The History of American Indians When E

The History of American Indians
    Today I am going to speak about American Indians. When Europeans discovered the western hemisphere they discovered a race of people unlike any they had known. Columbus called them Indians because he thought that he had reached the East Indies. He took a few of them back to Spain with him to exhibit at the royal court. It was as if the first Americans to land on the moon had discovered a race of moon men and had brought some of them back to earth to show its residents and others. We can imagine the excitement if the moon men were scheduled to visit the campus of our university.
    Although Indians, or red men, as they came to be called also, were widely distributed in North, Central and South America when Europeans first arrived, I shall be concerned in this talk mostly with those in the region that is now the United States. I shall have something to say about their origin and early history, the consequences for them of European settlement in the New World, the part they have played in the history of the United States, and their number, distribution and condition today.
    Where did the Indians come from? How did they get to America? When did they come? How many were living in what is now the United States when Europeans made their first contacts? None of these questions can be answered as clearly as we would wish, but many scholars have dealt with them and we can find tentative answers. Most scholars believe that the homeland of the Indians was Eastern Asia and they migrated to North America along a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska.
    The migrations may have begun 25 000 years ago, or even before that. They probably went on for a very long time, and the Indians gradually scattered over vast areas. Thus when Europeans arrived, the Indians were very old residents, living in many regions. Perhaps a million were living in the area of the United States when the white men came. In all of New England, where the pilgrims began their settlement in 1620, there were then probably fewer than 20 000 Indians.
    The Indians were a diverse people. They lived in hundreds of tribes. They spoke many languages. They lived under many different conditions. They gained their living in different ways. Some Indians did considerable farming; others did none at all. Some developed a way of life that depended on the buffalo that ranged the prairies and plains by the millions; others never saw a buffalo. Their dwellings were different. Indians of the northeast who lived in wigwams made of trees and barks would have been surprised to see the buffalo-skin teepees on the plains, or the cliff dwellings of the southwest. Tribal wars were carried on long before the coming of the white men. Every tribe lived close to nature and adapted to it, had its own myths, ceremonies and religious beliefs.
    Then came the white men. The white men had many things that the red men soon developed a desire for, ornaments, knives, guns, utensils, blankets, cloth, horse, whiskey. The red men had what the white men wanted, land, furs, and military power. Some white men both in the colonies and in Europe believed that it was the duty of Christians to bring Christianity to the Indians. It was thus inevitable that there should be many contacts between the two races.
    These contacts had tremendous consequences for the Indians. Guns revolutionized their hunting and warfare. Whiskey corrupted them. Christianity changed the lives of some Indians and brought conflict within tribes. The introduction of the horse by the Spanish changed the way of life of Indians in the west. The steady increase in the numbers of whites resulted in pressure being brought on the Indians to sell part of their lands and to move westward, to get out of the way of the white settlement. The Indians were under pressure also to take sides in the wars between European powers in America.
    For example, in the great French and British War of the eighteenth century (known as the Seven Years War) many Indians fought with the French in America and many others with the British. In one famous battle, which history records as a victory for the French over the British, most of the fighters on the French side were Indians. With the coming of large numbers of Europeans to America, life for the Indians could never be again what it had been before Columbus. The culture shock for them was very great indeed.
    The Indians made many efforts to prevent the advance of the frontier. Their attacks almost wiped out the early Virginia settlements. Isolated frontiersmen often found themselves in danger. In 1763 a great uprising against the British began under Pontiac, a Michigan Indian leader. Before the uprising was put down, the Indians had captured several British forts and had brought terror to the frontier. During the American Revolution many Indians sided with the British and caused much trouble for Americans on the frontiers.