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Population history of American indigenous peoplesThere were millions of people living in the Americas when Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492. Columbus's voyage to what Europeans called the "New World" set the stage for the later European colonization of the Americas, with millions of emigrants (willing and unwilling) from the "Old World" eventually resettling in the Americas. While the population of Old World peoples in the Americas steadily grew in the centuries after Columbus, the population of the American indigenous peoples plummeted. The extent and causes of this population decline have long been the subject of controversy and debate, and became particularly widespread in 1992 during the 500th anniversary of Columbus's famous voyage, with a number of people claiming that the natives of the Americas have been the victims of genocide.
Population overviewEstimates of how many people were living in the Americas when Columbus arrived have varied tremendously; in the 20th century scholarly estimates ranged from a low of 8.4 million to a high of 112.5 million persons. Given the fragmentary nature of the evidence, precise pre-Columbian population figures are impossible to obtain; estimates are often produced by extrapolation from comparatively small bits of data. In 1976, geographer William Denevan used various estimates to derive a "consensus count" of about 54 million people, although some recent estimates are lower than that. Historian David Henige, representing a minority opinion, has argued that many population figures are the result of arbitrary formulas selectively applied to numbers from unreliable historical sources. He believes there is not enough solid evidence to produce population numbers that have any real meaning, and characterizes the modern trend of high estimates as "pseudo-scientific number-crunching."2 This population debate has often had ideological underpinnings. Low estimates were sometimes reflective of European notions of their own cultural and racial superiority, as historian Francis Jennings has argued: "Scholarly wisdom long held that Indians were so inferior in mind and works that they could not possibly have created or sustained large populations." At the other end of the spectrum, some have argued that contemporary estimates of a high pre-Columbian indigenous population are rooted in a bias against aspects of Western civilization and/or Christianity. Robert Royal writes that "estimates of pre-Columbian population figures have become heavily politicized with scholars who are particularly critical of Europe often favoring wildly higher figures."3 Since civilizations rose and fell in the Americas before Columbus arrived, the indigenous population in 1492 was not necessarily at a high point, and may have already been in decline. Indigenous populations in most areas of the Americas reached a nadir by the early twentieth century, and in a number of cases started to climb again.4 Depopulation from diseaseThe earliest European immigrants offered two principal explanations for the population decline of the American natives. The first was the brutal practices of the Spanish conquistadors, as recorded by the Spanish themselves, most notably by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, whose writings vividly depict atrocities committed on the natives by the Spanish. The second explanation was religious: God had removed the natives as part of His divine plan in order to make way for a new Christian civilization. Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives.5 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) for so long is that disease, according to the widely held theory, raced ahead of European immigration in many areas, thus often killing off a sizeable portion of the population before European observations (and thus written records) were made. Many European immigrants who arrived after the epidemics had already killed massive numbers of American natives 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."6 The most devastating disease was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, mumps, yellow fever, and whooping cough. The Americas also had endemic diseases, perhaps including a 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.") But the diseases brought to the New World proved to be exceptionally deadly. The epidemics had very different effects in different parts of the Americas. The most vulnerable groups were those with a relatively small population. Most island based groups were utterly annihilated. The Caribs and Arawaks of the Caribbean nearly ceased to exist as did the Beothuks of Newfoundland. While disease ranged swiftly through the densely populated empires of Mesoamerica, the more scattered populations of North America saw a slower spread. Why were the diseases so deadly?A disease (virus or bacterial) that kills its victims before they can spread it to others tends to flare up and then die out, like a forest fire running out of fuel. A successful disease establishes an equilibrium, which means the victims live long enough after infection to further spread the disease. Hence there is a long-term evolution process tending to select against quick lethality, and for relative mildness. There is also an evolutionary pressure on the victim populations. Those without resistance to common diseases die and do not leave descendants; those who survive have children, and may pass the genes conferring resistance to their children. Thus both diseases and victim populations tend to evolve towards an equilibrium in which the common diseases are non-symptomatic, mild, or manageably chronic. When a population that has been relatively isolated is exposed to new diseases, they have no inborn resistance to the new diseases (they are "biologically naive") and succumb at much higher rates, resulting in what is known as a "virgin soil" epidemic. Before the European arrival, the Americas had been isolated from the Eurasian-African landmass. The people of the Old World had had thousands of years to accommodate to their common diseases; the natives of the Americas faced them all at once. Other contributing factors:
