"Arrivals...There goes the neighborhood"

I feel that this saying can be applied to when the explorers came to North America. Before the explorers arrived, the natives were happily living off the land. These people worshipped the land and used it as part of rituals. Then when Columbus and the rest of the explorers came, everything changed. Columbus was more concerned about gaining land taking everything he could as he would profit more from doing so. To him, the land was his and basically it was now his “neighborhood”. They harvested a bunch of natural resources, destroyed villages and animals, and killed many with diseases as the natives didn't have a strong immune system. There goes the neighborhood as now some European guy they had never met was in charge. He and many other explorers were only exploring for personal gain. They had far different views than the natives and thought of them as primitive.The Europeans, being monotheistic, wanted to convert the natives, who were polytheistic. The Native Americans probably knew that there would be change coming to their nation when they saw strange, white-skinned people arriving at their coasts.I doubt anyone would just change their way of life just because some stranger told them to. Maybe at the beginning, the natives were welcoming and hospitable to them like in “Plymouth Plantation” but soon realized those people weren’t who they initially thought they were. To try to resist the change, they did what they could and attacked back.

Fast forward a bit to the Puritans. These people were super strict and followed the bible down to a T. Step out of line one bit and you’d be in big trouble. They didn’t like newcomers and unlike the Native Americans, weren't hospitable to them at all. The natives at least gave them a chance, but the Europeans took advantage of it and then just took over, forcing the natives west to live in reservations.

Nowadays, this saying can also apply, though, we are more open to new people. This was not always like this as we used to be very discriminatory toward some immigrants and ethnic groups. They felt that these immigrants would destroy their culture with their own and take over, just like how the Europeans did with the Native Americans.

In present day, my former neighbors could also have been said to have ruined the neighborhood for the rest of us. Everybody else in the neighborhood was pretty uniform; moms and dads go to work, the elderly staying home or working on their yards, and the kids going to school. But not these people, I don’t think they worked at all but somehow had the money to buy a bunch of tattoos, six-packs of beers everyday, some weed, and afford to take care of their family, which included a 2 year old kid. They had parties with music blasting into the morning hours basically every night and the smell of weed lingering in the air for a few hours. Then decide it is a good idea to throw their garbage wherever they want, whether it was in their yard, my yard, or right in the middle of the street. Everyone on the block was affected by their behavior. Well, there goes the neighborhood.