Hacker News Reader

Comment by merpnderp | Hacker News Reader

Wikipedia says that the US genocide of Native Americans numbered somewhere between 30-50K people over 120 years, some of those in military conflicts. In comparison in the Rape of Nanking, the Japanese murdered 50-300K. And averaged 300-500K civilians murdered per month between 1937 and 1945.

By 1941 Japan had no reason to believe the US was in any way expansionist. There had been 20 years of isolationist rhetoric from both political parties and almost no public support for intervention in wars abroad.

View on HN

The Manifest Destiny doers didn't know it, but most of the Americas had been cleared a hundred years earlier by disease. Some estimate 95% fatality rates.

So, is OK to decimate everybody left because disease had already killed a lot of the native people. So if another country had come to conquer the European nations after the black plague and committed genocide would it have been OK? Otherwise I'm not exactly sure what is your point.

Is like you are trying to say, hey, I only killed 4%, the other 95% were already dead so is not so bad.

There's no one saying it is okay here. Everyone agrees it meets the modern definition of a genocide. But I'd would certainly need some evidence that the US was responsible for 80% of the deaths of the remaining native Americans. I looked around for these numbers and have never seen anyone claim this.

I'm guessing the parent post is saying that the numbers of dead would have been higher had the populations not been decimated by disease.

If that is what Wikipedia is claiming then it is off by orders of magnitude on the the Native American genicide.

If you try to prove this you'll find the problem. There is very little evidence to go by except guestimations. You can say it is off by orders of magnitude (which is silly because 2 orders of magnitude would be the total estimated population of N. American before Columbus), but you certainly can't back that up with evidence.

18 million was the estimated population for North America alone. So, yes, the population drop has been in the millions. the Trail of Tears alone would cover half the 30k. U of OK did a lot of the research.

18 million is the max with other estimates being much lower. That's certainly not a fact. And the only source for deaths on the trail of tears is the US government which gives 4000.

You quote a government source on the deaths cause by said government?

"And the only source for deaths on the trail of tears is the US government"

No, they are not the only source. "Cherokee Population Losses during the Trail of Tears: A New Perspective and a New Estimate" gives the loses as double. Not counting the subsequent increase in loses where they ended up.

I doubt we would take German official's word at numbers during WWII, so I'm not sure why the US's word is valid in this instance. The US couldn't even keep the land ownership and payments straight for the tribes and lost a massive lawsuit because of it.

You are missing my point. I'm not saying the US government is correct, I'm saying no one else was counting the dead. And at the time, the US government had no reason to downplay the numbers since the voting population mostly didn't care.

And I don't have time to read your book, but I'm going to guess that the book relies upon the official government numbers and their extrapolates additional deaths based on some criteria. I doubt someone just magically found a new as yet undiscovered accurate death list.

A lot of work has gone into ancestry by the tribes and finding old records along with tribal sites not destroyed, but quoting old numbers without current research is just wrong.

90% died from diseases. That's why it was so easy to settle North America. The socities collapsed before settlers even expanded westward. The diseases traveled much faster than European contact. That's why Europeans thought much of North America was wilderness.

There were certainly acts of genocide (like Trail of Tears) and Indian Removal was a form of ethnic cleansing.

But there was never an attempt or policy to kill Native Americans off.

Plus a lot just blended into society. Intermarrying has always been common. Both on and off the reservations. Most native americans aren't full blooded anymore, but a mix of white and black too.

"But there was never an attempt or policy to kill Native Americans off."

I see stuff like this and I cannot believe the total ignorance. I guess I'm going spend part of my night grabbing every damn reference to every government and private company policy that was specifically designed to kill Native Americans including some laws still on the books that included clause that you could kill any Native American if you were in a covered wagon or any group of 5 Native Americans that were gathered. Some, including MN's ban on all Dakota Indians, are still on the books.

We'll ignore the whole, give Native Americans disease laden blankets and killing as many buffalo as possible so the plains tribes would starve.

Its as bad as people quoting the US government general on how many Native Americans died during the Trail of Tears. I guess people like that believe other governments when they say how many people they killed.

As to your last line.... that does not account for the loss.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com