European settlers to "the New World" had a major, and mostly negative effect on the indigenous populations across North and South America. Whatever the motivations, those who settled North America left in their wake a legacy of poverty, domestic, drug and alcohol abuse, and an impenetrable sense of hopelessness among Native American communities. European settlement resulted in the displacement of native tribes, the wholesale destruction of cultures and the implementation of genocidal policies that decimated Native American tribes. The deliberate contamination of Native communities with diseases alien to North America like Small Pox wiped out large numbers of Native Americans, affecting subsequent generations. The usurpation of the most productive grazing lands and the expulsion of Native tribes from their historic territories and onto inhospitable reservations scarred those communities for eternity.
