How Indians' basic worldview differ from Europeans'?

Indians' Lives and Worldviews-Despite the extraordinary diversity of Indian peoples, their cultures also shared some common features. We often think of Indians as living in tribes, but most Indian peoples lived in small villages. Indians tended to band together to form larger tribes with other Indians who shared their culture as a strategy to resist European invasion of their lands. In many Indian societies, women had great respect and a large role in providing for the needs of members of the village. For instance raising crops was considered women's work in most Indian societies. Instead of viewing this as a sign of women's power and importance, English settlers would see it as an indication that Indian women were exploited by their men.

Indians generally shared a worldview and spirituality quite different from Europeans'. Indians believed that the world was animate, or filled with spirits. People, animals, plants, sky, rocks, and rivers all possessed a spirit. Thus, the Indians world was one in which the sacred and material worlds were one and the same. European Christians, by contrast, believed that only human beings had souls, and drew a sharp distinction between the spiritual and material worlds. For Europeans, God had created animals, plants, and the physical world for humans to control and use.

Although Indians had traditional homelands, which they considered theirs to inhabit and use, they did not share Europeans' idea of property, in which people could gain permanent ownership of land, animals and crops. Rather, most Indians believed that people were entitled to use land and hunt game to support themselves and their fellow villagers.