In this paper I will describe how the contact between Native Americans and Europeans between the founding of Jamestown and the outbreak of the American revolution constituted a continuous cultural revolution for Native Americans. I will support my thesis with the book The Earth Shall Weep by James Wilson, and other Internet sources sited below. It is important to understand how the impact of the Europeans changed the lives of Native Americans so we can understand their past, and what became of the victims of a terrible invasion.
The contact between Native Americans and Europeans between the founding of Jamestown and the outbreak of the American revolution constituted a continuous cultural revolution for Native Americans. The invasion of the Europeans had a great impact on Native American life. The Europeans impacted Indian religion and how they felt about their religion after the Beaver Wars. The Europeans impacted the way they farmed, their trade, their tools and the way they lived from then on. They also impacted they way they thought about themselves as individuals, their religion, and the way they thought of their tribes. The changes made by the Europeans ethier ended up in war, death, or changing the Indian culture to be more like their own. The only thing the English could not change was the Native American traditions. However the European impact changed their lives a great deal more than it stayed the same.
Every Indian tribe has a different creation story. All of them are very similar, they start out the same way and have the same idea and have the same outcome. Indian creation stories are similar to the Catholic creation story as well. One man creating others to live on earth. Indians live in cyclical time. They go from season to season living their lives in a pattern. "You have noticed that everything as Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round...The Sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.... Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves." Black Elk Oglala Sioux Holy Man 1863-1950. That is how the Indians lived their everyday lives, in a cycle. They believe in connecting and interacting with the environment. They respect the Earth and cherish its beauty. The Eagle is a creature that "flies the highest"(2) to them. It holds prayers on it's wings carrying them up to the almighty, or God. They hold the Eagle up high just like any Christian would hold a Bible. Indians believe in spirits, that everything has a spirit, trees, themselves, animals. They believe that the spirit never dies, it lives on forever. Stories and religion are passed on from generation to generation, cherishing their ancestors, environment, tradition and their culture.
"Rather than going to church, I attend a sweat lodge; rather than accepting bread and toast [sic] from the Holy Priest, I smoke a ceremonial pipe to come into Communion with the Great Spirit; and rather than kneeling with my hands placed together in prayer, I let sweet grass be feathered over my entire being for spiritual cleansing and allow the smoke to carry my prayers into the heavens. I am a Mi'kmaq, and this is how we pray." Noah Augustine, from his article "Grandfather was a knowing Christian."
When the Europeans came and invaded the Indians they changed their culture forever. When Europeans came they destroyed their culture, brought diseases, caused conflict and violence, removed the Native Americans from their lands, took their food and eventually defeated them all. When the Europeans settlers first arrived they did not know how to live on their own. They depended on the Native Americans to survive. In Plymouth, unlike Jamestown, the settlers knew how to survive on their own. They didn't disrupt them much, let them practice religion and hold their rituals. However eventually the only way the Indians could survive was to fall under European economy and to make their own products to trade and sell. They Europeans started taking more land and their food and the Indians were having trouble surviving. When another epidemic hit, the disease of smallpox, it killed off nearly 90% of the Native Americans and wiped out a lot of the Europeans as well. The settlers didn't know how to bounce back from the disease and needed to rely on the Native Americans to recover. This made the Indians question their religion. They couldn't understand why Europeans were surviving while their tribes were dwindling away. They started to lose confidence and some thought it would be safer to convert religions. After the wars between the Native Americans and the Europeans, most Indians were forced to convert to Christianity, some did it on their own. They were forced to live on reservations, where they were still allowed to practice their traditional dances, ceremonies and rituals. Europeans had a major impact on Native American religion, they nearly destroyed it but because of oral tradition and their tradition it was never forgotten.
