Posted on 10/06/2007 6:04:49 PM PDT by shield
Ok. What does salvage come from then?
***Same happened in the Carribbean, where the Tainos and Arawaks were powerless in the face of disease, mostly smallpox.****
Actually, there are so few of these Indians because the Carib tribe was chowing down on them.
The Carribean sea gets it’s name from this tribe and the Spanish called them Canabs from which we get the word “Cannibal”.
Were these people FORCED to use the tobacco product that the Indians grew? Were they forced to puff themselves to death? You’re being very silly to carry on so.
Cannibalism was practiced extensively by the Aztecs starting as a part of state policy shortly before the arrival of Cortez. There was a “prime minister” who declared let us make them [surrounding tribes like the Tlaxcallans] our bread basket. They engaged in “flowery wars” and brought home thousands of captives who then had their beating heart cut out of their chest and then the bodies given to the people as a sort of communion. There was a definite shortage of animal protein in the diet of the people so this made a difference nutritionally. The religious sanction may have reduced any potential squemishness on the part of the populace. At any rate this is why Cortez with such a small number of soldiers was able to conquer the Aztecs. He had 100,000 angry, willing Tlaxcallan and other allies to help with the fighting.
A few decades after Cortez’s conquest there were several terrible plagues that decimated the Mexican population.
On a separate note, an officer of Pizarro’s [I think the name was Carvajal] ended up having to boat down the Amazon from the Andes to the Atlantic. He recorded a very well settled Amazon shoreline with tens of thousands of Indians. Apparently, they were pretty much gone when later explorations were made. The Indians treated these strangers reasonably well, and probably were infected with the Spaniards’ diseases by way of return.
I noted the reference to Yaws being identified in Indian skeletons from more than 1,000 years earlier. Perhaps there was some travel between or from Africa and the Americas.
someone oughta contact ward churchill.
LOL...
Small pox depopulated not only native Americans but Hawaians also. Measles nailed many as well.
Europeans had developed a "relative" immunity to these diseases due to natural selection in an urban environment. The native tribes were relatively isolated and were in essence immunological virgins.
Small pox depopulated not only native Americans but Hawaians also. Measles nailed many as well.
Europeans had developed a "relative" immunity to these diseases due to natural selection in an urban environment. The native tribes were relatively isolated and were in essence immunological virgins.
You are correct.
But my comment was reflecting new research that suggests that the populations recorded by the earliest settlers were already significantly reduced by diseases spreading ahead of those settlers.
The population of California has often been placed at about 310,000 or so in 1769, the year the Spanish first settled at San Diego and pushed on to Monterey and San Francisco Bay.
But it is now being realized that earlier visits, from the early explorers such as Cabrillo and others, may have reduced the population significantly before 1769.
Here is a link to a good article (pdf format):
thanks for the link
That does seem more likely than having leprosy epidemics in the ancient world. Thanks!
I did some research on the claims of Anasazi cannibalism — my work was between the time when the coprolite was found and when the myoglobin test results were released — proving cannibalism to a degree of certainty that would get a conviction in a court of law.
Most anthropologists today accept that cannibalism has occurred on every continent at one time or another. They stress that this one proven incident does not prove a pattern of behavior, any more than an excavation of Auschwitz a thousand years from now would summarize 20th century Europe.
It is "savages" in the Declaration.
“They stress that this one proven incident does not prove a pattern of behavior, any more than an excavation of Auschwitz a thousand years from now would summarize 20th century Europe.”
Not to be contentious, ROE, but Auschwitz does kind of summarize 20th Century Eastern Europe doesn’t it? I mean, you have endless slaughter of ethnics by the Russians, Serbs, Albanians, Greeks, Germans, etc.
I think ethnic cleansing rather defines 20th Century Europe.
I mean, you wouldn’t find a site like Auschwitz or Chechnya in 20th Century America.
My main point, however, was that Native Americans were not the philosophical, peaceful tourist attractions they are today. For the most part they were “savages” in the truest sense of that word.
“barbarian or ‘salvage” as in our Declaration of Independence,...”
***It is “savages” in the Declaration.(***
Gasp! You are right! It is in some other manuscript that they are called “salvages”.
Sorry bout that!
I thought it did but maybe I read the wrong docs many years ago. Seems as though it was between the many “Black Death” plagues.
“The term “savage” is derived from the Spanish “salvaje” meaning “one who needs salvation.”
I thought it came from the French word sauvage meaning wild. Actually I thought that salvaje meant that as well.
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