Eric Vandebroeck 3 October 2007

The Scandal of the Indigenous Boarding Schools Part Four of Five

The rhetoric of contemporary indigenous politics suggests that the arrival of newcomers was an unvarnished disaster for the aboriginal peoples and their lands. While there is much truth to this assertion - there are relatively few examples of positive, well-developed and mutually beneficial relationships along the cultural frontier - it is also true that some non-indigenous peoples wrestled with and even agonized over the impact of expansion on the original societies that  included soldiers, missionaries,  government officials, and other observers who were upset about the destruction and dislocation of indigenous cultures as a result of exploration, settlement, and development.

By the early nineteenth century, when all but a few indigenous societies had been eliminated as major military threats, philanthropists and moralists began to contemplate a more positive sense of responsibility for original peoples. Criticism mounted of violent military campaigns and broken treaties. Advocates for the indigenous peoples generally shared a belief that rapid assimilation and incorporation into the developing mainstream was in the best interests of the indigenous cultures. As a consequence, these same commentators lobbied extensively for the protection of government reserves, health and education services, and a more respectful approach to the responsibilities of national governments and colonial authorities. The most important of these organizations was the Aboriginal Protection Society, created in 1836 with the mandate of critiquing British colonial involvement with indigenous peoples. The organization lobbied hard for fair and just treatment of indigenous peoples, including their right to be protected from the intrusions of outsiders. The Aboriginal Protection Society, like the churches, assumed that the indigenous peoples would be affected by settlement and industrial development; they sought to ensure that the local residents benefited from the transitions. Atrocities in the Congo attracted the attention of the APS, who protested loudly against Belgian actions. Their publicity campaigns generated widespread condemnation and demands that the imperial powers stop the exploitation. These organizations were joined by numerous missionaries, who often devoted a great deal of their effort in the field to urging the protection of indigenous rights and the preservation of aboriginal societies. They were not, as followers of the Christian church, averse to the cultures being changed radically in the process, but many were staunch defenders of the rights of the marginalized minorities.

Other organizations and indigenous advocates focused on protecting the integrity of indigenous cultures. They were drawn, often through the evocative descriptions of explorers and early anthropologists, to the characterizations of the unique, mobile populations inhabiting the isolated corners of the world. These commentators, described by John Bodley as the "Idealist Preservationists," advocated substantial reserves where the indigenous peoples could live without the intrusions of outsiders. Large tracts of land were set aside in Australia, New Guinea, several areas in the Amazon, and a few reserves in Africa, with the express purpose of protecting the indigenous way of life. Even here, of course, outsiders set themselves up as the arbiters of indigenous futures, deciding for the peoples how they should relate to the rest of the world.

In the haste to criticize the racism and expansionism inherent in the expansionist process, commentators have often underestimated the importance of newcomer advocates in the indigenous struggle. L.F.S. Upton, an analyst of the ill-fated Beothuk of Newfoundland, argued that the group died out, in large measure, because they had too little contact with the British settlers and thus failed to be drawn under the protective grasp of the church and to a lesser extent the state. In numerous other regions and countries, missionaries and government agents worked to protect indigenous harvesting, demanded government support for education and rudimentary medical care, and criticised the incoming non-indigenous population for their rapacious behaviour. More than a few of these representatives of newcomer societies "crossed over" and became outspoken advocates for the rights of indigenous peo­ples. The same churches which spawned aggressive attacks on aboriginal languages, spirituality, and cultural values also produced the first wave of indigenous rights advocates, giving national and international voice to people without the skills or connections to take their stories to a broader audience.

The first decades of contact with outsiders brought dramatic changes to the indigenous world. Violent occupations upended centuries-old relationships with traditional territories and left greatly diminished populations to cope with the mass invasion of their lands. Indigenous peoples were enslaved by the thousands and, as will be shown, killed in the hundreds of thousands by imported diseases. Even where relations were more mutually beneficial, the advent of metal tools, new economic systems, intense social contact with newcomers, and the arrival of gov­ernment administrators and agricultural settlers meant major changes for the original peoples in these areas. There was no single reaction and therefore no single outcome to this world-wide process of cultural encounter.

