Have You Always Wondered?

Why the Native Americans lost control of the Americas

Native Americans. Native Americans are usually overlooked, as Native Americans have basically disappeared in North America, having nearly 10,000,000 Native Americans living in their native lands in the what is now the modern United States in 1492 and 40,000,000 in both the Americas. But as of today what the U.S government recognizes as Native American land has only 5,000,000, live in reservations which almost fully belong to Native American tribes, but under United States law, that government passed for the American Indian reservations. So how did Native Americans lose their control and influence over the Americas? But before I could explain to you how that happened I must send a quick side note. Native Americans still have heavy influence in the Americas. Over 10,000,000 people in the U.S are descendents of Native Americans and in Mexico, Native American descendents are 10x higher than in the U.S which is almost 110,000,000 people, which is why many Hispanics have a usually darker skin tone than any white person. But we're getting off track. So the main and pretty obvious reasons why Native Americans lost their grip on the Americas, was Europeans. But not specifically Europeans, but what the Europeans brought, but we'll talk about that soon. An obvious reason for Native Americans losing their land was European colonialism. Europeans, after seeing the riches that Spain brought back from her travels and colonies back on the other side of the world, other Europeans joined the game, and these other European players were Portugal, France, the Netherlands, England/Great Britain, Russia, and to some extent Sweden and Denmark. Obviously claiming and capturing land was obviously pissing off the Natives living there. The Natives would have clashes with Europeans, usually ending with a European victory because the Europeans have guns and Natives don't. But Europeans didn't always fight against Natives. The Natives even made alliances with Europeans. An example of this is when the Netherlands, who still had control of New Amsterdam, a.k.a New York, made an alliance with the Iroquois, which made the Iroquois expand their territory creating an empire to keep up with demand with the Dutch. Until the Iroquois met the French. When the Iroquois wasn't able to find land that had a major beaver population, the Iroquois head north into New France, modern day Quebec, Canada. When the Iroquois attacked the French in Quebec City and Montreal, it obviously started a war between the French and Iroquois. When the French realized the Iroquois was using Dutch guns, the French weren't really happy with the Netherlands. This ended when England annexed New Amsterdam from the Dutch, then Iroquois had nowhere to go to, but the English, but the English were as nice as the Dutch. But, believe me or not, wars with Europeans did not cause American Indian decline. It was the Europeans brought with them. Disease. Europeans, where immune to many diseases, which they experienced before. Not the Native Americans, when disease hit the Americas, it killed 90% of the Native American population. Why is this? The lack of big cities. Of course then you'll think of large cities such as Tenochtitlan and Cuzco, but these cities were reliant on agriculture. European cities at the time, such as London, Paris, Constantinople, Madrid, etc. These large cities had animals, such as cattle, pigs, goats, etc. The Americas lacked this until the Europeans brought them over. Animals had diseases which is how diseases are even get to humans. With the lack of these animals, Native Americans had no experience fighting against or being immune to these diseases spread by animals. Another thing Native Americans lacked was horses, lacking transportation, doing everything yourself was a big disadvantage to the Native Americans, being easily defeated by Europeans. Another thing Native Americans lacked was experience. The Native American tribes, were the same, had no technological advantage over each other, the Europeans certainly did have a technological advantage because Europe wasn't isolationist like the Americas, because Europe had a chance to improve it's army from fighting other Europeans and or outsiders from Asia, because of that, Europeans learned how to improve against their enemies, the Natives didn't. But hey. That's history. Modern day Native Americans, are like any other person that walks down the sidewalk. Has adopted to this new technology, knows what to do with it, knows how to use it. Native Americans did things that their ancestors failed to do. But it's good now that things have changed.