Native Tribes
Aside from European colonial powers, the NPC powers include eight Native American tribes, in four main categories. Each Native American settlement can convert one regular colonist into a specialist (such as an Expert Farmer or Cotton Planter); the specialist type varies in each settlement, with the capital settlement able to convert multiple times (natives will train indentured servants, but criminals are rejected). When a scout unit tries to enter a settlement, results may range from monetary gifts, to the revealing of nearby lands and the occasional being tied up for target practice (usually only if the natives are wary of the player's actions or growth on their lands).
After setting up a mission in a native settlement, some of their civilians may convert to Christianity and live in your colonies where they can used as trappers, farmers, miners, lumberjacks, and fishermen (but are nearly useless at skilled labor).
More advanced tribes live in larger cities. Conquering them is harder, but yields more treasure. On the standard map they typically have fewer settlements than the other tribes, but there is no difference on random maps.
At the start of the game, natives only fight with poorly armed warriors, but later on they may acquire horses and guns by defeating a unit carrying them.
Read more about this topic: Sid Meier's Colonization
Famous quotes containing the words native and/or tribes:
“The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.”
—J.M. (John Millington)
“That those tribes [the Sac and Fox Indians] cannot exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)