--- title: The people who were already there: what colonisation did — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The people who were already there: what colonisation did», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Europa Universalis 5 often paints the Americas, Australia and much of Africa as empty land waiting for colonist --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / The people who were already there: wha… # The people who were already there: what colonisation did Lesson 36 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/0/) — Europa Universalis 5 often paints the Americas, Australia and much of Africa as empty land waiting for colonists, but every valley and coast already had people with their own nations, laws, farms and cities. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/1/) — Imagine new neighbours moving into your street and announcing that your house is "unclaimed" because they had not seen it before: that is how colonisers often treated land that was already someone's home. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/2/) — After 1492 smallpox, measles and flu crossed the Atlantic and killed far more people than swords did; American peoples had never met these diseases, so their bodies had no defence against them, no immunity. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/4/) — But this is not only history: about 476 million Indigenous people live today, and many are bringing back their languages, rights and lands. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/5/) — When Europeans arrived in 1492, tens of millions of people lived in the Americas, in cities, farming villages and many nations. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/7/) — Far more deadly diseases travelled from Europe to the Americas than the other way, because Europeans had long lived close to farm animals and crowded towns where such diseases arose. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/8/) — Under the Spanish encomienda system, colonists were given the right to the labour and tribute of Indigenous people, and the friar Bartolomé de las Casas wrote fiercely against its cruelty. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/9/) — North America held many Indigenous nations, such as the Haudenosaunee, Cherokee, Lakota and Powhatan, who made treaties, traded and fought with Europeans. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/10/) — The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also called the Iroquois, joined five, later six, nations in a lasting alliance. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/11/) — In the 1830s the USA forced the Cherokee and other nations of the south-east off their lands to the west, and thousands died on the march known as the Trail of Tears. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/12/) — Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have lived in Australia for at least 50,000 to 65,000 years, among the oldest continuing cultures in the world. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/13/) — When Britain began a colony in Australia in 1788 it treated the land as belonging to no one, an idea Australia's High Court rejected in the Mabo decision of 1992. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/14/) — British colonisation brought disease, violent frontier killings and the taking of land to Aboriginal peoples, and later many Aboriginal children were taken from their families; they are called the Stolen Generations. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/15/) — In 1840 many Māori chiefs and the British Crown signed the Treaty of Waitangi, but the English and Māori texts said different things about who held power. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/16/) — In the 1800s and early 1900s European rule in Africa often meant taking land, forced labour and violent punishment of resistance; in King Leopold II's Congo Free State forced rubber collection caused millions of deaths. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/17/) — Indigenous peoples are still here, about 476 million people across about 90 countries, and many are reviving their languages, rights and land; the UN adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. - ← previous: [The Mughals, the Ming and the empires of Asia](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/35-the-mughals-the-ming-and-the-empires-of-asia/) - next →: [How empires fell: the map of the 20th century](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)