Counting the Dead:  Denying the Native American Holocaust

             The history of the conquest is mostly written by the conquerors, who want to read what exalts them, and want to remember what affirms their high sense of identity. The history of the  16th and 17th century is usually written as if such figures of Charles V and Philip of Spain,  Elizabeth of England , the 'miracle' of Dutch Trade,  the goings on at Versailles, or the amazing scientific feats of Descartes, Newton, Galileo and others, and the technological developments the accompanied the theoretical changes, is all that mattered. But in the midst of this baroque and decorated view of the Baroque century, there are two facts which pale and shame all other aspects of the period. The genocide of the Native Americans and the slave trade. It is very difficult to find material written on the relation of 17th century culture, mysticism, religion and science to these atrocities. Much is made of the economic and social historical aspects of these atrocities. The reason that the cultural, scientific, religious, economic and social aspects are not considered all of a piece is probably that the mental and cultural  mindset that created the Invasion of the New World is still current, and there is resistance to looking at history or the world from the outside of the belljar of the Empire of the Intellect. The relation of science, and to some extent religion, to the Euro-American atrocities are still subjects that are resisted.

            The debate over the population of the Americas at the time of 'contact' and the death toll as a result of the conquest has been vigorous and inconclusive. I quote the following figures to give some idea of the reigning confusion. To consider some statistics: according to Stavrianos, the decline of the Native population in Mexico fell from 25 million or more in 1519 to 1.07 million in 1605. [1]  Rosenblat in contrast, imagines that Mexico had 800, 000. [2] In Peru the population was reduced from 7 million to 1.8 Million by 1580, Stavrianos maintains..  Some more recent estimates, like those in Stannard's  are much higher; he says Peru had 14 million inhabitants.   Las Casas estimates, as an eye witness,  that the population of Hispanola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, was 3-4 million. But based on the tribute count taken by Bartolome Columbus in 1496, the population of Hispanola was 3,770,000. But if 40 % of the Native were dying annually since 1492, as Sherburne Cook and William Borah estimate, then with other factors taken into account, the population of Hispanola was approximately 8 million.[3]  In contrast, Rosenblat is sure, with very little to back up his argument,  that Hispanola had only 100,000 inhabitants. [4]  But Rosenblat cannot be taken seriously.

            A similar debate has taken place concerning total population estimates for the Native population of the Americas prior to Columbus. Rosenblat believed that the population was 13.38 million. Denevan believes it was 53 million: Dobyns, 90-112 million. Thornton, 72 million. [5] Dobyns has increased his estimate more recently and finds reason that the total may have been 145 million. Denevan, shows a graph in one of his books which indicates that scholars have increased their estimates over the last sixty years, from Kroeber's estimate of 8 million in 1939 to Dobyns estimate of over 145 million. [6]  Most historians and demographers accept around 75 million, on average. Some 60 million of these died due to warfare, disease and other hardships caused by the Europeans. Other estimates of the dead are higher, such as Stannard who writes that the "total extermination of many Native American peoples and the near-extermination of others...eventually totaled close to 100,000,000"[7]. I suspect that Stannard is right, along with Ward Churchill, whose figures are similar. But I believe it is fair to suppose that a high average of these numbers is likely.   I will suppose, therefore, that the American holocaust took 60 to 100 million lives. I do not mean to say by this number that I know how may were killed, I mean to say that every indication supports the Native American belief that the number was very high and the atrocity was enormous.

            Much more of these death's were due to violence than most of these historians are willing to admit.  Las Casas was estimating when he said that 3-4 million was the number on Hispanola. 8 million is quite likely, since he had not seen the whole area, but what he had seen he described as the "most densely populated place in the world". [8] This is not an idle comment from a man who had traveled much of the known world and some of the unknown world of the 16th century. Writing in 1542, Las Casas estimates that, moreover, that  in the lands In Mexico, The Caribbean and South America, of which he was aware," I believe without trying to deceive myself, that the number slain is more like fifteen million". [9] He does mention some Indians dying of disease, but he maintains that European violence and cruelty is the primary cause of death. He repeatedly says in his detailed account that " I have not revealed a thousandth part of the sufferings endured by the Indians". [10] His eye witness account of this has been consistently denied by Western historians even until recently.

            The reason that some historians wish to insist on low estimates for the American Holocaust is not hard to imagine.  High estimates imply the quilt of Europeans, whereas if the numbers are small, and the death tolls are blamed on disease, then Euro-Americans have a convenient excuse.  William Borah summarizes this quite well:

The destruction of a large native population and highly organized native political and social   structures is held to mean greater European guilt because of conquest and domination; conversely, the existence of a smaller native population which underwent less loss or none at    all, and the existence of more primitive social and political structure are held to diminish European guilt.[11]

            Some of the dispute about numbers appears to be due to the refusal of many Western scholars to admit the atrocities committed by "civilization", of which they are members, as well as a continuation of the myth of some form of 'Manifest Destiny'- a belief that the benevolence of the West is god inspired and providential and cannot be questioned. The myth of the 'wilderness' is carefully cultivated, yet all the evidence suggests the Americas were densely populated. There was no 'wilderness', except in the savage hearts and minds of Europeans who projected the wilderness and savage stereotype on the Americas. The denial of  European quilt in some respects parallels the denial of the Nazi Holocaust, with the exception that those who deny the Nazi holocaust are in a minority, whereas those who deny the American Holocaust are in the majority of the official class of government, business, universities and culture.

