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Christopher Columbus' ship originally landed at Guanahaní, which he decided to rename "San Salvador." But, what if that never happened? What if it kept its original name to this day? What if Columbus' ship never landed in the Americas? Here's what I think would happen:

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Most Likely...

Columbus' voyage was said to be during hurricane season, which would make the journey to the Americas very dangerous. If their ship turned back with nothing, other countries would be discouraged from the risky trip.

The eventual European colonization of the Americas wouldn't have taken place until much later. This would mean the exploration would be lead by new rulers, with a possibility of different political intentions.

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Different tribes would have less tension between them, as alliances with colonists wouldn't have gotten in the way.

The eventual colonization of the Americas wouldn't have taken place until much later. This would've given the Natives more time to develop more structured political systems and a chance to fight back against European conquest.

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The Native American population would have continued to increase, as they wouldn't have been met with diseases.

Native Americans would have been called by their proper tribe names, as Columbus' mistake of calling them "Indians" wouldn't have happened.

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Their commonly used method of migrating across the country by horseback wouldn't be available, as the Europeans wouldn't have brought them to the Americas.

America's technology would stagger behind the rest of the world, as the Natives had more traditional systems.

The enslavement of Native Americans and African Americans wouldn't have taken place, at least not in the Americas. America, whatever country it would eventually turn into, wouldn't have been built on a foundation of racism.

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It is possible that Europe would've had more time to socially develop, and once they met the Natives, could've considered them as equals.

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Without the Columbian Exchange, Spain wouldn't be the world power it became. The same thing could be said about the riches of the African countries that sold slaves.

The Spanish would've had to continue to use the long sea route to India for trade.

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The environment was severely impacted by European colonization of the Americas. If this event never happened, "Old World" diseases such as smallpox, measles, whooping cough, and influenza wouldn't have come into contact with Native Americans. This wouldn't have gotten 90% of the Native American population killed. Wheat, sugar, and bananas were also introduced to the Americas from the Old World. It's hard to believe that animals such as horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs weren't native to the Americas. Especially horses, which are depicted commonly with Indians in old-school media.

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Surely, every nation would have eventually discovered America, but without the widely known 1492 discovery, it would've taken much longer. Populations would have migrated to the Americas for different reasons than they did in the past. Many surges of immigrants wouldn't have taken place such as:

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in 1501

The First Great Wave of Immigration in 1820

The Irish Potato Famine in 1845

The California Gold Rush in 1848

...and that's just in the first 356 years since its discovery!

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Many European countries such as Spain, Portugal, France, and England were greatly involved and influenced by the colonization and discovery of the Americas. Their success during this period was rooted in the exploitation of the Americas. Spain, Portugal, France, and England were able to produce cash crops, create trades with the Natives, and conquer new territories for their nations. Without this, these nations may not have been as powerful as they are today.

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Because of the lack of colonization, the Natives will be able to develop their culture more. We know that during the development of the U.S., Native customs were stripped away from their people. If their tribes had more time to advance, their government policies would be influenced by their values, most likely with a focus on an equal relationship with the environment.

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Colonization ruptured many ecosystems, bringing in new organisms while eliminating others.

The Europeans brought many diseases with them that decimated Native American populations.

Colonists and Native Americans alike looked to new plants as possible medicinal resources.

Environmental changes

The European presence in America spurred countless changes in the environment, negatively affecting native animals as well as people. The popularity of beaver-trimmed hats in Europe, coupled with Native Americans' desire for European weapons, led to the overhunting of beavers in the Northeast. Soon, beavers were extinct in New England, New York, and other areas. With their loss came the loss of beaver ponds, which had served as habitats for fish as well as water sources for deer, moose, and other animals. Furthermore, Europeans introduced pigs, which they allowed to forage in forests and other wildlands. Pigs consumed the foods on which deer and other indigenous species depended, resulting in scarcity of the game native peoples had traditionally hunted.

European ideas about owning land as private property clashed with indigenous people's understanding of land use. Native Americans did not believe in private ownership of land; instead, they viewed land as a resource to be held in common for the benefit of the group. Colonizers erected fields, fences, and other means of demarcating private property. Indigenous people who moved seasonally to take advantage of natural resources now found areas off-limits, claimed by colonizers.

Introduction of disease

Perhaps the single greatest impact of European colonization on the North American environment was the introduction of disease. Microbes to which native inhabitants had no immunity caused sickness and death everywhere Europeans settled. Along the New England coast between 1616 and 1618, epidemics claimed the lives of 75 percent of the indigenous people. In the 1630s, half of the Huron and Iroquois people living near the Great Lakes died of smallpox. The very young and the very old were the most vulnerable and had the highest mortality rates. The loss of the older generation meant the loss of knowledge and tradition, while the deaths of children only compounded the trauma.

