1. Native Americans lived under constant oppression from European colonial powers who sought to gain control of new territories. They were frequently deceived, slaughtered, and saw their populations decimated by disease. 2. One of the largest impacts on Native American populations was epidemic diseases brought by European colonists, against which they had no immunity. Many tribes were also displaced and relocated west of the Mississippi River through acts like the Indian Removal Act in the 1830s. 3. Native Americans faced loss of land, culture, sovereignty, and way of life under the policies and expansion of European colonialism and later American manifest destiny, being relegated to reservations with little autonomy.

1. Album of the American Colonies Mitchell Kuhnert

3. This expanded greatly, however, after 1450. Around 1500 the Portuguese bought around 1,800 West African slaves annually to provide labor to their sugar raising in the Caribbean.

4. In North America, African slaves lived among large amounts of farm animals who carried parasites, spreading disease widely throughout the population.

5. In the 1780’s and 90’s, African slaves in North America were increasingly converted to Christianity, some even becoming preachers and starting Baptist churches. African traditions were mixed with Christian symbols for a unique form of Christianity.

6. At the height of African slavery, nearly half a million Africans were enslaved in America.

7. In 1774, the American Continental Congress called to abolish the African slave trade, and six Northern states did.

8. During the eighteenth century, the British colonies imported 1.5 million slaves. They produced sugar, tobacco and rice in these colonies.

10. The Spanish, led by Hernan Cortes, first entered Mexico in 1519, fighting and slaughtering the Aztecs and other groups until August 1521 when they destroyed Tenochtitlan for good.

11. The Spanish, especially Cortes with the Aztecs, had a tendency to act brutally toward their subjects, slaughtering them in horrid ways.

12. Central American natives were brought under Spanish rule largely by new diseases brought by the Spaniards. Life became so terrible under Spanish rule that they eventually acquiesced.

13. Spanish colonial rule was said to be , “ highly bureaucratic, inefficient, and slow.”

14. Religion played an extremely important role in New Spain, and those who refused to convert to Catholicism were subject to the harsh punishments of the Inquisition.

16. In 1450, Portuguese sailors negotiated with the Africans to make their trade exclusive.

17. The Portuguese may have expanded their westward conquest, but instead they turned south and east, concluding that it was more important to find a trade route to Asia. This vastly limited Portuguese expansion in the Americas.

19. French priests were sent on missions to the Americas, and were found throughout North America attempting to convert the Natives.

20. Many French settlers underestimated the harsh realities of winter in some regions of North America. At the trading outpost established in Tadoussac, what is now known as Quebec, only five out of sixteen Frenchmen survived the first winter.

21. One major French colony was on the island of Hispaniola. The French renamed it Saint- Domingue. St. Domingue became the wealthiest Caribbean colony before a slave revolt in 1791, that eventually led to the Haitian Revolution.

22. The French also attempted to establish colonies in South America. An example are the Huguenots who attempted to form France Antarctique in present day Brazil. They were repeatedly rejected and eventually gave up.

23. French Guiana was first settled in 1604. They first left and gave up power to other nations, but eventually regained it in the early 19th century.

25. In 1609, Harry Hudson, a hired British explorer, claimed places in North America, entering the Hudson Bay (which is now named after him).

26. The first Dutch settlement was in 1615, named Fort Nassau, near present-day Albany, New York.

27. Another Dutch company, the Dutch West India Company began to compete for land, purchasing the island of Manhattan from Natives. These settlements were usually not dominated by those of Dutch ancestry, but from various European nations.

28. The Dutch were relatively successful in South America. They established the colony of Suriname around 1667 and it remained under them until it gained full independence in 1975.

29. Around 1630, the Dutch also gained a small portion of Brazil and named it Recife.

31. Along with its well known North American colonies, Great Britain also obtained many Caribbean nations like the Turks and Caicos, Barbados, Antigua, the Bahamas, etc. Some gained their independence but many still remain under British control to this day.

32. Britain’s South American and Caribbean colonies are not comparable to the amount of its North American colonies. The British colonized much of Americas eastern coast, beginning in Jamestown , stretching from Georgia to Massachusetts.

33. Thirteen of these colonies rebelled in 1775, starting the Revolutionary War which eventually led to the recognizing of the United States of America as a country in 1783.

35. Around 1763, the British acquired Canada and Florida. Former French Canada was divided into Lower Canada and Upper Canada.

36. While the British colonization of North America’s eastern coast is well known, the British also colonized it’s western coast. The Hudson Bay Company gained control of land west of the Rocky Mountains, until the signing of the Oregon Treaty of 1846.

38. There were many revolts by Native Americans, especially by the Iroquois. The colonizing powers were generally severely reactionary, and one of these slaughters was the Sullivan Expedition of 1779. During the Sullivan Expedition American colonial troops destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages.

39. Native Americans obviously suffered greatly from America’s theory of Manifest Destiny, which would eventually decimate their entire way of life, leaving them with nothing but reservations.

41. These deadly diseases were headed by smallpox and measles.

42. A large portion of the Native population was also lost in war’s between conquering colonists, such as the French-Indian War. While Natives fought on both sides, they were more prevalent with the French, hoping it would stop British expansion.

43. The signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 robbed Natives of much of their land without informing them, leading to the Northwest Indian War. They eventually lost much of their land during this period; the Iroquois lost nearly five million acres.

45. The Indian Removal Act stated that all Native tribes living east of the Mississippi River were to be moved onto reservations west of the river.

46. The government was often deceitful in their dealings with the Natives, as in the Treaty of New Echota, which was signed by a small amount of Cherokee tribal members. The treaty resulted in an 1838 forced relocation in which an estimated 4,000 Cherokee Indians died, on what is now known as the Trail of Tears.