The Columbian Exchange (Post 1)

The Europeans brought a lot of negative things to North America, all the while receiving many benefits from the native Americans, benefits that were quintessential to their survival. The Columbian Biological Exchange website shows in the chart that this is true. The Europeans brought so many new diseases to North America that greatly affected the natives. They brought diseases such as small pox, influenza, and the common cold. The native Americans, unlike the Europeans, were not immune to these diseases.

   (Palomar Website)

Even though the native Americans were not getting anything positive, at the time, from the Europeans, they still shared their maize with them (Public Gettysburg). As professor Holden said in class, maize was essentially the only thing keeping the European population, in North America, alive . As the Public Gettysburg website said, maize was useful to the Europeans because it could be stored quickly and easily and it also could grow faster, and in more sorts of conditions, than wheat could be. The Palomar Columbian Exchange website states that one of the reasons maize was so important to the Europeans was because it could be used in many ways other than food for the humans. They could use it as feed for their livestock, a major export, and food to keep their population alive. It could be argued that maize is the main reason Europeans were able to survive the new and harsh conditions of the new world.

(Gettysburg.edu)

According to the Palomar website on the Columbian Exchange, disease was the number one thing Europeans had to help lessen the strength of the natives. Even though the Europeans did not fully understand what they were doing, they were bringing awful diseases to a country that had no immunization or resistance to any of the diseases. This had a huge negative impact on the native Americans because they were not only losing part of their population, but they were losing great leaders as well. According to the Gettysburg website, the disease that had the greatest and worst affect on the native Americans was small pox. This was such a huge problem to the natives because it was often misdiagnosed and treated incorrectly, which led to death for tens of thousands of Indians (Public Gettysburg). Most Europeans had already been exposed to this disease and had developed at least a partial immunity to this disease, so even though it was destroying the native populations, it hardly affected the Europeans (Public Gettysburg).

(Gettysburg.edu)

"The Columbian Biological Exchange." The Columbian Biological Exchange.

 "Columbian Exchange." Palomar College. S.J. Crouthamel, 2003. Web. 12 Feb. 2013.

Malone, Cory, et. al.  "The Columbian Exchange." Gettysburg.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2013.