Very often, the newcomers spoke wistfully of the once proud and once formidable indigenous populations, declaring them incapable of adapting to the many influences associated with colonization and occupation. The outsiders assumed, from Australia to the Arctic and from Brazil to Hawaii, that the arrival of the outsiders would, invariably, result in the demise of the local population. That exact result happened in places, with the violent dispossession or other dislocations resulting in the collapse of the indigenous societies. More often, the aboriginal commu­nities faced enormous pressures to change. They lost assured access to land, faced great competition for resources, and struggled with the complexities and depredations of the newcomers. Indigenous cultures changed in ways large and small. Some learned the languages of the colonizers; others accepted incorporation into new economic, social, and political systems. Interracial sex and intermarriage blurred the lines between newcomer and indigenous populations. Falling under the control of government meant that authority passed from traditional leaders to external agents, resulting in less attention to the needs and nuances of aboriginal culture. But forecasts of the imminent collapse of indigenous values, customs and world-views proved to be wrong-headed.

Yet so, too, did the idea that indigenous cultures would remain intact. Roger Sandall, in a book entitled The Culture Cult, critiques what he called "designer tribalism" and accuses western liberals of "romantic primitivism." He accused academics and writers from Karl Polanyi to Margaret Mead of over-glorifying the less savoury aspects of indigenous life - be it coming of age rituals or attitudes toward women and human life - and of romanticizing the thus-censured social portrait. Sandall's description cut to the bone, for the indigenous-rights and aboriginal-support networks count among their number many people who offer uncritical definitions of original people's social ways. And as he points out, few of these people would choose to live themselves, or have their children live, under the strictures and values of indigenous societies that they support so wholeheartedly.

This critique of indigenous societies is hardly new. For decades, opponents of indigenous people's rights (or supporters of their assimilation into the social mainstream) have pointed out the imperfections of indigenous societies in the modern era - the absence of individual freedoms in some cultures, restrictions on women, the value attached to communitarian decision-making in most, the violence of some societies, the reality that indigenous peoples did not always live in harmony with nature and the non-materialist values of societies trapped in a materialist world. Sandall and others, while correctly pointing out the improve­ments in the human condition attributable to the same western industrial order which produced imperialism and the colonial system, make two fundamental errors. First, they fail to acknowledge that many of the elements which they critique in indigenous cultures were, at one time, integral to western belief and social systems. Second, they do not recognize that, like all human organizations, indigenous societies change over time. Just as western society stepped away from the brutal­ity of religious persecution which marred much of its history and from the excessive poverty of serfs, slaves, and the working poor, so too have indigenous societies moved beyond aspects of their cultures that were in place when first contact occurred.

Historian Alfred Crosby observation was a simple one: the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean sparked a hitherto little understood biological transformation of both worlds. In the early years of the twenty-first century, the implications of these shifts remain very much in evidence. Kudzu (imported from Africa) and Eurasian milfoil plants migrate northward in North America from the equatorial zones, displacing native species. Strange Asian fish, released into the wild by pet owners or restauranteurs, show up in eastern American states. European mussels, transported on the bottom of ocean-going ships, are deposited in inland waters, with devastating effects on local watersheds. Across Australia, millions of rabbits, descen­dants of introduced species, continue to wreak havoc on the landscape. In New Zealand, environmentalists wage a seemingly unwinnable strug­gle against the opossums which attack the unique flora and fauna on this long isolated archipelago. At a different scale, human attempts to reshape landscapes through the construction of hydro-electric and irri­gation dams have had massive and unintended impacts on vast stretches of territory. Resettlement schemes in Irian Jia, Indonesia, and forestry projects in Sarawak, Malaysia, likewise, failed to anticipate the immediate and long-term effects of rapid and ill-planned development. These modern examples, however, pale in comparison to the long and complex history of the ecological changes associated with the expansion of newcomers onto indigenous lands.

When the first European explorers set out, they wisely brought sub­stantial amounts of supplies with them. In the holds and on the decks of their ships, they carried plants and animals, planning to use them in the unknown and potentially inhospitable lands on the other side of the ocean. Unintentionally, these same ships carried hundreds of rats, which managed to get to shore, carrying both disease and the capacity to upset local ecosystems. Upon arrival, finding lands that ranged from the harsh and frightening islands of the far north to the densely forested territories of the temperate zones of North America to the jungles of the.

Amazon and Africa, the early colonizers worked assiduously to transform them into farmland and settlements. This was particularly true in the temperate zones of North and South America, southern Africa, and por­tions of South America which attracted the vast majority of the European migrants. Few gave more than a passing thought to the ecological impact of their decisions. Those who did saw the transformations in a positive light, believing that the changes added to the diversity of plant and ani­mal life and made alien spaces more habitable as, indeed, they did.

