In North America, Indigenous peoples have lived, governed, stewarded, and spiritually connected to places, territories, and homelands since time immemorial. With European invasion in the Western Hemisphere, genocide was perpetrated along the east coast of the continent and spread to other areas. Turtle Island, as it is lovingly called by Indigenous peoples, was given to Native peoples by the Creator. By the late 1400s to 1700s, invaders caused the lands to be a bloody battleground as the Europeans, including the British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish, brought their conflicts over power and territory to this hemisphere. Early on, Tribal Nations engaged in commerce with the newcomers, but soon turned to defending their peoples and lands.
As Europeans targeted the Western Hemisphere for exploitation of natural resources by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Native peoples in Central America were subjected to enslavement, torture, and complete annihilation as the European Spanish male military seized Native lands and resources that had been stewarded and were intended for future generations of Native societies. The encomienda system established by Spanish colonizers condemned Indigenous peoples to lives of forced labor, every form of abuse and maltreatment, and the attempted destruction of Indigenous governance, culture, and spiritual ceremonies. To the north, many Tribal Nations were willing to educate, enter peaceful relations, and develop longstanding treaty relationships with the men from British, Dutch, French, and Russian origins. This willingness to trade, interact, and intermarry was viewed as an opportunity to exploit the lands, peoples, and cultures of the Western Hemisphere.
For Tribal Nation leaders, the newcomers were often received with sympathy and allowed in the communal circle with hospitality. A long tradition of alliances, confederacies, and treaty-making had been the norm in the Americas prior to European arrival. The basis of the tribal worldview is kinship and obligations based on the status of relatives in an interdependent living world. In some societies, prophecies foretold of cataclysmic change that would ensue upon the arrival of foreigners, but nothing could fully prepare the tribal governments sustainably managing large territories for the onslaught that occurred in the 1600s and 1700s across North America.