Cultural Exchanges Between Native Americans and Early European Settlers

This paper looks at the history of cultural contact between the native Americans and the early settlers in North America. These contacts, which meant conveniences to one group and inconveniences to the other, affected both of them, resulting in the sharing of ideas, commodities, and knowledge. Many Native Americans taught the European pioneers how to farm, and some of these initial crops that European folks adopted were ‘the Three Sisters’ – corn, beans, and squash. These crops were part and parcels of settler’s food basket and were very essential for their existence in New World. Shelter, food: how to hunt or fish and medicinal plants, which settlers lacked understanding of the new environment. On the other hand, Europeans gave Native Americans better technologies and commodities, such as metalwork, weapons, and clothes, respectively. The Spanish introduced the horse into the continent, and this completely revolutionalized the manner in which a number of native tribes, especially those of the Great Plains, with the extra mobility and agility thus offered for hunting purposes. However, these exchanges were not always positive. European infectious diseases, especially smallpox, killed many Natives, and more often than not, European Natives were in conflict with one another. Eventually, European colonization had a negative impact on Native American communities because those societies lost their lands, culture, and self-rule. However, the initial meeting between the NA and European migrants set the social structure evolving as more of their traditions mixed with the European modern nation formation.