By 1648 about 90% of the Indians had died of disease ~ at this point in time the reigning theory is they died of hanta virus (which was a recurring problem in the Americas, not something brought from the Old World).
I once read an analysis that was rather persuasive. Let's say you lined up all the Spaniards in the New World from roughly 1500 to 1600 on one side, and then you had all the Indians who'd lived here at any time in that century line up and begin marching at the Spaniards where they would be instantly chopped down (with their bodies instantly disappearing).
The Spaniards would soon be overrun and the Indians would keep on coming.
Viewed as an invasion the movement of the Old World peoples to the New World required resources that were simply not available at the time. Only the rich had boats. Virtually everyone else was poor as a church mouse. Those boats had very limited capacities, and it wouldn't be until the late 1600s until anyone figured out how to move large numbers of humans in boats across the Atlantic.
There were tens of millions of Indians. They'd been here a long time and occupied an enormous percentage of the land. They excelled in the domestication and development of fruits and vegetables.
In short they were well prepared to take advantage of the newcomers. Alas, they didn't get the chance because they were killed by one of the great plagues that periodically swept the Americas.
All of that means that Michael is more than willing to believe lies about things that never happened.
Someday he will be struck down by the viruses that live and breed in large Hoagies everywhere. He will blame it on the Olive Oil and the Greek slave masters who poisoned him.
While most of the Indians who died, died of disease, it is a fact that the Massachusetts and Maine colony legislatures voted to pay a bounty for Indian scalps, a higher price for men’s scalps, a lower price for women’s and children’s, in order to kill off or drive away the tribes who kept making raids on the towns. This is genocide even if it was a local and time-limited genocide, even if it was a response to attacks.
The Great Migration, of Puritans to New England, was between 1620 and the early 1640s. Nearly all of my New England ancestors arrived then, not later, and they multiplied. Northern New England was mostly settled by Great Migration Puritans. The natural increase was greater in the 1700s, the 1600s being hard times, what with hunger, Indian attacks, and disease (from being hungry, and crowded in fortified towns to escape Indian attacks.) Immigration stayed relatively low until the 1800s.
Hanta virus: carried by rodents. Europeans aren’t immune. If it was a New World plague, the Indians ought to have had better immunity than the Europeans. My vote is for Old World diseases, small pox, measles, influenza, etc.
Either way, I’m not consumed by white guilt or victor’s guilt or better immunity guilt.
If you take the entire north american continent, maybe. Although the numbers are in dispute, the indian population of north america probably numbered around ten million with the great bulk of the pre-european settlement indian population of it in central america. North of the Rio Grande, the Indian population most likely didn't number over a few million. Hunter-gatherer societies simply do not generate mass amounts of people. The europeans who settled the land north of the Rio Grande faced a virtually uninhabited land for the most part. In fact, the land west of the Missouri River and east of the Sierra Nevadas, is still largely unpopulated.