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North American Indians (view source)
Revision as of 23:42, February 24, 2010
, 23:42, February 24, 2010→War and Social Issues: disease
Other issues remain between recognized Sovereign Nations and the US government including mineral right issues, natural resource husbandry and mediation, conflicts with government run museums (as well as a few private museums) over who has the right to various artifacts, what rights modern Indian peoples should and should not have when dealing with artifacts that are clearly earlier than the oldest known existence of any particular tribe (for example, who has rights to archaeological finds at Mesa Verde, which represents an extinct tribe, the Anisazii).
Other issues remain between recognized Sovereign Nations and the US government including mineral right issues, natural resource husbandry and mediation, conflicts with government run museums (as well as a few private museums) over who has the right to various artifacts, what rights modern Indian peoples should and should not have when dealing with artifacts that are clearly earlier than the oldest known existence of any particular tribe (for example, who has rights to archaeological finds at Mesa Verde, which represents an extinct tribe, the Anisazii).
==War and Social Issues==
==Role of disease, war and social issues on Indian populations==
In addition to vast decimation by the hands of European groups, in contrast to those who worked to covert Indians to faith in Christ, armed conflict and ritual violence between Indians themselves are of considerable antiquity in North America. In ''North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence'', it is evidenced that in contrast to revisionist history that tribal warfare was more like football games, recent findings provide more evidence that from antiquity Indians fought each other, that internecine "warfare was ubiquitous; every major culture area of native North America reviewed herein has produced archaeological, ethnohistorical, osteological, or ethnographic evidence of armed conflict and ritual violence." This could involve the taking of human trophies being encouraged before contact with Europeans, and hostilities that at least among some areas resulted in "the massacre and mutilation of men, women, and children."
Indian populations suffered substantial losses over time, mainly due to disease and warfare. A great disparities exists in estimates of native American Indian populations before the arrival of Europeans, from around 1.2 million to 12 million, with assertions being given of inflation or deflation of numbers. However, it is generally accepted that that only 250,000 native Americans were alive in the territory of the United States at the end of the 19th century. The major cause of the reduction of population is understood by many scholars to be ''virgin-soil epidemic'', that of death through the the spread of highly contagious diseases to which the Natives had no immunity. The principal pathogen was smallpox, the effects of which also killed by hunger by reducing the food gatherers. Other killers included measles, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, and scarlet fever. It is estimated that between 75 to 90 percent of all Indian deaths resulted from such killers. While there is evidence that some Europeans promoted this decimation, and certain liberal historians are given to ideological-driven charges, specific accounts of such are in dispute, but poor medical understanding, as well as poor conditions and later forced relocations, such as that of Cherokee resettlement 1838, certainly fostered it. However, the largest loss of life occurred well before such forced relocation, and sometimes after only little contact with European traders from Europe.<ref> [http://hnn.us/articles/7302.html Guenter Lewy, ''Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?'']</ref>
In addition to decimation by war with European groups (in contrast to those who worked to covert Indians to faith in Christ), armed conflict and ritual violence between Indians themselves are of considerable antiquity in North America. In ''North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence'', it is evidenced that in contrast to revisionist history that tribal warfare was more like football games, recent findings provide more evidence that from antiquity Indians fought each other, that internecine "warfare was ubiquitous; every major culture area of native North America reviewed herein has produced archaeological, ethnohistorical, osteological, or ethnographic evidence of armed conflict and ritual violence." This could involve the taking of human trophies being encouraged before contact with Europeans, and hostilities that at least among some areas resulted in "the massacre and mutilation of men, women, and children."
While the devastating effects of wars by European against Indians are not to be minimized, trade with Europeans could reduce traditional forms of intergroup conflict during the early contact period. However, as unjust warring is the usually the result of lust (Ja, 4:2) tribal warfare also could shift from "raiding each other based on revenge, and a desire to acquire prestige goods and status, to an extremely violent pattern of engagements arising from unequal access to foreign trade goods and the quest for war booty, revenge killings, status intensification, and slaves", as it did among Northwest Coast Indians.<ref>[http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/catalogs/dlg_show_excerpt.php?id=1872&title=North+American+Indigenous+Warfare+and+Ritual+Violence&subtitle=&author=Edited+by+Richard+J.+Chacon%3B+Rub%E9n+G.+Mendoza ''North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence'', summary]</ref>
While the devastating effects of wars by European against Indians are not to be minimized, trade with Europeans could reduce traditional forms of intergroup conflict during the early contact period. However, as unjust warring is the usually the result of lust (Ja, 4:2) tribal warfare also could shift from "raiding each other based on revenge, and a desire to acquire prestige goods and status, to an extremely violent pattern of engagements arising from unequal access to foreign trade goods and the quest for war booty, revenge killings, status intensification, and slaves", as it did among Northwest Coast Indians.<ref>[http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/catalogs/dlg_show_excerpt.php?id=1872&title=North+American+Indigenous+Warfare+and+Ritual+Violence&subtitle=&author=Edited+by+Richard+J.+Chacon%3B+Rub%E9n+G.+Mendoza ''North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence'', summary]</ref>