Some indigenous people perceived disease as a weapon used by hostile spiritual forces, and they went to war to exorcise the disease from their midst. These " mourning wars " in eastern North America were designed to gain captives who would either be adopted or ritually tortured and executed to assuage the anger and grief caused by loss.

New plants make new medicines

European expansion in the Americas led to an unprecedented movement of plants across the Atlantic. A prime example is tobacco, which became a valuable export as the habit of smoking took hold in Europe. Another example is sugar. Columbus brought sugarcane to the Caribbean on his second voyage from Spain in 1493, and thereafter a wide variety of other herbs, flowers, seeds, and roots.

Notably, Europeans traveled to America to discover new medicines. The task of cataloging the new plants found there led to the emergence of the science of botany. Early botanists included the English naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, who traveled to Jamaica in 1687 and there recorded hundreds of new plants.

Native Americans, who possessed a vast understanding of local New World plants and their properties, would have been a rich source of information for those European botanists seeking to find and catalog potentially useful plants. Enslaved Africans, who used medicinal plants in their native land, adapted to their new surroundings by learning the use of New World plants through experimentation and from the indigenous inhabitants. Native Americans and Africans employed their knowledge effectively within their own communities.

What do you think?

How did the environment of the Americas suffer from European contact? How did it benefit?

Did the markets in Europe influence the development of botany and agriculture in the New World? How so?

How did indigenous people and colonists exchange both knowledge and materials to make new medicines?

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Environmental and health effects of European contact with the New World (article) | Khan Academy

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When Christopher Columbus and his crew arrived in the New World, two biologically distinct worlds were brought into contact. The animal, plant, and bacterial life of these two worlds began to mix in a process called the Columbian Exchange. The results of this exchange recast the biology of both regions and altered the history of the world.

Geologists believe that between 280 million and 225 million years ago, the earth's previously separate land areas became welded into a landmass called Pangaea. About 120 million years ago, they believe, this landmass began to separate. As this happened, the Atlantic Ocean formed, dividing the Americas from Africa and Eurasia. Over the course of the next several million years in both the Americas and in Afro-Eurasia, biological evolution followed individual paths, creating two primarily separate biological worlds. However, when Christopher Columbus and his crew made land in the Bahamas in October 1492, these two long-separated worlds were reunited. Columbus' voyage, along with the many voyages that followed, disrupted much of the biological segregation brought about by continental drift.

After Columbus' arrival in the Americas, the animal, plant, and bacterial life of these two worlds began to mix. This process, first studied comprehensively by American historian Alfred Crosby, was called the Columbian Exchange. By reuniting formerly biologically distinct land masses, the Columbian Exchange had dramatic and lasting effects on the world. New diseases were introduced to American populations that had no prior experience of them. The results were devastating. These populations also were introduced to new weeds and pests, livestock, and pets. New food and fiber crops were introduced to Eurasia and Africa, improving diets and fomenting trade there. In addition, the Columbian Exchange vastly expanded the scope of production of some popular drugs, bringing the pleasures - and consequences - of coffee, sugar, and tobacco use to many millions of people. The results of this exchange recast the biology of both regions and altered the history of the world.

The flow from east to west: Disease

By far the most dramatic and devastating impact of the Columbian Exchange followed the introduction of new diseases into the Americas. When the first inhabitants of the Americas arrived across the Bering land bridge between 20,000 and 12,000 years ago, they brought few diseases with them. Why? For one reason, they had no domesticated animals, the original source of human diseases such as smallpox and measles. In addition, as they passed from Siberia to North America, the first Americans had spent many years in extreme cold, which eliminated many of the disease-causing agents that might have traveled with them. As a result, the first Americans and their descendants, perhaps 40 million to 60 million strong by 1492, enjoyed freedom from most of the infectious diseases that plagued populations in Afro-Eurasia for millennia. Meanwhile, in Asia and Africa, the domestication of herd animals brought new diseases spread by cattle, sheep, pigs, and fowl.

Soon after 1492, sailors inadvertently introduced these diseases - including smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, influenza, chicken pox, and typhus - to the Americas. People who lived in Afro-Eurasia had developed some immunities to these diseases because they had long existed among most Afro-Eurasian populations. However, the Native Americans had no such immunities. Adults and children alike were stricken by wave after wave of epidemic, which produced catastrophic mortality throughout the Americas. In the larger centers of highland Mexico and Peru, many millions of people died. On some Caribbean islands, the Native American population died out completely. In all, between 1492 and 1650, perhaps 90 percent of the first Americans had died.

