How did European conquest effect the native peoples?
1 Answer
Almost universally badly.
Explanation:
Disease was the big killer wiping out whole tribes. The natives had no natural immunity to smallpox, measles, and other diseases from Europe and Asia.
If the population of the New World before Columbus was about 40 million and there were about 5 million left by 1900. About 14 million were killed by Europeans in one way or another. The figures are from Matthew White's "The Great Big Book of Horrible Things".
Natives were herded away from the best land into land that no one wanted. There were impoverished. They were occasionally openly hunted. They were politically marginalized in both North and South America. Early experiments in enslaving the natives were unsuccessful as the tended to die or run away. African slaves were brought in to do heavy labor.
The only minor success story is those tribes who did well in the Fur Trade did rather better than others but not by much. The Cree tribe in Canada worked a lot with the Fur Trade and spread over Western Canada. The was a concerted effort by governments to ethnically cleanse through integration and cultural eradication. The history of Residential Schools in Canada is a case in point.