The most dramatic European addition to North America was probably the horse, an animal that had once inhabited portions of the continent but which had been extinct for centuries. The introduction of the horse transformed the very foundations of indigenous life in many parts of North and South America. The widely held image of the plains Indians astride their war and hunting ponies is, in fact, an artefact of the post-contact era. The first horses of the modern era arrived via Spaniards, who used the mobility thus afforded to extend their control over much of Mexico and Central America. Horses quickly passed through indigenous hands and spread across the Great Plains. The domesticated animals proved to be an enormous boon to the prairie hunters, for the horse improved the efficiency of the bison hunt, made travel much easier, and quickly transformed the nature of warfare in the region. By the time the first Europeans ventured into the western regions, horses had figured prominently in indigenous life for several generations. The newcomers typically assumed that the horse was a permanent part of the aboriginal way of life, as indeed it now was.

Other animals carried with them significant economic and social implications. The arrival of a variety of domesticated animals, particularly cattle and sheep, resulted in the expansion of herding and ranch­ing, thus competing for land and resources with other large game and, over time, forcing indigenous peoples away from their traditional hunts. The need to manage stock in plains areas from North America to South America and Australia brought the newcomers once more into conflict with the original inhabitants. Across South Africa, for example, Boer ranchers shouldered African peoples aside by extending their grazing range, gradually encroaching on indigenous land. Local hunters were used to harvesting what was needed from the land. The new animals were, however, viewed as personal property by the newcomers and were protected with considerable force. The arrival of herds of cattle and sheep meant, as well, greater competition for the grass and water resources of the region, resulting in a further diminishment of the open range for wild game. When, faced with hunger and potential starvation, indigenous peoples killed the domesticated animals, they incurred the wrath of the rangers and herders, thus adding to already tense situations.

The list of imported animals connected with the "Columbian Exchange" is substantial indeed. The seemingly quaint and harmless decision to carry English and European song-birds to North America resulted in the rapid diffusion of the new birds across the continent. The massive flocks of starlings that, by the nineteenth century, became a permanent feature of the continental landscape originated in this process, which capitalized on the transition of much of the land mass from forest to cultivated farms. So it was, too, with a wide variety of plants, fish species, insects, and other forms in life. In many cases, these new plants, animals, and birds found attractive climates and geographic surroundings, often shouldering aside local species in the process.

Few areas on Earth were transformed as dramatically as Australia and New Zealand. The latter was home to virtually no mammals; the birds had very few defences against predators for the simple reason that there were none. Australia is home to a wide variety of unique animals, from the kangaroo to the koala, but there were large ecological niches that remained unfilled. The rabbit, spread dramatically across the Australian continent, causing enormous disruptions in the wake of the invasion. Similarly, water buffalo brought in from Asia for agricultural purposes escaped and soon left their mark in many north­ern regions. New Zealand suffered through successive introductions of "exotic" animals and plants. Fur traders brought over possums from Australia, believing (correctly) that they would flourish in the island nation and (incorrectly) that they could be harvested profitably for their pelts. Rats that swam ashore from boats wreaked havoc on bird populations. And the many plants that the newcomers cultivated in New Zealand spread rapidly in the near-perfect growing conditions, threatening to overwhelm the native bush. One positive development, in the eyes of many, was that trout species introduced in the nineteenth century flourished in New Zealand, creating over time one of the world's best sports fishing industries.

The ecological transformation did not continue endlessly. Geography and climate restricted the adaptations of numerous species, some of which were being deliberately transplanted into newly occupied lands. The frigid lands of the far north, with short growing seasons and ferocious winters, proved impenetrable to many imported forms of life. Mountainous areas, likewise, proved more resistant than lowlands and range for wild game. When, faced with hunger and potential starvation, indigenous peoples killed the domesticated animals, they incurred the wrath of the rangers and herders, thus adding to already tense situations.

The list of imported animals connected with the "Columbian Exchange" is substantial indeed. The seemingly quaint and harmless decision to carry English and European song-birds to North America resulted in the rapid diffusion of the new birds across the continent. The massive flocks of starlings that, by the nineteenth century, became a permanent feature of the continental landscape originated in this process, which capitalized on the transition of much of the land mass from forest to cultivated farms. So it was, too, with a wide variety of plants, fish species, insects, and other forms in life. In many cases, these new plants, animals, and birds found attractive climates and geographic surroundings, often shouldering aside local species in the process.

