In 1492 Columbus landed in North America and created the first contact between Native Americans and Europeans. Thus began diplomatic negotiations over territory which will become the United States of America. From the very beginning of these negotiations both sides were confused about each other. Columbus mistakenly called these people Indians. Columbus either knew did not know how far from India he really was or he didn’t want to admit it. Some Native Americans believed fair skinned Europeans to be some kind of demon. Each of these misconceptions about the other is directly caused by each of the two group’s worldviews. As we see in the course of US history the misconceptions keep rolling in from 1492 to present shaped by conflicting worldviews. The European-American worldview will have a dramatic impact on the fate of many Native Americans while providing the rationalization for Indian removal by the US government. The Native American worldview is what makes it relatively easy for the US to force them off their land without a full-scale invasion or drawn-out war.

Beginning in 1776, when the United Stated declared its’ independence from England, the US government took an official and active role in removing Native Americans for their lands in order to allow European Americans to settle the area. A definition of the European American worldview is necessary in order to understand how the people of the time justified stealing land and murdering people. This worldview can be traced back throughout the history of European contact with Natives in North America.

One demonstration of the European worldview comes from Spain in the seventeenth century. The infamous Spanish Inquisition occurred during this century. Six hundred thousand Spaniards attempted to flee the country to avoid brutal religious persecution and torture. Approximately two-thirds of those six hundred thousand were killed by the Spanish church or died trying to escape. This lack of respect for the lives of people who were different continued to manifest itself in the Spanish treatment of Native Americans during Spain’s conquest of portions of North and South America. In the book Neighbors and Strangers William Polk points out, “It is clear that the attitudes toward Moriscos were quickly transferred to the indigenous population of the New World. In the hundreds and thousands Native Americans were enslaved, expelled, or simply hunted down and slaughtered like wild animals.” Spain is one example of the worldview that will have a profound influence on how Americans in the nineteenth century will deal with Indian removal.