Auto-Summary**Summary:** The post argues that while the loss of life among Native Americans during colonization was immense, the overwhelming majority of deaths were due to diseases brought by Europeans, such as smallpox, measles, and influenza, to which indigenous populations had no immunity. It cites historical sources and Wikipedia articles to support this claim, emphasizing that epidemics, not intentional acts like the blanket incident referenced, were the primary cause of the population decline. The post also discusses specific examples of devastating smallpox outbreaks and their impact on various Native American groups, concluding that disease was the overwhelming factor in the population collapse.
Seuss said:
> Yea we killed a lot of native americans, but the vast majority died because of diseases that they couldn't fight off.
Which tends to happen when you give a population blankets that are contaminated with smallpox.
Come on Seuss, do you have any evidence for this claim? As far as I can tell based on researching this, there has been only a few claims that this ever occurred. The VAST majority of deaths occurred because the Indians could not handle fighting off the disease when the settlers showed up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_American_indigenous_peoples
"Disease began to kill immense numbers of indigenous Americans soon after Europeans and Africans began to arrive in the New World, bringing with them the infectious diseases of the Old World. One reason this death toll was overlooked (or downplayed) is that disease, according to the widely held theory, raced ahead of European immigration in many areas, thus often killing off a sizable portion of the population before European observations (and thus written records) were made. After the epidemics had already killed massive numbers of American natives, many European immigrants who arrived assumed that the natives had always been few in number. The scope of the epidemics over the years was enormous, killing millions of people—in excess of 90% of the population in the hardest hit areas—and creating "the greatest human catastrophe in history, far exceeding even the disaster of the Black Death of medieval Europe"[9] that killed up to one-third of the people in Europe between 1347 and 1351.
The most devastating disease was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, mumps, yellow fever, and pertussis (whooping cough). The Americas also had endemic diseases, perhaps including an unusually virulent type of syphilis, which soon became rampant in the Old World. (This transfer of disease between the Old and New Worlds was part of the phenomenon known as the "Columbian Exchange"). The diseases brought to the New World proved to be exceptionally deadly."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States
"The European colonization of the Americas nearly obliterated the populations and cultures of the Native Americans. From the 16th through the 19th centuries, the population of Native Americans in what became the United States was ravaged by European colonization in the following ways: violence and possible genocide[4] at the hands of European explorers and colonists, epidemic diseases brought from Europe, displacement from their lands, enslavement, internal warfare[5] as well as high rate of intermarriage.[6][7] Most mainstream scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives.[8][9][10][11]"
Same Article:
"The first Native American group encountered by Christopher Columbus were the Island Arawaks (more properly called the Taino) of Boriquen (Puerto Rico), the (Quisqueya) of the Dominican Republic, and the Cubanacan (of Cuba). It has been said that of the 250,000 to one million Island Arawaks living in 1492, only about 500 had survived by the middle of the 16th century, and that the group was considered extinct by the middle of the 17th century.[citation needed] However, DNA studies show that the genetic contribution of the Taino to that region continues, and the mitochondrial DNA studies of the Taino are said to show relationships to the Northern Indigenous Nations, such as Inuit and others.[12]
European settlers brought infectious diseases against which the Native Americans had no natural immunity. Chicken pox and measles, though common and rarely fatal among Europeans, often proved deadly to Native Americans. Smallpox proved particularly deadly to Native American populations.[13] Epidemics often immediately followed European exploration, sometimes destroying entire villages. While precise figures are difficult to arrive at, some historians estimate that up to 80% of some Native populations died due to European diseases.[14]
In 1617–1619, smallpox wiped out 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans.[15] As it had done elsewhere, the virus wiped out entire population groups of Native Americans. It reached Mohawks in 1634,[16] Lake Ontario in 1636, and the lands of the Iroquois by 1679. During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30% of the West Coast Native Americans.[14] Smallpox epidemics in 1780–1782 and 1837–1838 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians.[17][18] By 1832, the federal government established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans (The Indian Vaccination Act of 1832).[19][20]"
As for the blanket incident here is one example:
http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html
However this was carried out in the middle to late 1700's, which if you read the links above means that the once again, the VAST majority of Indian deaths was unintentional and related to the diseases they couldn't fight off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_epidemics_in_the_Americas
In 1519 Hernán Cortés landed on the shores of what is now Mexico and was then the Aztec empire. In 1520 another group of Spanish arrived in Mexico from Hispaniola, bringing with them the smallpox which had already been ravaging that island for two years. When Cortés heard about the other group, he went and defeated them. In this contact, one of Cortés's men contracted the disease. When Cortés returned to Tenochtitlan, he brought the disease with him.
Soon, the Aztecs rose up in rebellion against Cortés and his men. Outnumbered, the Spanish were forced to flee. In the fighting, the Spanish soldier carrying smallpox died. After the battle, the Aztecs contracted the virus from the invaders' bodies.[citation needed] Cortes would not return to the capital until August 1521. In the meantime smallpox devastated the Aztec population. It killed most of the Aztec army and 25% of the overall population.[citation needed] A Spanish priest left this description: "As the Indians did not know the remedy of the disease…they died in heaps, like bedbugs. In many places it happened that everyone in a house died and, as it was impossible to bury the great number of dead, they pulled down the houses over them so that their homes become their tombs."[citation needed] On Cortés's return, he found the Aztec army’s chain of command in ruins. The soldiers who lived were still weak from the disease. Cortés then easily defeated the Aztecs and entered Tenochtitlán.[citation needed] The Spaniards said that they could not walk through the streets without stepping on the bodies of smallpox victims.[citation needed]
The effects of smallpox on Tahuantinsuyu (or the Inca empire) were even more devastating. Beginning in Colombia, smallpox spread rapidly before the Spanish invaders first arrived in the empire. The spread was probably aided by the efficient Inca road system. Within months, the disease had killed the Sapa Inca Huayna Capac, his successor, and most of the other leaders. Two of his surviving sons warred for power and, after a bloody and costly war, Atahualpa become the new Sapa Inca. As Atahualpa was returning to the capital Cuzco, Francisco Pizarro arrived and through a series of deceits captured the young leader and his best general. Within a few years smallpox claimed between 60% and 90% of the Inca population,[63] with other waves of European disease weakening them further. A handful of historians argue that a disease called Bartonellosis may have been responsible for some outbreaks of illness, but this opinion is in the scholarly minority.[64] The effects of smallpox were depicted in the ceramics of the Moche people of ancient Peru.[65]
Nice try though, Im glad to see the anti-American settler propaganda machine is in full effect
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