America was built on two monumental crimes.

[Scuba]

[newfie11]

1. Sad and true n/t

[Octafish]

2. Explains the record from ''War is a Racket'' to ''Money Trumps Peace.''

Doesn't excuse it, though.

[MohRokTah]

3. From what I've read, the Native Americans were mostly wiped out by a plague of small pox.

Spaniards brought it over and it destroyed the population of natives, possibly as much as 90%.

Taking everything else away from the survivors was simple after that. Without that plague, I don't think Europeans would ahve had such an easy time trying to take the land away.

There was a fairly advanced very large civilization on the North American continent prior to the small pox plague.

[DhhD]

8. There are several stories about how the Indians got small pox.

http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/252

Here is another view.

http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/the-smallpox-infected-blankets/

There are other views and writings also.

[MohRokTah]

10. I never heard anything about the first plague being caused by blankets.

Spaniards were not intent upon settling. This was before there was a single settlement. The explorers brought the disease and spread throughout the continent.

So basically, a continent with a thriving civilization was mostly wiped out by disease prior to the first settlement. The rest of the history of the European takeover of the continent became quite easy.

It wasn't anything intentional, just another example of what happens when a virus that never existed in a place is introduced.

[heaven05]

11. wasn't intentional?

I guess neither was slavery, right?

[MohRokTah]

13. Dude, the Spaniards brought the virus with them. They didn't KNOW they were doing that.

They had no clue that simply by coming to the North American continent it would start a plague that would wipe out as much as 90% of the continent.

They thought they had a built in population for slaves once they started to settle. It was only after the native population dies off that the settlements began and because the local population was so low and the demand for forced labor was so high that they began importing slaves from Africa.

The initial introduction of smallpox, though, was not an intentional act. The result was devastating nonetheless.

[Jenoch]

14. Are you suggesting that the European

explorers intentionally infected the natives?

[heaven05]

22. wouldn't surprise me if they did

Last edited Tue Aug 12, 2014, 08:51 AM - Edit history (1)

every other type of eradication was practiced and PERFECTED by the European and the european transplants on the Native American(s). That's all the proof or facts I need.

[Jenoch]

24. Viruses were not yet been discovered.

[heaven05]

37. oh please

smallpox was in infected blankets. All you soft soapers of native-american genocide, I hope you'll sleep better by ignoring the reality of native-american genocide. The spanish had nothing to do with the genocide perpetrated by the European transplants.

on edit: "the fact is that humans are the only reservoir of the smallpox virus....it is now known that the likely source was bottles of smallpox virus possessed by First Fleet surgeons and there were reports of smallpox among the FIRST colonists".

Simple as Wikipedia.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

27. Look up the timeline on 'germ theory'.

The proof and facts are that no one even knew how disease spread at the time the first Europeans arrived. Now a couple of hundred years later, yes, there was likely some deliberate germ warfare perpetrated. But it couldn't have taken place with the first few rounds of Conquistadors.

[heaven05]

38. "likely"?

right. Definitely is more to the truth of the point I'm making. Damn the spanish deflection theory, they had nothing to do with the horrific genocide perpetrated against he native-american population(s) of the First Americans.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

45. I'm sorry that you're so ignorant of history.

Also, no one is 'soft-soaping' or even denying genocide. Or 'deflecting it'. The genocide BEGAN with the Spanish, long before germ theory was understood, who simply were germy buggers who inadvertently passed along diseases while they were busy raping, looting, and demanding tribute. It continued for hundreds of years with various Europeans joining in. EVENTUALLY, a couple of hundred years later, after germ theory was developed and disease a bit better understood, came the account to which you refer several times, with the one British guy and his subordinate in the mid 1700s. As noted in other comments, smallpox actually doesn't survive well outside the body; checking one med site, roughly 90% will already be dead within 24 hours outside the body. So even though the Amherst and his subordinate TRIED to use biological warfare, it's unlikely they succeeded, and there is no evidence they succeeded.

If you want to repair some of your ignorance, you can read up on 'Conquistadors' and the Aztec and Mayan empires. I'm wondering if you simply didn't understand that Native Americans existed in central and south america, as well as north america. Or haven't read anything about the Spanish in the south with tribes such as the Arawak and Carib indians, since you make the ludicrous claim that the spanish had 'nothing to do' with the genocide perpetrated upon natives in the americas.

