Native American Contribution to American Culture Essay

One of the most neglected aspects of early American history is the part that native peoples played in its culture, development and institutions. With out the natives, English settlers could not have survived the new land. While trading their metal tools and other goods, the natives gave them food supplies for the English to survive. At times the Indians showed generosity in providing gifts of food to the colony. On other occasions, encounters between the colonists and the tribes turned violent, and the Native Americans occasionally killed colonists who strayed alone outside the fort. (http://www. britannica. com/eb/article-247837/Jamestown-Colony#849030. hook) In fact the dependency on food that the English settlers had was so great that Captain John Smith ordered that those who did not work, would not eat. No settler went hungry and died under his rule. Finally, the Indians taught the new settlers how to plan crops and feed themselves off the land. This was the first step toward the help received by the Native Americans and their influence on America. They helped settlers grow corn, pumpkin, squash and many other things including that of tobacco. The tobacco industry was explosive in America. Tobacco was the first crop grown for money in North America. In 1612 the settlers of the first American colony in Jamestown, Virginia grew tobacco as a cash crop. It was their main source of money. Other cash crops were corn, cotton, wheat, sugar, and soybeans (Indians taught them how to plant them). Tobacco helped pay for the American Revolution against England. Also, the first President of the U. S. grew tobacco. (http://healthliteracy. worlded. org/docs/tobacco/Unit1/2history_of. html). The fur trade was a big connection that most of the Indian tribes had with white settlers. In fact, it because a problem amongst the natives hence much of the fur was traded for guns, white supplies, and whiskey. Starting in 1790, the federal government tried to regulate the Indian fur trade and the use of alcohol through a series of Trade and Intercourse Acts. (http://www. mountainsofstone. com/) Many settlers brought diseases with them as well that the natives could not cure or were not immune to. The new Americans moves out west once the government started selling the land. This land turned to expansion and exploration, which happened to be Indian lands. There was much bartering and selling land from the Indians but expansion also resulted in great suffering, destruction, and cultural loss for the Native Americans of North America. (http://encarta. msn. com/encyclopedia_761589809/Westward_Movement. html) They started developing settler’s ways and culture because it was forced on them by the millions of new settlers coming out west and trampling everything in their path. Native Americans, even today, fight to keep their past and culture alive.