What events created a bad relationship between native Americans and europeans?

Answer 1

Usually, it was down to the fact that most Colonists wanted to appropriate land for themselves and assume ownership of it. Indian belief generally holds that people belong to the land, not land to people, and resented the new territorialism and greed of the white settlers. To them, hearing someone say that it was possible to 'own' land was like it would be to us hearing someone say that they could 'own' a bit of the sky- it was a completely foreign concept. They thus either could not, or refused on principle, to acknowledge any idea of land ownership, and ignored demands by the white settlers to move on when they were told that they were trespassing. Also, whilst not having an idea of land ownership, the Indians were nonetheless aware of tribal 'spheres of influence'- different tribes were understood to have hunting rights and ancestral precedence over different parts of the USA, and believed that the spirits of the ancestors of various tribes dwelt in these regions, making these areas special (and even sacred) to the tribal descendants. Indian tribes often went to war with each other over breaches of ancestral prerogative, so it was only to be expected that they would come into conflict with white settlers too for the same reasons. In the 19th Century, the emergent USA sometimes sought to exploit such tribal rivalries to it's own advantage, allying US Government forces with one tribe (or group of tribes) against others, and promising the allied tribes protection, arms supplies and land rights in return for help in defeating the other Indian tribes regarded as the greater threat. In other cases, the Indians initially bore the white settlers no grudges, being merely curious about the new race of pale-skinned people with strange technologies and an alien culture- only to have outrages committed against them by the settlers not long afterwards. Huge numbers of white settlers carried out needless atrocities against Indian tribes, slaughtering the braves, raping and torturing the squaws and butchering their children. Word thus circulated within the Indian community that ALL white men were bad and evil, thus leading to redskin reprisals against peaceful white settlers who may have wanted good relations with the Indians- and the situation just snowballed from then on. This kind of situation made things almost impossible for the tolerant, conciliatory elements on both sides. It should also be mentioned that in the very FIRST days of European exploration and settlement of the USA, in the 16th Century, some pioneers did come across Indian tribes who were themselves extremely aggressive. This usually happened in the hot, swampy regions of the far South, in the region now known as Florida and thereabouts- English, Spanish and French explorers and missionaries sometimes ran up against warlike tribes with savage customs, who immediately attacked them and comitted torture, mutilation and cannibalism against their parties. They were different in kind to the sort of Indians familiar to the Western world in popular culture, being more like degenerate Amazonians than the sort of headdress-wearing, teepee-dwelling 'Red Indians' we all know- most of them were wiped out either by European diseases against which they had no resistance, by subsequent waves of explorers, or in wars against each other. But they gave the inhabitants of the 'New World' a bad name in Europe, who grew to fear it's indigenous population in general.