And their world views and spiritual beliefs were beyond most white men’s comprehension. Indians’ collusion with the British during the American Revolution and the War of 1812 exacerbated American hostility and suspicion toward them.Įven more fundamentally, Indigenous people were just too different: Their skin was dark. Settlers, most of whom had been barred from inheriting property in Europe, arrived on American shores hungry for Indian land-and the abundant natural resources that came with it.

The reasons for this racial genocide were multi-layered. By the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 Indigenous people remained, a sharp decline from the estimated 5 million to 15 million living in North America when Columbus arrived in 1492. government to authorize over 1,500 wars, attacks and raids on Indians, the most of any country in the world against its Indigenous people. READ MORE: Native American History Timelineįrom the time Europeans arrived on American shores, the frontier-the edge territory between white man’s civilization and the untamed natural world-became a shared space of vast, clashing differences that led the U.S. A group of Native Americans look at a sailing ship in the bay below them.

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