Dear Google, and any others interested,
Your post was interesting and touching, but there is one large error.
The lands of North America, South America and Central America were far from barren of people when theEuropean explorers and then settlers first arrived. The indigenous peoples of the Americas lived there. There were many nations and tribes
of them, all up and down the two American continents. There were many nations
here.
They had their own cultures and languages. They lived every where: from the
Arctic regions to down near Antarctica. We know them today as Inuit (Eskimos) and the native Indian peoples of many nations. These nations had their own languages and ways.
These peoples had been here in the Americas anywhere from ten thousand to thirty
thousand years when Europeans came. They had towns and villages. They had kings and queens and other royalty. Some of them had extremely high civilizations.
Some of them had stayed hunters and gatherers, but that doesn't mean they were
stupid, poor, or incapable. It just means that the area in which they lived supported hunters and gatherers well.
The areas where there were settled peoples had larger and smaller towns and also
villages. They traded up and down the continent, and a few still do. I bought something from an Inuit woman from Alaska recently, which she made from three big
balls of coral that came from coral islands in the southern seas. She had traded all the way down to there for it. She traded some whalebone. Native peoples
developed bountiful foods from their former wild and tiny beginnings.
We still eat these foods today. Some of these foods are corn, pumpkin, potatoes
, and so on.
When the first Europeans came they brought disease to these people. Europeans usually came from crowded and dirty cities. The native people were described by the first Europeans as splendid specimens of humanity. They had lean, beautifully developed bodies, were very clean and healthy. The Europeans had immunity
to diseases such as measles and other viruses and bacteria because they had been exposed for centuries to unclean conditions, carelessness about personal cleanliness. Frankly, the native people said they stunk. The native people were basically free of most disease because they lived here on lands that had been clean
by time without humans, and ice ages, and they themselves were clean people who
bathed often. They did not live in crowded, dirty conditions. Therefore they died in their hundreds and thousands as soon as they came into any kind of contact with the European conquerors. Pitifully, in the beginning many of them had welcomed the Europeans with kindness and hospitality.
Too many Europeans wanted to find "new" land for their kings. They wanted colonies. Some wanted slave labour. They wanted gold. The second wave brought
priests to convert the native peoples to Christianity. Eventually, as time passed, they wanted them to lose their languages and cultures in order to
absorb them into the general population. That's the way it was then and for a very long time. Even somewhat to this day. But things are changing fast in thisnew age.
Warmly, Mary
