this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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Many weren’t intentional though. There was diseases spread initially by livestock that killed many of that 3.6 million.
Yes, there absolutely were intentional campaigns of genocide but a lot of natives just caught the flu and had zero defense to it. Nobody intentionally gave them the flu because many of these people never saw Europeans.
I have a suspicion that if it weren't for all the disease the colonizers would have destroyed them anyway.
Also nobody intentionally made them deathly ill? Smallpox blankets.
You're not wrong.
However, it is worth pointing out that the documented "smallpox blankets" stuff happened in the 1700s and 1800s, which was already a century or two after the continent had been greatly depopulated by diseases spread unintentionally.
Good point, I didn't think about that.