(In the colder areas of the Eurasian landmass, houses were often built in two stories. The bottom story was used to stable animals, the top to house humans. In winter, the animal heat would rise and warm the human section of the house. This arrangement is efficient, but it also contributes to disease.) Deliberate infection?One of the most contentious issues relating to disease and depopulation in the Americas concerns the question of whether or not American indigenous peoples were intentionally infected with diseases such as smallpox. There is no evidence that the Spanish attempted to deliberately infect the American natives.8 However, there is one documented incident in which intentional infection was attempted by the British. During Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763, some Native Americans ("Indians") launched a widespread and effective offensive against British soldiers and settlers. Fort Pitt, with a garrison of 330 men (and over 200 women and children inside), was attacked on June 22, 1763, primarily by Delaware (Lenape) Indians. Too strong to be taken by force, the fort was kept under siege. On 24 June 1763, the commander of Fort Pitt gave representatives of the besieging Delawares two blankets that had been exposed to smallpox, in hopes of spreading the disease to the Indians in order to end the siege. Indians in the area did indeed contract smallpox. However, it is impossible to verify how many people (if any) contracted the disease as a result of the Fort Pitt incident; the disease was already in the area and may have reached the Indians through other vectors. Indeed, even before the blankets had been handed over, the disease may have been spread to the Indians by native warriors returning from attacks on infected white settlements.9 Although British General Jeffrey Amherst is usually associated with this incident, by the time he suggested trying to spread the disease to the Indians, officers at Fort Pitt had already made the attempt, apparently on their own initiative. It is certain that these British soldiers attempted to intentionally infect Indians with smallpox; what is uncertain is whether they succeeded.10 A second alleged incident is disputed. The controversial professor Ward Churchill has written that in 1837 the United States Army deliberately infected Mandan Indians by distributing blankets that had been exposed to smallpox, resulting in 125,000 deaths. Others have made similar charges, though without the high death toll. However, sociology professor Thomas Brown argues that Churchill's cited sources do not support these claims. According to Brown, one of Churchill's sources, Russell Thorton, agrees that Churchill has misrepresented him, saying, "The history is bad enough — there's no need to embellish it."11 Historian Guenter Lewy agrees that there is no evidence that the United States ever attempted to deliberately infect Native Americans. In fact, he says, the opposite was taking place: the U.S. government had implemented a program of smallpox vaccination for Indians at the time of the alleged Mandan incident. Vaccination for Native Americans had been suggested in 1801 by President Thomas Jefferson, who attempted to send smallpox vaccine on the Lewis and Clark expedition for distribution to western tribes. An official U.S. vaccination program was first funded in 1832 during the administration of President Andrew Jackson, with an act passed "for the purpose of arresting the progress of smallpox among the several tribes by vaccination." One study concludes that in some areas of the United States, American Indians were eventually more thoroughly vaccinated against smallpox than their white neighbors.12 Other causes of depopulationWhile diseases from the Old World accounted for most of the population decline of the American natives after 1492, there were other contributing factors, all of them related to European contact and colonization. Population decline was not only the result of increased death rates—decreased birth rates resulting from oppression and disruption of ways-of-life also had an impact.13 According to demographer Russell Thornton, war was a comparatively minor cause of overall Native American population decline, although many lives were lost in numerous wars over the centuries, and war sometimes contributed to the near extinction of certain tribes. There is some disagreement among scholars about how widespread warfare was in pre-Columbian America, but there is general agreement that war became deadlier after the arrival of the Europeans. The Europeans brought with them gunpowder and metal weapons, which made killing easier and war more deadly. Over the long run, Europeans proved to be consistently successful in achieving domination when engaged in warfare with indigenous Americans, for a variety of reasons that have long been debated. Massive death from disease certainly played a role in the European conquest, but also decisive was the European approach to war, which was less ritualistic than in native America and more focused on achieving decisive victory. European colonization also contributed to an increased number of wars between displaced native groups.14
