Contact Continues: Clash and Blending of Cultures

Hello again and welcome. In the last post we talked about the Indigenous perspectives of first contact with Europeans, trade networks that existed before contact, and how much change the fur trade brought to the continent.

The reality is that European and Indigenous ways of life clashed with each other because they were so different. It was a challenge for Indigenous nations to adapt to the European systems that governed the fur trade. Plus, there was a lot more adaptation outside of the fur trade that only brought on more changes.

Though many European governments tried to ban them, intermarriages and affairs occurred, often tied to the fur trade, between Indigenous peoples and Europeans. European governments primarily sent men over to colonize and settle North America with very few European women coming along in the early years. It wasn’t hard for European men to fall for the beauty of Indigenous women living along the fur trading route and begin a relationship.

Amongst all this change, missionaries also came to the “new world” in the hopes of changing Indigenous peoples’ religion. Christian colonizers believed they needed to convert and ‘save the souls’ of Indigenous peoples. However, Indigenous peoples had their own religions based on millennia-old traditions. The number of converts to Christianity was often low. However, as fatal foreign diseases devastated Indigenous communities, whose traditional medicines and beliefs were ineffective against the new diseases, conversion to European faiths picked up speed.

These are just a few of the changes that occurred during the contact period. It was a time of rapid change from the Indigenous perspective. After millennia of tradition and culture, suddenly Indigenous lives were being interrupted by new and foreign ways.

With all these changes occurring and shaping the country we know today I often wonder what would’ve happened had no colonizers come over at all. What would North America be like? How would Indigenous cultures have progressed without interference with Europeans? What would the landscape be like? What technologies would have come about overtime? How would politics and social relationships have progressed? It is hard to imagine now as there is so much European influence that has changed Indigenous life today.

In the end, European powers had plans to overtake the continent and make it their own. It was hoped that these new colonies would be a new slate for even better European societies though, in reality, European settlers were already blending their lives with Indigenous ones. Either way, Britain and France actively sought to acquire land in North America. Treaties and land agreements are what emerged following the contact period, we’ll explore them further in the next post.