The Unfinished Nation Brinkley
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Chapter 1: The Meeting of Cultures

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SUMMARY

Before European explorers arrived in the Americas Native Americans had developed many forms of social organizations that differed from one another in their levels of achievement. Europeans concerned first with exploiting the New World and its peoples regarded the natives as savages and set out to destroy their societies and replace them with a variation of European culture. Helped in this quest by the biological disaster brought on by smallpox and other diseases the Europeans were able to conquer the tribes and civilizations and impose on the Indians a number of different colonial systems. To help make up for the Indians' labor lost through conquest and epidemic Europeans brought in African slaves who added to the cultural diversity of America. Conflicts in the Old World spilled over into the New as different nations got into the race for colonies. By the end of the sixteenth century the age of discovery was all but over and the great era of colonization especially English colonization was about to begin.

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