actually titledAmerican Holocaust(by David Stannard). The questions were,
simply, Just how many innocent natives died as a result of European im-
perialism? Just how guilty should Europeans’ numerous American descen-
dants be? More recently, and hardly dismissing the scope of the American
catastrophe of –ca. , a compromise reflecting good (albeit incom-
plete) archaeology and anthropology has emerged.
Shepard Krech, calmly synthesizing the ‘‘sensible’’ as well as recent re-
search, suggests a figure between and million. Calculation of regional
population densities, however, necessitates a low total of about million,
which can be reliably documented in detail. The higher numbers of and
million require simply the multiplication by two or three of the following:
Of a North American estimate of ,,, the population of the South-
east in was about ,, with a density of per square miles.
This figure was the densest in the eastern two-thirds of the continent. (The
density in the Northeast was ; the Plateau, ; the Plains, ; Great Basin,
.) California had the densest native population, at ; the Pacific north-
western coast followed at , then the Southwest with .
Thereafter all totals (whether or not multiplied by two or three) declined,
occasionally in a terrifyingly short time, as virgin-land epidemics swept
away thousands, destroyed polities, and forced evacuations of survivors
and mergers with remnants of other peoples. Inexorable transformations
of landscape doubtlessly contributed to natives’ distress and pathos. Defor-
estation (by Indians and by Europeans), the elimination of game and trade
animals, the manifold disturbances not only of Europeans themselves but
of their trampling and routing animals, and then the invasions of European
plants—wheat, turnips, and countless ‘‘weeds’’ now assumed native, such
as dandelions—stripped the Indians of their places, cultures, orientations,
and existences.
Surely European imperialism was as ecological as it was military and
economic. Yet natives’ cataclysmic diminution cannot simply be termed
ecological. After all, European landscapes themselves had been deforested,
overrun with fenced farms and hordes of animals, too. Yet in , En-
gland’s population density was , per square miles; France’s, ,.
It was the killing of humans, by war and privation but primarily by dis-
eases, that accomplished the horrific work. So in the South, where in
the population was percent native, by it waspercent.
tSave substantial remnants of the ‘‘Five Civilized Tribes,’’ most of them
bound for exile in the Territory during the s, the South was a coun-