The lure of trade and resources prompted Europeans to push ever further into the Americas, making inroads into the continent while increasingly encroaching on Indigenous land. Intertribal competition at times allowed Europeans to employ divide and conquer strategies, but just as often, Indigenous peoples turned European rivalry and competition to their own advantage. Indigenous people were not simply pawns in European colonization—they had agency and carved out their own lives amid colonization, warfare, and disease.
Some Indigenous communities banded together to form confederacies or tribal groups. Others raided neighboring groups to take captives, a practice in effect among many tribes prior to European arrival, but one that seems to have been exacerbated by European arrival. For example, many Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) groups engaged in Mourning Wars to take captives in order to adopt them into Iroquois communities and boost populations. Some scholars suggest that the Beaver Wars of the 17th century served as an escalation of this tradition in part as a response to smallpox epidemics. Some indigenous groups—like the Iroquois, Cherokee, and Comanche—managed to grow more powerful, in part by controlling trade routes, acquiring horses or firearms, and negotiating strategically with European powers. Many Indigenous groups also served as crucial links in growing trade networks, facilitating the exchange of furs, horses, guns, and other goods across vast regions and using these links as leverage. The Iroquois, for example, used diplomacy and shifting alliances to protect their autonomy and expand their influence throughout the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, often playing the English and French against one another. The Comanche emerged as a dominant force on the southern Plains by adopting the horse and expanding their territory and power, conducting trade and raids across the vast region.
Other Indigenous communities found themselves displaced by settler encroachment or military defeat, especially as European settlements expanded. Some were pushed into marginal lands or migrated to new areas, displacing neighboring groups and further exacerbating tensions over resources, as seen in Bacon's Rebellion. Thus, even in the face of growing European power, Indigenous nations remained central actors in the shaping of North America’s political and economic landscape.