Few areas on Earth were transformed as dramatically as Australia and New Zealand. The latter was home to virtually no mammals; the birds had very few defences against predators for the simple reason that there were none. Australia is home to a wide variety of unique animals, from the kangaroo to the koala, but there were large ecological niches that remained unfilled. The rabbit, 4lready mentioned, spread dramatically across the Australian continent, causing enormous disruptions in the wake of the invasion. Similarly, water buffalo brought in from Asia for agricultural purposes escaped and soon left their mark in many north­ern regions. New Zealand suffered through successive introductions of "exotic" animals and plants. Fur traders brought over possums from Australia, believing (correctly) that they would flourish in the island nation and (incorrectly) that they could be harvested profitably for their pelts. Rats that swam ashore from boats wreaked havoc on bird populations. And the many plants that the newcomers cultivated in New Zealand spread rapidly in the near-perfect growing conditions, threatening to overwhelm the native bush. One positive development, in the eyes of many, was that trout species introduced in the nineteenth century flourished in New Zealand, creating over time one of the world's best sports fishing industries.

The ecological transformation did not continue endlessly. Geography and climate restricted the adaptations of numerous species, some of which were being deliberately transplanted into newly occupied lands. The frigid lands of the far north, with short growing seasons and ferocious winters, proved impenetrable to many imported forms of life. Mountainous areas, likewise, proved more resistant than lowlands and coastal zones. Desert areas were also inhospitable and only the hardiest plants and animals could make the necessary adaptations. Many of the plants, animals, and other items carried from northern and western Europe did not flourish in tropical regions.

Animals transported for domestic purposes often escaped, establishing the foundation for large and disruptive feral populations. Pigs introduced by Europeans often flourished in the wild, as did thousands upon thousands of wild horses. The rabbits that overran much of Australia were initially intended to be raised for food; once allowed to roam free in the outback, however, their population exploded. Camels brought to the same continent to assist with transportation proved ill-suited to the task but those freed into the outback survived in a feral state. And so it was, in numerous locations, with cats, dogs, cattle, sheep, and other imported animals, freed to move across lands with few natural predators and therefore with limited checks on their population growth.

The sharing of biomass was not all in one direction. Plants were returned to Europe and other nations. Several New World plants particularly potatoes and corn (or maize), flourished in the Old World and became the foundation for a major population explosion. There is a ten­dency to idealize these more profitable biological exchanges but, as Felipe Fernândez-Armesto has pointed out, the sharing of maize within North America and overseas carried significant costs:

[Maize] did not make people longer or stay healthier; on the contrary, the exhumed bones and teeth of maize eaters in and around the Mississippi flood­plain bear the traces of more disease and more deadly infections than those of their predecessors. When Old World invaders adopted maize, they showed similar reluctance and even worse effects. ... Wherever it took over, similar tyrannies accompanied it: collective effort to plant, harvest, process and store it, and elites to organize its product and regulate its distribution. Soil had to be prepared in various ways according to the genus of place: earth might have to be ridged or raised; forest might have to be cleared. Surplus food demanded structures of power. Storage had to be administered, stockpiles policed.(1)

Different conditions in the Old World prevented the transplantation of a variety of highly valuable plant species - tobacco, cotton, and most spices - which could be produced much more cheaply and effectively in the land-rich colonies. Sailors carried valuable plants from the South Pacific to the Caribbean and found new places for commercial production. Rubber, tobacco, and cotton plants, for example, were moved to new colonial locations, where growing conditions suited the cultivation of the crops, where there was abundant land for commercial production and where administrative structures provided capitalists with assurances of freedom to prosper from the new economies. Animals from the vari­ous New Worlds were more curiosities than substitutes for existing domesticated species in Europe. The new and unique animals figured prominently in the fast developing zoos across Europe and were a wel­come addition to fair and circus circuits across the continent. In general, however, Europe and the densely settled parts of Asia had few ecologi­cal niches available for imported animals and plants, and only a small number of commercial crops became part of the Old World ecosystem.

