Comparison of Treatments of Native Americans in the East and West

East of the Mississippi

Early European colonists that came to North America found a sparsely inhabited coastline which gave them opportunities to settle and succeed where others had previously failed. Since many of the pilgrims were in search of religious freedom they saw a land their god had prepared for them by wiping out the natives through pestilence and disease. The fact is that the plague of disease that wiped out more than 90% of the original inhabitants of the northern east coast was brought by European fisherman around 1617, who were fond of the cod in the Massachusetts Bay area. These fishermen would come ashore for firewood, freshwater and to kidnap the occasional native to sell into slavery, and unknowingly leave behind diseases from the Old World. The immune systems of the natives were in no way prepared to deal with diseases such as viral hepatitis, smallpox, chicken pox, measles and influenza in the way the Europeans were. These diseases originate in areas of dense populations with close contact to domesticated animals, both foreign affairs to the natives of North America but not for the Europeans who brought the disease. When the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock arrived in 1620 few natives remained along the northern coast and those that did greeted the new comers hospitably, unlike the welcome of previous endeavors in 1606 and 1607 which ended with the natives driving the attempted settlements away. The Europeans were not the only ones attributing the disease to divine intervention, the natives began to believe their gods had abandoned them which facilitated their conversion to Christianity. The results of this unplanned germ warfare attack on the natives was that for nearly 50 years the early European settlers faced no real challenge from the Indians which enabled them to get a firm footing in the New World.

The Revolutionary War around 1776 was largely between the British forces and the American Settlers, but the natives were not without consequence. Both sides competed for the alliance of the Natives. Most Native Americans who joined the struggle joined on th side of the British in an attempt to halt the settlers expansion westward, but many native communities remained divided on which side to support. After the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 the British turned large swaths of native land over to the Americans and they in turn tried to treat the Natives as a conquered people which proved difficult. These difficulties coupled with the desire to continue to expand westward caused the newly formed American Government to try to buy the land from the Natives through various treaties and negotiations, this too proved difficult.

Throughout the 1800 many Native Tribes were taken from their lands east of the Mississippi and marched to new lands in the west under the Indian Removal Act of 1830. One such march of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia to Oklahoma and was called by them “the trail where they cried” or the Trail of Tears all of which was the result of signing of the New Echota Treaty. The deadline for voluntary removal was May of 1838 and by the the end of may the U.S. Army had arrived to round up those Cherokee who had not yet left for the west. Around 17,000 Cherokee were moved from their homes at gun point and forced to walk a distance of about 1,200 miles to their new reservation. The death toll of the march is said to be between 4,000 and 6,000 due to poor conditions, heat and dysentery.

West of the Mississippi

Long before the English were able to establish long term settlements in the New World the Spanish explorers of the the early 16th century had made a lasting impression upon the tribes inhabiting the western half of North America. After Cortez's conquest of the Aztecs which ended in 1521 and a few failed attempts at colonizing the southern parts of North America the Spanish expanded their territory to the northwest into modern day Texas, California Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma and New Mexico many of the expeditions led to the destruction of the explorers at the hands of the Natives. Some of the first permanent European settlers were groups of Spanish Jews in New Mexico in the late 1500's. With this expansion came some key elements of Spanish culture the most influential of which was probably the horse and the way it transformed the Plains Indians.

The Navajo, a plains tribe in New Mexico, first came in contact with the American Government in 1846 as they witnessed the Mexican-American War. The Navajo and Mexicans had been at odds with each other long before the Europeans came to the Americas. At the end of the Mexican-American War the Mexicans we considered American citizens and were protected my the Americans. Over the next ten years Americans built forts in New Mexico in traditional Navajo territory. The Americans signed peace treaties with the Navajo chiefs such as Manuelito. The soldiers at Fort Defiance in New Mexico prohibited Manuelito from pasturing their horses on some of the most prized pasture land which they had commandeered and proceeded to shoot any Navajo horse found grazing in them. This and other similar incidents provoked the Navajos to break their treaties of peace and sparked skirmishes between the Navajos and American Soldiers, many of the casualties being Navajo. When the American Civil War began there was peace struck again between the Navajos and the soldiers only to be broken after provocation by the soldiers at Fort Wingate. In 1862 a regiment of Union soldiers under the command of General James Carleton marched into New Mexico. Gen. Carleton began the process of forcing the Navajos out of their