The goal will be to determine what causes were responsible for what percentage of the native population decline. How these diseases increased mortality among the Native American population will be analyzed, as will the arrival and spread of epidemics in the.
Old and New Americans
Native American Contact and Initial Relations
The year 1607 marked the date of the first permanent English settlement on the American continent, Jamestown. These early settlers found the Native Americans hospitable, and a "romanticized view of the Indians prevailed." (Ross and Moore 36) But these first encounters between the Native Americans and the colonizers quickly fell into a pattern: at first a friendly curiosity was the typical attitude on both sides, and as time passed and specific events occurred, which deepened distrust and opened hostilities replaced the original peace (Debo 22).
Epidemic Diseases
- Virgin-soil Epidemics and Spread of the Diseases
- Cholera
- Tuberculosis
- The Odd One Out: Alcohol
One reason for delayed infections is population density. they write that there were indigenous settlements in the Caribbean and Mexico. 247). In addition to the poor living conditions of the natives in the north and in the interior of the continent, there were other reasons for the delay of epidemics. These winter counts provide records of the cycle of epidemic diseases among certain Native American tribes.
Cholera first appeared in New York in the spring of 1832 and quickly spread throughout the rest of the United States. Native Americans also had no concept of contagion and therefore did not practice quarantine for the sick (Powers and Leiker 333-337). Through this chart we are able to see numerical comparisons of pre- and post-epidemic outbreaks of a small portion of the Native American population.
This chart is able to give us an overall picture of the history of epidemic diseases on the North American continent affecting the Native American tribes. However, pre-Columbine TB had only a mild impact on the inhabitants of the American continent (Young 59). In the United States, TB reached its peak in the nineteenth century and became one of the leading causes of death (Grob 110).
In the preceding pages it has been discussed how epidemic diseases originated in Europe and appeared in the early sixteenth century on the continent. In colonial times alcohol was seen as the substance that brought out the savage nature of Indians.
Genocide
Factors and Reasons for Genocide
Below is a diagram included in Kinloch et al. 27), which provides an overview of the crimes of genocide in the United States. One of these examples is the extermination of the Pequot Indians in New England in the year 1637 by the New English settlers (Campbell 157). When the Indians retaliated and countered the white man's raids, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 30 colonists, the settlers decided to wage war against them (Campbell 157).
This war resulted in the death of one quarter to two thirds of the Pequot Indian population, and led to their dissolution as a nation. If we look at the history of conflicts between white settlers and Native Americans in the territory of the United States, we can see that genocide as well as warfare occurred rather intermittently. As long as there were still options on the part of the Native Americans to escape from direct confrontation, these options were utilized.
This difference in severe damage to the Native American population between the western and eastern states was noted by. A specific example of the Californian Indian genocide can be related to the killing of the Yuki tribe. The degradation of the Native American population allowed Europeans to distance themselves, making it easier to view them as inferior beings who needed to be done away with.
The Trail of Tears
The Indian Removal Act recommended the removal of the Indian nations living in the east to the lands west of the Mississippi River. Altogether, as many as 100,000 American Indians were driven from their homes and relocated west of the Mississippi River. The losses and story of the Cherokee, who became the most famous of the five tribes.
At that time, in the 19th century, land was one of the most valuable resources in America, and both the Native Americans and the white settlers seemed well aware of this. One of the reasons for enacting the Indian Removal Act was in response to demands by whites in Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida for more land from the government (Davis 49). The land of the Cherokees at the time and prior to the Indian Removals had been vast.
Such persons and families as, in the opinion of the emigrating agent, are capable of supporting themselves and removing. This treaty was not signed by any of the chief officers of the nation, but rather by individuals of the Cherokee tribe, therefore the treaty was not seen as. The Indian removals of the 1830s were typical cases of genocide carried out for economic gain, for possession of very valuable pieces of land.
Warfare
The Battle of Wabash
After discussing some of the technical details of Native American and white warfare, the next section will be devoted to two instances of warfare between the two peoples. The precedent of the Battle of Wabash can be traced back to the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which ended the American Revolutionary War. United States sovereignty was recognized over all land east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes.