[heaven05]

41. reply#37

[Warpy]

51. You nuts? They wanted slaves for gold and souls for god.

The last thing they wanted was to have 90% die before they made any money off them and beat them into giving lip service for Christianity.

[heaven05]

53. thanks warpy

true........

[H2O Man]

54. That was in Mezo-America.

In the northeast, the first examples of "germ warfare" did take place, when European settlers "traded" purposely-infected blankets to the Algonquian and Haudenosaunee peoples.

[cemaphonic]

31. No it wasn't intentional.

For one thing, they hadn't yet discovered the Germ Theory of diseases. Moreover, in most cases, the epidemics outpaced European settlers and explorers by a decade or more. The sailors that charted the Atlantic coast of North America reported a much larger population than encountered by the English when they began settling much later in Virginia and Massachusetts. And once Europeans began exploring the interior of the continent, they found wilderness that had been heavily populated a generation before.

[heaven05]

40. BS

distraction and deflection. I know you can't betray your logic because it might just be too painful to realize just how tragic, horrific and horrible the genocide was that the European transplants perpetrated against the First American(s) population. This revisionist history is laughable and transparent. Any nation that could create one of the most heinous and vicious slavery systems ever, of which that racial hate is still with us in institutionalized and systemic racism cannot be washed of it's sins by revising history. The First American population, nationwide, was purposefully eradicated to make way for European expansion. No ifs, ands or buts about it. I will never believe anything that tries to minimize the slaughter perpetrated in the name of Manifest Destiny.

[cemaphonic]

48. I (and others ITT) am not claiming that Manifest Destiny didn't exist

or that the pre-United-States colonial powers didn't engage in deliberate conquest and eradication of Native groups, going all the way back to the depopulation of the major Caribbean islands in the wake of Columbus. I am just making the point that the Native Americans were vulnerable to these efforts (in a way that Asians and Africans were not) because they had been devastated by multiple disease epidemics following contact.

[H2O Man]

55. "Germ warfare"

was absolutely understood in the northeast. Anyone who attempts to deny this fact is either sadly ignorant, or purposefully injecting misinformation into the discussion.

[BrotherIvan]

12. Check your facts

A) There were permanent Spanish settlements in South America, the Caribbean and Florida before the English arrived in North America. They had every intent upon settling and they did. The Americas was the major source of income for the crown and settlements grew around mines and ports.

B) The slaves imported from Africa to those areas brought smallpox as that is where the disease was thought to have originated. There were other diseases that came with "white men" such as measles, chicken pox, typhus, typhoid fever, dysentery, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and after 1832, cholera. All of them helped to wipe out the population as there was no natural immunity.

C) Some Native American tribes were crippled by disease, but some were slaughtered, starved, ejected from their lands. It was a purposeful extermination campaign.

[MohRokTah]

16. It all started with initial contact.

The devastation began at first contact, prior to any Spanish settlements. Mitochondrial DNA studies backs that statement up.

The population then reached a low point about 500 years ago—only a few years after Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World and before extensive European colonization began.

There was a massive loss of life almost immediately after that first contact that spread throughout both continents.

Then came the settlers, who finished the job.

[BrotherIvan]

18. This is a new theory, but it has not yet been proven

Interesting as it would change some accepted history. From your link:

Although the new study is based on DNA, the researchers caution that their use of statistical analysis means the findings aren't conclusive and can only suggest that a particular scenario most likely occurred.

"Our methods infer thousands of genealogies," O'Fallon said. "By looking at the bulk properties of all these genealogies we can begin to get a clearer picture of what likely happened."

In addition, the margin of error for the new study is rather large, O'Fallon said, so it's possible the decline happened more recently than 500 years ago.

"I don't think it would rule out European influence at all if the bottleneck happened a bit more recently than 500 years ago," he said.

Instead, a slightly more recent time frame might change "our interpretation [of the early cause of the decline] from disease to other causes such as war, societal disruption, loss of homelands, etc."

Some Native American populations were more isolated and did not have contact enough with each other for the first wave of settlers to effect them. There is no doubt that the result of contact was devastating. Europeans were brutal to all foreign peoples they encountered. There is no doubt that contact is what killed the native population whatever the particulars.

