Genocide and American Indian History

In 1848 the California Indian population was probably about 150,000. By 1860, it was only 30,000.

Direct killing was a significant factor and may have explained the majority of deaths for some nations, such as the Yukis and Yanas, but overall more people died from disease and malnutrition as they were subjected to coerced labor, land loss, destruction of game, and reservation confinement.

The death toll for all three nations—close to 20 percent—is equivalent to 60 million for the current U.S. population.

Many hundreds died during the journey west, though the “trail of tears” metaphor obscures the fact that the majority of deaths occurred in internment camps while awaiting transportation west and in the first few years after relocation.

While most scholars who have studied boarding schools regard them as oppressive institutions and would likely accept cultural genocide as an apt term for their objectives

Boarding schools have also been characterized as institutions of outright genocide on the grounds that the mortality rate (from disease) within boarding schools was very high and that boarding schools took children from Native groups and in this way prevented births within them.

to a low point (often referred to as “the nadir”) of about 250,000 sometime around 1900.

Since then, the population of American Indians has steadily increased.

but it is also due to the efforts of Native individuals, families, and nations to rebuild their communities.

Despite overall demographic growth, however, it remains possible to characterize at least some U.S. actions toward Indians during the twentieth century as genocidal.

Many writers see the massive depopulation of the indigenous population of the Americas after 1492 as a clear-cut case of the genocide. Other writers, however, contend that European and U.S. actions toward Indians were deplorable but were rarely if ever genocidal.

The most frequent charge is that the army or fur traders distributed smallpox blankets to Indians on the upper Missouri River in 1837.

Though scholars have generally accepted evidence of an intention to engage in biological warfare for the Amherst case, they have not for the outbreak of smallpox on the upper Missouri.

But the evidence marshaled thus far has failed to dislodge a scholarly consensus that the intentional infliction of disease was rare.

In an attack on the Indian town of Ouiatenon on the Wabash River in Indiana in 1791 , for example, a Kentucky militia fired on Indians in five canoes who were trying to escape.

the militiamen voted on whether or not to kill their captives. When the majority vote was tallied, the militiamen proceeded to slaughter men, women, and children alike.

This is especially so of a Colorado territorial militia’s slaughter of Cheyennes at Sand Creek ( 1864 ) and the army’s slaughter of Shoshones at Bear River ( 1863 ), Blackfeet on the Marias River ( 1870 ), and Lakotas at Wounded Knee ( 1890 ).

it is clear that the United States never intended to put to death all Indians in the territory it claimed. If that is the standard for genocide, then the term does not apply.

The threat of genocide in this very strong sense of the term played a crucial role in allowing the United States to achieve its primary goal of taking Indian lands.

Genocide and American Indian History Genocide and American Indian History Jeffrey Ostler Jeffrey Ostler Department of History, University of Oregon

Usually treated as an isolated anomaly, the Fort Pitt episode itself points to the possibility that biological warfare was not as rare as it might seem.