The rapid expansion of settlements on indigenous territories resulted in increased competition for local resources. Miantonomo, a Narragansett, said of the newcomers, "since these Englishmen have seized our coun­try, they have cut down the grass with scythes, and the trees with axes. Their cows and horses eat up the grass, and their hogs spoil our bed of clams; and finally, we shall all starve to death. ,4 Newcomer agricultural settlements typically began along the coast and gradually moved inland, soon engulfing the temperate zones that were best suited for commercial cultivation. This meant that one aboriginal group after another found itself shouldered aside. The newcomers hunted and fished from the same resource pool that had sustained the indigenous peoples for generations. They generally did so with less discrimination and fore­thought than did the long-time residents, often resulting in a rapid depletion of game for all people in the area. When shortages occurred, and they often did as a result of poor planning on the newcomers' part, tensions arose and conflict could easily follow. The net long-term effect was that there were fewer resources to harvest and pressure on the indigenous peoples to move further afield, typically into the territory of another indigenous group.

At times, the attack on local resources was deliberate. Pastoralists saw little value and considerable threat in the continuation of indigenous harvesting. In various parts of the Australian outback, particularly the Kimberley district, local animals were shot or poisoned to make room for sheep and cows. Across the American West, massive bison herds interfered with the development of railways, ranching, and farming; at the same time, new tanning techniques increased the value of the bison for trade. Commercial hunters began to attack the herds. The blood­thirsty destruction of these animals, for profit and for sport, stands as perhaps the single best example of the incompatibility of the needs of the local ecology, traditional harvesting practices, and commercial agriculture. According to an estimate by Francis Haines, close to 6.3 million bison were slaughtered in the Kansas to Texas region in 1872-74 alone, with some 400,000 killed by plains Indians and the rest by commercial hunters. Estimates of the decline of the herds suggest that the number of buffalo fell from over 60 million before the Europeans, arrived to less than 1,000 by the end of the nineteenth century. The farmers and ranchers did not mourn the destruction of the buffalo herds, for their disappearance into tiny, protected herds left vast stretches of prairie open for agriculture. This tension between mobile indigenous populations and sedentary farmers and ranches played out in many locations around the world, as one group struggled to survive with a diminishing land and resource base and the other, sincerely believing themselves to be on the vanguard of progress and prosperity, sought the ways and means of solidifying their hold on their newly occupied and legally titled lands.

The destruction of the buffalo herds increased tensions between the plains Indians and the traders and newcomers. The conflict peaked in 1874, when Comanches in the Texas Panhandle laid siege to the trading post at Adobe Walls. A war party of some 700 warriors attacked the buffalo hunters, only to be met with a withering counterattack. The Comanches were forced to retreat, and although they and other plains Indians continued to harass the hunters, the Adobe Walls battle marked the last significant attempt to turn back the buffalo hunt. Within a decade, the buffalo had been wiped out in vast portions of the American West, driving the Indians into a state of desperation and clear­ing the way for cattle ranchers and farmers to move into the area.

The expansion of the surplus-based societies generated enormous ecological and therefore socio-cultural change. Newcomers came looking for wealth and opportunities to prosper. Amongst their vast arsenal they carried a seductive and misunderstood tool - land-tenure systems which rested on the codification, registration, and legalization of individual property rights. At its very root, this system (with its multiple variants) stood in sharp contrast to the communal, fluid, and non-proprietarial concepts of land tenure that existed among the indigenous peoples. On top of this conceptual and organizational change, the new­comers brought plants and animals which, when released into the wild to breed and compete for ecological niches, often forced out local species and thereby upset local harvesting patterns. Given that the indigenous world was based on a sophisticated and culturally entrenched understanding of the natural environment, the transformations wrought by the introduction of by the introduction of new land-tenure systems and new species often proved to be extremely dramatic.  
 

Disease and Epidemics

The ecological impact of newcomer expansion had another equally profound and dramatic element: the spread of new diseases. In the years before the age of expansion, it is hardly surprising that the various societies evolved with very little biological contact. While there were many diseases, such as yellow fever and malaria, which are specific to particular sites and ecological conditions, others developed and flourished within human societies. When a disease worked its way into a population, the people gradually developed immunity to it, turning an often-fatal ailment into a childhood disease, rather like chickenpox among the Europeans. So long as the populations remained geographically separate, diseases rarely spread between one and the other. Once exploration, trade, travel, warfare, and contact expanded, however, the biological risks expanded dramatically.

