How Native Amerindians have been Treated by History

The original nations of the Americas represent hundreds of cultures which successfully adapted to the wide variety of environments that extended from arctic to the tip of South America. This kind of social organizations and the diversity of native cultures that developed through time, represent the high degree of variation and complexity according to the hitherto necessities and demands of the environment. Research points out that the primary economic motivation as well as the need for exploration and settlement had a direct effect on the lifestyles and the general nations of the Americas. This paper examines the native Amerindians and possibly how history has treated them with regard to the primary reasons for the treatment.

Native Amerindian
Native Amerindians form the original inhabitants of the America. Anthropologists contend that Amerindians faced a hard time when the Europeans invaded the continent because, they were thought of as people who were not culturally developed (Brookhaven, 2005). Jennings (2006) further asserts that the cultural orientations of the native Amerindians was the sole reason as to why the Europeans labeled them as such and thus, some of them ate raw meat. Historical perspectives outline that native Amerindians were not given the slightest opportunity to participate in the constitution making of their country hence they were quite secluded from the rest of the world.

According to Jennings (2006), the invasion of America was motivated with the notion that Amerindians were not developed and therefore there was no question of allowing them to preserve their culture. The history of the Amerindians was one fraught with civil war, dictatorship, revolutions, and political intrigues not forgetting religious persecution. In many respect, the history of the past forms the fundamental basis for the influence and shaping of the structures, roles and meaning of Amerindians today. Ideally, history treats them the group that values both fictive and non fictive relations thereby believing in a strong kinship network. Accordingly, their tribes transcend structures of matriarchal and matrilocal as well as patriarchal and patrilocal blood relations.

Today, the Amerindians are considered a distinct racial group. History provides arguments that Amerindians became the first inhabitants of the new world at the time of the first European exploration in the late 15th century .As such, their forbearers came from North Eastern Asia as a result of the low sea levels, during the  ice age to cross the Bering Strait on land. The cultural development of Amerindians as pictured by Brookhaven (2005) provides a very interesting comparison with other worlds. For example, their agriculture, which began somewhat 7000 or more years ago, was based on maize, squash and beans. Because, they had no suitable animals to domesticate, the Amerindians resorted to guinea pigs and somehow the draught animals to pull the plough and thus their development became gradual.

According to the controversial New World Migration model and the oral histories, Amerindians are the indigenous people of the America and history acknowledges that they have been living there since their genesis as evidenced by a wide range of traditional creation accounts. According to Jennings (2005), different American groups were treated differently but there were more discrimination against the native Amerindians and more or less enslaving them. In fact, the Anglo Americans became harsher and tended to exterminate the Amerindians.

Historians contend that Amerindians are treated as the indigenous people to the history of Guyanese culture and thus played a commendable job in the historical evolution of America as a nation. During colonial period and the period of invasion to America, Amerindians are regarded to have played a role that is multifaceted depending the invaders and the historical circumstances that they happened to find themselves in. What is really and historically acknowledged is the fact that Amerindians shared the same fate as the African. In other words, they spent their fortunes being slaves on plantations (Jennings, 2005). As slaves, they were captured and traded at the periphery of the colony and endured the same brutal conditions as their African counterparts. Many of the Amerindians slaves were women who were put to work either in the cassava fields or bread gardens and thus forced to produce cassava bread everyone ate in an era when wheat flour was unobtainable.

After 1770, the Amerindians took up yet another slave view such that they acted as plantation policemen. According to Brookhaven (2006), it should be noted that Amerindian slaves ran away from the plantations with a great frequency. The history of the plantation and the entire story of colonization of America was marred with slavery a factor that marks the history of Amerindians and which must acknowledged in our history classes.

In addition, political rule and the settlement in the America were initiated by the Spanish who fought with their native allies. The invasion of the America by Europeans brought many changes to America and the people inhabiting it. Jennings (2006) asserts that by the end of the nineteenth century, most of North America, the territory of Amerindians became Europe. Accordingly, the Amerindians became part of this European mould and with the takeover the Amerindians were taken advantage of by the Europeans through religion, trade and land. This phenomenon led the native Amerindians to begin accommodating the invaders offering their unexpected visitors with hospitality, willingness to trade and giving them advice on certain issues such as transport as well as food.

Later on, the cordial relationship was short-lived the European through exploration, missionaries and settler enclosed the native Amerindian populations. The native Amerindians were therefore taken from their homes and left with virtually nothing a factor which points out to the cause of the extinction of the Amerindians. Jennings (2006) highlights that European settlement challenged the understanding of the Amerindians on land ownership hence the property rights of the Amerindians were taken up by Europeans. In addition, the white national community sought to establish a homeland for the whites therefore they did everything to wipe away the Amerindians from the face of the earth.

Despite the historical cultural homogeneity within the white race, they succeeded in their pursuit to acquire land and homes from Amerindians. The simple reason behind this is based on the premise that Amerindians had conflicts of culture amongst themselves (Brookhaven, 2005). Cultural confederation behind common racial identity is a necessary key factor to the victory and if there was to be a widespread cultural and racial conflict, it was influenced by the artificial racial division that permitted the Amerindians to be exploited, divided and extinct.

There is need for the a few remaining Amerindians to unite behind a common Amerindian racial identity and form the main force behind a renewed American Indian movement that encompass both Latin America and North America as well as the surrounding land. As to that Jennings (2006) notes that there is a puzzling and curious double standard among the white nationalist movement in that the white colonizers subjugation of other race may be justified by the philosophy of  might makes right but then howl and screen about minority race like the Amerindians. The victory of the whites over the Amerindians was constituted around violent crimes and fueled by racism. Although it may be argued to be true racial victories by some quarters, it was a victory gained through artificial division of the Amerindians thereby making them to lack a united front. In addition to this, accidental disease spread and the deliberate biological warfare by the invading Europeans contributed largely to the crippling and the slaughtering of the Amerindians.

Amerindians are treated by history as the weak and oppressed lot who endured horrible experiences from the invasion to America a factor that saw them wiped out of the face of the Earth. Form the forgoing discussion, it is evident that Amerindians are the first and native inhabitant of America and through centuries of unjust and imperialistic invasion as well as colonization, they were able to be displaced from America by the Europeans and eventually made extinct due to the use of biological warfare. All the documentation in history succinctly outline the process and intrigues that were used by the Europeans to invade America. Amerindians were regarded as pagans with no defined culture and thus an artificial division on the basis of racial as well as the cultural conflict amongst them was instituted by the white to destroy them completely by making them less united.

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