Death By Disease

In case you haven't noticed, I'm taking issue with a few things that have bothered me over the years. Today, I want to talk about what has been charged by some historians as the American genocide of the Native Americans in North America.

If we're still debating if Stalin committed genocide imagine how much further down the probability scale it is for the United States.

The truth is there was no genocide - at least the way I've come to understand it  - just like the Wild West wasn't all that wild. It was rowdy but not like in the popular imagination.

There were displacements and there were wars and indeed it did unfortubately hasten the fall of many Native American tribes and societies. It wasn't fair but history is history. It's one of those unfortunate moments that has always occured in world history. Mass migration and invasion is stuff of human legend.  Now, how they were treated after the White man took over once and for all is another matter altogether and not exactly something we should be proud of especially considering those who served in the U.S. military.

Canada's own record on Native affairs is cause for shame as well.

Still. The one thing that's always left me uneasy was how "violent" Europeans were against the "pacifist" and "nature loving" Indians. It overlooks, if not outright dismisses, the reality that Native tribes were in a constant state of warfare with one another and caused more war deaths between them than the Europeans inflicted. Instead, some historians or artists or activists paint them as eternally peaceful people of the Buffalo. There were moments of atrocity and massacres. This can't be refuted but it doesn't amount to mass scale genocide.

Lemme tell ya, the Apache (and the Sioux) were one wickedly fierce warrior society. They learned to be that way before the arrival of the Eurocrashers.

What decimated the Natives was, as we all know, disease. But disease is not murder. I agree with this person's logic: Even if the Europeans came with the best of intentions, disease would have still wiped out the Natives. It was a Bubonic plague for the New World. Speaking of which, I've read over the years people assert, not all that wrongly, should Europeans charge India or Mongolia with genocide for the Black Death? I mean, what, 65% of its total population fell to its demise?

The case, to me anyway, for a Western (or American) genocide of Natives was always weak (if not groundless) and it remains so.

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That all being said, I appreciate the efforts being made to connect to First Nations. We're on the same land now and it's only fitting First Nations is integrated into our collective experience. I thoroughly enjoy learning more and more about them - something we don't do enough of. Indeed, we can learn quite a bit from their wisdom and experiences. We always did mind you.