This loss is considered among the largest demographic disasters in human history. By stripping the Americas of much of the human population, the Columbian Exchange rocked the region's ecological and economic balance. Ecosystems were in tumult as forests regrew and previously hunted animals increased in number. Economically, the population decrease brought by the Columbian Exchange indirectly caused a drastic labor shortage throughout the Americas, which eventually contributed to the establishment of African slavery on a vast scale in the Americas. By 1650, the slave trade had brought new diseases, such as malaria and yellow fever, which further plagued Native Americans.

The flow from east to west: Crops and animals

Eurasians sent much more than disease westward. The introduction of new crops and domesticated animals to the Americas did almost as much to upset the region's biological, economic, and social balance as the introduction of disease had. Columbus had wanted to establish new fields of plenty in the Americas. On his later voyages he brought many crops he hoped might flourish there. He and his followers brought the familiar food grains of Europe: wheat, barley, and rye. They also brought Mediterranean plantation crops such as sugar, bananas, and citrus fruits, which all had originated in South or Southeast Asia. At first, many of these crops fared poorly; but eventually they all flourished. After 1640, sugar became the mainstay of the Caribbean and Brazilian economies, becoming the foundation for some of the largest slave societies ever known. The production of rice and cotton, both imported in the Columbian Exchange, together with tobacco, formed the basis of slave society in the United States. Wheat, which thrived in the temperate latitudes of North and South America and in the highlands of Mexico, eventually became a fundamental food crop for tens of millions of people in the Americas. Indeed, by the late 20th century, wheat exports from Canada, the United States, and Argentina were feeding millions of people outside the Americas. It is true that the spread of these crops drastically changed the economy of the Americas. However, these new crops supported the European settler societies and their African slave systems. The Native Americans preferred their own foods.

When it came to animals, however, the Native Americans borrowed eagerly from the Eurasian stables. The Columbian Exchange brought horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and a collection of other useful species to the Americas. Before Columbus, Native American societies in the high Andes had domesticated llamas and alpacas, but no other animals weighing more than 45 kg (100 lbs). And for good reason: none of the other 23 large mammal species present in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus were suitable for domestication. In contrast, Eurasia had 72 large animal species, of which 13 were suitable for domestication. So, while Native Americans had plenty of good food crops available before 1492, they had few domesticated animals. The main ones, aside from llamas and alpacas, were dogs, turkeys, and guinea pigs.

Of all the animals introduced by the Europeans, the horse held particular attraction. Native Americans first encountered it as a fearsome war beast ridden by Spanish conquistadors. However, they soon learned to ride and raise horses themselves. In the North American great plains, the arrival of the horse revolutionized Native American life, permitting tribes to hunt the buffalo far more effectively. Several Native American groups left farming to become buffalo-hunting nomads and, incidentally, the most formidable enemies of European expansion in the Americas.

Cattle, sheep, pigs, and goats also proved popular in the Americas. Within 100 years after Columbus, huge herds of wild cattle roamed many of the natural grasslands of the Americas. Wild cattle, and, to a lesser degree, sheep and goats, menaced the food crops of Native Americans, notably in Mexico. Eventually ranching economies emerged, based variously on cattle, goats, or sheep. The largest ranches emerged in the grasslands of Venezuela and Argentina, and on the broad sea of grass that stretched from northern Mexico to the Canadian prairies. Native Americans used the livestock for meat, tallow, hides, transportation, and hauling. Altogether, the suite of domesticated animals from Eurasia brought a biological, economic, and social revolution to the Americas.

The flow from west to east: Disease

In terms of diseases, the Columbian Exchange was a wildly unequal affair, and the Americas got the worst of it. The flow of disease from the Americas eastward into Eurasia and Africa was either trivial or consisted of a single important infection. Much less is known about pre-Columbian diseases in the Americas than what is known about those in Eurasia. Based on their study of skeletal remains, anthropologists believe that Native Americans certainly suffered from arthritis. They also had another disease, probably a form of tuberculosis that may or may not have been similar to the pulmonary tuberculosis common in the modern world. Native Americans also apparently suffered from a group of illnesses that included two forms of syphilis. One controversial theory asserts that the venereal syphilis epidemic that swept much of Europe beginning in 1494 came from the Americas; however, the available evidence remains inconclusive.

