The Role Of Disease In The Destruction Of Indian Society

There is no doubt that an immense number of Native Americans died at the hands of United States citizens and were slaughtered for trying to protect themselves from persecution allotted by the Indian Removal Act. The amount spiritual and physical damage done to the tribes that were forced to leave their homelands is simply incomprehensible. It is terrifying to see and realize that this country’s economic and geographical growth came at an awful price: the happiness and safety of thousands of innocent

Some colonists died at Jamestown because of the poor relationships they had with the Natives. First, some colonists died because of Native American attacks. This is significant because the colonists sometimes treated the Natives horribly, causing the Natives to fight back. Also, the Native Americans were forced to trade with the colonists. Because of this, the Natives retaliated and attacked the colonists.

The negative effects were mostly the destruction of the empire; after three months of conflict Cortez had finally defeated the capital city of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlan (Tucker). Cuauhtémoc, the emperor, was taken captive and later that year he was executed, and Cortez became the ruler of the vast empire (Tucker). The Aztecs were highly vulnerable to European diseases unknown to their nation, such as smallpox and typhus; in 1521, smallpox annihilated the population of Tenochtitlan, two following epidemics wiped out 75 percent of the remaining population (Tucker). The surviving Aztecs were not allowed to learn of their native culture and were enforced to read and write in Spanish, unfortunately a wide range of the Aztec religion and culture were lost forever (Tucker). Some positive aspects were that the Spanish helped ‘modernize’ the civilization, they introduced them to domestic animals, sugar, grains and even European farming practices (Tucker).

Case Study 2: Depopulation One of the most dominant issues of the British conquering lands is depopulation. Most of the depopulation originates from the disease that the British carried with them; smallpox. Although the British killed plenty of people via guns and brute force, the largest number of deaths came from smallpox. It has been estimated that, in the 20th century alone, 300 - 500 million people have died due to smallpox. One can only imagine the amount of deaths that occurred in the past where healthcare, hospitals, medicine, and more advancements were not present.

Cortez left, Captain Pedro Alvarado in charge, along with 200 of his men and left Tenochtitlan with the rest to battle Narvaez, although Cortez’s army smaller, he was able to overthrow Narvaez and convince him to ally with them too instead of fighting against him. However whilst he had been away Alvarado had become subject to a revolt due to a massacre during one of the religious ceremonies/festivals for the Aztecs. Alvarado had begun killing prominent members of the upper classes of the Aztecs in turn setting off a local rebellion. Cortez insisted that Moctezuma speak and reason with his people but this only resulted in the crowd throwing stones etc. at him and resulting in his death.

Firstly, the idea of deadly diseases that the Europeans brought into the Americas will be discussed. This resulted in a staggering number of deaths. “The death tolls from the newly introduced European diseases often reached 80-90 percent. Entire groups of people vanished before the tidal wave of disease”- Americannetroots.net December 28, 2009 by Ojibwa. If a comparison was made between the native Indians and Europeans, it was true to say that the Indians were slightly healthier.

Tens of thousands died from malaria, starvation, and mass murder by the military. 2) Genocidal aid In the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the work of humanitarian aid workers prolonged the ethnic cleansing of the Tutsi [toot-see] people, by providing protection to the Hutu [hoo-too] killers. When a military campaign eventually ended the genocide, 2 million Hutus - including those that committed genocide - fled across the Rwandan border into the neighboring country, then known as Zaire. Huge refugee camps were assembled in Zaire, which quickly became militarized by Hutu extremists. The Hutus commenced a second campaign of ethnic extermination, which led to another outbreak of war and the death of tens of thousands of refugees.

When comparing the two one has to look at the fact that individuals were upset about what happened to the United States soldiers during the Bataan Death March even though years prior the United States put the Native Americans in an identical situation during the Trail of Tears of 1838. The United State caused the death of Several Native Americans with no sympathy but willingly executed a man for doing the exact thing that their government allowed. When comparing these two major events, the Trail of Tears and the Bataan Death March, one

Aboriginal people were introduced to illnesses like smallpox, measles or tuberculosis, which were brought by the British convicts. Indigenous Australians had no immunity to these sicknesses, which led to the diseases spreading at a rapid speed and eradicating a large part of Australia’s indigenous population. According to Governor Phillip, smallpox has killed half of the Indigenous population settled in the Sydney region within a year since the First Fleet’s arrival. Moreover, Aboriginal girls

Introduction The Cambodian Genocide is one of the least known, yet most tragic and deadly genocides that happened in the 20th century. With the aim to restore the glory of pre-colonial times, which was to be achieved by purifying the Cambodian population, from 1975 to 1979 the Khmer Rouge regime killed between two and three million of the 8 million population (Kissi, 2004). The victims of the regime were the Vietnamese minority, which was completely swept out of the country by deportations or mass killing, the Cham Muslims and Buddhists, who were either completely transformed or massacred, and half of the half million large Chinese community, which was either worked to death or deported (Kissi, 2004). However, while the regime relentlessly

Diseases probably played the biggest role in the collapse of the Incan empire. Shortly before the arrival of Pizarro, the smallpox epidemic had just killed the Incan emperor and most of his court. Then, there was a civil war between Atahuallpa and his brother Huascar regarding who should be emperor next. If it had not been for the epidemic the Spaniards would have faced a united empire. 23.

In the end the war caused hundreds of Indians and colonist deaths and towns and villages destroyed. One of the worst attacks was Bacon 's rebellion. About a thousand Virginians broke out of control in 1676 led by Nathaniel Bacon. They resented Berkeley 's friendly policies toward indians (Document B). Chaos swept over the Indians and the rebellion.

According to Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900. This drop was caused in part to the smallpox epidemic that swept the native tribes killing vast numbers, the push into their land and the reservations we established on the principle of our freedom but taking away theirs was an overlooked atrocity that shouldn 't have happened. Additionally the wars to oust the settlers was more than justified by the actions of those in jamestown and other first generation colonies.

Native Americans were seen as warlike savages that often fought with their European counterparts; however, the reality of Native Americans was that they lived a simplistic life and had a scare population within their tribes. Native Americans were viewed as warlike savages—namely, they invaded Europeans settlements in which were built on Native Americans land—however this is a stereotypical view and not the actual truth. Manifest Destiny led to these beliefs because of the Americans concept of expanding westward. According to a source, there was a plague that had killed 90% of Native Americans before Christopher Columbus arrived to North America. Native Americans populations already faced a drastic decline, with the Europeans diseases and expansion

With the first wave of Spanish colonization of the New World, many indigenous peoples were killed and their lands were seized and their way of life was destroyed (Tindall 26-27). When the Spanish showed up, they greatly overpowered indigenous peoples. They had iron, seafaring vessels, firearms, explosives, and swords, with indigenous peoples had copper, dugout canoes, arrows, and tomahawks (Tindall 27). This is immoral because the indigenous peoples would have no chance against the Spanish, and killing the indigenous people was senseless since they couldn’t fight back well anyway. When indigenous people were threatened by people in a village Columbus left behind, they attacked, killing ten people, only to lead to a retaliation that decimated their numbers (Tindall 21).