Native American Genocide?

Today we talked about Bartolome de Las Casas, the Dominican priest who became one of the lone voices amoung the Spaniards and church officials to condemn the treatment of the Native Americans by the Spanish conquistadors and colonizers. Written as propaganda pieces, his accounts may have been exaggerated, but the reality of the devastation of Native American life and culture upon arrival of the Europeans is undeniable.

It is impossible to know with an accuracy the population of the Americas before 1492. At best we can make very generalized, educated guess made from archeological evidence, statistical analysis and anecdotal accounts both Native and European. Here is a chart showing the wide variance among scholars on the subject…

The “consensus” view of many historians is that somewhere near 40 to 60 Million is probably the best guess. By the mid 17th century (1650 or so) this number had been reduced to a mere 8-10 million. That means the Native American population fell by 80-90% in a period of 150 years. This makes it possibly the largest loss of human life in a short period in the history of the planet – likely out numbering the victims and population percentages of the European Black Death. Like the Black Death, the primary culprit was disease (responsible for probably close to 90% of the total number) brought by the colonizers to the New World. But war, mass murder, slavery, removal and exploitation also played an important part.



Links to info on Bartolome de Las Casas…
http://www.lascasas.org/

http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/casas.htm

Theodore De Bry's Illustrations for Bartolome de Las Casas's "Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies"…
http://www.lehigh.edu/~ejg1/doc/lascasas/casas.htm

En Espanol…
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas

http://www.ciudadseva.com/textos/otros/brevisi.htm

Question…

Would you use the term genocide to describe what happen to the Native peoples of the Americas after Colombus’s arrival? Please respond on your blog.

Webster’s On-Line Dictionary defines genocide as…

“the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group”

Here are some more definitions…
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genocide

http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext.htm