by Calsue Murray

Created on: July 05, 2008

History has proven and continues to prove that the Colonists' effect on the Native American population was deleterious. Despite numberless chapters in history books that strive to portray interactions between, European Colonists and Original Natives of North America, as initially harmonious and mutually beneficial, the negative effects that ensued for Native Peoples can be neither denied nor minimized. Over time, over all the intervening years, the destructive impact of those effects has grown greater and more lasting.

The genocidal decimation of Native American populations is, justifiably, the best way to describe the end result that the Colonists' effect has had. Despite disclaimers by persons wishing to deny deliberate intent, the end results of the European Colonists' effect have not been accidental. Those results were not the result of happenstance. They were achieved by virtually every means imaginable.

For some years, after the armed conflict of early confrontations, military actions were used to kill off Native American populations. Additionally, pestilence, disease, alcohol addiction and forms of germ warfare were used against American Indians. They were driven off their lands. Their life styles were destroyed as the buffalo herds were slaughtered. Finally, dwindling bands of defeated Original Natives of North America were placed on "Reservations". Un-comprehensible treaties were signed and succeeding generations of living in poverty, ignorance, exploitation and despair were begun.

Some persons argue that inevitable cultural conflict was to blame for the decline and destruction of North American Native Populations. Some argue that the inability of Native Peoples to adapt and change and develop lifestyles similar to those of the European Colonists ought to be blamed. There are others who maintain that the mind sets, beliefs and expectations of the European Colonists were totally wrong. It is said that these Europeans came intent upon taking for themselves everything of value that the Native American Indians possessed. Never the less, wherever the blame and responsibility should truthfully be placed, devastation and decimation has been the undeniable effect of the Colonists' on the Native American Population that they encountered and began to impact when then arrived on the North American Continent.

Present generations of descendents of those early Colonists and present generations of descendents of those early Native Americans, whom those early Colonists began to negatively effect, cannot reverse those negative effects. They cannot go back, in history, and change any of the events that started those negative effects. Present generations of descendents from neither group can undo the damage that has already been done. However, it is probably not too late for present generations of descendents, of both groups, to begin to communicate and cousult one another and try to find ways to begin to stop those negative effects from continuing to impact and influence the thinking, sensitivities and reactions of persons living today and persons who will be living tomorrow.

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