4 ms·

Find it curious how people in the US tend to give a questionably huge role of disease to the population loss of the first americans

Terr_ 2y ago
Well, what's the better explanation? If it was internecine warfare, the victors would be around. If it was colonial attackers, we'd have more records. We have good documentation for it happening in the other direction, where some areas had diseases which struck Europeans so badly that they didn't want to immigrate and raise a family there.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  The modern explanation is that disease played a major role, but it's disease that's closely related to the social and political disruptions from European contact. Some examples: Spaniards enslave the Taino of Hispaniola, who are ravaged by diseases with lethality and infectiousness boosted by the malnutrition and stress of their enslavement. Spaniards take over Tenochtitlan, then destroy the sewer systems of the valley of Mexico. A series of E. Coli and salmonella epidemics known as Cocoliztli subsequently ravage the Mexican highlands. Spaniards get involved with a bitter civil war in Peru, and diseases decimate the displaced and destabilized populations. Spaniards institute corvee labor and create a famine in the southwest, which is followed by decades of recurrent epidemic diseases that heavily affect the people most directly under Spanish influence. Nomadic groups largely outside Spanish control, but still physically in the same regions like the Apache and the Comanche then became ascendant political forces in the resulting demographic collapse. And the result of these losses was permanent because the populations ended up displaced or absorbed into colonialism.
potato3732842 2y ago
Because when they learn the origin of each of the 13 colonies in grade school that's the way Massachusetts and New England (which get a lot more time than some of the other because they were one of the first and US democracy traces its roots do the Pilgrims) get taught because it's the easy way. There is a kernel of truth to it. The Pilgrims did kinda luck into settling an area that was somewhat depopulated from recent disease (but they also picked just about the most shitty area in the region so it wasn't exactly densely populated to begin with). But that line of causation gets over-played because nobody wants to stand in front of a bunch of teenagers and split hairs between various flavors of christian extremists and the circumstances by which they came to "own" the land they settled.
Hilift 2y ago
In 1500 there were 60 million north american natives. In the early 1600s when the English settled, there were six million, most due to disease. It wasn't a single event of course. The smallpox epidemic of 1862 killed far more native peoples in California than settlers. Smallpox killed 66% of all native people in British Columbia (20,000) in that event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1862_Pacific_Northwest_smallpox_epidemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1862_Pacific_Northwest_smallpo...

Terr_ 2y ago

Well, what's the better explanation? If it was internecine warfare, the victors would be around. If it was colonial attackers, we'd have more records. We have good documentation for it happening in the other direction, where some areas had diseases which struck Europeans so badly that they didn't want to immigrate and raise a family there.

AlotOfReading 2y ago
The modern explanation is that disease played a major role, but it's disease that's closely related to the social and political disruptions from European contact. Some examples: Spaniards enslave the Taino of Hispaniola, who are ravaged by diseases with lethality and infectiousness boosted by the malnutrition and stress of their enslavement. Spaniards take over Tenochtitlan, then destroy the sewer systems of the valley of Mexico. A series of E. Coli and salmonella epidemics known as Cocoliztli subsequently ravage the Mexican highlands. Spaniards get involved with a bitter civil war in Peru, and diseases decimate the displaced and destabilized populations. Spaniards institute corvee labor and create a famine in the southwest, which is followed by decades of recurrent epidemic diseases that heavily affect the people most directly under Spanish influence. Nomadic groups largely outside Spanish control, but still physically in the same regions like the Apache and the Comanche then became ascendant political forces in the resulting demographic collapse. And the result of these losses was permanent because the populations ended up displaced or absorbed into colonialism.

potato3732842 2y ago

Because when they learn the origin of each of the 13 colonies in grade school that's the way Massachusetts and New England (which get a lot more time than some of the other because they were one of the first and US democracy traces its roots do the Pilgrims) get taught because it's the easy way. There is a kernel of truth to it. The Pilgrims did kinda luck into settling an area that was somewhat depopulated from recent disease (but they also picked just about the most shitty area in the region so it wasn't exactly densely populated to begin with). But that line of causation gets over-played because nobody wants to stand in front of a bunch of teenagers and split hairs between various flavors of christian extremists and the circumstances by which they came to "own" the land they settled.

Hilift 2y ago

In 1500 there were 60 million north american natives. In the early 1600s when the English settled, there were six million, most due to disease. It wasn't a single event of course. The smallpox epidemic of 1862 killed far more native peoples in California than settlers. Smallpox killed 66% of all native people in British Columbia (20,000) in that event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1862_Pacific_Northwest_smallpox_epidemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1862_Pacific_Northwest_smallpo...