[gahahaha]

Supposedly, 95% of Americans were killed by diseases, so it didn't feel as bad. Especially if your perspective on the matter was (and it really was) that "God has given America to us and the proof is that he is is killing the Indians to make room for us"

[ldd]

Say, why is the population of Andean countries (Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Bolovia) so high in natives and 'mestizos' compared with North American countries? The disease hypothesis puzzles me because it cannot explain the reality of such countries, where I come from. Moreover, I'd argue that a factor was the idea that English settlers came as families instead of as unmarried men, like the Spaniards. At any rate, I am not saying you are wrong. The evidence seems to point towards a different idea, but it is possible that I am wrong or stuff.

[AngrySkillzz]

Latin and South America were far more developed than North America when the Westerners arrived. There were a lot more natives in those areas; nothing near the size and population of something like Tenochtitlan existed in NA. We're talking estimates of ~37 million in Latin America versus ~7 million in North America.

[learc83]

Civilizations south of the modern day U.S. were far larger. That means more people to begin with, but also there is a theory that their immune systems were better prepared to deal with European diseases because they lived in large cities like Europeans.

[tarollins]

The US WAS ABOUT segregation seperation of race, no race mixing. These adean countries were about integration, intermarriage , in effect classism. Intergration in South America was about bettering your family and childrens future by lightening your race. In other words race mixing was allowed. Not like the Jim Crow laws in the US.

[lamuerteflaca]

Not only that, 60 percent of Mexicans are mestizos and millions more are pure blooded indegenous people. Truth is that American's ancestors where quite genocidal among other things. To the point of almost exterminating most of North America's population. Just like the Buffalo. It really is quite a sad tale. That in itself tells you that there is no God. And if there is then he might as well not exist.

[mc32]

About the buffalo. First nations really think it's funny (patronizing) when some whites think FNs were all about peace and understanding. It makes them out to be emasculated. No, they say, we killed way more buffalo than whites ever did. Colonialists killed buffalo as a proxy siege warfare b/c buffalo were a vital natural resource for many FNs.

I think the Spaniards (or Iberians), given their religion, were way more accepting of other peoples and readily mixed --which is why you end up with so many meztizos in LAm --whereas initial NA settlers were less likely to reproduce with FN peoples.

[cbd1984]

> No, they say, we killed way more buffalo than whites ever did.

Ah, but the official mythology is that they used every part.

Sure. They herded massive groups of buffalo off buffalo jumps, which are essentially small cliffs, so that they'd fall and crush each other when they went off the edge, and they'd use every part of all of the hundreds of full-grown buffalo they killed.

But everyone knows the White Man invented waste. Thus it was, thus it must ever be.

[mc32]

The greatest respect one can offer another society is to treat them as being the same kind of humans as ourselves -raw, opportunistic, realists who would go to similar lengths as ourselves to achieve goals, not the fake respectful nonsense people project onto them to subvert them.

[pyre]

I somehow doubt that the indigenous peoples killed this many buffalo: http://cache.wists.com/thumbnails/7/37/7377f4d1d8add3298c08c...

But I'm open to the idea if you have more than just hand-waving to offer.

[cbd1984]

What, exactly, are you disagreeing with? The idea of a buffalo jump or my doubts that they used every part?

[fsloth]

To my understanding the main economic motivator for hunting the buffalo in massive scale was the fact that their leather was fantastic for various belts and straps used for power transport in industrial engines.

[coldtea]

>But everyone knows the White Man invented waste. Thus it was, thus it must ever be.

No, he just took it 3-4 orders of magnitude higher.

(And even as a white man, I see some racism in your comment).

[lotsofmangos]

No, they say, we killed way more buffalo than whites ever did.

In total over time, maybe. However, it is pretty clear who got the number of bison to less than 600 in the 19th century.

[mc32]

That may or may not be true, but it's not the substance. The point was that FNs resent being caricatured into something they aren't. They are normal human beings capable of the same things (good and horrible) as any other human being, as an individual and society.

[lotsofmangos]

Fair point, I was being pernickety. I was not meaning it in terms of the Europeans being less moral, just that the Europeans had more effective tools for bison slaughter and when it got competitive, well, the results speak for themselves. - http://webs.anokaramsey.edu/waite/environmental/untitled.jpg

[swatow]

But the post you were replying to stated

>Truth is that American's ancestors where quite genocidal among other things. To the point of almost exterminating most of North America's population. Just like the Buffalo.

If the point about the buffalo is correct, then how does this post otherwise misrepresent Native Americans? It seems like you latched onto this mention of buffalo to make a completely unrelated point about Native Americans.

[coldtea]

>They are normal human beings capable of the same things (good and horrible) as any other human being, as an individual and society

Of course they are.

We shouldn't use this to neutralize who did the really horrible things to whom though. They were the victims here.

[iaejpiejf23]

> The disease hypothesis puzzles me because it cannot explain the reality of such countries

The disease hypothesis is bullshit. Some retard wrote a silly book about it and nytimes pushed it like it was gospel.

The royal proclamation of 1763 set the border between the colonists and the indians at the appalachian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Proclamation_of_1763

Even after disease supposedly wiped out the indians, we could only push the indians past the appalachians in the 1760s.

[iaejpiejf23]

But 95% of natives didn't die of disease. Unless you are saying white men are a disease. We had to cull the indians like we culled the bison, deer, wolves, bears, etc. It was the most successful genocidal campaign in human history. It was also one of the most successful clearing the land of all life period.

