Tribes such as the Mic Mac, Wampanoag, and Inuit were crucial to the survival of Europeans in the New World. Their generosity, however, led to their demise. They shared knowledge of whaling, maple sugar tapping, canoeing, corn cultivation, and clam digging with the "visitors" who never returned home.
Corn Cultivation: Over many generations, farmers in northern Guatemala and southern Mexico selectively bred teosinte, a wild grass, to increase the size of the ear and produce kernels soft enough for human consumption. After developing the corn plant, this innovation disseminated across the Western Hemisphere.
Rubber: Some Native American inventions were appropriated by the Europeans, who had the trading networks and manufacturing infrastructure to commercialize them, and who sometimes added improvements. For example, rubber was a material developed by Native Americans, and then Columbus in between murdering and raping native women and children took a rubber ball back to Europe, De Gennaro says. Columbus main goal was gold so soon thereafter he and his men kidnapped a number of the native Arawaks and forced them through torture and maiming to identify other sources of gold throughout the region.
Armed with a vast array of advanced weapons and horses, Columbus and his crew landed on the islands later known as Cuba and Hispaniola (today's Dominican Republic and Haiti). They then devastated the indigenous populations, enslaving children as young as ten to labor in the mines. Columbus compelled the Natives to toil in gold mines to the point of exhaustion. Those who resisted faced execution by beheading or mutilation. In the Cicao province, individuals over 14 were mandated to deliver a thimbleful of gold dust every three months or face execution; those who complied received copper necklaces as tokens of their submission.
Upon arrival, the sheer magnitude of gold, which was readily available, set into motion a relentless wave of murder, rape, pillaging, and slavery that would forever alter the course of human history.
Goggles (Sunglasses): The Inuit created goggles from materials like wood, bone, antler, or leather to shield their eyes from the intense sunlight reflected off vast snowfields. They featured a slit to mimic squinting, which reduced the amount of ultraviolet rays reaching the eyes. These snow goggles served as the early prototypes for modern sunglasses.
Pumpkins and Shell fishing:The melanated Wampanoag First Nation people imparted survival skills to the Pilgrims. Upon their arrival in Eastern and Southeastern North America during the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans encountered well-established agricultural societies. These societies had been cultivating the "three sisters" — corn, beans, and squash — a tradition dating back over 5,000 years in the Americas. They also instructed the Europeans in harvesting and consuming clams, mussels, lobsters (initially served to prisoners as punishment by Europeans), eels, groundnuts, acorns, walnuts, chestnuts, squashes, and beans. Wild fruits and berries, such as strawberries, raspberries, grapes, and gooseberries, were also available. Conversely, the Europeans had limited knowledge about surviving in the New World, at times resorting to cannibalism.
Tribal War Alliances: The Narragansetts were allies of the Puritans, and one of the earliest acts of genocide was perpetrated against the Pequot. The tribes that had assisted the Europeans were often subjected to torture and public executions, which sowed terror, desperation, and degradation. The gruesome practice of being "flayed alive" entailed stripping the skin from the face and head and disemboweling the individual while still conscious. Much of the violence against Native peoples originated from settlers encroaching on their lands without consent to leave. Europeans frequently incited intertribal violence by arming one tribe to attack another, then turning on the victors once they ran out of ammunition. Such conflicts were often intensified by colonial strategies of divide and conquer, further aggravated by enslavement, disease, alcohol, dispossession, forced relocations, and continuous assaults on tribal religion, culture, and language.
Drink Together to Celebrate Peace: English colonists, under the guise of seeking peace with the Powhatans, deceitfully offered them poisoned wine. To dispel any doubts, a colonist drank from one vessel and then covertly presented another, laced with poison, to the Powhatans. In 2008, a historical marker titled "Indians Poisoned at Peace Meeting" was erected in West Point, Virginia, to acknowledge this telling incident of colonial treachery and murder from 1623. The marker commemorates the mass poisoning by the colonists, who gave tainted wine to 200 Powhatans from a confederacy of approximately 30 Native groups. As the afflicted natives suffered in agony, the soldiers ensured their demise by shooting them, although 50, including the leader Opechancanough, managed to escape and lived to reveal the true nature of their adversaries.
The Baby Bottle with Nipple: According to Iroquois historian Arthur C. Parker, the Iroquois created infant feeding bottles by taking dried and greased bear gut and attaching a nipple made from a bird's quill. Europeans, who had been using terra cotta and horn for 7000 years, adopted their version of this Native American invention in the 16th century, of course falsely claiming it as a European innovation.
Pain Relief Medication: Native American healers were at the forefront of developing pain relief methods. Throughout the Americas, Indigenous peoples, including the Algonquian, Aztecs, Navajo, and Cherokee, utilized jimson weed (scientifically known as Datura stramonium) as a topical analgesic. They ground the root into a paste to create a plaster for treating external injuries like cuts and bruises. These First Nation healers also administered the plant orally as an anesthetic for setting broken bones. Additionally, they brewed tea from the bark of the American black willow (Salix nigra), which contains salicin, a precursor to salicylic acid—the active component in contemporary aspirin tablets. For topical pain relief, Native Americans also applied capsaicin, the pungent compound found in hot peppers.
The Delawares Who gave Up their Guns: Ironically, the Delawares were the first Native Americans to sign a U.S.-Indian treaty that set the precedent for 374 treaties over the next 100 years. Often employing the common phrase “peace and friendship,” 229 of these agreements led to tribal lands being taken to the white population of a rapidly expanding United States. Many treaties negotiated U.S.-Indian trade relations, establishing a trading system to oust the British guns they had put in Indian hands. Once the natives were disarmed their eradication began in full swing. In 1782 four years after the first treaty with Delawares were signed, a group of militiamen from Pennsylvania killed 96 Christianized (those told if they accepted Christ and the white European God they would be spared) Delaware Indians, illustrating the growing contempt for native people. Captain David Williamson ordered the converted Delawares, who had been blamed for attacks on white settlements, to go to the cooper shop two at a time, where militiamen beat and hacked them to death with wooden mallets and hatchets.
Oral Contraceptives: The Shoshone and Navajo tribes utilized stoneseed, also known as Columbia Puccoon (Lithospermum ruderale), as an oral contraceptive well before the advent of modern birth control pills. America's history of harsh experimentation on people of color is often highlighted by the Tuskegee Experiment, where doctors allowed African-American men to suffer from syphilis for 40 years. However, a lesser-known atrocity is documented by Jane Lawrence, who reveals the forced sterilization of thousands of Native American women by the Indian Health Service during the 1960s and 1970s. It is believed that these procedures were carried out on one in every four Native American women at the time, without their knowledge or consent.
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