A Difference of Philosophy

The Indians generally displayed a gracious and trusting hospitality toward those first white Europeans.  One record states, "They are hospitable, friendly and civil to an immense degree, in good breeding, they surpass the French."

Most white men fueled by land hunger, saw the Native Americans as an obstacle to overcome.  The philosophies of life differed 180 degrees from that of the Native Americans.

To the white European, the land, forests, and  rivers of the New World were resources to be exploited and divided for profit.  To the Native American the land and its resources should be shared by the entire community and passed to succeeding generations without change.

Yes, tribes could clash over hunting grounds, but to own a portion of nature was an alien concept.  To the Indians there was a vast spiritual force inherent in living things called "orenda" by the Iroquois.

The struggle to possess the land became a battle fought with superior weapons and technology of the Europeans against the Indians' simple, primitive ways.  One of the most destructive weapons inflicted on the Indians was disease. 

The Europeans had contracted and developed an immunity or resistance to such diseases as measles, malaria, typhus, influenza, the bubonic plague, and small pox.  Small pox, for example, wiped out entire Indian villages.  Hundreds of thousands of Eastern Indians died, victims of bacteria and viruses introduced by the first white man. 

Next time...The Invasions of the 16th century.

____________________________

On This Day in Pioneer History:  On July 22, 1793, Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing north of Mexico,  more than a decade before Lewis and Clark.