Cultural Characteristics Of Native Americans

1. The native Americans survived largely on the resources available in their immediate surroundings. The natives built complex civilizations of great variety that subsisted on hunting, gathering, and fishing. The varying geographical regions of North America produced many distinct Native American tribes. The cultural features varied enormously from one tribe to another. The Eskimos of the Arctic Circle fished and hunted seals; their civilization spanned thousands of miles of largely frozen land, where they traveled by dogsled. The bison-pursuing Indians of the Great Plains (most Great Plains Indians were sedentary farmers, but several small tribes pursued bison) and the big-game hunters of the northern forests, who pursued moose and caribou,
The most obvious consequence of the Columbian Exchange with the Western Hemisphere was the introduction of European diseases (smallpox, measles, influenza, etc.) to the Native Americans. The Native Americans got the short end of the stick: the Europeans benefited greatly from the Columbian Exchange, as they learned new agricultural techniques from the natives, and discovered new crops, including corn, which became an important staple among the settlers, while the natives were virtually obliterated by diseases they had no immunity to. As squash, pumpkins, beans, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes were finding their way back to Europe and revolutionizing European agriculture, natives were dying at catastrophic levels. Native groups inhabiting some of the large Caribbean islands and some areas of Mexico were virtually extinct within fifty years of their first contact with whites. On Hispaniola, the native population declined from 1 million to 500, and as much as 95 percent of the Mayans were wiped out within a few years of their first contact with the Spanish. In addition to exposing the natives to deadly diseases, the Europeans also tried to subjugate and exterminate the natives. The Europeans considered the natives savages and not fully human, and waged war against them. Finally, many explorers and settlers wanted to find treasures in the New World, while others wanted to start an agricultural economy. The Natives soon became the principal source of labor for the Europeans. The colonists used a wage system close to slavery which forced the Indians to work in mines and plantations for fixed periods. The Spanish brought their system of distributing encomiendas to the New World (they first used it with the Moors in Spain). In this system, natives were forced to provide tribute and