Historian Alfred Crosby has argued that the peoples of North and South America and the Pacific regions lacked immunological resistance to European diseases. In these circumstances, "virgin soil epidemics" swept through the local population, killing many, many people and undermining indigenous societies with shocking rapidity. The diseases proved exceptionally frightening to the aboriginal peoples, for they had no way to explain them within their spiritual or medicinal conceptual frameworks. Shamans or spiritual leaders, once believed to be all-powerful, had their weaknesses exposed as they failed to solve the dilemmas posed by the new illnesses. People stricken with the disease, often watching dozens of their community members die within days from the sicknesses, typically fled to neighboring settlements. Unwittingly, they took the disease with them, thereby spreading it to yet another vulnerable group. And so, with the speed of a prairie fire, the diseases sliced through indigenous populations. Wilbur Jacobs would later refer to the "fatal impact" of European expansion, in which disease devastated and undermined indigenous peoples. Some indigenous peoples shared the view that there was little that they could do to stop the destruction: as a Maori writer observed "As the clover killed the fern, and the European dog the Maori dog; as the Maori rat was destroyed by the Pakeharat, so our people also will be gradually supplanted and exterminated by the Europeans.(2)

While the indigenous peoples were not without disease in the generations before contact, they had no experience of numerous European illnesses. A Yucatan commentator said, rather uncritically, of the years before the newcomers arrived:

There was then no sickness; they had no aching bones; they had then no high fever; they had then no smallpox; they had then no burning chest; they had then no abdominal pain; they had then no consumption; they had then no headache. At that time the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here (3)

There are countless documented examples of the impact of intro­duced diseases - and there would be more save for the fact that many of the outbreaks occurred in advance of the arrival of newcomer chroni­clers of the deadly events. Smallpox, the most deadly killer in human his­tory, cut an enormous swath through indigenous societies. Smallpox devastated the peoples of Central America following the arrival of Cortez. Bernardino de Sahagün described the consequences:

[A]t the beginning of the year 152Q the epidemic of smallpox, measles, and pustules broke out so virulently that a vast number of people died throughout this New Spain. This pestilence began in the province of Chalco and lasted for 60 days. ... During this epidemic, the Spaniards, rested and recov­ered, were already in Tlaxcala. Having taken courage and energy because of reinforcements wl o had come to them and because of the ravages of the [Mexican] people that the pestilence was causing, firmly believing that God was on their side ... they began to construct the brigantines that they would need in order to wage war by water?(4)

It is important to understand the sense of trauma and turmoil associ­ated with the outbreak of a hitherto unknown disease. Thomas Herriot, writing about the impact of imported illness on Roanoke Island, said:

[B]ut that within a few dayes after our departure from everies such townes, that people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some townes about twentie, in some fourtie, in some sixtie, & in one sixe score, which in truth was very manie in respect to their numbers.... The disease also was so strange that they neither knew what it was, now how to cure it; the like by report of the oldest men in the countrey never happened before, time out of mind.(5)

The massive losses associated with the epidemics in Mexico touched off widespread suffering and panic:

It was [the month of] Tepeilhuitl when it began, and it [smallpox] spread over the people as great destruction. Some it quite covered [with pustules] on all parts - their faces, their heads, their breasts, etc. There was a great havoc. Very many died of it. They could not walk; they only lay in their resting places and beds. They could not move; they could not stir; they could not change position, nor lie on one side; nor face down, nor on their backs. And if they stirred, much did they cry out. Great was its destruction. Covered, mantled with pustule, very many people died of them.)

Disease, it soon transpired, was a powerful weapon that eased the conquest of the region. The lukagir and Nia of Northern Russia, for example, succumbed in large numbers to smallpox outbreaks in 1669, 1690-93, 1884, and 1889. The same disease swept across the Great Plains of North America in 1780-81 and again in 1837-38, killing thousands of people each time. One observer said of the 1633 smallpox outbreak, that "it pleased God to visit these Indeans with great sickness, and such a mortalitie that of a 1000 above 900 and a halfe of them dyed, and many of them did rott above ground for want of burial."' The Pueblo of New Mexico saw their population collapse, in the face of 'a smallpox epidemic, from 130,000 in 1539 to less than 6,500 in the first decade after 1700. South Australian Aborigines incurred the wrath of smallpox in 1814 and 1831, with estimated population losses of 90 percent. A smallpox out­break in California in 1830-33 destroyed close to three quarters of the Yokut and Wintun population. The Timucuans of Florida lost an esti­mated 98 percent of their people by 1800; in that region, in fact, within 250 years of initial contact, all of the indigenous people had disap­peared. Among such diverse groups as the Ache of Paraguay, the Soriano of Bolivia, and the Akuriyo of Surinam, smallpox exacted a serious toll. Even such isolated peoples, far removed from newcomer settlers, experi­enced rapid population losses due to imported disease.