Native American tribes never farmed for money or traded goods to form an economy. They farmed for their families and would only grow enough to survive. They believed in preserving the natural land and only using what they needed. The very first crop Indians started to grow was squash. From their they started growing cotton, tobacco, goosefoot, sump weed, sunflower, watermelon, pumpkins, and the most important was maize. Maize was very important because they lived off of it, and after it was eaten the husks would be made into arts and crafts. Native Americans cherish every part of the environment and they didn't believe in wasting it. So they put every part to good use, the husk of the corn being used for arts and crafts and the cob being used for fuel. They way of life for the Native Americans was women were in-charge of planting, weeding and harvesting the crops, while men were in-charge of clearing the land. Men would also hunt and fish for food. Tools that were used by Native Americans were the hoe, maul and dibber. The dibber is used for digging and planting the seeds. The hoe was used for clearing land, cultivating and harvesting. The maul was used to grind the corn so it could be made into mush and bread. When the Europeans came the way the Native Americans lived changed, and just like their religion they held on for as long as possible. When they settlers saw how much land was untouched by the Indians they invaded and took over all the land. They brought in new tools and new technology to plant more food than what the Indians did to make a profit. Europeans depended on the Indians to survive. The settlers didn't know how to grow crops in this new territory, the land was different. So they forced the Native Americans to continue to grow crops but instead of feeding their families what they grew would be exported and sold. They forced to Indians to work with the tools that they brought so the work would be done faster and their would be twice as much. Europeans were gaining profits while the Indians starved. After the Europeans came Indian agriculture and way of life was never the same. The Indians had to abandon their own tools so they could survive. They had to pick up on European trade and were forced to become apart of their economy. "When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money." Cree Prophecy (4) When epidemic hit and massive amounts of Native Americans died, they had no choice but to surrender to European way of life. After the wars and after the Indians were defeated by the Europeans they were forced to live on reservations where they lived like the Europeans. The English coming to America and invading Native Americans destroyed their way of life and destroyed their future.
Before the Europeans arrived its safe to say that Indian tribes were separated. Their were the tribes who lived in Plymouth, there tribes that lived in Jamestown and there were a hundred other tribes that lived up and down the coast. There are Alaskan tribes, Hawaiian tribes, Eskimos, and many more categorized by where they live or what they practice.(1) Indians rarely ever came into contact with each other outside of their tribes. Every tribe has their own rules, their own creation story, their own myths, their own chiefs and their own way of life. Although all of these things may be very similar within a tribe, they are also different and practiced separate from other tribes. When the English invaded America the major tribes they invaded were the Pequouts, the Powhatans, and the Wampanoag. When the Europeans arrived the Indians had to stop them. They were taking over the land and their culture. One thing all Native American tribes have in common is they are pacifists. They don't believe in fighting, violence or wars. Another thing they all had in common was they needed to stop the English. When the English invaded Plymouth it created Indian unity. It changed the way Native Americans interacted with each other. The war turned into the English versus all the Native American tribes. Even though the Native Americans were defeated in the end, it changed the way they thought of themselves and the Native American culture in general. They didn't just see their tribe, they saw other tribes as one of them. Once the wars were all over, the Iroquois Confederacy was created. It is a nation of six tribes brought together to work as one. It consisted of the Mohawk tribe, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Seneca and the Tuscarora tribe. They were known as the "league of peace and power".
The Europeans bringing unity within the Native American culture may have been a good thing, but it wasn't the only thing they influenced. Not only did the effect of the European invasion change the way the Indians saw themselves as a whole, but it changed the way they thought as themselves as an individual. When epidemic hit hard on the English and the Native Americans, the Indians started to question themselves. They started questioning their courage, their confidence, and their religion. They took away their land, they took away their rights and their way of life and then they took away their spirits and their hope. After the European invasion, their was peace and unity within the Native American world, and their also was a wide-spread destruction of confidence, hope and pride.
The Europeans may have taken their culture, there way of life, they might have tried to change their religion and their beliefs, but they couldn't take away their tradition. After the Europeans forced the Native Americans onto reservations they were still allowed to practice rituals and ceremonies. All the way up to today Indians still practice their traditions. Art and music is very important to the Indians. The drum is a tool that was said to be brought to them by the "Almighty". Native Americans practice rituals for healing, marriages, spirituality, and to stay in touch with mother Earth and their Almighty. They pray before a ceremony or ritual and pray after. Ways of healing today in America have been adopted by the tradition ways of healing by the Native Americans that they still practice today. 
Animal totems are used for ceremonies and rituals and are still seen today.(5) Tradition is very important to the Native Americans, and that was one thing that the Europeans could not change. Today we know the stories of the Indians from oral tradition. Ever since their ancestors Native Americans have been using the form of oral tradition to pass on stories and legends. This is how they passed on their religion, stories of their very beginnings and their memories. The reservations and the invasion couldn't change those special parts of their life.
Watch a 2008 Native American ceremony
http://www.religioustolerance.org/nataspir.htm (1)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week707/belief.html (2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States (3)
