Depopulation of Native Americans: Genocide or Disease
Native Americans were wiped out by the hundred thousands during the late 1800’s, but why they were wiped out, and how is still a mystery. Did foreign disease cause their demise, or were they murdered during a genocide by Europeans because of Greed? You have two sides to this question presented in the reading Taking Sides: Clashing Views in the United States. Side A, Calloway states disease was the contributor. On the contrary, Side B, Jones states disease as well as violence, and weapons resulted in their wipeout.
Calloway and Jones have two different sides to this argument as previously stated Side A’s representative would be Calloway who suggest that population decrease was as a result of the various diseases and illnesses floating across the country. Diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox, and more were factors. On the contrary, Jones states the behavior, persona, and darkness that Europeans possessed wiped out the Native Americans. He’s saying that their weaponry caused the decrease in the Native American population.
During the mid to late 1800’s Native Americans decreased severely in numbers. There were fewer Native Americans existing in the land. This posed for the question of “Was disease the key factor of the depopulation of Native Americans in the Americas? “. There are two positions to this question as discussed in Taking Sides. Side A believes disease and illness flushed away the Native American population, while others believe Europeans used violence and weaponry to kill of the Native American population, and it was covered up by these so-called illnesses.
Calloway suggests that disease was the key factor and Jones states that depopulation was mainl...
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...ve out important pieces of information would could strengthen their standpoints on why the Native Americans were wiped out of America so quickly.
Calloway states that diseases were brought from one world to another, but there are other factors that contributed to the deaths of thousands of Native Americans. Jones opens up this statement, by presenting why the Native Americans were wiped out, impoverished lifestyles, and greed of Europeans contributed. Over twenty thousand Native Americans passed on when Europeans decided to come to America, referred to as the New World. Very few were able to survive, not many exist in the world today that are one hundred percent Native American. In conclusion, was disease the only factor, or a key contributor? Absolutely, but the abrasive behavior of foreign bodies, Europeans played a role in the demise of Native American people.
In the fourth chapter titled “Native Reactions to the invasion of America” in the book, “Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America, the author James Axtell shares with us an essay he wrote and shared at a conference at Vanderbilt University. Historical accounts are followed beginning at the arrival of explorers and settlers until the 1700’s with various Native tribes in North America. Axtell’s goal is to educate us on the multitude of ways Native Americas reacted during various periods of colonization, and the various methods that the Native Americans perished. Axtell also educates us in his essay on the ways that Native Americans tried to ultimately prevent their extinction at any cost.
Some consequences of the exchange are the spread of disease to the Native people and settlers, the destruction of the Native population, and the disappearance of the Natives custom’s, beliefs, and way of life. Columbus’s arrival to the Americas, land that had already been established by the Natives, resulted in a spread of fatal diseases. Disagreement between the Europeans and the Natives and the enslavement of Native people helped to wipe out the population. Document 5 illustrates the fighting that occurred between the Natives and Europeans.
People know about the conflict between the Indian's cultures and the settler's cultures during the westward expansion. Many people know the fierce battles and melees between the Indians and the settlers that were born from this cultural conflict. In spite of this, many people may not know about the systematic and deliberate means employed by the U.S. government to permanently rid their new land of the Indians who had lived their own lives peacefully for many years. There are many strong and chilling reasons and causes as to why the settlers started all of this perplexity in the first place. There was also a very strong and threatening impact on the Native Americans through the schooling that stained the past and futures of Native Americans not only with blood but also with emotion. It was all a slow and painful plan of the "white man" to hopefully get rid of the Indian culture, forever. The Native American schools were created in an attempt to destroy the Native American way of life, their culture, beliefs and tradi...
Beginning in the fifteenth century with the arrival of Columbus, natives of the Americas were infected with European diseases that proved to be deadly to the Indians. The population in northern Mexico suffered an immense decimation of 2,500,000 peoples to less than 320,000 by the end of the sixteenth century (Vargas, 30). The Spaniards’ cruel treatment of the natives aided this vast reduction in the Aztec and Mexican population, enabling the Spaniards to conquer the lands of the Aztecs and other native tribes. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Spaniards had expanded their conquests into the southwest region of what is now known as the United States of America.
In conclusion Native Americans were lead close to extinction after the discovery of the New World. They suffered damages from diseases and injuries the europeans brought. They had to relocate their tribes only to fulfill european demands. As well as to change their belief for the ones the europeans brought with them in order to survive and avoid the risk of extinction.
Epidemic diseases brought to the state by Spanish colonists and missionaries in the late 1700s to the early 1800s, turned out to be the most powerful and discreet method to surmount Native American population. The impact of the missionarie...