The flow from west to east: Crops and cuisine

America's vast contribution to Afro-Eurasia in terms of new plant species and cuisine, however, transformed life in places as far apart as Ireland, South Africa, and China. Before Columbus, the Americas had plenty of domesticated plants. By the time Columbus had arrived, dozens of plants were in regular use, the most important of which were maize (corn), potatoes, cassava, and various beans and squashes. Lesser crops included sweet potato, papaya, pineapple, tomato, avocado, guava, peanuts, chili peppers, and cacao, the raw form of cocoa. Within 20 years of Columbus' last voyage, maize had established itself in North Africa and perhaps in Spain. It spread to Egypt, where it became a staple in the Nile Delta, and from there to the Ottoman Empire, especially the Balkans. By 1800, maize was the major grain in large parts of what is now Romania and Serbia, and was also important in Hungary, Ukraine, Italy, and southern France. It was often used as animal feed, but people ate it too, usually in a porridge or bread. Maize appeared in China in the 16th century and eventually supplied about one-tenth of the grain supply there. In the 19th century it became an important crop in India. Maize probably played its greatest role, however, in southern Africa. There maize arrived in the 16th century in the context of the slave trade. Southern African environmental conditions, across what is now Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and eastern South Africa, suited maize handsomely. Over the centuries, maize became the primary peasant food in much of southern Africa. In late 20th-century South Africa, for example, maize grew in two-thirds to three-quarters of the region's cropland.

Despite maize's success, the humble potato probably had a stronger impact in improving the food supply and in promoting population growth in Eurasia. The potato had little impact in Africa, where conditions did not suit it. But in northern Europe the potato thrived. It had the most significant effect on Ireland, where it promoted a rapid population increase until a potato blight ravaged the crop in 1845, bringing widespread famine to the area. After 1750, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, and Russia also gradually accepted the potato, which helped drive a general population explosion in Europe. This population explosion may have laid the foundation for world-shaking developments such as the Industrial Revolution and modern European imperialism. The potato also fed mountain populations around the world, notably in China, where it encouraged settlement of mountainous regions.

While maize and potatoes had the greatest world historical importance of the American crops, lesser crops made their marks as well. In West Africa, peanuts and cassava provided new foodstuffs. Cassava, a tropical shrub native to Brazil, has starchy roots that will grow in almost any soil. In the leached soils of West and Central Africa, cassava became an indispensable crop. Today some 200 million Africans rely on it as their main source of nutrition. Cacao and rubber, two other South American crops, became important export items in West Africa in the 20th century. The sweet potato, which was introduced into China in the 1560s, became China's third most important crop after rice and wheat. It proved a useful supplement to diets throughout the monsoon lands of Asia. Indeed, almost everywhere in the world, one or another American food crops caught on, complementing existing crops or, more rarely, replacing them. By the late 20th century, about one-third of the world's food supply came from plants first cultivate in the Americas. The modern rise of population surely would have been slower without them.

In contrast, the animals of the Americas have had very little impact on the rest of the world, unless one considers its earliest migrants. The camel and the horse actually originated in North America and migrated westward across the Bering land bridge to Asia, where they evolved into the forms familiar today. By the time of the Columbian Exchange, these animals were long extinct in the Americas, and the majority of America's domesticated animals would have little more than a tiny impact on Afro-Eurasia. One domesticated animal that did have an effect was the turkey. Wild animals of the Americas have done only a little better. Probably after the 19th century, North American muskrats and squirrels successfully colonized large areas of Europe. Deliberate introductions of American animals, such as raccoons fancied for their fur and imported to Germany in the 1920s, occasionally led to escapes and the establishment of feral animal communities. However, no species introduced from the Americas revolutionized human affairs or animal ecology anywhere in Afro-Eurasia. In terms of animal populations as with disease, the Americas contributed little that could flourish in the conditions of Europe, Africa, or Asia.

The Columbian Exchange in the modern world

As the late dates of the introduction of muskrats and raccoons to Europe suggest, the Columbian Exchange continues into the present. Indeed, it will surely continue into the future as modern transportation continues the pattern begun by Columbus. Recently, for example, zebra mussels from the Black Sea, stowed away in the ballast water of ships, invaded North American waters. There they blocked the water intakes of factories, nuclear power plants, and municipal filtration plants throughout the Great Lakes region. Just as the arrival of Christopher Columbus's ships in America in the 15th century resulted in the worldwide exchange of disease, crops, and animals, the 20th-century practice of ships using water as ballast helped unite the formerly diverse flora and fauna of the world's harbors and estuaries. Similarly, air transport allows the spread of insects and diseases that would not easily survive longer, slower trips. Modern transport carries on in the tradition of Columbus by promoting a homogenization of the world's plants and animals. To date, however, the world historical importance of modern exchanges pales beside that which took place in the original Columbian Exchange.

