Have you ever thought of life without Thanksgiving?  Or hot chocolate without the chocolate?  What about corn on the cob, minus the corn?  We would be living without all of these things if Europeans had not come to America.
In 1492, Columbus sailed to the New World.  By 1600, Europeans had explored much of the Americas, conquering some of the greatest native civilizations and paving the way for European settlements.  Europeans and Native Americans were both profoundly affected by these early encounters.  The Native Americans acquired new technologies, plants and animals, as well as new diseases and a new religion.  The European explorers carried parts of the Native American culture back to Europe, including many new agricultural products as well as vast quantities of gold and silver.  Unfortunately, many Native American civilizations were destroyed in the European quest for land, fame, and gold.
Columbus set sail in search of the Spice Islands, or India, hoping to establish a western trade route for valuable spices and silks. By the time Columbus sighted land two months later, his crew was restless and tired.  Many feared that they would never get home to their families again.  Instead of reaching India, Columbus had stumbled into America. Rather than spices and silks, he found such wonders as tobacco and new kinds of food.
When Columbus landed in Novidad, he met the Arawack tribe.  The two cultures began trading ideas and customs, even if it was not intentional.  For example, the canoe had not yet been introduced into Europe. The Arawacks used canoes for travel and hunting as well as warfare. Columbus introduced these sleek boats to Europe, where the came to be used for pleasure and travel.
The Arawacks also used hammocks, which the Europeans had not yet discovered.  Fathers had the highest hammocks, while mothers were lower so they could tend the fire.  The use of hammocks struck Columbus as a good idea.  Galleons were too small for all of the crew to sleep inside, so many sailors had to sleep on the deck, exposed to the elements.  With the ability to stack one on top of the other, hammocks made it possible for the whole crew to sleep inside, where it was warmer and drier.
More importantly, the Native Americans had many new foods that the Europeans had never tasted. Native Americans used tobacco for religious ceremonies and rituals in the Native American cultures.  Tobacco was not so much smoked for pleasure, but the smoke was supposed to appease the gods. Tobacco was only smoked by the priests and holy people. The Europeans found that tobacco was a source of enjoyment.  In addition, they realized how much money tobacco could make.  Once a sweet tobacco was made that was especially popular to smoke, tobacco plantation owners made fortunes.  Tobacco is now one of Europe's biggest cash crops as well as one of its biggest health problems.
 Corn, or maize, played an important role in many Native American cultures.  Many Native Americans believed that the gods originally made them out of corn. The explorers brought corn back to Europe, realizing that it grew well in places that are too wet for wheat and too dry for rice, allowing vast new tracts of land to be cultivated.  Corn is now a staple in the diets of both people and farm animals as well as being used in Gasohol, which is a gasoline substitute.
 Many tribes in the Americas drank chocolate, though they were only familiar with unsweetened chocolate.  The Europeans brought chocolate back to Europe, but added vanilla and sugar, which also originated in America.  The result was a sweet drink that soon became immensely popular.  Later, scientists found a way to make solid chocolate, which is what we eat today.
 Tomatoes, which were also native to the Americas, were at first thought to be poisonous.  Today they are an important ingredient in European cooking especially in Italy.  The Native Americans also had many types of beans which were unknown to the Europeans.  Lima, string, and kidney beans soon became popular throughout Europe.
 Potatoes were an important part of many Native American diets.  Because potatoes are more nutritious than other native Europeans crops, they soon became a popular vegetable.  Potatoes supported a population boom in Ireland, and when the potato crop failed in the 1800s, many Irish refugees surged to the U.S.
 When the first Explorers arrived in the Americas, wild turkeys abounded. Turkeys became a popular and easy source of food.  This is why many people eat turkey on Thanksgiving.  The Europeans also liked the taste of grilled meat, which they called barbecue, leading them to introduce barbecuing in Europe.
Columbus and the early European explorers found a Native American alcoholic bring to be much to their liking.  The Europeans may not have liked the drink if they knew how it was made.  Native Americans chewed a type of bread until it was thoroughly mixed with saliva, and then they spit it out into a jug.  They left it to sit until it fermented, and then stirred it into a liquid.
The Native Americans way of life was also influenced by the Europeans.  Hernan Cortez brought the first horses to the New World. Horses were an excellent form of transportation and allowed the Spanish to fight, hunt, and travel better than could the Aztecs.  Soon the Europeans discovered that the Native Americans would trade for horses, and horses were brought to the New World.  The Tribes that had horses were far superior to those without horses and the latter were overrun easily, causing horses to spread throughout the New World.
One of the reasons that the Aztecs thought that the Spanish were gods was the horse.  The Aztecs had never seen a horse before, and were scared of it, and its riders.  The horse was also one of the main reasons that the Aztecs fell; the horse enabled the Spanish to fight much better than the Aztecs.
The Spanish also impressed the Aztecs with their guns.  The Spanish guns often did not work.  They were prone to accidents and ineffectual in close combat. But the guns made a loud bang that scared the Aztecs.  The Aztecs regarded the gun as a possession fit for a king.  The Aztecs also looked on the Spanish cannons, which worked much better as a work of the gods as well.  As well as making loud sounds cannons killed many people in one shot, which would have been very handy for a tribe that went to war as much as the Aztecs.
 The use of the gun became standard in Native American cultures, and guns are still used in Indian reservations.  The cannon never became a part of the Indian culture,  perhaps because it worked so well the conquistadors strictly forbid any member of the crew to give it to the natives, or perhaps because it was so unwieldy as to not be of use to the tribes.
 Livestock was common on ships to the New World, because it was an easy way to keep the meat fresh until it was time to cook it.  The explorers brought the first pigs to the New World.  The Aztec nobility especially liked pork, because it reminded them of the taste human flesh, which had been outlawed by Cortez. The Europeans also brought cows on board their ships, which thrived on the vast open plains of the Americas.  Cattle could be used for many purposes, it could be eaten, milked, it hide could be sold, and its fat made into candles.
 The settlers soon realized that bananas would grow well in the hot moist climate of Central and South America.  Today, Central and South America are the worlds leading export of the fruit.
 Not everything that the Europeans brought was beneficial.  They also brought disease.  Smallpox swept through the Native American villages, whose members had no immunity fight the germs, killing almost half the population in some places.  The Native Americans gradually built up immunities to the diseases that the newcomers brought.
The early European explorers soon established a pattern of behavior that was disastrous for the Native Americans.  Columbus spread word of the New World throughout Europe. He told about fame, riches and power.  Soon everybody that could was on a ship to the New World looking for gold and land.
The Native Americans were initially very receptive of their white visitors, and were easily swayed in the Europeans' favor.  The Natives would do anything that the Europeans asked them to, even give gold and riches.
Despite the Native Americans peaceful responses, the Europeans gave way to violent tendencies.  Cortez came to the New World in search of gold.  First he came to Cuba, and then went to mainland Mexico.  In Mexico he found the Aztecs, a fierce group of Native Americans with a very strict religious practices in which human sacrifice was key.  Cortez, a Catholic, thought that this was a pagan religion and that it should not exist.  It so happened that Cortez arrived when the Aztecs thought their white god would initiate the world's destruction.  It was natural that the Aztecs should think of Cortez as a god.  Cortez' greed for power and his devotion to the church, prompted him to conquer the Aztecs in the name of the Church.
With horses, guns, and cannons, the Spanish easily defeated the Aztec army, even with six hundred soldiers.  If Cortez had not been so eager to gain power and land so he could grow in favor with the King and Queen, perhaps the Aztecs would have been spared. Or perhaps the Native Americans would have been harder to conquer if they had deferred less and rejected more quickly.  Nobody really knows.
There was great conflict over the New World between Spain and Portugal.  This is because everybody in the Old World wanted to claim the New World for his or her country.  If they did not many of the Native American tribes would still be there, like the Aztecs.  In order to solve the problem of who gets what, a line was made that on the east of the line Portugal could conquer and on the West Spain could take over.  This line was called the Demarcation line.  One of the few places Portugal got was most of Brazil.  This is why Brazil has strong Portuguese origins.
Sugar in itself is an important crop.  Sugar grew well in Latin America and was one of the Americas first money making crops.  The problem with sugar was that it needed slaves to grow and so a steady slave trade developed.
The Europeans replace the Native American cultures with practices designed to exploit the wealth of the Americas.  Today there are only a few Native Americans left in reservations that the U.S. Government created so that the natives would not be obliterated completely.  Native Americans today are coming back but there are still not very many in the U.S.  A 1980 census count of Native Americans yielded the following results* .

