In both cases, smallpox/disease reduced the native population by about 90%
It should be noted; it wasn’t just disease, or rather, disease (as always throughout history and till today) only got far, far worse when natives were also subjected to constant war, violent encroachments, and man-made (American-enforced, rather) famines.
Subject any population- European populations included- to such pressures and their immune systems will be greatly compromised. It wasn’t just disease- these went hand-in-hand with systemic policies, ideology, and rhetoric that encouraged disease and killed and terrorized the natives in many other ways, with the end goal of- as you said, assimilation or death (ie. genocide)- and even the question of how much “assimilation” was actually on the table is another matter- they wanted to erase their cultures, religion, livelihoods, rights, etc. yes- but even those who had adopted much of the western customs like the “5 civilized tribes” eventually were driven west in forced marches (the trail of tears- ie. another form of genocide, akin to what was inflicted on the Armenians) despite the US law itself being on their side.
Because no amount of “assimilation”- by natives, by blacks (as one can see with “black Wall Street”/Tulsa, Oklahoma), by other minorities- changed the guiding ethos of the US- if white settler society wanted what you had, or simply wanted you out of the way and saw you as an eyesore to be culled, or wanted you as a slave- one way or another it would take what it wanted through force. And white settler-colonial and imperialist society wants everything the world over and more (and even that would not quench it IMO- because it is a all-devouring, monstrous system that, without new lands to conquer or peoples to subjugate and enslave, would likely collapse in on itself as it is doing now)- still does to this day, as should be clear to anyone sensible as well.
It’s believed they had syphilis. But no other major diseases come to mind- perhaps because of the comparative lack of domesticated animals, or the smaller and less connected geographic area (compared to Afro-Eurasia), and perhaps because severe disease mutations would likely burn themselves out within such regions rather than travel the length of Afro-Eurasia like old world diseases…
The vast majority of the 90% killed by disease were killed over a hundred years before any of the tribes had ever even heard of a white person or European. Smallpox spread like wildfire since the arrival of the Spanish. The diseases just appeared seemingly out of nowhere and annihilated millions of people without them even knowing what hit them or where it came from.
I know you didn’t bring it up but the 90% thing is a myth. Rates were different for different outbreaks and many of the deaths chocked up to disease that contributed to the depopulation of Mesoamerica and the Gulf region (now US South) was due to mass slavery by the Spanish and Portuguese who were destroying villages and capturing slaves to work them to death mining silver and gold for a 7 year life expectancy in captivity.
Certainly some communities were hit extra hard by outbreaks, whole villages wiped out like the one the Mayflower colonists would inhabit with homes and food stores ready-made by the deceased.
However disease was consistently the largest killer during wars in the Colonial period. Outbreaks would kill half the population in the aftermath of wars throughout pre US and US history like that in the north east during the 1776 events and those in Oregon country right after Plateau wars in the 1850s and 60s.
Being displaced from sources of medicine, being displaced from clean water and food, losing elder knowledge keepers to the diseases, those elders were also more likely to be killed in a Conquistador’s raid. There are many compounding reasons why disease was so rampant and deaths due to war usually came in the form of disease, for instance, some estimates put half the deaths in WW2 to disease and famine.
It is true, in a plainly quantitative sense of body counting, that the barrage of disease unleashed by the Europeans among the so-called “virgin soil” populations of the Americas caused more deaths than any other single force of destruction. However, by focusing almost entirely on disease, by displacing responsibility for the mass killing onto an army of invading microbes, contemporary authors increasingly have created the impression that the eradication of those tens of millions of people was inadvertent - a sad, but both inevitable and “unintended consequence” of human migration and progress. This is a modern version of what Alexander Saxton recently has described as the “soft side of anti-Indian racism” that emerged in America in the nineteenth century and that incorporated “expressions of regret over the fate of Indians into narratives that traced the inevitability of their extinction. Ideologically,” Saxton adds, “the effect was to exonerate individuals, parties, nations, of any moral blame for what history had decreed.” In fact, however, the near-total destruction of the Western Hemisphere’s native people was neither inadvertent nor inevitable.
