Cory's Unexcusably Late, Ridiculously Horrid Essay of Doom.

The following is an essay using Cliffnotes, 2000 Census Report, and Dating the Iroquois Confederacy to support the claim that Contact between native Americans and Europeans between the founding of Jamestown (1607) and the outbreak of the American revolution (1776) constituted a continuous cultural revolution for native people.

Today, most Native Americans are mingled and almost completely indiscernible from the descendants of those who once were considered a threat to an entire way of life. They made good on that threat. Once thriving with many Indian nations going about their business and interacting with each other as they chose, within three hundred years the continent of North America was an extension of the European world in every aspect of culture. This rapid and drastic change occurred not because of internal natural progression, but because of outside forces forcing Native Americans to change, adapt, and conform, or be utterly annihilated.

From the time Europeans started showing up on the shores of North America, to the breakout of the American Revolution the economy of the surrounding tribes was controlled and altered by the will of the Europeans. Before the settlement of Jamestown was established in 1607 the nearby Powhatan people had a culture hinging it's hopes of survival on the growing of maize and other crops along with hunting enough game to eat, what surplus goods they had they exchanged with others in symbolic trading rituals to gain power. With the colonization of Jamestown, which was established with the thought of plundering the riches of the New World for export back to England, the goods of the Powhatan's were needed to feed the colonists while they spent their time searching for gold. Once the colonists finally realized they were going to need to become self sustainable, their interactions with the Powhatan's became another source of extra income, rather then one of required for living. This was the first step towards a complete and utter dependence by Native Americans on trading furs with Europeans for European industrialized goods which they could not create on their own. With all of this hunting merely to sell the unending demand for furs, also contributed to decreased game amounts causing an inability to live off the land and support large amounts of people like Native Americans had always been doing before the arrival of the Europeans settlers. All the way up through the outbreak of the American revolution, the Native American economy was based completely around bartering with furs to the Europeans, all being traced back to that original search for profit in this "New World".

Native American Nations had at one point for hundreds of years been separated, but once the Europeans arrived on their shores, and they started to realize just how powerful a force they were dealing with, some Nations realized that in order to be more then a nuisance to the Europeans, they could no longer be separated into so many split up communities. To the Europeans one Indian was just like another, he was an Indian, that was his group, any sub category was of far less importance; however, to Native Americans, the individual nation that one belonged to was of far more importance then what the Europeans saw it as. This started to change once European presence started to become seen as something that wasn't just going to go away if Native Americans continued to do as they had been doing for so long. With this realization tribes started to band together, many, such as the Tuscaroras in 1700 joined the already established Iroquois league in what can be seen as an attempt to combine all the power of the many once scattered tribes into one that could possibly, hopefully stand against the domination of the European settlers slowly taking over the entire continent. It's overall effect however, was to group together Native Americans in their own minds as well as the Europeans. It was no longer the Powhatan's, and the Mohawk against the French and the English; it was the Indians against the Europeans.

Over the whole of America, so many different native American religions had flourished and been practiced for hundreds of years before the Europeans arrived; more importantly, before the European diseases which Native Americans had no resistance to arrived. With the arrival of these diseases came one of the largest drops of a population of people that has ever occurred in recorded history. Native Americans were succumbing to these new diseases and dieing at such disturbingly huge rates that it is quite astonishing that they were able to regain their footing at all after the first waves of death ran rampant through their nations. At the same time these plagues such as small pox were ravaging the local population, European missionaries were arriving to try and sway some of the Indians over to Christianity. The missionaries telling the Native Americans about the graces of God were, along with their compatriots from Europe, not be afflicted at all by the utter destruction that the Indians themselves were; this did not go unnoticed by the Native Americans. As such, many Native Americans began to convert to Christianity in the hopes that the missionaries were correct in their teachings, and that they would be saved from the horrifying deaths befalling their brethren at the hand of cold, disgusting plague by this new omnipotent God. Thus, out of fear of death, a piece of Native American culture, in their various religions was severely close to being lost.

It may have been noticed that this entire paper has been in the past tense, that was quite misleading. It may have been noticed that this entire paper has been talking about pieces of the Native American Culture that either morphed, or had been completely destroyed, that was quite misleading. With European contact, and colonization in the Americas came a dramatic continuous cultural revolution for the Natives of the area. With that contact and interactions came a huge shift in power over the continents of North and South America. Yet, these things do not mean that Native American culture is completely obliterated and gone. According to the 2000 U.S Census report their are 2,475,956 American Indian, and Alaska Natives living in the United states; not a large percentage of the total population, but a large number for a race most see as either extinct or only running casinos. With events as recent as the memorial ride to Wounded Knee in 1990, it is impossible to call Native American Culture as completely gone. The original way of life for human beings on this continent isn't gone, it has been attacked, and thought to be destroyed, but it hasn't succumbed, it simply shrunk, and, more importantly, adapted. Native American culture doesn't have to be used in the past tense.