How the American Indians lost the lands to the White Man

How the American Indians Lost the Lands to the White Man

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2007 October

Introduction

The people now known as Indians or Native Americans were the first people to live in the Americas . They had been living there for thousands of years before any Europeans arrived . The Vikings explored the east coast of North America around A .D .1000 and had some contact with Indians (Watson Howell 1980 . But lasting contact between Indians and Europeans began with Christopher Columbus 's voyages to the Americas . In

br 1492 , Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain . He was seeking a short sea route to the Indies , which then included India China , the East Indies , and Japan . Europeans did not then know that North and South America existed . When Columbus landed in what is now known as the West Indies , he did not realize he had come to a New World He thought he had reached the Indies , and so he called the people he met Indians . Almost every Indian group had its own name . Many of these names reflected the pride of each group in itself and its way of life . For example , the Delaware Indians of eastern North America called themselves Lenape , which means genuine people . Today , many Indians refer to themselves as Native Americans . The first Indians came to the New World from Siberia , in Asia . Most scientists think they arrived at least 15 ,000 years ago . At that time huge ice sheets covered much of the northern half of the earth . The Bering Strait , which today is a narrow area of water that separates Asia and North America , was easily walked across by the Indians who were following the animals that they were hunting . Much later this ice sheet melted and the land bridge became covered with water . By then , Indian groups had already spread throughout the New World , all over North and South America . These Indian groups developed different cultures because of the different climates and landforms in the regions in which they settled

Body

Anthropologists , scientists who study human culture , classify the hundreds of North and South American Indian tribes into groups of tribes that are alike . These groups are called culture areas . Some of the cultures of North America are the Arctic the Northeast , or Eastern Woodlands the Plains and Southwest . The Indians spoke hundreds of different languages and had many different ways of life . Some groups lived in great cities and others in small villages . The Aztec and the Maya of Central America built large cities . Some of the Aztec cities had as many as 100 ,000 people . The Maya built special buildings in which they studied the moon , the stars , and the sun . They also developed a calendar and a system of writing . Many of the Indians of Eastern North America lived in villages . They hunted and farmed , growing such crops as beans , corns and squash (Bains , 1985 . Most of the Indians were friendly at first and taught the...