A question to Charles Brown

Alexandre Fenelon afenelon at zaz.com.br
Thu Apr 26 16:59:19 PDT 2001


-One month ago, I think, I asked you about USA genocide against Native Americans. -As you sent me back some material, I started to enlarge my research. It was quite -interesting, but it´s difficult to prove that US government had a systematic policy -of anihilation of Native population. It´s said that there were 5-12,000,000 Native -Americans in the 48 contiguous states of the USA before 1942. Up to 1700, there was -a dramatic reduction in the population, mainly due to smallpox (mortality from -this disease was much higher in Native populations, who hadn´t immunity against -this disease). Population data from 1776 is not easily found in the Internet. -However, I found an estimate of 360-400,000 Native Americans in the West in 1850. -Population in the East was dislocated and had their lands stolen during the early -1800´s, culminating with the Trail of Tears, in which there were something like 9,000 -deaths. As the expansion to the West went on, the population was progressively -reduced to a low of 210,000 in 1910. It appears that this happened due to -confiscation of the means of survival Indians needed (extermination of buffallo -and land steal), but there was not a planned policy of extermination (althought -the pratical results were quite the same). I would say it is more similar to -the policies of expropriation and expulsion of English and Irish peasants from -their lands from centuries XVI to XIX than to the systematic killing of complete -populations that Nazi Germany or Spanish colonists made so efficiently. I would -estimate excess deaths of the late XIX century campaign in a few hundreds of -thousands (disease, by the 1800´s, was not so frequent as cause of disease). As -for the use of smallpox as biological weapon, it seems to be one well documented -report (it was used by English colonial army in 1763). It would be important to -state that was a remarkable increase of this population since 1910. It´s now -estimated in 2,000,000 people (it´s difficult to believe in this 10-fold increase -in so short period....) -Well, what I have to ask to you is: 1-Do you have something to add to this demographic data I put here? 2-In what is based your statement that there was genocide against Native American in the USA? -Note that I´m not agreeing of disagreeing from you, just asking for more information. This -seems to be a good case example as the necessity for expansion and capital accumulation that -are inherent to capitalism can decimate entire populations even if there is no intention to -do this. And it seems very few pre capitalist civilizations undertook the massive and -systematic destruction of entire peoples and cultures, like the Europeans colonizers did -in America and Africa

http://www.iearn.org/hgp/aeti/aeti-1997/native-americans.html http://www.iearn.org/hgp/hgp-home.html http://members.aol.com/aacdrcnnea/natam.htm http://www.csusm.edu/nadp/nadp.htm http://www.miquelon.net/usa/people.html http://www.termpapers-on-file.com/native.htm http://www.frontierpress.com/frontier.cgi?category=ind http://www.greatdreams.com/lies.htm http://www.iphc.org/evusa/culture/native.html (a pentecostal site!!) http://nativeamculture.about.com/culture/nativeamculture/library/blainews.ht m http://www.oneearthonepeople.org/nalinks.html http://www.emayzine.com/history16/syllabus.html http://www.calacademy.org/research/library/biodiv/biblio/amind.htm http://www.studyweb.com/links/2196.html http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/Articles2000/Keeler001115Thanksgiving.htm http://are.as.wvu.edu/ruvolo.htm http://nmnhwww.si.edu/anthro/outreach/Indbibl/bibliogr.html http://www.welcomepages.org/living_with_the_stigma_of_genoci.htm http://www.iliff.edu/about_iliff/faculty_george.htm http://www.reinventing.com/cmp31.html



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