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Native American genocide in the United States

Native American genocide in the United States
Part of Genocide of indigenous people in America
1919 illustration of a U.S. cavalry attack on a village
LocationUnited States
TargetNative Americans
Attack type
Genocide, mass murder, forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, starvation, internment, genocidal rape, cultural genocide
Deaths
  • Decrease 96% population drop (1492–1900)[a]
    • +4 million (est. 1492-1776)[3]
    • 350,000 (58% population decline from 1800 to 1890)[4]
Victims
  • 98% loss of ancestral homelands[5]
PerpetratorsUnited States
Motive

The destruction of Native American peoples, cultures, and languages has been characterized as genocide. Debates are ongoing as to whether the entire process or only specific periods or events meet the definitions of genocide. Many of these definitions focus on intent, while others focus on outcomes.[6] Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide", considered the displacement of Native Americans by European settlers as a historical example of genocide.[7] Others, like historian Gary Anderson, contend that genocide does not accurately characterize any aspect of American history, suggesting instead that ethnic cleansing is a more appropriate term.[8]

Historians have long debated the pre-European population of the Americas.[9][10] In 2023, historian Ned Blackhawk suggested that North America's population had halved from 1492 to 1776 from about 8 million people (all Native American in 1492) to under 4 million (predominantly white in 1776).[3] Russell Thornton estimated that by 1800, some 600,000 Native Americans lived in the regions that would become the modern United States and declined to an estimated 250,000 by 1890 before rebounding.[4]

The virgin soil thesis (VST), coined by historian Alfred W. Crosby, proposes that the population decline among Native Americans after 1492 is due to Native populations being immunologically unprepared for Old World diseases. While this theory received support in popular imagination and academia for years, recently, scholars such as historians Tai S. Edwards and Paul Kelton argue that Native Americans "'died because U.S. colonization, removal policies, reservation confinement, and assimilation programs severely and continuously undermined physical and spiritual health. Disease was the secondary killer.'"[11] According to these scholars, certain Native populations did not necessarily plummet after initial contact with Europeans, but only after violent interactions with colonizers, and at times such violence and colonial removal exacerbated disease's effects.[12]

The population decline among Native Americans after 1492 is attributed to various factors, mostly Eurasian diseases like influenza, pneumonic plagues, cholera, and smallpox. Additionally, conflicts, massacres, forced removal, enslavement, imprisonment, and warfare with European settlers contributed to the reduction in populations and the disruption of traditional societies.[13][14][15][16] Historian Jeffrey Ostler emphasizes the importance of considering the American Indian Wars, campaigns by the U.S. Army to subdue Native American nations in the American West starting in the 1860s, as genocide.[6] Scholars increasingly refer to these events as massacres or "genocidal massacres", defined as the annihilation of a portion of a larger group, sometimes intended to send a message to the larger group.[6]

Native American peoples have been subject to both historical and contemporary massacres and acts of cultural genocide as their traditional ways of life were threatened by settlers. Colonial massacres and acts of ethnic cleansing explicitly sought to reduce Native populations and confine them to reservations. Cultural genocide was also deployed, in the form of displacement and appropriation of Indigenous knowledge, to weaken Native sovereignty. Native American peoples still face challenges stemming from colonialism, including settler occupation of their traditional homelands, police brutality, hate crimes, vulnerability to climate change, and mental health issues. Despite this, Native American resistance to colonialism and genocide has persisted both in the past and the present.

  1. ^ Michael Smith, David. "Counting the Dead: Estimating the Loss of Life in the Indigenous Holocaust, 1492–Present" (PDF). Southeast Oklahoma State University. Retrieved January 27, 2024.
  2. ^ "The American Genocide of the Indians—Historical Facts and Real Evidence". Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China. Retrieved January 27, 2024.
  3. ^ a b Blackhawk, Ned (April 26, 2023). "Without Indigenous History, There Is No U.S. History". Time Magazine. Retrieved February 7, 2024.
  4. ^ a b Thornton, Russel (1990). American Indian holocaust and survival: a population history since 1492. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-8061-2220-5.
  5. ^ "Indigenous peoples: loss of land to the United States". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved January 27, 2024.
  6. ^ a b c Ostler, Jeffrey (March 2, 2015). "Genocide and American Indian History". American History. Oxford Research Encyclopedias. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.3. ISBN 978-0-19-932917-5.
  7. ^ McDonnell, M. A.; Moses, A. D. (2005). "Raphael Lemkin as historian of genocide in the Americas". Journal of Genocide Research. 7 (4): 501–529. doi:10.1080/14623520500349951. S2CID 72663247.
  8. ^ Sousa, Ashley (2016). "Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian: The Crime That Should Haunt America by Gary Clayton Anderson". Journal of Southern History. 82 (1): 135–136. doi:10.1353/soh.2016.0023. ISSN 2325-6893. S2CID 159731284.
  9. ^ Snow, Dean R. (June 16, 1995). "Microchronology and Demographic Evidence Relating to the Size of Pre-Columbian North American Indian Populations". Science. 268 (5217): 1601–1604. doi:10.1126/science.268.5217.1601.
  10. ^ Shoemaker, Nancy (2000). American Indian Population Recovery in the Twentieth Century. University of New Mexico Press. pp. 1–3. ISBN 978-0-8263-2289-0.
  11. ^ Edwards, Tai S; Kelton, Paul (June 1, 2021). "Germs, Genocides, and America's Indigenous Peoples". Journal of American History. p. 72. doi:10.1093/jahist/jaaa008. Retrieved May 2, 2024.
  12. ^ Gilio-Whitaker, Dina (2019). As long as grass grows: the indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-8070-7378-0.
  13. ^ Ostler, Jeffrey (April 29, 2020). "Disease Has Never Been Just Disease for Native Americans". The Atlantic. Retrieved April 12, 2022.
  14. ^ Reséndez, Andrés (2016). The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-547-64098-3.
  15. ^ Ostler, Jeffrey (2019). Surviving genocide : native nations and the United States from the American Revolution to bleeding Kansas. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-24526-4. OCLC 1099434736.
  16. ^ Gilio-Whitaker, Dina (2019). As long as grass grows : the indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-8070-7378-0. OCLC 1044542033.


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