[MohRokTah]

19. Absolutely, then new technologies were introduced.

Those new technologies allowed some groups with longstanding issues held over other groups to aid in the slaughter.

What really gets me is looking at how civilized the so-called "savages" were. There were cities, governments, confederations, and so much more.

[BrotherIvan]

20. I remember seeing a documentary about how man's relationships to animals is what gave them advantage

I'm not sure if this is it, but the information looked similar

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/horses.html

We often say it was gunpowder that conquered the Americas. And while that is somewhat true, let's not forget that tropical diseases were also wiping out Spaniards. Even with guns, they might not have made it into the interiors and have been able to subdue the native population.

It was because they had horses, basically tanks compared to a person on foot with a spear. They could also travel long distances with less effort. It was, as you said, a war of technology. The same theory says that man's relationship with dogs is what allowed him to triumph over larger animals. It's all very interesting.

And yes, many tribes decided to side with the Europeans in order to fight enemy tribes as captured in Last of the Mohicans. But in the end the Europeans betrayed them all.

[hfojvt]

25. it wasn't really "quite" easy

The colonists took a hell of a beating at both Jamestown and during King Philip's war, for just a couple examples.

The death rate at Jamestown and Plymouth was staggering.

One thing that made it work though was a huge and growing supply of new settlers from England and Germany.

Thornton's "American Indian: holocaust and survival" is interesting reading. He notes that while we brought disease to North America we got things like potatoes and corn from North America.

And while Indian population of the US was about 5 million in 1500 down to 3 million by 1600 and 1.5 million in 1700 and perhaps 0.5 million in 1800 on the other side the population of Europe went from 70 million in 1500 to 150 million in 1750 to 425 million in 1900 (using the lower end of his estimates) (actually Durand's estimates). And that does not even include the European population of North and South America.

[yellerpup]

17. Both links name Jeffrey Amherst

Jeffrey Amherst had dinner plates that were decorated with a pattern around the rim with a colonial man on horseback with a gun chasing a native man through the woods. I have seen a note in which he admits (and thanks the supplier) that a handkerchief saturated with smallpox contamination was given as a gift to a local chief. No, they didn't write the plan on paper, but they were doing it regularly. This form of biological terrorism was much cheaper than buying bullets to kill NDNs.

Robert Lindsay is wrong about everything at his link.

[heaven05]

23. thank you

for stopping the genocide apologists in their tracks. I know of that scenario and the blankets with the same given to native-americans.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

29. Except that Amherst wasn't even born until the 1700s.

You were not running into 'genocide apologists' above. You were being corrected on the idea that Europeans in the 1400s and 1500s were engaging in deliberate biological warfare, because no one actually knew about germ theory and disease transmission until the late 1600s.

No one was declaring that the early Europeans were not bastards towards the natives. Just pointing out that you can't simply flip around 200 years of history to make what you think you heard happened actually have happened.

[yellerpup]

32. The English were well practiced in biological warfare.

The genocide was in full force during the 1700s in Colonial America. Agreed that the first waves of disease on this side of the world were not planted on purpose but were passed on by accident. Amherst was personally engaged in distributing smallpox infected textiles.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

34. Later on, sure.

And the vast majority of Europeans (certainly including Brits) treated natives of the americas somewhere on a scale from 'kill them all' to 'they're savages who must be converted to Christ'. I just see so much incorrect history coming from the right that I prefer not to see it on the left.

[yellerpup]

35. It is not always easy to discern history from propaganda.

They Europeans had been catapulting infected dead bodies of animals and humans over castle walls for centuries before they set foot on this continent. It seems to be evident that they had a pretty clear understanding of biological weapons, whether or not they understood the mechanics of how infection worked. The history of my people as written by their conquerors can't be trusted. They originally intended to enslave the indigenous people here, and when that didn't work they killed them.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

46. heaven05 doesn't seem to understand that Spaniards

are actually Europeans too, and they they were raping, looting, and killing long before most other Europeans arrived, as tribes like the Carib and Arawak found out to their dismay, as did entire empires in South and Central America.

And connecting corpses with death is understandable, and doesn't automatically suggest that handing over dirty hankies and blankets used by sick people will do the same thing. I would consider it more a matter of terrorism than 'displaying a clear understanding of biological warfare'.

At any rate, I think everyone in this thread can at least agree that genocide was perpetrated over the course of more than four centuries by Europeans upon those already living in the Americas.