Settlers were paid for each indian scalp they got. Indian men, women and children were hunted and slaughtered wholesale.

Idiots like Jared Diamond might try to absolve our sins by lying about how the indians died. But the truth of how the west was won is no so convenient. It was brutal and rapacious.

I mean, we didn't even push the natives past the appalachian mountains until the 1760s and that idiot jared diamond wants us to believe the natives essentially died off in the 1500s.

[learc83]

>But 95% of natives didn't die of disease.

Do you have any sources for that. The hypothesis that disease was primarily responsible for wiping out Native Americans is far older than Jared Diamond's book.

It wouldn't have been possible for white colonists to completely destroy Native American civilization if smallpox hadn't devastated them first--there were just too many of them.

Just look at the population of white settlers at the time. The number of Native American murders committed per settler you're proposing are simply too high to be plausible.

[iaejpiejf23]

> Do you have any sources for that.

Yes, it called history and biology. Disease doesn't work that way and history proves it didn't work that way.

> The hypothesis that disease was primarily responsible for wiping out Native Americans is far older than Jared Diamond's book.

Sure, but jared diamond's silly book is what made it mainstream. No serious historian takes that theory serious because science and history says that didn't happen.

> It wouldn't have been possible for white colonists to completely destroy Native American civilization if smallpox hadn't devastated them first--there were just too many of them.

North American civilization didn't get completely destroyed until well after the civil war when mass european migration and the invention of machine guns, the expansion of railroads, etc gave american settlers a huge advantage.

> Just look at the population of white settlers at the time. The number of Native American murders committed per settler you're proposing are simply too high to be plausible.

And like I said, the border that the colonists and the indians drew in 1763 was the appalachian mountains. The colonists were confined to a tiny sliver of land on the eastern seaboard. If disease wiped out the natives, why would the colonists take so little land? Why would the border between "america" and indian lands be divided in such a manner.

[dasil003]

But let's not romanticize Native American culture either. The Comanche formed a barrier between the Spanish and the French/British Americans through most of the 1800s, and they did this by subjugating the other tribes around them and by maintaining a war-like stance at all times. There was simply no way that they could co-exist with a European culture. It's very easy to sit here with our 21st century morality and say what we did was wrong, but we have no idea the kind of hardship that people on both sides were living through and trying to make a life for themselves. We simply don't have the context to judge them. It was what it was.

[learc83]

You can also look north the the Thule (Inuit) and Dorset cultures. The Thule expanded to Canada and Greenland in the middle ages, and in a very short time they completely wiped out the dominant Dorset culture that had existed for thousands of years.

The modern day Inuit are descendants of conquerors in exactly the same way that descendants of European settlers are.

[lamuerteflaca]

And I'm sure that if there were any Dorset left they too would still be cursing them for wiping them out.

[iaejpiejf23]

> The modern day Inuit are descendants of conquerors in exactly the same way that descendants of European settlers are.

Highly doubtful. The Dorset culture probably died off due to change in climate and their failure to adapt rather than inuits traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to kill the dorset.

Not to mention that these dorset was a tiny population already in significant decline.

There is a world of difference between the inuits and dorsets. Hell the norse and europeans were in contact with dorset long before the inuit. Perhaps it was european "disease" or raids that wipe them out...

Nobody really knows. But what we know is that they were a dying peoples long before the inuits came around.

[aminok]

The Dorset culture was spread all across Northern Canada and parts of Greenland. It was found in widely divergent latitudes, with different climates.

It's simply not plausible that such a widely dispersed culture would disappear in such a short time due to climate change.

Disease transmitted from Norse settlers/traders being the cause is also not plausible, as the Dorset disappeared first in the Western stretch of Northern N. America, where the Thule were expanding from, rather than the East, where they would have first had contact with the Norse. Competition from an invasive culture, the Thule, is the likely cause.

[iaejpiejf23]

> But let's not romanticize Native American culture either.

Absolutely. But lets also not pretend that the natives were racially motivated genocidal maniacs either.

> The Comanche formed a barrier between the Spanish and the French/British Americans through most of the 1800s, and they did this by subjugating the other tribes around them and by maintaining a war-like stance at all times.

Sure. But they need to do so in order to survive. And lets not forget that we hunted the comanche like animals and wiped them out. Settlers were encouraged to hunt indians and bring their scalps in exchange of money.

> There was simply no way that they could co-exist with a European culture.

Even if they were the most peaceful buddhists, they would have been wiped out. We wanted their land and they simply had no choice. It's pretty idiotic to blame the comanches for fighting back.

> It's very easy to sit here with our 21st century morality and say what we did was wrong, but we have no idea the kind of hardship that people on both sides were living through and trying to make a life for themselves.

It was wrong no matter what century you are in.

> We simply don't have the context to judge them.

If you think hunting indian men, women and children and killing them and selling their scalps for money gives you no context for judgment, then there is something wrong with you.

What happened to the natives was the greatest extermination campaign in history. The holocaust was a joke compared to what happened to the natives.

To emphasize this point, there are more jews in the US than there are natives...

[dasil003]

> If you think hunting indian men, women and children and killing them and selling their scalps for money gives you no context for judgment, then there is something wrong with you.

All the rest are good points, but this is an emotional non-sequitur. The reason we don't have context to judge is because we live lives of comfort today, we have no idea what it was like to move into the Wild West and the danger and hardship that entailed.

Of course I agree genocide is bad, that doesn't make me equipped to judge people who lived 200 years ago based on hazy historical generalities.