Epidemic disease created sweeping devastation on its own, spreading quickly from person to person, village to village, but many indigenous people concluded that the destruction was deliberate. They attributed the outbreaks of illness to sorcery by the newcomers, superior "medicine," and any manner of supernatural or practical actions. In one of the most famous statements about the use of disease as a form of govern­ment policy, Lord ,Jeffrey Amherst instructed: "Infect the Indians with sheets upon which smallpox patients have been lying, or by any other means which may serve to exterminate this accursed race."" Contemporary indigenous observers have repeated these claims - not always accurately - reflecting the disbelief and anger with which indige­nous peoples confronted the impact of disease.

Smallpox was the most severe and most virulent killer, but it was not the only disease to cause serious difficulties. Measles, mumps, whooping cough, influenza, and many other illnesses were brought to indigenous territories by newcomers. There are stories, some of them accurate, in many different areas about poisoned blankets or other supplies, left behind deliberately to destroy the local population. The substantial truth of the matter is that disease rarely needed a helpmate. The ill­nesses had a profound impact on people who lacked the immunity or resistance that other societies had built up over the generations. Many societies suffered crippling losses. Some were wiped out altogether or suffered such grievous losses that the survivors amalgamated with other societies. In numerous locations around the world, population declines of between 75 to 90 percent were commonplace. As Henry Dobyns once observed, the American frontier was not a virgin land, as the settlers described it. Rather, it was best understood as widowed territory.

Debate continues to rage about the severity of the disease-related population loss, although most analysts argue in favor of a significant, even cataclysmic decline. Russell Thornton, in his study of the extent of population loss in North America, estimated that the decline was in the order of 90 percent or more, a massive devastation of the original peoples of the continent. The Huron of the Great Lakes region in North America were virtually wiped out, leaving a small remnant population behind. The impact was uneven. Losses do not appear to have been as severe in the Pacific Islands and New Zealand as they were in North and South America. Similarly, there is often more discussion of mortality among the newcomers to Africa than among the indigenous popula­tions. Throughout Africa, diseases like yellow fever, malaria, and other tropical maladies killed many members of the immigrant communities, turning assignments to military stations, missions, or government posts into death watches. There appears, in the case of Africa, areas in Asia, and portions of South America, to have been less indigenous population loss as a result of the importation of disease than the destruction of new­comer life through exposure to tropical illnesses.

While the precise numbers will remain lost in the fogs of historical analysis, the reality is that the diseases introduced, unintentionally or otherwise, among the indigenous peoples of the world had enormous consequences. As oral societies, these populations relied on elders to protect and preserve their traditional knowledge. A quick and deadly outbreak could and often did carry off a large percentage of the elders in a single devastating blow. It is impossible, however, to determine the precise loss in cultural and social terms, except to assume that it was typ­ically considerable. Some indigenous communities rebounded from the population loss, particularly if the deadly illnesses killed mostly the young and very old. In many instances, however, the individuals exposed to the newcomers were principally those in their childbearing years, precisely the ones that the indigenous communities could least afford to lose. There was also a cumulative effect from the impact of dis­ease. Successive epidemics - sometimes as many as one a year for a decade - devastated the societies' belief in their spiritual leaders and healers, opened indigenous minds to the potential power of the new­comers' God, and so weakened the population as to make resistance to the occupation of their lands virtually impossible. The dispiriting impact of wave upon wave of biological attack - particularly to illnesses that seemed to leave the newcomers unscathed - demoralized indigenous populations and underminçd their ability to respond as they wished to the intrusions and opportunities associated with the immigrants.

