<P> As European - American women started working independently at missions and Indian schools in the western states, there were more opportunities for their meeting and developing relationships with Native American men . For instance, Charles Eastman, a man of European and Lakota descent whose father sent both his sons to Dartmouth College, got his medical degree at Boston University and returned to the West to practice . He married Elaine Goodale, whom he met in South Dakota . He was the grandson of Seth Eastman, a military officer from Maine, and a chief's daughter . Goodale was a young European - American teacher from Massachusetts and a reformer, who was appointed as the US superintendent of Native American education for the reservations in the Dakota Territory . They had six children together . </P> <P> African and Native Americans have interacted for centuries . The earliest record of Native American and African contact occurred in April 1502, when Spanish colonists transported the first Africans to Hispaniola to serve as slaves . </P> <P> Sometimes Native Americans resented the presence of African Americans . The "Catawaba tribe in 1752 showed great anger and bitter resentment when an African American came among them as a trader ." To gain favor with Europeans, the Cherokee exhibited the strongest color prejudice of all Native Americans . He contends that because of European fears of a unified revolt of Native Americans and African Americans, the colonists encouraged hostility between the ethnic groups: "Whites sought to convince Native Americans that African Americans worked against their best interests ." In 1751, South Carolina law stated: </P> <P> "The carrying of Negroes among the Indians has all along been thought detrimental, as an intimacy ought to be avoided ." </P>

What factors determined how native american cultures developed in different geographical regions