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When Christopher Columbus and his crew arrived in the New World, two biologically distinct worlds were brought into contact. The animal, plant, and bacterial life of these two worlds began to mix in a process called the Columbian Exchange. The results of this exchange recast the biology of both regions and altered the history of the world.

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Native Americans resisted the efforts of the Europeans to gain more land and control during the colonial period, but they struggled to do so against a sea of problems, including new diseases, the slave trade, and an ever-growing European population.

Subjects

Geography, Human Geography, Social Studies, U.S. History

Image

Diplomacy between Cheyenne and Settlers

Whether through diplomacy, war, or even alliances, Native American efforts to resist European encroachment further into their lands were often unsuccessful in the colonial era.

Photograph of woodcut by North Wind Picture Archives

During the colonial period, Native Americans had a complicated relationship with European settlers. They resisted the efforts of the Europeans to gain more of their land and control through both warfare and diplomacy. But problems arose for the Native Americans, which held them back from their goal, including new diseases, the slave trade, and the ever-growing European population in North America.

In the 17th century, as European nations scrambled to claim the already occupied land in the "New World," some leaders formed alliances with Native American nations to fight foreign powers. Some famous alliances were formed during the French and Indian War of 1754-1763. The English allied with the Iroquois Confederacy, while the Algonquian-speaking tribes joined forces with the French and the Spanish. The English won the war, and claimed all of the land east of the Mississippi River. The English-allied Native Americans were given part of that land, which they hoped would end European expansion-but unfortunately only delayed it. Europeans continued to enter the country following the French and Indian War, and they continued their aggression against Native Americans. Another consequence of allying with Europeans was that Native Americans were often fighting neighboring tribes. This caused rifts that kept some Native American tribes from working together to stop European takeover.

Native Americans were also vulnerable during the colonial era because they had never been exposed to European diseases, like smallpox, so they didn't have any immunity to the disease, as some Europeans did. European settlers brought these new diseases with them when they settled, and the illnesses decimated the Native Americans-by some estimates killing as much as 90 percent of their population. Though many epidemics happened prior to the colonial era in the 1500s, several large epidemics occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries among various Native American populations. With the population sick and decreasing, it became more and more difficult to mount an opposition to European expansion.

Another aspect of the colonial era that made the Native Americans vulnerable was the slave trade. As a result of the wars between the European nations, Native Americans allied with the losing side were often indentured or enslaved. There were even Native Americans shipped out of colonies like South Carolina into slavery in other places, like Canada.

These problems that arose for the Native Americans would only get worse in the 19th century, leading to greater confinement and the extermination of Native people. Unfortunately, the colonial era was neither the start nor the end of the long, dark history of treatment of Native Americans in the United States.

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October 19, 2023

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Native Americans resisted the efforts of the Europeans to gain more land and control during the colonial period, but they struggled to do so against a sea of problems, including new diseases, the slave trade, and an ever-growing European population.

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The River Valley School for the Deaf is a haven for new kid Charlie, golden boy Austin, and February, the headmistress. When the school faces closure, all struggle with what this might mean for them and for their community.

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Sara Novi&cacute; is an author, translator, and educator with an MFA in fiction and literary translation from Columbia University. She is the author of the two bestselling novels Girl at War and True Biz. Novi&cacute; is a deaf rights activist and has written about Deaf culture for the New York Times, Slate, CNN, and the Washington Post. She lives in Philadelphia.

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When Julia finds a slur scrawled on the wall of her school, Kingston School for the Deaf, she covers it up with a mural of her own. But when she is expelled for her illegal graffiti, she becomes the only deaf student at her new school. Julia's art is her only outlet in this new environment. She soon realizes she may not be the only graffiti artist in town...

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Whitney Gardner is an author and cartoonist based in the Pacific Northwest. After working as an art teacher and school librarian, in 2018 she published You're Welcome, Universe, which won the Schneider Family Book Award. Her second novel, Chaotic Good, was nominated for a 2019 White Pine Award.

Little Bear feels the world around him, but sometimes he doesn't quite understand what his friends are saying. They all say, "Can bears ski?" When he and Dad Bear go to the audiologist, they learn that Little Bear has been experiencing deafness. With new hearing aids, Little Bear's world is LOUD and will take some getting used to-but with the love and support of Dad Bear, Little Bear will find his way.

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