European responsibility for native american mass death

[dmitry]

Ok I wonder how you people will find this argument:

Ok its known that the Spanish/Portugese invaders into the new World didnt exactly want to kill the natives. They wanted to subjugate them and extract rent from them (and convert them ofcourse).
Its also known that europeans brought many illneses with them that soon killed 60-90% of the native population. At first it may seem that Europeans cant be directly held responsible for the overwhelming majority of the deaths BUT....

1.The Europeans did know how illneses spread, they understood the basics of infection

2.They soon saw that the natives die en masse from contact to such illneses and thus that they have less resistance

3.They went out and conquered them/preached among them/traded with them anyway

4.Thus they comited actions that they knew would lead to mass death and did them anyway!


To create an alternative: Take the salve trade, we do count it as an atrocity even though neither christian nor Muslim slavers wanted their slaves to die on the way to the delivery spot, they just acsepted that some would die and did the slavetrade anyway.

Or: If A warlord counquers a city, we dont just count the people his troops killed as victims, but also all the people who starved or died from illnes because of the conquest (even if the warlord didnt want them to die but knew that people would die)

[dmitry]

Basicly my question is how much did the Europeans understand that it was them who made the natives sick and made them die?

The medical knowloge of that time as far as I know did include that people who have a sickness spread it and they must have understood soon that the natives were more vulnerable to such illneses?

So they must have understood that werever they went, 90% the natives would die...but they did comunicate with the natives anyway. Or did they not understand the connection?

[jonkon]

Until the mid-19th century, people were more prone to blame "bad air" than sick people for the spread of disease. Witness the resistance to Semmelweis's insistence that doctors wash their hands before examining patients and Florence Nightingale's and Clara Barton's steps in cleaning hospitals to reduce mortality among wounded soldiers.

[dmitry]

Well thats indeed the question. I dont know much about pre germ theory medical views (I think Dr.Hannam might know much more), I think the so called "Miasma theory" predominated back then arguing that it was "poisonous vapor or mist filled with particles from decomposed matter (miasmata) that caused illnesses. The miasmatic position was that diseases were the product of environmental factors such as contaminated water, foul air, and poor hygienic conditions. Such infection was not passed between individuals but would affect individuals within the locale that gave rise to such vapors. It was identifiable by its foul smell. It was also initially believed that miasmas were propagated through worms from ulcers within those affected by a plague."

Ok so how did the Europeans explain that werever they went the natives started to die en masse? Also if its dirt and decomposing mater that couses illneses then why did the natives not have such illneses in the first place? Also the Europeans did know that objects could be conterminated (for instance the idea that smalpox blankets could be given to spread smallpox shows that, it also shows that the Europeans did understand that the natives were particularly affected by such illneses)(ofcourse this was much later in the 18th century). Europeans also understood that ill people spread the illness (hence the idea of Quarantine)

[jonkon]

You are assuming that Europeans cared enough to notice the natives were dying en masse.

[dmitry]

Oh but they did! Just read Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650 (New Approaches to the Americas) from Noble Cook.

The Church on its holdings did try to create a system of Quorantine and after to many of their serfs died the Encomindero landholders started to do the same.

In Hispano-America were the new Rulers depended on the native workforce (and some clerics actualy cared for them) their mass death was precieved as a problem.

Then again Las Cassas blames Encomindero cruelty on the mass mortality so I wonder how much they understood about illneses....

[himself]

Keep in mind that communicable diseases spread from the infected to the uninfected, not from a central source to the uninfected. That's the difference between smallpox and cholera. The latter requires common contact with contaminated water, but the former requires contact only with infected others. Many of the die-offs took place before the Europeans got there, having spread inland from coastal tribes ahead of the explorers. The SE US, for example, had been emptied long before DeLeon arrived.

[dmitry]

Yes I know that most natives died before the Europeans arived, death rates were similar in north and south America (even though Europeans bearly set foot on the northern continenet in the 16th century). I also know that had the Europeans mearly arived as traders and preachers most of the natives would still have died. The question here is if they Europans KNEW they were making the natives ill just by being close to them?

Basicly if I would today get some maledy that would make everyone who sees me drop dead and I would go out shoping I would still be responsible for the people who would die as a consequence of looking at me.

[mcc1789]

They figured it out at some point, since smallpox-infected blankets were given to hostile natives on some occasions to deliberately infect them. As to other explanations, some like Cotton Mather believed the epidemic was God's will, clearing the land for them.

[peteri]

Jan 30, 2016 2:43:14 GMT mcc1789 said:

 As to other explanations, some like Cotton Mather believed the epidemic was God's will, clearing the land for them.

Are you thinking of Magnalia Christi Americana Book I Chapter II?

Cotton Mather attributes everything to God.  In that chapter he thanks God that crooked Dutchmen had paid the master of the
May-Flower to take them to Cape Cod instead of the mouth of the Hudson river because it turned out that there were lots of
Indians at the mouth of the Hudson.   He also in that chapter credits Providence with having seen to it that more than half
of the colonists died of disease in the first few months because otherwise they entire colony would have likely starved.

[mcc1789]

I don't know the source of the quote, just remember reading it.

[himself]

Jan 30, 2016 2:43:14 GMT mcc1789 said:

They figured it out at some point, since smallpox-infected blankets were given to hostile natives on some occasions to deliberately infect them.

When and where was this done? It is one of those things oft mentioned but seldom cited. There was a case in the French and Indian War when the Iroquois allies broke into a storeroom to obtain the blankets they had been promised by the English as reward, but the blankets had been sequestered because they were thought to be infected.

[mcc1789]

During the Siege of Fort Pitt in 1763, both the officers there and their superiors discussed infecting warriors from the Ottawa tribe who were besieging it using cloth (blankets included) infected with smallpox. This was documented by the letters they sent, journals, and even invoices for the cloth items. An outbreak of smallpox devastated native tribes of the area in 1763-4. It's likely it happened more often, but without the incriminating documentation. Of course, most outbreaks were not biological warfare. The same officers involved felt the hostile tribes should be exterminated. However, to be fair this was the only instance historians regard as proven.

[peteri]

Feb 2, 2016 23:47:08 GMT himself said:

Jan 30, 2016 2:43:14 GMT mcc1789 said:

They figured it out at some point, since smallpox-infected blankets were given to hostile natives on some occasions to deliberately infect them.

When and where was this done?

Fort Pitt, June 1763.  Two Indian envoys came to Fort Pitt, They told the British garrison that they had taken all of the other forts in the area and asked them to surrender.  The forces at Fort Pitt made a present to the Indians of two wool blankets, a silk handkerchief and a linen handkerchief all taken from the smallpox hospital.  The two Indian dignitaries did not themselves get sick, but smallpox soon spread through the Indian population in the area.  There is some dispute as to whether or not the blankets were the likely cause of the spread of disease.

As far as I know, this is the only time it was tried, but the fact that the local command at the fort and General Amherst appear to have independently ordered this to be done suggests that there may have been other occasions.

Peter.