1.5 Conclusion

Native American, African, and European peoples all lived in dynamic cultures when they encountered each other. Long before peoples of different continents mixed, thousands of different North American cultures rose, flourished, and profoundly changed—sometimes repeatedly—in energetic interaction with each other. Cultures in Africa and Europe, too, underwent significant changes that laid the foundations for both cultural sharing and cultural conflicts when they did finally meet. By the time Africans and Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere, most peoples of the Caribbean and the coastal mainland lived in sedentary villages or semi-permanent encampments. They had organized themselves into clusters of families and hierarchical communities that were recognizable to Europeans, and they included leaders, servants, and specialists of many kinds. From Aztec and Inca to Pueblo and Seminole, the Native Americans who came into contact with the first arriving Europeans were sometimes closer culturally to the strangers from across the Atlantic Ocean than they were to nomads or hunter-gatherers who lived in remote places and rough climates of the American interior.

But there were also deep differences. Portuguese and Spanish explorers pushed aside Islamic commercial supremacy with a burst of energy in the 1400s and went on to conquer islands and empires stretching over thousands of miles in the New World. By 1450 medieval technological, agricultural, and commercial innovations had changed living conditions dramatically within Europe. Religious and political turmoil had uprooted huge numbers of Europeans, many of whom became migrants to the West. The changes in city-states of the Americas and Africa were just as far-reaching as those in Europe; their cultures were just as rich. But Africans and Native Americans did not choose to enter this imperial race; they were brought into it forcibly.

The first crude toeholds of Europeans in the Americas contrasted sharply with the great Native American city-states of mound builders, Aztec, Inca, and southwestern peoples. And yet, within a short period, the demographic tables reversed. While life was no doubt difficult for European colonizers, who experienced starvation, death, and disease in the first years of each settlement, millions of Indians and Africans throughout the Americas perished from the diseases, steel weapons, harsh work regimens, and oppressive political authority introduced by migrating European strangers. As Spain extracted shiploads of hides and precious metals from new lands, deadly diseases took a greater toll on Native Americans than Europeans had ever experienced in the bloodiest of wars. At the same time, Spanish and Portuguese explorers and settlers required greater and greater replenishment of African slaves to perform an array of tasks as forced labor. This pattern, as we shall see, repeated itself when other European countries entered the race for colonization. It didn’t take long for the initial European dreams of glory and gold to give way to the reality of difference, disappointment, and sharpening tensions among strangers.

The Cherokee legend of creation does not disclose what happened when the encroachments of Europeans and Indians became unbearable. However, it does reveal much about the Cherokee respect for—and awe of—nature and the place of humans in a spectrum of living things. It is intriguing to wonder whether the legend provided a familiar explanation of creation that eased introductions between the Cherokees and Europeans, or whether its starkly different view of Cherokee homelands and social order contributed to alienation between the two cultures.