The initial effect of the settlers on the Indians of America was good it brought much trade to the Indians and provided for an increase of Indian population. This peace did not last long for soon these too civilizations began to clash and by 1650 the settlers were in an all out war with the Indians.

These Europeans had brought along with them many diseases to which the Indians had no immunity too this put a huge dent in the Indian population. The slaughter of many of the Indian’s game animals also led to malnutrition and death. These factors weakened the Indian forces and the Indians were starting to get sick of these white men. The settlers had no respect for the Indian’s rights and had continually cheated them out of their lands forcing them to move further and further to the west. The Indian tribes would eventually get fed up with this, which led to many battles. One of the first was the massacre of 1622; the Opechancanough led the Powtan confederacy in an attack on the ever-expanding Virginia colony. This led to many raids on the Indian’s cornfields for the next two years and Virginia eventually pushed the Indians further west. The Opechanough attempted attacks on Virginia a couple more times but were never successful. Also in 1637 New England virtually exterminated the Pequot tribe.

The white man’s greed for more land continued to push the Indians farther west and led to many attacks on the colonies and tribes of the Americas. Purchase or treaties acquired few territories; most were acquired using military forces. The Americans moved through modern day Ohio and Indiana acquiring millions of acres in territory. This caused the Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, to form a confederation with many other Indian tribes. Attacks on settlers by this new confederation began in 1810 and grew to the battle of Tipecanoe on November 7, 1811 and eventually merged into the war of 1812. Many treaties would be passed in the future to try and protect the Indians but none were very successful. One of the treaties said land could not be taken without the permission of the Indians or by war approved by congress but in most court cases land was taken from the Indians and awarded to the settlers.

As the United States continued to grow the remaining Indian tribes were pushed into small reservations were they were forced to fight other tribes for survival and give up hunting for manufactured food. Indian population was initially 2,500,000 in what is now the United States, excluding Alaska, and by 1890 population had fallen by 90% to a low of 250,000. During the times of the settlers Indians were deemed unimportant and treated like cattle. They were pushed off their homeland and herded onto reservations and compensated little if any for all the land they had lost.