 
California     201311
Oklahoma       169464
Arizona        152857
New Mexico     104777
North Carolina 64635
Alaska         64074
Washington     60771
South Dakota   45101
Texas          40074
Michigan       40038
New York       38732
Montana        37270
Minnesota      35026
Wisconsin      29497
Oregon         27309
North Dakota   20157
Florida        19316
Utah           19256
Colorado       18059
Illinois       16271
Kansas         15371
Nevada         13304
Missouri       12319
Ohio           12240
Louisiana      12064
Idaho          10521
 
 

Contact between the Europeans and the Native Americans had both good and bad consequences.  A good thing in my eyes is the fact that European contact the USA would not have become a country.  Another beneficial outcome of the encounters is the fact that Europe got many things that it did not previously have, helping it to become one of the richest continents in the world.
There were other consequences that I think the world as a whole would now have liked to have avoided, such as destroying many great civilizations.  Both the Aztecs and the Inca met their downfall after the Spanish came.  The Aztecs were fierce warriors that, despite their initial deference, did not give up without a fight.  They beat back the Spanish forces for a few years, but couldn't hold out after the Spanish regrouped and charged again.  The Inca were run over much more quickly.  In a matter of a few years, one of the world's greatest civilizations had been destroyed.
The Europeans did not obliterate the Native Americans completely, but destroyed their way of life.  Many Native Americans' old customs and rituals gave way to modern medicines and technology.  This was bad because those ways of life are now gone forever.  We will never really know what life then was like then.
All in all, there were many things that I would have changed if I was in control of history.  I think that contact between the Old and the New World was a very good one, and had to be made in the course of time.  What would you have done if you were able to change the past, what would you have changed?  What would you have left the same?
 
 
 

Bibliography

 Athearn, Robert G. American heritage Illustrated History of the United States Volume 1 The New World Choice Publishing, Inc. 1988

 Craig, Claire Explorers and Traders Time Life Custom Publishing 1996

 Jacobs, Heidi Hayes, Randolph, Brenda, LeVasseur, Michal L. Prentice Hall World Explorers Latin America Prentice-Hall Inc. 1998