Historians Have Debated the Costs and Benefits of the European

Historians have debated the costs and benefits of the European encounter with Native Americans in the period from 1491-1607.To what degree was the encounter positive,and to what degree was the encounter negative?
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Source: Gabriel Archer, Gosnold’s Settlement at Cuttyhunk, 1902

The fifteenth day we had again sight of the land, which made ahead, being as we thought an island, by reason of a large sound that appeared westward between it and the main, for coming to the west end thereof, we did perceive a large opening, we called it Shoal Hope. Near this cape we came to fathom anchor in fifteen fathoms, where we took great store of codfish, for which we altered the name, and called it Cape Cod. Here we saw sculls of herring, mackerel, and other small fish, in great abundance. This is a low sandy shoal, but without danger, also we came to anchor again in sixteen fathoms, fair by the land in the latitude of 42 degrees. This cape is well near a mile broad, and lieth north-east by east. The captain went here a shore and found the ground to be full of pease, strawberries, whortleberries, &c., as then unripe, the sand also by the shore somewhat deep, the firewood there by us taken in was of cypress, birch, witch-hazel and beech. A young Indian came here to the captain, armed with his bow and arrows, and had certain plates of copper hanging at his ears; he showed a willingness to help us in our occasions
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Saurce: Hernando Cortsis and the 5panish Soldiers Confront the Indians, ca. 1585 (artist urienown)

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Source: Engraving by Robert Vaughan, 1624. The figure of Opechancanough was based on John White’s 1585-1586 watercolor of an Algonquian-speaking chief, and also on a 1590 engraving by Theodor de Bry

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After purchase, each slave was branded with a hot iron signifying the company, whether Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, or Dutch, that had purchased him or her. Thus were members of "preliterate" societies first introduced to the alphabetic symbols of "advanced" cultures. "The branded slaves," one account related, "are returned to their former booths" where they were imprisoned until a full human cargo could be assembled. The next psychological wrench came with the ferrying of slaves, in large canoes, to the waiting ships at anchor in the harbor. An English captain described the desperation of slaves who were about to lose touch with their ancestral land and embark upon a vast ocean that many had never previously seen. "The Negroes are so wilful and loth to leave their own country, that they have often leap'd out of the canoes, boat and ship, into the sea, and kept under water till they were drowned, to avoid being taken up and sayed by our boats, which pursued them; they having a more dreadful apprehension of Barbadoes than we can have of hell." Part of this fear was the common belief that on the other side of the ocean Africans would be eaten by the white savages.
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Saurce: Stages of Smallpox in 16^th century, as depicted by unionown artist in Franciscan frar Bermardino de Sahagin's Florentine Codax

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Source: Historian Ira Berlin, “The Discovery of the Americas and the Transatlantic Slave Trade”
In the middle of the fifteenth century, Europe, Africa, and the Americas came together, creating—among other things—a new economy. At the center of that economy was the plantation, an enterprise dedicated to the production of exotic commodities—the most prominent being sugar—for a distant market. The sugar plantation, which first developed in the Mediterranean, was an enormously complex unit of production requiring the mobilization of vast amounts of capital, the development of new technologies (agricultural, industrial, and maritime), the invention of management techniques, and—because sugar production was extraordinarily labor intensive—the employment of huge numbers of workers.
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Source: Bartalomé de las Ca5as, A Erief Aceomt of the Destruetion of the Indies, 1552
[Spaniards’] reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits. It should be kept in mind that their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies. And also, those lands are so rich and felicitous, the native people so meek and patient, so easy to subject, that our Spaniards have no more consideration for them than beasts.