It was not Americans who did not murder 100 million Native Americans, but diseases! Personal Opinion

It was not Americans who did not murder 100 million Native Americans, but diseases.

One such meme or, as it were, argument that has been extremely trending on social media is as follows: Americans killed 100 million native Americans.

To begin with, it is ridiculous to say that there were 100 million native Americans inhabiting the north American continent. By 17th century, there were up to 18 million native Americans residing in North America. Generally, It is approximated that the pre Columbian population of the Native people in the BOTH South and North America was between tens of millions and over 100 million people in the 15 th century. Whichever the case, the population of the natives reduced to less than six million by 1650 in South America (as estimated by the Spaniards) and in North America the population ranged between several millions and 18 million during the periods. Should you wish to accuse someone of the death of the Native Americans, in south and north America, you should accuse the bubonic plague, chicken pox, pneumonic plague, cholera, diphtheria, influenza, measles, scarlet fever, small pox, typhus, tuberculosis and whooping cough that was being ferried across Europe by the European settlers and colonists unintentionally. These are the diseases that Europeans were mostly immune to yet the natives were not and were transferred across the Atlantic ocean in their flesh, the animals they carried with them, ships and even the clothes and tools they used in the new world.

The very nature of the epidemics with such scale was apocalyptic in nature and the death toll of up to 90 percent of the population in the worst hit regions was in itself a disaster, not even to be surpassed even by the catastrophe that was the Black Death of medieval Europe.

The arrival of European settlers in North and South America exposed more of the native population, and they were eliminated as a consequence. In reality It was the European germs who did the bulk of the actual conquest of South and North America as they killed off the local population and literally depopulated both South and North America of their indigenous populations. These were already germs and diseases that were introduced in South America back in 1492 with the first voyage of Christopher Columbus and the discovery of South America after that. They started their journey upwards starting South America and caused inconceivable destruction to the locals of North America. It is estimated that the majority of the local population that succumbed to the contraction of these diseases tens and tens of millions perished in the 16th century and the dawn of the 17th century. According to historians, had it not been the pandemics that swept across the continent empires like the Inca and Aztec would have never succumbed to the Spanish conquistadors and the Native American population in the North and South would have resisted the Spanish colonialists with more success.

Aztecs Dying of Small Pox, 16th Century.

It is worth mentioning that the European settlers, otherwise known as colonizers, were unaware of the disastrous impact on the population they made on the natives. Their use of their diseases as a form of bio weapon against local native populations, whether it was by providing them with blankets or other items infected with contagious diseases (except one case of one British officer) is simply a historical myth. But this by no means can be construed as defense of horrendous, brutal crimes and actual conquest of Spanish, English, French and American colonists against the indigenous local population of south and north America. Crimes that were characterized by enslavement, massacres, rape and plunder at an industrial level, destruction of entire civilizations and lifestyles, and the displacement and ethnic cleansing of entire peoples and human beings. But one should not forget that in the first place, the deaths of the vast majority of the local population in the Americas were caused by diseases, not by people and by no means by Americans or the USA that did not even exist in that epoch, and which so loudly promulgate themselves on the internet. 

Bibliography - Guns, Germs, and Steel. by Jared Diamond. Born To Die: Disease and New World Conquest. Noble David Cook, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. by Charles C. Mann.

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