Is it true that 15 million natives or more were murdered in America after Columbus anchored in this continent?

Question

Some scolars talk about 100 million !!!

Did any European country at least apologize for this "unfortunate mistake"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_American_indigenous_peoples#Massacres

Answer 1

people were overwhelmed with the idea that hitlers regime exterminated some six million jews. this is well documented on the history annals/archives.
15 million or even in excess of ten million is so much more than considerable. these people, of the americas, didn't perpetrate any heinous deeds. on the contrary, they helped their executioners back to health.


when all of the killing was done 4% of the initial populace remained. these where imprisoned on meager tracks of land.
this crime is vaguely documented in the annals/archives of history. today, people try to minimize the damage done by the dregs of society from across the ocean. oh yes, and disassociate themselves in order that their mind and conscience may be at ease.

Answer 2

The problem with throwing a number out in a statement this is there is no evidence or records of any kind to back that # up. I think a good indication of the extent of the population decrease in American Indians (the word native implies savage or uncivilized) can be seen in numbers atributed to the United State of America. Pre-Columbian estimates by archeologist and historian range from one million Indians (very low end) up to 40 million (very high end). Now we do know that by 1900, per the US census, there were only 250,000 Indians in the US. Whether it was murder, war, disease, or natural causes the population decline was at least 75% in 400 years.

As far as I know, no european country as ever issued an apology.

Answer 3

a few points:

No one has any idea how many inhabitants there were in North, Central and South America in 1492, let alone in 1592 or 1692.

To say 100 million died is hysterical propagandist's nonsense.

100 million? from when to when? If you say that disease killed 80% of the Native population from Maine to Peru, you would be supposing that 150 million lived on the continent in those years.....there's barely 400 million in Maine to Peru now a days and only because of vastly effecient oil powered farming in the Mid West.

Could pre Columbian agriculture in 1492 or 1550 support 35 million in the Americas? maybe but we'll never know so any number is moot.

To say the Native Americans were disease free is laughable; syphalis is a New World disease unknown in Europe before "contact" with the Americas........

Answer 4

Arguably, the European countries don't bear much responsibility since it was outcasts from Europe who were the early settlers. Since people like the Puritans and the Huguenots left Europe precisely because they weren't wanted there, you can't really hold their countries of origin responsible for their behavior in North America.

Besides, it was mostly natives killing natives back in the day. The settlers may have encouraged and armed them, but in the end it was the natives doing the killing. For example, the Beothuck were liquidated by Mic Mac hit squads.

Shouldn't the real issue be what's going on down on the Rez nowadays? Everyone knows that natives were treated badly, but it's their own leadership that has really betrayed the natives. Take a look at the native people in BC that don't get the salmon they are entitled to. Why don't they get their salmon? Their own chiefs trade the salmon catch for cocaine.

Answer 5

Not murdered.. killed by WMDs.... (White Man's Diseases)

When Cortes arrived in what is now Mexico in 1520 one of his men had smallpox. The native Americans had absolutely no resistance to it. When Cortes came back a year later he found over half of the Aztecs dead from that one disease. That made his conquest of them pretty easy.

The smallpox moved north and south from there. When Pizarro arrived in what is now Peru in 1540, he found the Inca empire equally devastated and he also had an easy conquest.

Statistics from the 1800s and early 1900s showed that in an un-immunized population, smallpox will infect 90% of the people and kill 45% of the people. Taking that proven fact into account, it is reasonable to assume that adding all the diseases the white man brought, well over half, and probably 3/4s of the native Americans died the 100 years following the arrival of the white man to north America. And that easily comes to 15 Million.....

Answer 6

I think it was 19 million. They weren't all necessarily murdered, either. A lot died of slavery and of murders, but most of them died because of disease. Before the Europeans arrived there was absolutely no (or very little) disease in the Americas, and thus the Native Americans had weak immune systems. The reasons there was no disease is because 1. the Native Americans had no domesticated animals and 2. the Native Americans had much more efficient sewage.

Answer 7

The treatment of natives was indeed atrocious. Some were enslaved and worked to death, some were killed in battle. But nowhere near the numbers you use. The great majority of Native American deaths were due to diseases for which they had no immunity. Common diseases like measles, mumps and the flu killed many, as well as more serious diseases like smallpox. It was sad, but nobody at the time had any idea how disease worked and it couldn't have been predicted.

Answer 8

I dont know about murdered. The biggest toll on the Native Americans was from the diseases that their immune systems were not ready for, which was brought from Europe by European settlers.

Answer 9

No.