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Manifest Destiny : The European Beliefs Of The Colonization Of North America

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The first foreign inhabitants of North America were originally from Spain and France, later came the English. Whether their motives for inhabiting Northern America were for political, social, or religious reason, they all encountered a blockade to their expansion, the Natives of North America. These Native Americans, although man had prophesied the arrival of the pale skins, were put in a tense situation with these newcomers from across the Atlantic Ocean. They were forced to change their way of living and had no choice but to try and accommodate, so as to appease the European settlers. The settlers however, mostly saw no reason to understand the culture and ways of the Native Americans. Instead, they converted these peoples’ religions, colonized their homeland, and violently suppressed any resistance to it all. The reason? One could argue that it was for “the advancement” of mankind, but the reality is that these white settlers could not bear to understand anything that was foreign to them. They judged these Natives based on the color of their skin and their culture, because it was different from what the Europeans had ever seen, and was therefore “savage”.
Manifest Destiny is what European settlers used to justify their expansion West. John Gast, a painter in the late 1800s, created a piece titled, the “American Progress”. It depicts an angelic woman, carrying telegraph wires and leading white settlers to the West. The Natives, as well as the wildlife (symbolic of nature)

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