tings with the natives, and what motives came into play on their explorations such as; religion, gold, and slavery.When these explorers met the native population, they encountered a people who had never had contact with anyone besides inhabits of their own world. The Europeans, on the other hand, had been trading with Africans, Muslims, Mongols, East Indians, and other Europeans for differing periods of time, thus being exposed to different types of culture in the past. On the other hand the isolation of the natives began some thirty to forty thousand years ago, when the last major ice age occurred. Divine supports this by saying, The first people to cross this land bridge were small bands of Siberian hunters in pursuit of giant mammalsthe migration of these nomadic groups took place over thousands of years (Divine, p.3). Gradually, new and different societies and cultures developed among the natives, depending upon the region where they settled. Divine mentions this by saying, Over the centuries, relatively isolated tribal groups had developed their own cultures, patterns of kinship, and spoken languages (Divine, p.3). When Columbus initially arrived, he found only primitive inhabitants, he states this in the first document of the first chapter of Gorn, a very poor people they do not carry arms, (Gorn, p.8). In reality the natives were not primitive but very intelligent and self-reliant. Even though these peoples did not have modern conveniences, such as iron tools or beasts of burden, they nevertheless constructed huge buildings, devised accurate calendars, and speculated about the solar system. Divine supports my idea by stating, The Maya and Toltec peoples built vast cities, organized sophisticated government bureaucracies, and developed an accurate calendar and a complex form of writing, (Divine, p.3). The quotes from both Divine and Gorn show us how a group of people can identify the natives as either intelligent or ...
