How Did Aborigines Respond To Native Americans

Register to read the introduction… While some were welcoming, others reacted with hostility and sometimes Aboriginal peoples living close to the site of a landing by Europeans were killed. As the colonists, whose guns gave them the advantage over the Aborigines, made it plain they intended to remain and began altering the landscape, clearing trees and building fences, resistance grew among the Aboriginal people and they suffered increasing numbers of casualties. As the settlements expanded, Aboriginal numbers declined and their ways of life in many areas were destroyed with survivors beginning to live within or on the fringes of the new European communities.
In addition, diseases such as smallpox, venereal disease, measles, and influenza, some of which were not life-threatening to Europeans, devastated Aboriginal people, who lacked immunity. The Aboriginal population may in fact originally have been several times higher than the estimated figure of 300,000 in 1788, when the first fleet of soldiers and convicts arrived to establish permanent European settlement. Animals brought by the Europeans, some feral, such as rabbits, cats, and foxes, and some domestic, such as sheep and cattle, muddied waterholes, making them unusable and unproductive, …show more content…
Some Aboriginal groups readily accepted Christianity; many others did not. Missions varied considerably in their approach. Some had an active policy of destroying Aboriginal culture, Aboriginal languages could not be spoken, ceremonies could not be performed, kin from outside could not be visited. In some cases, Aboriginal people were dressed in European clothing and given manual labour to