New World DBQ

Words: 445
Pages: 2

When explorers from Europe began exploration of the Americas, many things came about as a result of this. Crops and animals were introduced to the Americas from Europe, and vice versa; and to some, the Christian missionaries bringing their religion was a blessing. However, not all effects were positive. One such unfortunate development was the introduction of a large number of diseases to the New World. In this essay, I will be exploring two different results of European exploration of the Americas. Although strange to some, horses were not always a major part of certain Native American cultures. In fact, until explorers started to bring domesticated animals with them to the New World, horses did not live anywhere on the continent. (Document …show more content…
For instance, Document Two outlines the morbid fact that disease was absolutely devastating to the Native Americans. It says that “disease spread faster than European colonization,” and that large networks of cities were “evaporated” in less than 180 years by Old World diseases. In addition to inadvertent deaths by the spread of disease, certain colonists would treat the natives as slaves, and Document One depicts the brutal mutilation of unwilling workers for not meeting the quota that the Spanish had set. Document Four shows that even the earliest explorers, in this case Christopher Columbus, had ulterior motives even while giving the natives gifts. He wrote: “They ought to be good servants and of good skill, for I see that they repeat very quickly whatever is said to them.” All in all, the arrival of settlers and explorers from the Old World had many consequences, but the overall effect was overwhelmingly negative, wiping out up to 90% of the original population. Many consequences were unpurposeful, such as the large spread of diseases like typhus or chicken pox, but many were inflicted knowingly and willingly; one such example of this would be using the Native Americans as slaves and inferiors, treating them barbarously when they would not fulfill certain criteria. The ultimate result, as we know, was the near extinction of the original inhabitants of this