How Colinization affected the history of American Indians Research Paper

How Colinization affected the history of American Indians - Research Paper Example When the European colonizers came in, they grabbed land from the American Indians mercilessly thinking that they have more than enough land for themselves. There are too many instances of land grabbing by European Colonizers but we can cite two of the most blatant case of land grabbing. The first case is John Winthrop’s land grabbing whereby it also intersected with religion which also changed the American Indian’s way of life. John Winthrop was the leader of the Puritans that settled in Massachusetts Bay Colony whereby they settled and took the lands of the Indians. John Winthrop was very blatant in his quest to take lands from the Indians because he thought that it was the Will of God for them to have lands in the New World because they, the Puritans were the chosen people of God and that they were entitled to take Indian lands. Thus when the Puritans sail to the New World on their ship Arbelia, he thought that taking the lands of the Indian is like entering a covenan t with God whereby they â€Å"shall be a city upon a hill. The eies of all people are upon us (Winthrop 68). Winthrop believed that the Puritans had a duty to fulfill their covenant with God by serving as an example of an ideal Christian community to the world in erecting a community on Indian lands (Gleason). Another is the case of land grabbing is California Foragers case. The California Foragers may not have religious undertone in their quest to take lands from Indians but their method was brutal. This happened after the Gold Rush of 1849 whereby the American Indians were the first settlers in the gold mines. When the Europeans came into California in 1542, they took the lands of the American Indians by force and thousands were needlessly massacred (www.funsocialstudies.com). The extent of the massacre was so massive that much of the cultural identities of