The European influences to the Native Americans were Europeans carried the new diseases to the Indians. “Europeans were used to these diseases, but Indian people had no resistance to them. Sometimes the illnesses spread through direct contact with colonists. Other times, they were transmitted as Indians traded with one another. The result of this contact with European germs was horrible. Sometimes whole villages perished in a short time” (Kincheloe). Slave trade was another influence to American Indians. Europeans soon realized that they could provide commercial goods such as tools and weapons to some American Indian tribes that would bring them other Indians captured in tribal wars, and these captured Indians were bought and sold as slaves. Therefore, “slavery led to warfare among tribes and too much hardship. Many tribes had to move to escape the slave trade, which destroyed some tribes completely. In time, the practice of enslaving Native peoples ended. However, it had greatly affected American Indians of the South and the Southwest” (Kinchloe). Lastly, Europeans change Native America and African’ roots. Native Americans
...e Americans, resulting in a large depletion of land. As this benefited the people that had migrated throughout the United States, it really harmed the Native American population.
The Columbian exchange was the widespread transfer of various products such as animals, plants, and culture between the Americas and Europe. Though most likely unintentional, the byproduct that had the largest impact from this exchange between the old and new world was communicable diseases. Europeans and other immigrants brought a host of diseases with them to America, which killed as much as ninety percent of the native population. Epidemics ravaged both native and nonnative populations of the new world destroying civilizations. The source of these epidemics were due to low resistance, poor sanitation, and inadequate medical knowledge- “more die of the practitioner than of the natural course of the disease (Duffy).” These diseases of the new world posed a serious
When early Europeans arrived in the United States more than 500 years ago, they were surprised to see Native Americans recovering from illnesses and injuries that they considered fatal. In many ways, the Indians' herbal remedies were far superior to those known to the new immigrants. But, for the Native Americans, they had no remedies for the "diseases of civilization," or white man's diseases, such as measles and small pox, which would wipe out thousands of them over the next few centuries. Not
The extraordinary good health of the natives prior to the coming of the Europeans would become a key ingredient in their disastrous undoing. The greatest cause of disease in America was epidemic diseases imported from Europe. Epidemic diseases killed with added virulence in the " virgin soil" populations of the Americas. The great plague that arose in the Old World never emerged on their own among the western hemisphere and did not spread across oceans until Columbus' discovery.
I believe disease was a key factor if not the primary factor in the depopulation of Native Americans in the Americas. Throughout time, there has always been inequality during the evolution of humanity. Over the course of evolution, different cultures as well as races have progressed more rapidly and at a stronger rate than others have. The depopulation of Native Americans happened because Europeans had better and more efficient supplies as well as immunities to the diseases that they brought over with them.
With buffalo numbers decreasing fast, Native American tribes faced starvation and desperation. There were many different actions the Americans did to destroy the land of the Native Americans. Western expansion caused a shift in the lives of Native Americans because many tribes, including women and kids, were being murdered by the new settlers. S.G. Colley, a U.S. Indian Agent, writes in a Report for the Committee on the Conduct of War, “That notwithstanding his knowledge of the facts as above set forth, he is informed that Colonel Chivington did, on the morning of the 29th of November last, surprise and attack said camp of friendly Indians and massacre a large number of them, (mostly women and children,) and did allow the troops of his command to mangle and mutilate them in the most horrible manner” (Colley, 1865). This quote shows the Americans were exterminating innocent American Indians for no justifiable reason.
The great explorations and subsequent migrations of Europeans to the Americas in the 15th-18th centuries opened up those entire continents to the fatal impact of the infectious diseases of Europe. European conquests owed a good deal of their success to the effects of disease on the indigenous peoples, especially smallpox in the Americas. Before Spanish conquest of the New World, there was no sickness or great health related issues that Natives were forced to face. That all changed, however, when European explorers, Spanish conquistadors in particular, unknowingly brought the deadly disease of smallpox into Latin America. A recollection of days before the Spanish by an Indian of the Yucatan from the book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel shows just how disease free natives were before the Spanish arrival: “There was then no sickness; they had no aching bones; they had then no high fever; they had then no smallpox; they had then no burning chest; they had then no abdominal pain; they had then no consumption; they had then no headache. At that time the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here.” Then, after the Spanish came to the New World and spread smallpox to the natives, over 95% of them were killed. The Taino population of Hispaniola that was once estimated to be as large as 8 million went virtually extinct. Central Mexico’s population went from 15 million in 1519 to 1.5 million a century later. ...
Native Americans never came in contact with diseases that developed in the Old World because they were separated from Asia, Africa, and Europe when ocean levels rose following the end of the last Ice Age. Diseases like smallpox, measles, pneumonia, influenza, and malaria were unknown to the Native Americans until the Europeans brought these diseases over time to them. This triggered the largest population decline in all recorded history. Fifty percent of the Native American population had died of disease within twenty years. Soon after, Native Americans began to question their religion and doubted the ability of shamen to heal. This was the first step towards the destruction of Native cultures. The Native Americans had never experienced anything like these deadly diseases before and they came to believe that Europeans had the power to kill or give life.