Sometimes history is manipulated for political effect: Groups have learned that the easiest way to get friends,or at least allies, is to make themselves victims of some great tragedy. Native American groups have settled on fabricating a genocide that happened during the 16th through 19th centuries, despite the historical fact that no such genocide actually happened. It's a great way of getting attention, especially among those looking to make it look like they are doing the right thing, but sometimes agreeing with something just to make yourself look good is hardly the best thing.
[This is not to say that the deaths of native peoples is not a tragedy, and that should not be the takeaway here. There is no doubt that the deaths of so many is in fact one of the greatest tragedies in world history, and there is no way that it can be righted. The subsequent theft of native lands by the US government just compounds that wrong, and it needs to be addressed by more aggressive action. However, that's beyond this entry....]
The sad truth of the matter is that when the first explorers hit the shores their intimate interactions with the natives they found began the spread of any number of diseases to which they had no defense. Those diseases then spread throughout the continent killing tribe after tribe, and eventually resulting in a decimation of the population; by the time the plague was finished between twenty and sixty million people would be dead. In this case a number of different reasons contributed to the decimation, ranging from limited medical knowledge, general separation of tribes, and the style of combat (most warriors counted coup more often than killing their opponents; this meant close physical proximity when they hit another warrior with a coup stick).
This epidemic would last from the day Columbus landed all the way to the late 19th century, when vaccines would become reasonably commonplace. The disease would eventually hit every tribe from Alaska to the tip of Chile, even though some tribes would be hit harder than others. Worse, it would keep coming back even to areas that it had previously passed over. It was the gift that just kept giving.
[It's worth noting that the natives did infect the explorers in turn: Several million Europeans died as a result of the diseases brought back, and one of the new immigrants, syphilis, is still a killer even today. But...those deaths were widespread enough that they were ignored until centuries later.]
The problem is that "genocide" is not a word to tossed around lightly; it's a word with a specific meaning and that meaning needs to be respected. For it to be considered a true genocide, not only do a massive number of deaths need to occur, but their also has to be intent: One group needs to actively seeking the destruction of another group. While a lot of deaths did occur, those deaths were the result of disease rather than actual intent. The explorers did not mean for the natives that they encountered to die, and they certainly didn't mean to kill millions; they meant to open up trade routes and it's hard to trade with people that don't exist.
The issue gets worse when the US government decided to take over The West. In general the settlers not getting along with the locals is a myth; settlers actally tended to treat the natives well. There were exceptions of course, but it went both ways: Native Americans did occasionally attack settlers for any number of reasons and the settlers weren't always the nicest people. Even roughly 44 "Indian Wars" over a century or so of fighting didn't do as much damage as some claim: There were 30,000 lives in all of those wars, some of which were with the British, French, and other nations (it has been estimated that the true total was closer to 45,000).
It's not even a genocide when the Bureau of Indian Affairs took things over. If so it was the worst genocide ever: Not only did the tribes survive the relocation and attempts at re-education with their beliefs mostly intact, but most of the 114 tribes that disappeared were due more to reclassification than due to actual deaths (at the beginning of the Western Expansion "tribes" could be as few as a handful of individuals, but the BIA grouped a lot of those smaller groups together). Although the practice of so-called "pagan" beliefs was illegal, tribes were still allowed to practice them as long as they were practiced away from civilized society (that was why the sun dance was renamed the "ghost dance" until the 1970s, when they were allowed to practice their beliefs openly again).
Heck, even the smallpox blankets were mostly myth. There were only two incidents of that ever reported, once in 1763 and another in 1837. In1763, Lord Amherst ordered two infected blankets be sent to a nearby tribe, but the tribe had moved on before the blankets arrived. In 1837, an epidemic among the Mandan tribe begun that would spread to the rest of the Plains Indians; although originally attributed to blankets it was actually found that a three Mandan women had been exposed to smallpox sufferers aboard a river boat on their way home, and they spread the disease to their tribe. While there were plenty of threats to release smallpox on various tribes, and there was a generally consensus it could be spread that way, there is no actual incident of it being spread by any means other than bad quarantine practices.
[It's worth noting that in 1832 the US government had passed a bill to vaccinate the various Plains Indians tribes, but Secretary of War Lewis Cass prevented surgeons to be dispersed in order to distribute the vaccine; this the person responsible for implementing Jackson's Indian relocation policy.]
Thus, while it's important to recognize that the Native Americans did suffer in a number of ways under colonization, genocide was not one of them. Sure, there were massacres, but the Native Americans did that as well (Little Big Horn is the obvious example, but a number of small settlements and forts were destroyed as well; in war there are no innocents). They did suffer from enslavement, governmental abuse, and any number of other crimes against humanity, but we need to be clear that genocide was not one of them; the tribes have survived and hopefully will for centuries to come. I'm not trying to make the tragedy any less horrific; it definitely needs to be noted and the lesson learned for any other attempts of colonization. If nothing else, hopefully we will have learned that the rights of indigenous natives need to be respected and will help protect them rather than take them over. If not, then we deserve to have some aliens take us over in order to properly teach the lesson, but hopefully it won't come to that.
