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Line 37: − 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>+ + + + + + + + + +
North American Indians (view source)
Revision as of 01:13, February 25, 2010
, 01:13, February 25, 2010→Role of disease, war and social issues on Indian populations
==Role of disease, war and social issues on Indian populations==
==Role of disease, war and social issues on Indian populations==
===Deaths by disease===
Indian populations suffered substantial losses over time, mainly due to disease and warfare. As author Guenter Lewy reports, 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.
===Death by war===
Although [[Puritans first regarded the Natives as potential friends and converts, and relations for some time were amicable. However, later developments would result in the Puritan seeing the Indians as hostile. The murder of several colonists in late 1636 by the feared (by colonists and other Indians alike) Pequot tribe, resulted in increased alarm and hostilities. Torture of prisoners was a routine practice for most Indian tribes, and the Pequots in particular had a reputation for cruelty and ruthlessness, and openly flayed the skin of one of their captors alive, and cut off his fingers and toes, while roasting another. Indians also engaged in cannibalism, eating certain body parts of their enemies. While the colonists sometimes engaged in torture in order to gain information, and the means of war on both sides could be brutal, the typical cruelty of warring Indians resulted in a fear and a determination to subdue them.
King Philip’s War (1675-76) was particularly brutal, with Fifty-two of New England’s 90 towns were attacked, seventeen were razed to the ground, and 25 were pillaged. Although Boston's colonial council in Boston had declared "that none be Killed or Wounded that are Willing to surrender themselves into Custody", this would not be English "civilized warfare", and Indian deaths were even higher, and many captured Natives were executed or sold into slavery to those foreign countries. Soon, the colonists would become more like their enemies in brutality, albeit more tempered by religious restraints.
Enlistment and incitement by the French, and expansion westward by European settlers resulted in escalating hostilities, and substantial deaths on both sides, with the European gaining the upper hand, and increasingly engaging in indiscriminate killing at times. However, that force was the answer was challenged by a number of federal commissioners.<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."
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."