British and French before 1750 to the Native Americans

The “discovery” by Columbus of the New World in 1492 was followed by the establishments of European colonies with French initially in the north and down the Mississippi. The arrival of European settlers in the late 1500s-early 1600s in North America disrupted the Native American tribes that had been living peacefully there for centuries. The responses European settlers had to Native American tribes reflected their own cultural and economic viewpoints. As a result, the Native Americans’ lives changed drastically. The French had developed peaceful, mutually beneficial relations with Native Americans in the establishment of the French fur trade and culturally befriended them. On the other hand, the British tended to oppress Native Americans economically and culturally and denied their potential contributions to helping growing settlements in the New World. The French were very nice with the Native Americans, especially compared to how the British treated them. They did not respond with any tyranny, they helped them with their economy and even with their enemies. They did not judge them in terms of religion and actually accepted it very peacefully without any problems.

The French enlisted Native Americans for trade and they then traded them with goods that the Native Americans appreciated like knives and beads. Without knowing so, the French incidentally heightened the Native American economy by trading with them. They did not create many settlements along wilderness and that was partially because the French did not have many people. People like Samuel Champlain and the Quebec colony had shaped a very sociable relationship with the Native Americans. They were very pleasant to each other and they were calm both economically and culturally. The French helped the Native Americans in fighting off the Iroquois even though they were under threat themselves from them. The French had a very mutually beneficial relationship with Native Americans and it worked out well for both sides.

Completely opposite from the French, the British were not in the mood of having any type of peaceful relationship with the Native Americans. They did not really care at all for the Native Americans and they did their best at trying to have control over them. The British colonies moved westwards in search of more land, cutting trees down and clearing land for grazing animals. When the British first came across the Native Americans, they almost automatically sparked a war with them which was called the Anglo-Indian War. The British were heartless against the Indians. If they were in desperation of land, they would raid them to benefit their own economy which is completely different from the agreement between the French and the Native Americans. The Virginia Company demanded war and the Southern colonies were constantly engaging Indians on frontier. An unfair fur trade established. Native Americans faced unfair prices offered by British traders. Quakers attempted to ease economic relations. Bought land from Indians and treated them fairly. HV the arrival of Scots-Irish and other non-Quakers The British received cultural accommodation from Squanto and the Wampanoag and thus Pocahontas and John Rolfe got married.

Soon diseases like smallpox, mumps, influenza, yellow fever, and measles spread and killed thousands of Indians. However soon settlers arrived and pushed inland. The shaky “peace” was soon destroyed as Native Americans were in the way of the Southern colonies’ push westwards. So the Carolinas teamed up and raided Native American villages, and caught and sold many Native Americans to slavery. Due to these raids many tribes were destroyed by 1720. The Pequot War between the Carolinas and the Native Americans started and Puritans began to regard Native Americans with contempt. The British were generally not benign as they attempted to satisfy their colonial needs, economically and culturally, though religiously they had less zeal and therefore a lack of response. The French generally responded passively and openly as they in turn helped the Native Americans economically, culturally, and encouraged lightly in terms of religion. Though the French had their own benefit in mind, compared to the British, they were saviors in the eyes of the Native Americans