by Bryan Sherwood

Created on: March 23, 2010

Change always comes at a cost.  For America, this cost has never been light.  Although many people view 1492 as the beginning of American history, the true history of the land began far before then.  The first Americans were believed to have journeyed to the U.S. about 25,000 years ago, across what is now known as the Bering Strait.  For their expansion into the Americas, leaving the familiar was the first price they had to pay.  These people had to adapt to different climates and foods.  The cultural groups in toward the south of North America eventually domesticated common crops such as tomatoes, squash, and corn.  Clearly, their tools and lifestyles were adjusted to better fit their environment.

However, these adjustments did little to prepare them for European voyages to the Americas in the 1400’s.  Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492, although he believed he had arrived in Asia.  Other European explorers quickly followed suit, and began rapidly colonizing the continent.  These explorers brought with them many foreign technologies.  However, the cost the natives had to pay for foreign technology was the transmission of foreign disease.  Diseases such as measles, mumps, chicken pox, and small pox devastated native communities, killing members off by the thousands.  Many Native Americans were also enslaved.  As a result, some view the European discovery of America as a cruel occurrence in Native American history.

As more and more European colonies were set up, Native Americans began to lose the land they had lived on for generations.  Several land disputes arose between the white settlers and the natives.  The price the people had to pay for an increase in population—namely, increases in the European and African population—was a depletion of resources.  Due to their numbers, conflicts between the colonies and their European homelands greatly affected all those living in the Americas.  The British colonists eventually wanted independence from England, due to unfair taxation without representation.  They believed that America was their nation, their home.  Colonists and Native Americans alike were torn between the two sides.  Most Natives supported Great Britain, believing that the colonists, with whom they were forced to coexist, posed a larger threat.  However, the Patriots opting for independence eventually won,

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