American Indians: Separating Truth from Fiction

One of the “legacies” of works like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is its treatment of Native Americans. People like Zinn accuse explorers and colonists of racial hatred and hostility, resulting in horrific massacres of Native Americans. He portrayed Native American societies as peaceful and environmentally conscious. This has become the mainstream perspective. But it does not reflect reality.

Exaggerated Numbers

The numbers were (likely) not as high as they are often presented. The population of all Native Americans was probably between around 10 or 20 million people. Some estimates have been way higher, which suggests that Native devastation was much higher than what the numbers actually indicated. The numbers in North America were far smaller and could have been less than one million.

“Noble Savage”

Native Americans were not “noble savages.” Native Americans were not at peace, were not all environmentally friendly, and were not permanently settled on the land. The Native cultures, like cultures on every continent, were a mixed bag. In fact, some of them were downright dreadful. For evidence, look at the human sacrifices and the skull racks of the Aztecs, or the offering of virgin girls by those at Cahokia.

Disease

Disease, not violence, was the great destroyer. First, the level of destruction is overstated. Rather than being an immediate collapse, the downfall of Native American societies, in reality, seems to be due to long-term death, lower birth rates, and assimilation. Consider the high levels of native ancestry, especially in Central America as an indicator that the devastation was not as cataclysmic as some suggest.

Of course, the spread of disease was horrific and devastating, but keep in mind that the Europeans who arrived had no idea about what would happen. Many Natives died before they ever met a European because of the rapid spread of germs and infection. European “racism” is overstated as well. Many Europeans, like Bartolome de las Casas, championed the cause of the Natives. John Eliot created a written language for Native American groups in New England in order to translate the Bible for them. New Englanders established praying towns for Native American converts to live in.

Further, Europeans did not destroy native culture. Rather, natives were quick to adopt European ideas. Europeans were ready to trade with them. Over time, many of them assimilated into European culture. Of course, many Native Americans suffered. But, for the most part, it was a horrible circumstance, not hate or malice.

For more on these considerations, there are a couple of books that I would recommend. I simply suggest these books to complicate the story that we are often told, not to endorse everything that the authors say or other positions that they might take. For example, Jeff Flynn-Paul’s Not Stolen challenges many of the myths about European maliciousness toward natives. There are places, especially regarding America’s westward expansion, where I would not go all of the way with Flynn-Paul, but the work is worth considering. Another book is Shepherd Krech III’s Ecological Indian. His work, which I read in my first semester of graduate school, challenges notions of Native Americans as models for environmentalism.

Clarifying Truth and Condemning Cruelty

We should not take all of this to justify the occasions of great cruelty. While I think that European civilization sometimes receives unjustified criticism regarding the period of exploration and colonization, that does not mean that they were always treated with justice. Many who seek to understand and explain the era of colonization also seek to justify activities of the U.S. government in other phases.

For example, during and after the Civil War, Union generals Christopher “Kit” Carson, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip Sheridan took their “total war” to the West. The record is of “scorched earth,” with brutal tactics, including killing livestock, including systematic destruction of the buffalo, burning fields, and what may be well described as massacres.

These efforts, far from being a crisis of circumstance, were the efforts of a government that had already moved these natives westward but went back on their commitment when westward expansion was too appealing. To be sure, American imperialism had not taken on its full measure, but the war dominating the South and the expansion to the West certainly previewed it.