Contributions To America Essay Research Paper Contributions

Contributions To America Essay, Research Paper

Contributions to America Early American society was

comprised of many different elements. The biggest

contributions to the society was the American Indians,

Africans, and, of course, the English, the biggest of the

three. Their relationship together was far different than what

we have today. You wouldn?t just see some African and

view him as just another American. It also didn?t have a

triangular connection, where everyone interacted in some

way with everyone else. Instead it was more along the lines

of the Africans relationship with the English, and the Indians

relationship with the English, not the Africans and Indians

relationship together. To take a closer look at this we need

to first look at each people separately. Native Americans

weren?t the same as a whole. There were hundreds, if not

thousands, of different tribes. These tribes had different

ways of living than others. They were hunters, agriculturists,

hunter-gatherers, or fishers, and each one had some

different and some similar views. All of them had sexual of

their labor, but in different ways. The hunters had the men

do the hunting and the women do the food processing and

clothing production. Such a sexual division is not always

common, however. In certain agricultural societies the men

were responsible for the agricultural labor. In others, the

men did the clearing of land, women did the rest of the

work, and the men did the hunting. It doesn?t seem like any

one sex had more power than the other did. Many of these

societies had their extended family defined matrilineally, or

through a female line of descent. This didn?t mean that it

was a matriarchal society, or power by women, just a

means of reckoning kinship. Some tribes had, instead of

this, their lineage defined patrilineally. Their political

structure was much of a government. Most tribes just had a

village council, which was the highest political authority.

There wasn?t much of a hierarchy. The Iroquois, by

contrast, had an elaborate political hierarchy that linked

?villages into nations and nations into a widespread

confederation.?1 Women?s political position varied from

tribe to tribe. In the agricultural peoples, women were more

likely to assume leadership positions than among the

nomadic hunters. Their religious views differed, but they

were all polytheistic (worship or believe in more than one

god). Their rituals and their gods would then relate to the

type of people that they were: hunters, gatherers, etc.

Some differences between the Indian and English culture

caused misunderstandings. They were both hierarchical, but

they their nature differed considerably. The English?s

hierarchy was inherited through their father. But the

authority of the some of the Indian leaders rested on

consensus. So when the English tried to negotiate treaties,

?they overestimated to ability of chiefs to make

independent decisions for their people.? They also had

different views on the holdings of land. The Indian believed

that know one owned the land, it was just for everyone to

work on. The English, however, was the exact opposite.

They insisted on having their own farms, and buying and