background

The relationship between Native Americans and the White American population has greatly affected both races. When the pilgrims came to America, the Native Americans help them adapt to the new environment so that they could survive. This helped jumpstart the White American population, because without the help of the Native Americans, the pilgrims would have died out within the first year of them living here. Because of their close interaction with the Pilgrims, the Native Americans caught the diseases that the Europeans brought over. Many of the Native Americans died because they did not have the immune system to fight off the diseases. Although this working together of the Native Americans and the White Americans helped the pilgrim population, it also hurt the Native American population; this is shown throughout America’s history.
In 1830 the Indian Removal act was established. This gave President Andrew Jackson the ability to move any Native American tribe that had land east of the Mississippi river, to unclaimed land to the west of the river. He used this power, and forced the Cherokee Native Americans that lived in Georgia, to move to land in Oklahoma. This was the start of the trail of tears; “As the Cherokee made their arduous journey to Oklahoma, starvation, illness, cold, and despair resulted in thousands of deaths.” This is another example of how the interaction between the Native Americans and White Americans lead to the success of the White population, and to the increase of the oppression of the Native American race. The White population profited from the addition of the land, where as the Cherokee Indians had to start their lives over.
The interaction between the two races also caused the Native Americans to alter their culture. Sequoyah, a Cherokee Native American saw that the White American population was dominating the country. He thought that his was because they were able to communicate through a written language. The Cherokee Indians decided that for them to be able to survive in this society they were going to need to give up a part of their culture; only having a spoken language. Once again this shows how because of the addition of the white American culture, Native Americans culture was somehow changed.
There was one Native American spiritual movement where Native Americans tried to take back their old culture and reject the new ways of the American culture. “Shun such European ways as schooling, Christianity, and alcohol”. This was an attempt to reverse the changes that the White American culture had on the Native American culture. But once again the Americans took control and wiped out the tribes that lived by these beliefs.
Throughout history, Native American and With Americans have always had a relationship. For the most part the relationship leaves the Native Americans worse off, while the white Americans prosper.