Why Did The Native American Culture Clash

The Native Americans sustained and took care of their home, while the Europeans pushed and pulled for more money to fall from it. This caused the land to lose a lot of its density and eventually the Europeans’ wealth as well. Things that were lost were proper farming grounds, culture of the Native Americans, and wild life. Different views of the Europeans and Native Americans caused a lot of conflict. The Europeans’ views on the Indians’ way of life became critical once they saw and felt as if their society was not controlled

Native Americans had conflict with the Europeans over social and environmental problems; this led to violence and war. Also, Europeans and Native Americans were both violent and Europeans enslaved and killed Natives to conquer land and people.

The Indigenous people of America are called Native Americans or often referred to as “Indians”. They make up about two percent of the population in the United States and some of them still live in reservations. They once lived freely in the wilderness without any sort of influence or exposure from the Europeans who later came in the year of 1492, and therefore their culture is very different from ours. The Iroquois are northeastern Native Americans who are historically important and powerful. In the following essay we will discover some differences between the religious beliefs of the Native American Iroquois and Christianity to see if culture and ways of living have an effect on the view of religion, but we will also get to know some similarities. I am going to be focusing on the Iroquois, which are the northeastern Native Americans in North America.

After Europeans first encountered Native Americans they did not fully understand the religions and culture of the different tribes. The Europeans Viewed the Natives as a lesser people that needed to be forcefully assimilate to European standards.The Native Americans traditional religions were throw aside by the Europeans who valued Christianity. They were also viewed as an easy resource and were enslaved.

The Europeans and the Indians had very contrasting ideas of personal wealth and ownership. The Europeans believed that only the rich should own land, and

In the early 1800’s, The United States and Spain had continuously argued with the Native people. The Louisiana Territory was purchased from France in the year 1803, Americans continued to push farther west for fertile land that could be used for farming. Due to overcrowding of eastern cities like New York City and Boston many settlers moved out west for a new start. It allowed for colonists to spread out and own untouched fertile land. When white settlers arrived they had realized that most of the land acquired from the territory was occupied by Native Americans for thousands of years. For decades Americans had thought that the land west of the Appalachian Mountains were unoccupied, but they were wrong. There were many tribes that had occupied this land. This included tribes like, The Choctaw, Cherokee, and The Chickasaw. In a sense, Americans had violent outbreaks with the Natives the minute the colonists’ had arrived in the United State. As the colonists’ tried to establish complete dominance and superiority over the Indians, ongoing heated debates over land ownership, and demanding requests to satisfy greed made forceful attacks between the groups unavoidable.

Europeans came to the Americas for many different reasons. Religious freedom, adventure, gold, new opportunity, and land are a few of them. Perhaps the most serious was the different way that Europeans and Native Americans thought about land. Land was extremely important to European settlers because land meant wealth, in which they established many communities where they lived and worked. Many of the settlers in the new country could have never owned land in Europe because they were too poor. The Native Americans believed that no one could own land. They

The Native American religion was very different from the Christian religion of the Europeans. The Native American’s didn’t pray to a god, they prayed to something in nature such as the sky or the sun. “O our Mother the Earth, O our Father the Sky” (Tewa Indian). The colonists thought that it was barbaric that the Native American’s didn’t believe in a God. The colonists thought that there was only one correct way to be religious and that the way that the Native American’s practiced religion was ‘the wrong way’.

Religion played a very important role in both Native American and Puritan society, though their idea’s differed greatly. The puritans were very religious people, and it mattered more of what God thought of them more than anything and what everyone else thought didn’t matter as much. While the Puritans were the very religious ones, the Native Americans cared more about viewing people for who they were as people than their religious beliefs. Although the Native Americans had their own religious beliefs, the Puritans also thought that the Native Americans needed to “prove themselves worthy”, of their religious beliefs. The Puritans did not believe that the Native Americans had any kind of regulation on their own lives. It was very

Europeans and Native Americans both retained religious beliefs. Though, Native Americans articulated their beliefs in a less structured way. Europeans were monotheistic. They attended churches led by and educated clergy. And, unlike Native Americans, interpreted written scriptures. In

The many cultural differences between the Europeans and the Natives also caused frequent clashes and rifts between the two groups that often led to destruction of land and people, and sometimes resulted in blood – shed, war or captivity. The Europeans not only wanted the Natives land when they arrived, but they also brought a sense of superiority and a string of diseases with them. These diseases are what would soon aid in wiping out most of the Natives tribes.

Many prominent historians argue a clash between culture and religious philosophy was the primary cause of conflict between European settlers in North America and Native Americans. However, a closer analysis of American history suggests otherwise. While a clash in cultures and religious differences did exist, the European domination of Native Americans was primarily fueled by European economic motivations, a desire for valuable natural resources and a craving to expand the American colonial system. Due to this, the conflict was inevitable.

The arrival of Europeans in America greatly disrupted the life of the Natives. The natives had their own culture in America with their own special beliefs. When Europeans arrived they tried to alter the way Native Americans lived their lives to resemble their way of living. The Natives did not respect this because they had previously built a lifestyle in America that they wish not to be transformed. The two cultures had different opinions about government, religion, land, and society. Due to the many differences between the Native and European people, it was unfeasible that there would be no conflicts between them.

            Indians had their own way of life and culture before the Spaniards came and started to change things. Native Americans had their own land and lived very different lifestyle than the settlers that came from Europe. The settlers did not approve of the ways of life of the Native Americans as they saw the Native American as wild savages. One viewpoint of the settlers from Dr. Gayle lesson states “As the Puritan minister Cotton Mather wrote, "probably the Devil" had delivered these "miserable savages" to America, "in hopes that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would never come here to destroy or disturb his absolute empire over them."” The Native Americas were not respected by the settlers. Their ways, cultures, and religion were not accepted they did know their lives were going to be changed drastically.

The European colonists and the Native Americans of North America had very different views on nearly everything they encountered in their lives. Living in vastly different cultures lead both groups to have two extremely different outlooks on four main topics; religious beliefs, the environment, social relations, and slavery, differences which the colonists used to their advantage when conquering the peoples of the New World.