From almost the instant of first human contact between Europe and the Americas firestorms of microbial pestilence and purposeful genocide began laying waste the American natives. Although at times operating independently, for most of the long centuries of devastation that followed 1492, disease and genocide were interdependent forces acting dynamically - whipsawing their victims between plague and violence, each one feeding upon the other, and together driving countless numbers of entire ancient societies to the brink - and often over the brink - of total extermination.
Stannard, D.E. 1992. “American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World.” Oxford University Press.
There’s still coercive sterilization being done too. Doctors on reservations are quick to pitch sterilizing procedures for women for issues that can be resolved in other ways.
It should be noted; it wasn’t just disease, or rather, disease (as always throughout history and till today) only got far, far worse when natives were also subjected to constant war, violent encroachments, and man-made (American-enforced, rather) famines.
Subject any population- European populations included- to such pressures and their immune systems will be greatly compromised. It wasn’t just disease- these went hand-in-hand with systemic policies, ideology, and rhetoric that encouraged disease and killed and terrorized the natives in many other ways, with the end goal of- as you said, assimilation or death (ie. genocide)- and even the question of how much “assimilation” was actually on the table is another matter- they wanted to erase their cultures, religion, livelihoods, rights, etc. yes- but even those who had adopted much of the western customs like the “5 civilized tribes” eventually were driven west in forced marches (the trail of tears- ie. another form of genocide, akin to what was inflicted on the Armenians) despite the US law itself being on their side.
Because no amount of “assimilation”- by natives, by blacks (as one can see with “black Wall Street”/Tulsa, Oklahoma), by other minorities- changed the guiding ethos of the US- if white settler society wanted what you had, or simply wanted you out of the way and saw you as an eyesore to be culled, or wanted you as a slave- one way or another it would take what it wanted through force. And white settler-colonial and imperialist society wants everything the world over and more (and even that would not quench it IMO- because it is a all-devouring, monstrous system that, without new lands to conquer or peoples to subjugate and enslave, would likely collapse in on itself as it is doing now)- still does to this day, as should be clear to anyone sensible as well.
Did Native Americans not have any diseases thay were picked up by white colonisers?
It’s believed they had syphilis. But no other major diseases come to mind- perhaps because of the comparative lack of domesticated animals, or the smaller and less connected geographic area (compared to Afro-Eurasia), and perhaps because severe disease mutations would likely burn themselves out within such regions rather than travel the length of Afro-Eurasia like old world diseases…
There are a few, most notably syphilis
The vast majority of the 90% killed by disease were killed over a hundred years before any of the tribes had ever even heard of a white person or European. Smallpox spread like wildfire since the arrival of the Spanish. The diseases just appeared seemingly out of nowhere and annihilated millions of people without them even knowing what hit them or where it came from.
I know you didn’t bring it up but the 90% thing is a myth. Rates were different for different outbreaks and many of the deaths chocked up to disease that contributed to the depopulation of Mesoamerica and the Gulf region (now US South) was due to mass slavery by the Spanish and Portuguese who were destroying villages and capturing slaves to work them to death mining silver and gold for a 7 year life expectancy in captivity.
Certainly some communities were hit extra hard by outbreaks, whole villages wiped out like the one the Mayflower colonists would inhabit with homes and food stores ready-made by the deceased.
However disease was consistently the largest killer during wars in the Colonial period. Outbreaks would kill half the population in the aftermath of wars throughout pre US and US history like that in the north east during the 1776 events and those in Oregon country right after Plateau wars in the 1850s and 60s.
Being displaced from sources of medicine, being displaced from clean water and food, losing elder knowledge keepers to the diseases, those elders were also more likely to be killed in a Conquistador’s raid. There are many compounding reasons why disease was so rampant and deaths due to war usually came in the form of disease, for instance, some estimates put half the deaths in WW2 to disease and famine.
this is worth i’s own semi-permanently pinned post tbh
Stannard, D.E. 1992. “American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World.” Oxford University Press.
Even if the diseases brought by the colonizers were spread unintentionally which they werent it was all intentional. They spread it intentionally.
I’m surprised nobody has brought up the smallpox blankets yet when talking about the disease…
There’s just too much to remember.
Hell, I just now remembered the forced sterilization campaigns…
There’s still coercive sterilization being done too. Doctors on reservations are quick to pitch sterilizing procedures for women for issues that can be resolved in other ways.