The Treaty of Paris was signed which established the boundaries of the United States, without much regard for the land claims of the Native Americans living in said regions. However, the Northwest Indian tribes refused to recognize American claims to the territory northwest of the Ohio River (Jones 3-5). In the War of Independence, Native American tribes were usually allied with the British to stop American territorial expansion, therefore, after the defeat of the British, these native tribes were treated as a defeated power (Birchfield 94-96).
The United States regarded the Indians of the Northwest “as a conquered people who lost. Tucker writes that the first serious attempt by the American government to establish jurisdiction over the territory north of the Ohio River was General Josiah Harmar's campaign in October 1790 (55). This campaign involved a series of battles over three days, all of which were decisive victories for the Native Americans. Starkey claims that the Battle of the Wabash was one of the worst Indian defeats in US history (146).
The Battle of Wounded Knee
All the Indians had to do was do the dance of departed spirits - the ghost dance. It was not only the appearance of this new religion, the Ghost Dance, which was a prelude to Wounded Knee, but the arrest and killing of Sitting Bull, the Sioux Chief, was another such event. A fight broke out during Sitting Bull's arrest, and when it was all over, Sitting Bull and several other members of the tribe lay dead (Reilly 261).
The remainder of Sitting Bull's followers, including 120 men and 230 women and children, fled but were intercepted by the 7th Cavalry, who escorted them to a Sioux camp near the Wounded Knee River (Reilly 262). While collecting the weapons, a shot rang out, triggering further fire from 470 soldiers and Hotchkiss guns. Warfare did not have as drastic an impact on Native American populations as epidemics and genocide did, but researchers predict that the casualties of warfare are likely to be greater than current documentation suggests.
Native American war tactics and strategies were found to be very different from white immigrant tactics and strategies. The Indians also adapted to the use of firearms, but in doing so became dependent on the trade in ammunition, gunpowder, and firearms. Although the Indian tactics proved effective, the Americans could not be contained in the end.
Native Americans Today
As of the 2010 US Census, the combined American Indian and Alaska Native population is 5.2 million, accounting for 1.7 percent of the total US population. Of the 5.2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives, 2.3 million self-identified as Native American and other races. According to French (2009), American Indians were trapped in poverty even until the end of the 20th century.
Traditional Indians are otherwise known as full-blooded Indians or true Indians, and they make up twenty percent of the total Native American population. The Indian middle class category, according to French, is "smaller than traditional Indians". (39) This group contributes to the US. These Indians are of Indian origin, but they neither speak their mother tongue nor practice their traditional customs.
Many marginalized Indians suffer from the dilemma of looking Indian and wanting to be Indian, but not knowing their traditional cultural ways or how to learn their heritage – a phenomenon that testifies to the success of relocation and other forms of cultural genocide.” (French 39-40). As noted above, the current population of American Indians and Alaska Natives today is 5.2 million (including full-bloods and mixed races), an improvement over the very low numbers of just over 248,000 in 1890. There has been a steady increase in their numbers since 1890, but Native Americans today still face problems of disease, alcohol consumption, and poverty, and most natives are still unable to live economically independent of the United States government.
Conclusion
Genocide is also discussed at length as the second cause of Native American population decline. The paper discusses the main differences between the Native American style of war and the white American style of war. From the research included in this article, it can be concluded that warfare against the Natives was the cause that contributed the least to the decline of the Native Americans.
In short, the main cause of the decline of the Native American population was epidemic diseases brought by the arrival of European colonizers. 34; The Social Construction of American Indian Drinking: Perceptions of American Indians and White Officials." Sociological Quarterly. 34; Untouched Land Epidemics as a Factor in Aboriginal Outmigration in the Americas." The William and Mary Quarterly.
34;Native American Traditional and Alternative Medicines." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. 34;European Contact and Indian Depopulation in the Northeast: The Timing of the First Epidemics." Ethnohistory. 34; The Greenville Treaty of 1795: Pen and Ink Witchcraft in the Battle for the Old Northwest." Johansen, Bruce E.
