Native Americans

The traditional history of American Indians suggests that the massive loss of life by native peoples after 1492 was both tragic and unavoidable and was not intended by the incoming settlers from Europe. However, since the Vietnam War era, a strong counter-narrative has developed specifying that the native population was intentionally and drastically reduced by means of an American Indian holocaust. In forthright language, the new narrative charges that deception and lies were at the heart of the traditional history.

The traditionalist argument is that Indians' resistance to European diseases was low, and many fell mortally ill because of that cause. The deaths, though unfortunate, were part of the price paid for progress as Eurocentric ideas and ways of life spread westward. In this traditional view, the Indians were depicted as living in small, scattered bands of hunting and gathering tribes in North America, leading a miserable existence until the advanced culture of the settlers came along to show them a better way of life.

Waves of historians and anthropologists gave legitimacy to this line of thought by claiming that the original aboriginal population was not nearly as large as some had suggested, and that the main cause of death was disease and not warfare. Further, these historians maintain, it was inevitable there would be some reduction in population on both sides of the conflicts over land. The vacant geographic area now known as the United States was open to whoever might wish to claim it; claims to land could invite challengers. Jews and Jewish scholars also lent their collective voices to legitimize the narrative by arguing that upstart claims of an American Indian holocaust were overdrawn and inaccurate. They cited the exclusivity of the Jewish holocaust, noting that all of the other claims of genocide pale in comparison with the tragic loss of life in the Nazi concentration camps in Germany during World War II.

In the counter-narrative, holocaust writers state that the idea of “no American Indian holocaust” is one of the biggest lies ever foisted upon the worldwide public about American Indians. Several holocaust scholars have pointed out the scope of this deception. Ward Churchill, for example, contends that during the 400 years from 1492 to 1892, the Indian population was reduced from approximately 125 million to less than one quarter of a million, a reduction of about 90 percent. The causes of death were disgusting, barbaric, and unfathomable to the modern reader. The same scholars that bring evidence of these horrific deaths also unashamedly indicate that failure to recognize the carnage as genocide amounts to a denial of the American Indian holocaust, a lie that flies in the face of the statistics they provide.

These writers contend that the “outrageous” massacres during the Indian Wars, such as those at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, were simply continuations along a steady path of genocide, and were not anomalies as the standard narrative suggests. At Sand Creek in 1864, a 700-troop force of Colorado militiamen attacked and destroyed a village of friendly Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped in southeastern Colorado, killing and mutilating an estimated 148 Indians, more than half of whom were women and children. By the end of the following year, the Cheyenne and Arapaho had been driven out of Colorado. This violence warranted national attention as Congress convened hearings to investigate the use of excessive force.

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