Economic Drivers of Indian Dispossession

Key Insight

Before Europeans arrived, North American Indians had few needs, fabricating their weapons, drinking river water, and dressing in animal hides. Europeans introduced firearms, iron, whiskey, and fabrics, creating new tastes but not the means to satisfy them. Indians were forced to rely on white industry, offering rich furs as their only commodity in barter, thereby hunting not just for sustenance but also to 'flatter the frivolous passions of Europe.'

As Indian needs increased, their resources steadily diminished. The approach of European settlements caused wild game, like buffalo, to flee instinctively westward by as much as 200 leagues beyond the white man's border, impacting tribes barely known to Europeans. This relentless retreat of game deprived Indians of their primary means of existence, akin to making fields barren for farmers, leaving them like 'famished wolves' in their depleted forests.

This process meant that it was not directly Europeans driving out native Americans, but rather 'famine.' Hardy adventurers would penetrate Indian territory, building homes beyond white outposts, exploiting the ill-defined boundaries of nomadic hunters. Eventually, the Indians, attached to their native soil by 'instinctive love of country' yet facing misery and death, were compelled to leave, following the fleeing game to choose new homelands, effectively being destroyed.