[This is not to say that the deaths of native peoples is not a tragedy, and that should not be the takeaway here. There is no doubt that the deaths of so many is in fact one of the greatest tragedies in world history, and there is no way that it can be righted. The subsequent theft of native lands by the US government just compounds that wrong, and it needs to be addressed by more aggressive action. However, that's beyond this entry....]
The sad truth of the matter is that when the first explorers hit the shores their intimate interactions with the natives they found began the spread of any number of diseases to which they had no defense. Those diseases then spread throughout the continent killing tribe after tribe, and eventually resulting in a decimation of the population; by the time the plague was finished between twenty and sixty million people would be dead. In this case a number of different reasons contributed to the decimation, ranging from limited medical knowledge, general separation of tribes, and the style of combat (most warriors counted coup more often than killing their opponents; this meant close physical proximity when they hit another warrior with a coup stick).
This epidemic would last from the day Columbus landed all the way to the late 19th century, when vaccines would become reasonably commonplace. The disease would eventually hit every tribe from Alaska to the tip of Chile, even though some tribes would be hit harder than others. Worse, it would keep coming back even to areas that it had previously passed over. It was the gift that just kept giving.
[It's worth noting that the natives did infect the explorers in turn: Several million Europeans died as a result of the diseases brought back, and one of the new immigrants, syphilis, is still a killer even today. But...those deaths were widespread enough that they were ignored until centuries later.]
The problem is that "genocide" is not a word to tossed around lightly; it's a word with a specific meaning and that meaning needs to be respected. For it to be considered a true genocide, not only do a massive number of deaths need to occur, but their also has to be intent: One group needs to actively seeking the destruction of another group. While a lot of deaths did occur, those deaths were the result of disease rather than actual intent. The explorers did not mean for the natives that they encountered to die, and they certainly didn't mean to kill millions; they meant to open up trade routes and it's hard to trade with people that don't exist.
The issue gets worse when the US government decided to take over The West. In general the settlers not getting along with the locals is a myth; settlers actally tended to treat the natives well. There were exceptions of course, but it went both ways: Native Americans did occasionally attack settlers for any number of reasons and the settlers weren't always the nicest people. Even roughly 44 "Indian Wars" over a century or so of fighting didn't do as much damage as some claim: There were 30,000 lives in all of those wars, some of which were with the British, French, and other nations (it has been estimated that the true total was closer to 45,000).
It's not even a genocide when the Bureau of Indian Affairs took things over. If so it was the worst genocide ever: Not only did the tribes survive the relocation and attempts at re-education with their beliefs mostly intact, but most of the 114 tribes that disappeared were due more to reclassification than due to actual deaths (at the beginning of the Western Expansion "tribes" could be as few as a handful of individuals, but the BIA grouped a lot of those smaller groups together). Although the practice of so-called "pagan" beliefs was illegal, tribes were still allowed to practice them as long as they were practiced away from civilized society (that was why the sun dance was renamed the "ghost dance" until the 1970s, when they were allowed to practice their beliefs openly again).
Heck, even the smallpox blankets were mostly myth. There were only two incidents of that ever reported, once in 1763 and another in 1837. In1763, Lord Amherst ordered two infected blankets be sent to a nearby tribe, but the tribe had moved on before the blankets arrived. In 1837, an epidemic among the Mandan tribe begun that would spread to the rest of the Plains Indians; although originally attributed to blankets it was actually found that a three Mandan women had been exposed to smallpox sufferers aboard a river boat on their way home, and they spread the disease to their tribe. While there were plenty of threats to release smallpox on various tribes, and there was a generally consensus it could be spread that way, there is no actual incident of it being spread by any means other than bad quarantine practices.
[It's worth noting that in 1832 the US government had passed a bill to vaccinate the various Plains Indians tribes, but Secretary of War Lewis Cass prevented surgeons to be dispersed in order to distribute the vaccine; this the person responsible for implementing Jackson's Indian relocation policy.]
Thus, while it's important to recognize that the Native Americans did suffer in a number of ways under colonization, genocide was not one of them. Sure, there were massacres, but the Native Americans did that as well (Little Big Horn is the obvious example, but a number of small settlements and forts were destroyed as well; in war there are no innocents). They did suffer from enslavement, governmental abuse, and any number of other crimes against humanity, but we need to be clear that genocide was not one of them; the tribes have survived and hopefully will for centuries to come. I'm not trying to make the tragedy any less horrific; it definitely needs to be noted and the lesson learned for any other attempts of colonization. If nothing else, hopefully we will have learned that the rights of indigenous natives need to be respected and will help protect them rather than take them over. If not, then we deserve to have some aliens take us over in order to properly teach the lesson, but hopefully it won't come to that.
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