Opinion Editorial

Published : 21 Jun 2018,

The less hyped genocide in history

Tracing the cultural holocaust of native Americans

By : Avik Gangopadhyay

Thousands of years before Christopher Columbus' ships landed in the Bahamas, a different group of

people discovered America: the nomadic ancestors of modern Native Americans who hiked over a “land

bridge” from Asia to what is now Alaska more than 12,000 years ago. These people would come to be

called Native Americans, numbering over 50 million, and settling from the top of North America to the

bottom of South America.

The Native Americans’ history began thousands of years ago but their European encounter started with

one man. Determined to find a direct route from Europe to Asia, Christopher Columbus stumbled on the

Americas in 1492. Columbus called the first people he met ‘Indians’ because he assumed he had been

sailing in the Indian Ocean. But in actuality, this land had already been discovered– millions of Natives

had occupied the Western Hemisphere for hundreds of years.

By the time Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492, historians estimate that there were

10 million indigenous peoples living in US territory. But by 1900, the number had reduced to less than

300,000.

Genocide is as old as history. It has been a part of the human condition from the very beginning. There

are two main forms of genocide. One is direct genocide, a deliberate campaign to kill all members of an

ethnic group. The second form of genocide is indirect genocide, which achieves the same result by

seizing or destroying the land, the crops, the livestock and other essential items needed for survival.

In the European conquest of North and South America both forms of genocide were used. There was no

one back in the time of Columbus compiling a census or doing a mass survey. A death toll of 100 million

figures has been documented by D E Stannard, author of American Holocaust. He wrote, "The

destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the

history of the world." Apparently it didn't take long for the Europeans to get this genocide started.

Today there are only around 5 million Native Americans left in the United States (Navajo Times). It is

unlikely that the area encompassing the U.S. only had 5 million people when the Europeans arrived.

After all, as a point of comparison, the population of Africa had approximately 86 million people in the

year 1500 (Demography: Analysis and Synthesis, Four Volume Set: A Treatise in Population, p 42).

European expansion into North America – whether to find gold, escape religious persecution or start a

new life – led to the destruction of Native American livelihoods. Disease was a major killer, followed by

malnutrition. Colonists in search of gold staged violent ambushes on tribal villages, fuelling animosity

with natives. Several wars broke out between tribes and American settlers which led to large death tolls,

land dispossession, oppression and blatant racism.

According to Necrometrics, by as early as the 16th century, the Native American death toll had already

reached an estimated 60 million.

In 1561, the Spanish historian Bartolomé de las Casas, wrote that Spanish colonists had slain 12 million

men, women and children in 40 short years. (A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Bartolomé

de las Casas 1552). American Colonies, Volume 1 of The Penguin history of the United States, History

of the United States Series by Alan Taylor, also discusses the different theories about how many Natives

populated the Americas before European colonization.

The American Indian Holocaust, known as the “500 year war” or the “World’s Longest Holocaust in The

History of Mankind And Loss of Human Lives” was a genocide, which is denied. John Totland in his book

Adolph Hitler (Pg. 202) writes “Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of

genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the

camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his

inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination – by starvation and uneven combat --- of the red

savages who could not be tamed by captivity.”

To this day, some people dispute whether the Native American genocide by the US ought to be called

“genocide.” Even academic writers have trouble acknowledging the historical record. Gary Anderson, for

example, wrote Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian, a 2014 book of more than 400 pages, filled with details

about the principal actors in the American effort to eliminate Indians---and argued that this was not

genocide.

Native Americans have the highest mortality rate of any US minority because of US action and policy.

The biggest killers though were smallpox, measles, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus,

bubonic plague, cholera, and scarlet fever but they were all imported by the Europeans colonists.

The Native American Indians felt comfortable with the environment, close to the moods and rhythms of

nature, in time with the living planet. Europeans were quite different, viewing the earth itself as lifeless

and inorganic, subject to any kind of manipulation or alteration. Europeans tended to be alienated from

nature and came to the New World to use the wilderness, to conquer and exploit its natural wealth for

private gain. But for American Indians, the environment was sacred, possessing a cosmic significance

equal to its material riches. The earth was sacred --- a haven for all forms of life --- and it had to be

protected, nourished, and even worshipped. Chief Smoholla of the Wanapun tribe illustrated American

Native reverence for the earth when he said in 1885:

“God said he was the father of and earth was the mankind; that nature was the law; that the animals, and

fish and plants beyond nature, and that man only was sinful:

You ask me to plow the ground! Shall I take a knife and tear my mother’s bosom?

Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest.

You ask me to dig for stone! Shall I dig under her skin for her bones?

Then When I die I cannot enter her body to be born again.

You ask me to cut grass And make hay and sell it, and be rich like white men!

But how dare I cut off my mother’s hair?

American Indians’ agricultural and medical wisdom had been ignored by the European invaders. In their

rush to control the land and people much has passed them by and much has been destroyed. Sadly,

what seems to have been almost totally ignored is the American Indians’ knowledge that the Earth is

their mother. Because their mother continues to give them life they must care for and respect her. This

was an ecological view of the earth.

Today there are over 500 Native American tribes in the United States, each with a distinct culture, way of

life and history. Even today, Native Americans face large challenges to cope with the disadvantages

history has left them and ongoing cases of discrimination.

A troubling reality is the religious justification for genocide, the conquest of North America, the largest

campaign of racial warfare in history. Religions celebrate and endorse genocide. The "good guys" in a

religion are the people who commit genocide. Religious totalitarianism is also framed as a very desirable

goal. The "good guys" are the people who slaughter people of other religions, and stamp out other

religions, and crush any other form of religion. The "bad guys" are the people who tolerate supposedly

false religions. The Puritans and other American Christians openly proclaimed America as the new Zion

and celebrated the slaughter of the native Americans.

Forced removal from homelands and forced assimilation were justified as the Europeans saw

themselves as the superior culture bringing civilization to an inferior culture. The colonial world view split

reality into popular parts: good and evil, body and spirit, man and nature, head and hear, European and

primitive.

American Indians spirituality lacks these dualisms; language expresses the oneness of all things. God is

not the transcendent Father but the Mother Earth, the Corn Mother, the Great Spirit who nourishes all. It

is polytheistic, believing in many gods and many levels of deity.

Culture is the expression of a people’s creativity — everything they make which is distinctively theirs:

language, music, art, religion, healing, agriculture, cooking style, the institutions governing social life. To

suppress culture is to aim a cannonball at the people’s heart and spirit. Such a conquest is more

accomplished than a massacre. Colonization materially kills the colonized, “Colonization distorts

relationships, destroys and petrifies institutions, and corrupts....both colonizers and the colonized.”

Scholars opine the “final solution” of the “North American Indian problem” was the model for the

subsequent Jewish holocaust and South African apartheid. Yet, why is the biggest holocaust in all

humanity being hidden from history? Is it because it lasted so long that it has become a habit?

Today historians, anthropologists and archaeologists are revealing that information on this holocaust is

being deliberately eliminated from the knowledge base and consciousness of North Americans and the

world. The cultural anthropologists are “still experiencing the cultural genocide.'

Even today Native Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 have higher rates of suicide than any other

ethnicity in America. School children are still being taught that large areas of North America are

uninhabited as if this land belongs to no one and never did. The role of the ancestors as caretakers is

constantly and habitually overlooked by colonial society.

Avik Gangopadhyay, based in Kolkata, India, is an educationist,

author and columnist

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