[yellerpup]

49. NA people didn't make distinction between Europeans.

Generally, they were first considered "foreigners" then/now white. The NA experience varied widely with the type of foreigner they met and what that foreigner wanted. Christopher Columbus tortured and murdered the Tiano people who rescued both his crew and his cargo from a shipwreck. The ones that weren't killed were captured and sold as slaves. There were French trappers who came and lived among the natives and were treated as family members because it was beneficial to the tribe. The point is that there is an alternate history that is not told. The true stories are kept alive by the .05 percent of the American population who are descendants of the survivors of the genocide. If you can convince yourself to give Amherst a pass, that's your business. I have seen the evidence written by his own hand that proves his culpability in biological terrorism, so you'll never convince me.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

50. Oh Jesus Christ on a cracker.

I'm not giving anyone a 'pass'. I said that what I've seen shows he certainly thought biowarfare was a good idea, and was willing to try it, just that there wasn't any solid evidence he succeeded. Saying someone might have failed in trying to murder people is not a 'pass'. Do you see me say anywhere 'Gee, that Amherst guy wasn't so bad!' Cause if you do, you're delusional, because I never did. Nor did I hand out 'passes' to anyone. If you read every freaking comment I've made, you'll see that you gave out 'passes' to French trappers, while I didn't give out a single pass. I said pretty much ALL of the Europeans were genocidal bastards, with a caveat that a few were just religious asses who wanted to convert the folks they thought of as subhuman.

[yellerpup]

52. The proof that he succeeded

is in the numbers of survivors. He wasn't the only person involved in genocide. I have read every 'freaking comment you made' and responded to your posts to me. It's not nice to call people delusional. As I said before, you are welcome to your opinion but you are wrong.

[heaven05]

42. right

Last edited Tue Aug 12, 2014, 11:16 AM - Edit history (2)

native-american depopulation was practiced by the european transplants very soon after landing at 'plymouth rock'. I saw that stone once. Pitiful little thing. I couldn't help laughing derisively while looking down into that hell hole of history. I'm not talking or nit picking 1500's, 1600's, just you. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHEN the genocide started all that matters is that it happened. Period. Apologist for genocide? FACT.

[yellerpup]

33. Wish I could have.

Not everyone responds to facts.

[heaven05]

43. Yeah

it hurts too much IF there is a conscience present.

[rhett o rick]

44. The Europeans were using biological warfare for a long time. You don't have to

understand the science to catapult the bodies of people that died from disease over a castle wall.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

47. They catapulted all sorts of dead bodies over walls.

Not just those that died of disease. Early terrorism.

[cilla4progress]

4. Karma's a bitch

[Enthusiast]

5. Kicked and recommended a whole bunch!

Way to go, Scuba!

[malaise]

6. It's that simple

but remember so was Britain

[lpbk2713]

7. A third ...

Masqueraders dressed up in costume to shift the blame.

[Nye Bevan]

9. There is a US National Holocaust Museum; there should be a National Slavery Museum too (nt)

[polichick]

15. True - our national stories are a mixture of myth and propaganda.

[merrily]

26. Those were the two greatest crimes, but not the only crimes.

Not even the only racist crimes.

[napkinz]

28. yep ...

[Kurska]

30. Name a nation not founded by either destroying a previous native population or their culture

Not to excuse it, it is a disgusting habit of history and a shame on our collective story. But we all did it.

Indo-Europeans destroyed native populations of which the Basque are the only remnant. Arabs established themselves by destroying entire cultures and civilizations. Russia put the Tartars to the sword. As the Tartars did the Russians before.

Everyone has done it, we just have to hope that it happens no more. No one has the moral superiority to claim their ancestors never engaged in genocide and no one should use anyone elses previous genocide as an excuse for their own.

Nor does collective guilt expunge the guilt of individual nations. Every country is built on a foundation of corpses.

Well now I'm depressed.

[pampango]

36. Certainly true, but we should acknowledge that AND seek "a moral high ground" rather than

shrinking from confronting 'other people's crimes'. Many countries have atrocities in their history, but the world needs to confront modern atrocities in spite of this.

[raccoon]

39. ITA with this OP. This is also true of almost any nation in the "New World."

(But other "New World" nations don't claim to be so exceptional.)

[napkinz]

56. ...