Last Sunday, I was talking to a few of my friends, and mentioned stuff that happened over a previous Columbus Day Weekend. Someone "corrected" me, saying it is "Indigenous Persons Day." I snapped at him, saying, "I am sick and tired of being told we're bad people, that we don't belong here." I feel that there have been many movement of peoples around the earth, and the primitive people almost always lose the argument.
I also feel that smallpox, diphtheria and typhoid, originally spread by de Soto's horses left being, deserve a large share of the blame. The book
1491: The Americas Before Columbus by
Charles C. Mann posits that horses and rats were that vector and suggests that much of North America's Native American population was reduced by 90% to 98% by the spread of those diseases. In other words the migrant European population found far fewer Native Americans than had existed half a century before. If the native population was dense enough to have the famous major Aztec, Mayan and Inca cities and in the Midwest cities such as Cahokia, there was enough population to support transmission of highly contagious diseases.
It's a given that Africa and Asia largely held European invaders at bay; the Americas' and Australia's did not. European presence and penetration in Africa and Asia, on the same landmass, was quite minor, like likely because the population was dense and its leadership relatively intact. Smallpox, diphtheria and typhoid raced through the native populations in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. In addition to the numbers killed, their leadership was decapitated, resulting in disorganization. I would like the shamers of relatively advanced Europeans to at least be honest.
We have the right to be here, and we are imperfect, but good. The Aztecs and Mayas were nothing to write home about.