Exploitation has often been cited as a cause of Native American depopulation. The Spanish conquistadors, the first settlers in the New World, divided the conquered lands among themselves and ruled as feudal lords, treating their subjects as something between slaves and serfs. Serfs stayed to work the land; slaves were exported to the mines, where large numbers of them died. Some Spaniards objected to this encomienda system, notably Bartolomé de Las Casas, who insisted that the indigenes were humans with souls and rights. Largely due to his efforts, the New Laws were adopted in 1542 to protect the Indians, but the abuses were not entirely or permanently abolished. Las Casas's vivid descriptions of the atrocities inflicted upon the natives gave rise to the "Black Legend" of the unparalleled cruelty of the Spanish. However, since Las Casas's writings were polemical works, intended to provoke moral outrage in order to facilitate reform, some scholars speculate that his depictions may have been exaggerated at least to some degree. No mainstream scholar dismisses the idea that atrocities were widespread, but many now believe that mass killings (massacres) were not a primary factor in native depopulation. Indeed, the Spanish rulers in America were unhappy at the high mortality rate of the natives, since they wanted to exploit the Indians laborers.15 There is still much debate as to what proportion of native depopulation was due to disease and how much to warfare and subsequent mistreatment. For instance, Newsom, in a 1987 discussion of the Central American population plunge, estimates that "the general impression is that the Indian slave trade and disease were of equal importance, perhaps accounting for one-third each of the total decline. The remaining one-third can be attributed to the ill-treatment and overwork of the Indians and to the disruption of Indian communities brought about by Spanish conquest and colonization."16 The more settlers to arrive from the Old World, the worse the peoples of the New World fared. Also, the importation of African slaves tended to displace native peoples. Conquistador, trader, and settler men took native wives and concubines; the children were often lost to their maternal tribes. There was also a great deal of intermarriage between indigenes and imported African slaves, leading to further dissolution of native communities. The new, mixed communities developed their own cultures in many cases, cultures estimable in their own right, but still a displacement from the aboriginal point of view. The genocide debateThe most controversial question relating to the population history of American indigenous peoples is whether or not the natives of the Americas were the victims of genocide. After the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust during World War II, genocide was defined (in part) as a crime "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." Does genocide apply to the experience of the indigenous peoples of the New World? Some scholars believe that it does. Historian David Stannard has argued that "The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world." [1] Like Ward Churchill, Stannard believes that the natives of the Americas were deliberately and systematically exterminated over the course of several centuries, and that the process continues to the present day. Stannard estimates that almost 100 million Native Americans have been killed what he calls the American Holocaust.17 Stannard's claim of 100 million deaths has been disputed because he makes no distinction between death from violence and death from disease. Noble David Cook considers books such as Stannard's — a number of which were released around the year 1992 to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the Columbus voyage — to be an unproductive return to Black Legend-type explanations for depopulation. In response to Stannard's combined figure, the political scientist R. J. Rummel has instead estimated that over the centuries of European colonization about 2 million to 15 million Native Americans were the victims of what he calls democide. "Even if these figures are remotely true," writes Rummel, "then this still make this subjugation of the Americas one of the bloodier, centuries long, democides in world history."18 While no mainstream historian denies that death and suffering were unjustly inflicted by a number of Europeans upon a great many American natives, many argue that genocide, which is a crime of intent, was not the intent of European colonization. Historian Stafford Poole wrote: "There are other terms to describe what happened in the Western Hemisphere, but genocide is not one of them. It is a good propaganda term in an age where slogans and shouting have replaced reflection and learning, but to use it in this context is to cheapen both the word itself and the appalling experiences of Jews and Armenians, to mention but two of the major victims of this century."19 Therefore, most mainstream scholars tend not to use the term "genocide" to describe the overall depopulation of American natives. However, a number of historians, rather than seeing the whole history of European colonization as an one long act of genocide, do cite specific wars and campaigns which were arguably genocidal in intent and effect. Usually included among these are the Pequot War and campaigns waged against tribes in California starting in the 1850s.20 See alsoThe European immigrants came from many countries, and arrived over the course of hundreds of years. In fact, from the viewpoint of many small tribes in the remote reaches of the Amazon Basin, the process of "European" expansion is not yet over. Any generalizations are but an imprecise summation of hundreds of individual historical studies. For further investigation, please see:
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