            The causes of the American holocaust are quite simply murder, overwork and disease. Much effort has been expended by scholars to try to prove that disease was the primary factor, but it appears that Las Casas was not only right that European genocidal violence played an important part in the deaths, but also that not even Las Casas, for all his awareness of the horror brought by Europeans, could imagine the centuries of pursuit, persecution and death brought on the Native Americans.. They were killed by armies, posses, in the dark in their tents: they were chased off their lands: their land was plowed, strip mined and scared: their villages, towns and cities destroyed, social organizations were destroyed, forbidden by law or forced underground: the animals on which their lives and religion depended were shot, diminished and in some cases driven to extinction.  The 19th century historian Francis Parkman wrote that if the Indian "will not learn the arts of civilization...[then] he and his forest must perish together".[12] This attitude appears to be typical of many at the time. The Indian must be killed for his lack of knowledge of how to be a European, as if the ways of the European were worthy of imitation.

            Also,  whatever political motives the English and Dutch had for promoting  the "black legend", what Las Casas has to say is certainly not a legend and the Dutch and English were no better than the Spanish.  The Devastation of the Indies , by Las Casas, has the incontestable ring of truth to it. No one would write such a document and suffer the inevitable reactions of hypocrites, and men whose greed and power were threatened, as Las Casas did, unless they were telling the truth. Las Casas come close to being killed by landowners in Chiapas for his attempt to expose the  greed and murdererousness of those who came to exploit the Americas  Las Casas demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt the malignant nature of the European vision of America.  Europeans, not merely the Spanish but the British, Dutch and others as well, killed, by outright murder, overwork or disease somewhere between 60-100 million people. [13] Stannard  claims it was nearly 100 million.[14]

            I leave these numbers deliberately vague because the argument over numbers is not settled, and moreover is somewhat beside the point..  It is valuable that the attempt is being made, but it is unlikely that the whole truth about the American Holocaust will ever be known, simply because much of the murdering of Native Americans was never recorded.  Murderous regimes rarely admit their murders openly. The Nazis tried to hide their atrocities, just as the US has hidden the fact of killing over 4 million Vietnamese. Like the KKK, who work in the dark, behind sheets and hoods,  much of the killing of the Indians happened beyond the spotlight of historical record. they were no allied powers to assess the massacres of Indians as their were allied powers during World War II who investigated German prison camps and Polish work farms. The Indians were not only killed by governments and armies, but by farmers and settlers, railroad tycoons, cattle ranchers and others. The history of the secret killings of California Indians by bounty hunters who profitted from skinning Indians after 1850 and the Gold Rush, for instance, is only beginning to be explored. The destruction of Indian crops by wild pigs let loose by whites in New England and South Carolina is likewise unaccounted for, though the literature is full of indications of this practice. But most of the killings in the Eastern States or in Mexico and South America are shrouded in the mysteries of the past, with only dim indications that Immigrants to America or Mexico murdered Indians who stood in the way of their land and gold lust. The consistently high level of propaganda in Newspapers and books about the rapacity of the native Americans indicates a need to project on the Indians blame for the whites own rapaciousness. This, in itself, offers some evidence of hidden horrors committed against Native Americans.

            Many Euro-American academics don't think anything is real unless there is a number on it. The number of the dead killed in the American holocaust will probably never be known exactly. The death toll was enormous.  All the evidence suggests that whatever the number, Europeans are primarily responsible, both for Native and African deaths. Arguing over the precise number is somewhat like counting the  angels on the heads of a pins, when the pins are sticking into the hearts of a dead Native Americans or Africans. What is important is that enormous numbers were killed, and killed by Europeans. One should not forget the dead because of too much concern with numbers.  As Chief Seattle said,

 these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe...when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land....the white man will never be alone.[15]

             At most where it is most denied,  the Americans are haunted by a bad conscience, the dead that they have killed, figuratively speaking, throng across the American landscape, as well as through Japan, Vietnam, Africa and elsewhere.. The precise number cannot be known, though scholars will continue to argue over it.   My concern is not counting the dead, but rather to consider, from the point of view of those that were killed, the deadly ideologies of those that committed these atrocities. Las Casas was right, the Indians were killed by greedy men, some did it "openly, others secretly and stealthily". The Europeans then as now, "cannot bring themselves to relinquish the estates and properties they have usurped...and whenever killing with the sword has come to and end, they are killing the Indians little by little by subjecting them to servitude". [16] This is still partially true today, 500 years later, though the techniques are more subtle and the elaborate historical denials more sophisticated, academic and statistical.

            Whatever the total, and scholars will not doubt argue this endlessly, the death toll was enormous and is as bad, and probably much worse than what Hitler, Himmler, Stalin or Mao accomplished many times over. Each death is individual, and each of the deaths in the slave trade, the Invasion of America or the Nazi, Russian or Chinese Holocausts, were deaths of humans with rights, whose rights were violated in the name of religion, destiny , science or the realization of knowledge, truth, progress or history. Historians should be awakened to the shame that attaches to their profession, and be taught first to doubt and deplore history, before they learn to embrace the history that all too easily becomes a religion  and a justification of death.

Previous      Table of Contents       Next