Negative Effects Of Native American Colonization

The European nations greatly benefited from the colonization of the Americas. From the Americas, the Europeans gained wealth, crops, land, and slaves through the Triangular Trade. However, despite the benefits of colonization, we should not ignore the numerous negatives as well. The Native Americans and the African slaves, where two groups of people who suffered from what the Europeans considered an achievement. While colonization heavily damaged the indigenous and the enslaved people, it is also responsible for the formation and diversity of musical culture in the Americas. Colonization heavily damaged the indigenous people of the Americas in four main ways. The first, and by far the most fatal to the indigenous population, is disease. Disease
They knew the land better than the Europeans, and their numbers helped even out the battlefield. Similar occurrences happened with the Native Northern Americans as well, which caused the loss of a significant amount of the native population. While disease and war affected the Native Americans physically, there were also psychological affects that resulted from colonization. One of these would be the loss of their culture. Culture is everything to a society. Culture is the heart of a society; it is what that entire society is centered around. Generally, culture is what holds a society together. When the Europeans landed in the Americas, they attempted to convert the Native American “savages” to Christianity. By attempting to convert them, the Europeans launched a religious attack on the Natives. They came to their homes and told them that what they believed in was wrong, even though it was not their place. This likely caused many Native Americans to question their religion, and probably offended many as well. This was a mistake made by mostly Spain, Portugal, and England. In contrast, the French and Dutch excepted their
Most modern day music can trace its way all the way back to the Negro Spirituals. The Negro Spirituals were songs that the African slaves sang as a way to create some form of culture and communication with other slaves. These songs expressed hope, freedom, and relief from hardships. Many of these songs, like “Kumbaya” are still sung today, even if the form is slightly altered, the meaning remains. For example, “Kumbaya” can be translated to “come by here” and expressed the African slaves’ hope that a savior would save them from the harsh conditions of slavery. From the Negro Spirituals evolved three main music genres; ragtime, blues, and jazz. The blues embodied the despair of the African slaves. Many of the same things that they sung about in the Negro Spirituals carried over into this style of music. It was a way to describe your hardships in live, in a musical form, and a way for African-American musicians singing it, to retain some of their historical culture. Ragtime and Jazz are two other styles of music that evolved from the Negro Spirituals. Ragtime was an African-American made music style that was based off the use of syncopated rhythms that, for the most part, only black musicians could do at this time. From ragtime came jazz, which is known widely as “America’s Classical Music”. Like ragtime it used syncopated rhythms, although it became much more based around