Since Europeans first made contact with the natives in 1492, Europeans have taken advantage of the natives for their own benefit. They were extremely effective, with Columbus discovering America and creating American slavery within 15 years. Before Europeans arrived, researchers estimated that the indigenous population numbered between 20 and 100 million people, and by 1620, 95 percent of the population was dead, according to PBS. Even today, according to Gallup Independent, there are only 5.2 million Native Americans left, 22% of whom live on reservations in conditions comparable to those in the Third World. Examining the treatment and lives of indigenous people throughout history and modern times makes it clear that the change brought about by Europeans has been undeniably negative. Say no to plagiarism. Get Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Balboa made his journey to the Pacific Ocean after overthrowing the governor of Darien in 1513. Years of violence against natives were preceded by the short story “Balboa” by Sabina Murray. Balboa had embarked on a genocidal killing spree, while "his muskets blasted the faces of the greatest warriors... His Spanish war dogs, great mastiffs and wolf dogs, tore the children limb from limb" (Murray ). The natives had no technology other than bows and spears, and even then they did not have the steel variants that Europeans had in previous centuries. Additionally, although the natives had encountered dogs before, they had never encountered a dog trained to kill nor one as large and deadly as a mastiff or greyhound. What was even more surprising was to see the dogs in their armor which offered them some protection against attacks from the natives. The Europeans simply killed anyone who dared oppose them as they sought the riches of the New World. Of course, this could not have been done without the help of diseases and epidemics. Balboa also had a nifty little trick guaranteed to destroy opposition, pointed out by Sabina Murray, the fact that "Balboa's soldiers spread smallpox and syphilis" (Murray). As stated in the introduction, 95% of the native population was killed by smallpox and other diseases after the arrival of Europeans. That was their strategy: infest the area and wait a few years, then when the population dwindled, they would come and start colonizing. This was of course terrible for the New World, as entire tribes and cultures disappeared in just a few years and the stragglers faced the impending onslaught of European explorers who viewed them as subhuman savages. Another injustice that hit the Americas when the Europeans came was, of course, racism. As Charles Mann points out in his short story “Coming of Age at Dawn,” “But the Indian is not a category that Tisquantum himself would have recognized... he considered himself above all a citizen of Patuxet” ( Mann). With the arrival of Europeans came the arrival of the terms “Indian” and “savage”, terms which, at the time, were acceptable to designate a Native American. For Europeans, there were initially neither Iroquois nor Wampanoag. There weren't even Sioux or Cheyenne, much less Lakota Sioux or any other smaller classification defining the average native. They were all grouped under one banner, the "Indian" banner despite the fact that they were not in India and the "savage" banner despite the fact that according to Cornell University, the governmentIroquois tribal had freedom of speech, freedom of religion, separation. powers, checks and balances and the fact that the Senate even recognized that the American republic was influenced by the Iroquois Confederacy. This systemic racism and grouping of different ethnicities into giant groups may have started with native people, but it also continues today in America. In Richard Rodriguez's essay “'Blaxicans' and Other Reinvented Americans,” he points out that “the OMB identified five major ethnic or racial groups. The groups are white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American/Eskimo, and Hispanic” (Rodriguez). Even in today's America, we cannot escape the ethnic generalizations given to us by our European ancestors. For example, the fact that Hispanics includes Spanish, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Brazilian, Portuguese, Chilean, Colombian, etc. is extremely insensitive because these cultures, although sharing some similarities, are nevertheless very different. It would be like someone grouping Germans and Russians or British and French together, they may be slightly similar but they are still completely different in most aspects. Europeans and later Americans also seemed to have a knack for enslaving and expelling natives from their homelands. . William Shakespeare's drama The Tempest depicts a colonist in the form of Prospero taking the island from the native Caliban. Caliban said: “This isle is mine, by Sycorax my mother, which thou hast taken from me” (Shakespeare). He explains that Prospero had taught him all sorts of things and that he was originally friendly and helpful, just as the Europeans had originally come to teach the natives their language, culture and religion but, just like Prospero , they ended up killing or enslaving the natives. and take the land. In fact, when Columbus literally wiped out the entire indigenous populations of some Caribbean islands, he brought black slaves from Africa to work the land, which is why Jamaicans are black. Europeans would do almost anything to obtain land or slaves to keep their industries and interests alive and strong. In Joy Harjo's poem titled "New Orleans", she describes the violence and remnants of the Creeks after they were completely destroyed and their culture collapsed, as well as the Indian Removal Act of 1830. In the poem she wrote , “There are voices buried in Mississippi. mud. There are ancestors and future children buried under the currents stirred by the pleasure boats that rise and fall” (Harjo). When the Creeks were displaced and removed from their lands, some were transported across New Orleans on steamboats and one crashed into another and 300 Creeks drowned in the river. A total of 3,500 died of the 15,000 displaced and when they arrived in Oklahoma, they were suddenly grouped with tribes with whom they had virtually no similarity and who were believed to live on dusty and infertile lands. In 1823, the Supreme Court ruled that Native Americans could occupy land in the United States but could not own it because the United States' "right of discovery" mattered more than the natives' "right of occupancy." . So in 1837, 46,000 Native Americans were forced from their lands and taken west to unfamiliar environments and strange tribes. Some will say that the violence was mainly Spanish against the natives or American against the natives, and that the English pilgrims who came were not violent. For example, in the short story.