Occasionally, a professor will assign a book in their lecture whose origins can be traced to a seminar paper. Undergraduates typically respond to this piece of trivia with emotions ranging from indifference to mild admiration. Graduate students however, tend to display more of an annoyed reverence which conveys the understood difficulties involved in forming an original and unique argument designed to contribute to the existing historical scholarship. In this regard, I am quite annoyed with William Cronon, who wrote Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England during his time as a master’s student at Yale University. The book not only contributed to the history of colonial New England by casting the environment as…
However, that equilibrium was shattered with the emergence of European colonists in North America who brought over a plague of diseases from Europe, such as smallpox, typhus, measles, and among other disease. Unfortunately,…
1. Explain the factors (physical, political, social, technological) that made Native Americans vulnerable to conquest by European colonizers. The major factors that made the Native Americans vulnerable to conquest were their susceptibility to diseases like chicken pox, measles and smallpox. All of these disease the European conquerors had immunities to these diseases.…
The intended audience of the article “ The Indians' Old World:Native Americans and the Coming of European”, are the general public and historians because the article shows how a lot of people give more importance of American history after Columbus rather than before Columbus and criticize how historians know much less history prior to arrival of columbus in 1492. For instance, the author Neal Salisbury states that “historians now recognize that Europeans arrived, not in a virgin land, but in one that was teeming with several million people (435)”. 2. The author’s main argument is that there was densely populated society before European arrival, how certain patterns and processes originated before and after contact with the Europeans.…
Horses brought from Europe were quickly adopted by North American tribes such as the Apache and the Sioux for transportation. The most significant and devastating effect of the Columbian Exchange was the death toll of the diseases exchanged between Old World and New World peoples. European invaders brought diseases such as smallpox, malaria, and yellow fever. Natives gave Europeans syphilis in return, but its effects did not ravage the European continent in the same way that European diseases did for the Americas. After being isolated from the Eastern Hemisphere for over a millennia, indigenous peoples were especially vulnerable…
Many beneficial goods were brought back and forth, but disease truly changed the future of the New World. Over the centuries, Europeans had developed immunities to a variety of sicknesses. When they arrived in the New World, Native Americans were exposed to a deadly concoction of diseases, to which they had no immunities to fight. Millions of Native Americans…
Cook, David Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. In this book, David Cook attempts to synthesize all available information about the spread of disease in the new world in one volume. Cook’s main argument is that the traditional historiography on the subject, most notably that written by Bartolome de Las Casas, over-emphasizes the cruelty of the Spanish as the reason behind the massive deaths experienced in Amerindian populations.…
Native American started to use steel knives and guns to hunt animals instead of obsidian daggers and bows, which were less effective and durable. However, these trivial advantages didn’t compensate for the devastation created by the Europeans. Although the lives of the survived Native Americans improved, the majority of Native Americans, which was ninety five percent of the total population, was killed by the diseases and brutality of the Europeans. On top of that, the devastation also spread to Africa and Europe through inflation and slavery. In this case, the minor benefits brought by the Columbian Exchange could not offset the huge disadvantages brought by…
The Columbian exchange was the extensive exchange of plants, animals, ideas, diseases, and technology between the Old World of western Europe and the New World of the Americas. Through this exchange of cultures and resources, both societies became introduced to new substances and concepts that would shape each population for years to come. However, not everything that was introduced proved to be beneficial, and this includes the horrific diseases which were introduced to the Native Americans through the Europeans. The Native Americans of the New World lacked the necessary antibodies to fight off the foreign diseases of the European explorers, and as a result, numerous Native American communities were decimated. The most potent of these diseases…
The Native American Health and Medicine talk was very interesting talk given by David G. Hilmey from St. Bonaventure University. He focused on Ethnoscience, which looks at the indigenous knowledge systems to connect culture with science. He is a synthetic organic chemist. He focused on The Seneca tribe, which is about 8,000 citizens. In particular, the Faithkeepers School.…
Kanong Vang The New Atlantic World During the colonial period, Europeans and Africans arrived to the Americas. Europeans in the fifteenth century did not have the necessary tools and economic resources to overcome the wilderness. However, when Europeans and Africans arrived to the New World they did not find wilderness but a civilization that has been created many years before already by the Native Americans. “Even in places that Europeans regarded as primordial wilderness there is evidence that native peoples engineered landscapes to support their populations (Video Lecture, Pre-Columbian America).”…
Dr. Marti Lindsey began her lecture with a parable about one’s ability to listen and learn. She explained how in the creation of humans long ago, there best fit creation was one that solved problems. There was first the creation of just one eye, but whoever created humans, decided that two eyes were better to recognize the problem. She explained how the mouth and nose was next, but after experimentation, one was almost too much because the mouth and nose only got you into trouble. Then finally the ears, one on both sides, were deemed the most important because of the ability of hearing in problem solving.…
The Europeans brought measles, malaria, and smallpox to the New World. Document 2 is a graph of the ¨Native American Population of Central Mexico¨. It shows the major decrease in the population of Native Americans from the years 1500 to 1620. The estimated populated in the year 1519 was 22 million, however the estimated population of Central Mexico by 1600 was 1 million. There weren't any treatments for these diseases, so Native Americans continued to die.…
During the 1700s, in the Colonial period, the practice of medicine was primitive, as was the healthcare provided to the early settlers. During this time “heroic medicine” was practiced. Aggressive treatments such as bleeding, purging, and blistering occupied a central place in therapeutics. Different philosophies (Western medicine and Native American medicine) were making it difficult for doctors to command the authority they desired. It was very easy to become a doctor during this period, anyone could claim to be a doctor.…
In 1492, Christopher Columbus set his voyage to America where he discovered new things. Christopher Columbus began the trade routes between Europe and America that has never been established before during that time. This would be known as the Columbian Exchange. The Columbian exchange was an exchange of goods and ideas between the old world (Europe, Asia, Africa) and new world (America). The exchange consisted of plants, animals, culture, diseases, and slaves.…