"At the time of first contact, around 1500 ce, Indian populations in North America had numbered, according to sober estimates, around 5 million. There were more than five hundred distinct tribes spread over the entire continent—from the Florida Keys to the Aleutian Islands. The deserts of the American Southwest hosted some of the most advanced societies, who built cities that still stand today. At the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi, where St. Louis now stands, was a city of more than twenty thousand. Along the resource-rich eastern seaboard, the coast was populated, without break, from Florida to Newfoundland. But four hundred years of warfare, disease, and starvation had taken its toll. According to the US census, there were only 237,000 Indians in the United States in 1900, a twentieth of the population at its peak.
The story of the land parallels that of the population. The United States comprises 2.3 billion acres. By 1900, Indians controlled only 78 million acres, or about 3 percent."
-- excerpt from The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, published by Riverhead Books. Author David Treuer is Ojibwe, from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota.
'400 years of warfare, disease and starvation' ... wiped out 4.75 million people.
ReplyDeleteSo, the new immigrants killed 32 people a day, every day, for 400 years ?
Now I understand why Americans seem to not be happy with new people moving in.
Most of them died from diseases they had never been exposed to and had no insight how to deal with. Their culture was a family member falls ill they all gather with the sick person in the lodge which is the worst thing to do.
ReplyDeleteThe majority murdered. Our country is founded upon an unspoken genocide. Until it is acknowledged and reconciled, America will never be made whole. The divisions and social decay of today are the price we have paid and will continue to pay until that reconciliation begun.
ReplyDelete