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Native American: 500 Years

Native American Nation:
The Fight to Survive for 500 Year
“We are now about to take our leave and kind farewell to our native land, the country that the Great Spirit gave our fathers, we are on the eve of leaving that country that gave us birth…it is with sorrow we are forced by the white man to quit the scenes of our childhood…we bid farewell to it and all we hold dear.” (Charles Hicks, 1838) For over 500 years the Cherokee Indians, among all other native nations, have endured many tragedies through war, epidemics, and loss of land. Throughout a course of 500 years the Native Indians have endured the following:
1. How did the European epidemics and war affect the Cherokee?
2. How and why were Cherokee and other Indian tribes forced west?
3. How did the Cherokee Indian’s rebel?
4. Can the Cherokee and the white man come together peacefully?
This review on the Cherokee Nation and the New Settlers focuses on these four questions.
How did the European’s epidemics and
war affect the Cherokee?
The first wave of European explorers brought over many diseases, not only to the North America, but also to the islands, Mexico, Central and South America. When the Europeans, under the command of De Soto, landed in Central America in 1540, they brought infections of measles, influenza, and smallpox that killed 80 million of the Native American population. In the beginning the Natives did not relate these diseases with the white man. The Natives welcomed the Europeans before they figured out that they were ones that caused these infections. The Cherokee Nation in 1674 was 50 thousand strong, and by 1729 declined by half. The population had another major decline in 1753 of 75 percent fatality; the epidemics claimed the lives of the old whom had wisdom to share oral stories of the past, and the young whom threaten the future of the Cherokee Nation because of the mortality rate being so high. With the decline in population the...