Native American Slavery 1800 essays

Native American Slavery 1800 essays The constitution of the United States reads; We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1830s, there existed a deep division among the nations white population reguarding Native Americans. In their dealings with Native Americans, the first white settlers adopted policies that were shaped by their own European worldview and experience. When the United States became a nation, the new government built on this European foundation, but over time adapted its Native American policy to changing perspectives and needs- mainly the desire for more land and wealth. Eventually the Native Americans were regarded as an anachronism irreclaimable savage by those west of the Appalachians and redeemable savages by eastern philanthropists and humanitarians. To the whites settlers in the trans-Appalachian frontier that ran from the mid-west to the southern states, Indians were considered a threat that had to be exterminated. Believers in Native American reform were largely from the industrial and commercial centers in the Northeast where few Indians lived. With the arrival of twenty "Negroes" aboard a Dutch man-of-war in Virginia in 1619, the face of American slavery began to change from the "tawny" Indian to the "blackamoor" African; a period of transition lasting from between 1650 to 1750. Though the issue is complex, the unsuitability of the Native American for the labor-intensive agricultural practices, their susceptibility to European diseases, the proximity of avenues of escape for Native Americans, and the lucrative nature of the African slave trade led to a transition to an African-based institution of slavery. In spite of a later tendency in the Southern United States to differentiate the African slave from the Indian, African slavery wa...