In five pages the differences and similarities in culture between those Eastern seaboard natives and the Europeans who settled there are discussed. There are no other sources cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: TG15_TGredwb.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Gary B. Nashs insightful book, Red, White and Black: The Peoples of Early North America. As Nashs impressively documented text reveals, the Native American cultures were flourishing long before
Christopher Columbus mistook North America for the Indies back in 1492. Although he describes in detail the respective cultures of the Cherokees, Creeks, Delawares, Narragansetts and Pamunkeys, among others,
he concentrates on the Iroquois, for while they were situated primarily in what later became New York State, their influence was felt up and down the Eastern seaboard. Their
culture was much more civilized than it would be depicted later by European historians and celebrated the sovereignty of the individual, a characteristic that would later be championed by Americas
founding fathers. It was, as were all the native cultures, agriculturally based, and consisted of a tribal rule that was equally participated in by both males and females.
Any native who was discovered to be in violation of their unwritten laws of legal and moral conduct would be shunned by other members of the tribe until he had
demonstrated he had sufficiently cleansed his moral character. Nash includes historian Robert Beverleys account of settlements in eighteenth-century Virginia, which portrayed the Native Americans as reminiscent of the
ancient civilization for Spartan, which was highly efficient and egalitarian. They were proficient hunters and farmers who respected the environment, were polytheistic, and basically peace-loving, only engaging in war
if their settlements were threatened. The native cultures were quite linguistically sophisticated, and many of the tribes were defined by their languages. In an early chapter, Nash wrote,
"In all, about 2,000 languages were spoken by the native Americans - a greater linguistic diversity than in any other part of the world" (9). When the Europeans (Spanish, French,