The destruction caused by introduced diseases had significant con­ceptual consequences. Because a large percentage of the population loss often occurred before the newcomers made face-to-face contact, it became easy for the new arrivals to assume that the indigenous people had very small populations, even though living in bountiful lands. This, in turn, contributed to the notion that aboriginal societies were small, inefficient, marginally sustainable, and constantly scrambling for survival. Sick aboriginal people could obviously not travel, work, fight, or otherwise contribute as much as individuals who were well. As the newcomers met yet another indigenous group reeling from the effects of a major disease outbreak, they could readily assume that the sick state was the norm. Newcomer rhetoric quickly described indigenous peoples as diseased, unkempt, and unable to care for themselves. Given that no one then understood the relationship between newcomer expansion and the outbreak of diseases among the indigenous people, it is perhaps not surprising that they reached these conclusions. These images, however, became deeply entrenched in the public's imagination and would prove extremely difficult to change in subsequent generations. Perhaps most significantly, the frequent appearance of epidemic diseases and the massive population losses experienced by the indigenous peoples in many parts of the world fed the notion that the aboriginal populations were dying and would soon disappear.

It is impossible to ascertain the precise impact of the importation of diseases into indigenous territories, in part because of other losses asso­ciated with war, acts of genocide, and the consequences of forced removals or starvation associated with the destruction of game. Because of the manner in which disease was spread between indigenous groups and in advance of newcomer settlement, it is often difficult to know the size of the pre-contact population and hence the scale of depopulation. Consider the North American situation. Before the 1960s, scholars assumed that depopulation was relatively small and, equally important, that there were very few indigenous peoples on the continent. Research by Henry Dobyns and others forced a reconceptualization of indigenous population, with the challenging assertion that the pre-contact numbers were as much as ten times higher than generally thought and, conse­quently, that some 90 percent of the people died through the first gen­erations of contact. These numbers remain a matter of debate, with some suggesting that the depopulation estimates are over-stated and others arguing that the introduction of foreign diseases represented, in Russell Thornton's deliberately provocative phrase, an "American Holocaust." A collective estimate prepared by anthropologist John Bodley argues that the global indigenous depopulation was on the scale of 90 percent, representing close to 30 million people.

Not all population loss can be attributed to disease. In many parts of the world - Latin America, Africa, and portions of Asia - the newcomers forced the indigenous peoples to work in mining camps or as plantation slaves. The aggressiveness of the new bosses, who evidenced little concern for the health and well-being of the indigenous peoples, was matched by the unsuitability of the indigenous population for the new work environment. The rapid expansion of the rubber industry in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador between 1880 and 1910 had massive impacts on the local popu­lation. The extension of ranching, logging, mining, and other industrial­age activities in many areas also had profound effects. Thousands of indigenous peoples died in various work settings, their spirits often weak­ened by incarceration, enslavement, and brutal working conditions. In an era when conquering imperial powers gave scant thought to mass death in work situations - heartlessness towards workers was widely in evidence in Europe and parts of Asia at these times - ruthless exploitation of indige­nous peoples only added to the steadily mounting death toll.

There will never be a precise definition of the full demographic impact of imported diseases. In areas as diverse as Tasmania, Australia, and the eastern Arctic in Canada, from the southern tip of South America to the Congo, careful research has documented dramatic population losses. Some groups - the Beothuk in Newfoundland, the Aborigines of Tasmania (in this case a widely repeated claim that is now disputed), the Yahgan of Tierra del Fuego, and others - were wiped out entirely. Many groups collapsed to the point of demographic unsustain­ability; the Huron of the Great Lakes, for example, succumbed in large numbers to disease and warfare in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and disappeared as a distinctive culture. Many cultures were reduced to greatly depleted remnants, struggling to survive after living through the debilitating effects of smallpox, measles, or some other disease. It is clear, as well, that the impact of disease was complicated by other transitions, ranging from spiritual uncertainty to competition for land and resources, contributing to substantial population declines.

The demographic holocaust did not end with the introduction of better medicines, or more humane imperial regimes. In the post-World War II era, indigenous groups in Brazil, Papua New Guinea, and other isolated areas who had extended contact with outsiders for the first time experienced the same "virgin soil epidemics" that had decimated other populations. The Yanomami, whose contacts with outsiders have been extensively documented, suffered through a series of debilitating dis­eases with large population losses. At the same time, missionary and governmental organizations had the capacity to respond more effectively to these outbreaks than their seventeenth- and eighteenth-century counterparts, thus ameliorating the full impact of the diseases. That the issue of biological encounter remains a matter of active concern and interest in the contemporary word is a somber reminder of how potent and destructive a force epidemic disease has been among the indigenous peoples of the world.  

 

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