Just a misunderstanding, really. (A horrible, destructive misunderstanding)

The following paper deals with the primary cause of conflict between Europe and Native America after first contact, and states that that primary cause was conflicting religious beliefs, leading to very different understandings of the world around them. It draws its information from 1. The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America, by James Wilson, 2. the article from Cross Currents, Mountains made Alive: Native American Relationships with Sacred Land By Emily Cousins and 3. the article Native American Culture of Giving by Heather Francis.

The primary cause of conflict between Native America and Europe was conflicting cultures caused by differences in religion. This is very easily determined by looking at the many aspects in which the two cultures had huge misunderstandings, from ideas about place, to gifts, to perception of time itself. The brunt of the conflict between European and Native American societies could have been avoided had there been lesser of a gap between how each perceived the world around them, based on their culture and religious beliefs.

The earth, and place as a whole were viewed very differently by European and Native American cultures. Land was an object to be owned, bought, and sold to Europeans; This notion was completely and utterly foreign to Native Americans, who saw the land as simply land, which belonged to no one. Also most Native American religions held certain specific places as sacred, making them unable to leave these places rightfully. "Frank Mitchell, a Navajo Blessingway singer, says that after First Man and First Woman created the four sacred mountains of Navajoland, First Woman paused and said, "I wonder by what means [the mountains] will be made to be alive!... Let some beings take standing positions within them! In matter of fact, if there be none standing within them, they are but things that lie around without purpose." (2). Unfortunately for them it just so happened that some of these places were good farming land or filled with valuable minerals... things that the Europeans were obsessed with. Being separated from the places that they held sacred, was to Native Americans the absolute worst thing that could happen to them as James Wilson touches on "It is their relationship with the land and its other inhabitants which identifies them as who they are. Their destiny is not to change it or move away from it but to maintain it according to the instructions they received 'long ago' from their Creator or culture hero." (1 pg.7). In essence the Europeans were asking (and forcing in fact) the Native Americans to do something that was completely unthinkable to them, they were made to leave the places they had always known they were not supposed to leave, because the Europeans had no real concept of place being utterly important, this is because of the lack of need to be in a certain place in most Judaeo Christian religions which were the overwhelmingly dominant religions of Europe. If the Europeans had been able to have a sense of the important role a specific place could have on a people, they would have been much more hesitant to force the Native Americans to do what they couldn't do, leading to much less conflict.

"A Gift Economy is one where status is given to individuals based on what they give to others as opposed to a commodity or exchange economy where status is given to those individuals who have the most (Pinchot 1999)." (3) The Europeans basic cultural outline is as today, one in which those who simply had the most, had the most power. Native Americans on the other hand viewed those that could give the most to others in the form of gifts as those with the most power. "..., from the Native American point of view, a form of ceremonial gift exchange which allowed them to bind the newcomers into their world of mutual obligation." (1 Pg.39) Seeing as how the Europeans had no concept of this system, they had no way of knowing that the gifts which the Native Americans were bestowing upon them in plenty were really a way of them telling the Europeans that they were had more power in the relationship between the two societies, and expected the Europeans to act accordingly. This misunderstanding led to a funneling of Native American resources into the pockets of Europeans. The Native Americans were giving everything they had to the Europeans with the thought that they were establishing that they were the more powerful, but in reality the Europeans were simply taking the things they were given. Then, when conflict hit, the Native Americans had thrown away many of their resources which could have been used to help fend off their enemies and most likely avoid the utter decimation that they received.

European mindset as to time always moving forward along a straight, linear, progressive line, caused a way of being that innovation and betterment of everyday life for the future becomes what everyone's lives are about. Where as the Native American view of time as cyclical, in that everything comes in cycles, leads to the opposite, where only focusing on the present occurs, not needing to look ahead, not needing to do anything that will make life easier or better in the future, because time is for the most part the same "Historic time is therefore less a straight line than a repeating cycle: instead of taking you a step further from your beginning, each year in some sense brings you back to it."(1 Pg.7). This complete opposite view of the world, led to difference in priorities, and overall way of living between the two cultures. The Europeans compulsion to advance falls in sharp conflict with Native American lack of such motivation. If the Europeans had simply had the same sense of time as the Native Americans, then they never would have felt the need to take the America's as their own in order to make life better for themselves in the future. Without this confliction in sense of time, there would have been no conflict between Europeans and Native Americans.

The differences between European and Native American religion, and culture, led to a complete inability to comprehend each other, and that, was the cause of conflict between them. The Europeans inability to understand or even comprehend the way the Native Americans perceived the world they lived in, from cyclical time, to the importance of physical places, to the meaning of the gifts they were receiving, were what primarily caused the conflict. It also didn't help that the Native American lack of realization that the Europeans didn't understand the meaning of everything they were doing. Conflict was more of a lack of comprehension based upon completely different views of the world then anything else.

"This, for the Indians, was how the universe worked" (1 pg.39)

The problem is, that's not how the universe worked for the Europeans.