NA genocide: Is this meme factually correct?

Is this meme factually correct? The part I'm focusing on is the claim of 100 million "slaughtered". A quick check says that the Native American population north of the Rio Grande River was estimated to be only 7 to 10 million total in 1700, and 2.3 to 7 million in 1492.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of stuff that European settlers did that was repugnant, and that shouldn't have been done, but the 100 million number suggests that Native Americans would have had to be popping out babies like rabbits for any genocide to even come close to that number.



I have other concerns with the truthfulness of this meme, also, but am focusing only on the numbers here. I may or may not address my other concerns later in the thread.

ETA: Note that the meme claims truth, but no one was willing to step up and put their name or a source to it.

eh, facts dont matter too much apparently.

its interesting that they brought christianity into it for some reason so i wonder who the target is.

also, will they be showing the same ads in central and south america because im guessing similar went on there

radcen said:

Is this meme factually correct? The part I'm focusing on is the claim of 100 million "slaughtered". A quick check says that the Native American population north of the Rio Grande River was estimated to be only 7 to 10 million total in 1700, and 2.3 to 7 million in 1492.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of stuff that European settlers did that was repugnant, and that shouldn't have been done, but the 100 million number suggests that Native Americans would have had to be popping out babies like rabbits for any genocide to even come close to that number.

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I have other concerns with the truthfulness of this meme, also, but am focusing only on the numbers here. I may or may not address my other concerns later in the thread.

ETA: Note that the meme claims truth, but no one was willing to step up and put their name or a source to it.

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Notice it doesn't say "North America." or "what is now the US." It's possible that there were that many native Americans altogether, counting all of the tribes of what is now the US and Canada plus the Aztecs, the Inca, and all of the smaller groups in between. However, it's not like anyone took a census before the Europeans started spreading their diseases among the native Americans who had no resistance to them, so no one really knows how many there were. Right off hand, I'd say your "historical fact" is more hysterical fact.

radcen said:

Is this meme factually correct? The part I'm focusing on is the claim of 100 million "slaughtered". A quick check says that the Native American population north of the Rio Grande River was estimated to be only 7 to 10 million total in 1700, and 2.3 to 7 million in 1492.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of stuff that European settlers did that was repugnant, and that shouldn't have been done, but the 100 million number suggests that Native Americans would have had to be popping out babies like rabbits for any genocide to even come close to that number.

I have other concerns with the truthfulness of this meme, also, but am focusing only on the numbers here. I may or may not address my other concerns later in the thread.

ETA: Note that the meme claims truth, but no one was willing to step up and put their name or a source to it.

Click to expand...

Here is the top comment from Reddit regarding this meme.

This really isn't bad history. It's not great history, but it's not really wrong either.
It's now estimated that between 80-100 million native people may have been killed as as result of the diseases which swept through North and South America.
A Spanish priest by the name of Bartolomé de las Casas wrote in the mid 16th century that he estimated that his countrymen had killed 40 million natives.
The worst part of this history is the certainty in which it treats the numbers. We can't know for sure, and the estimates of the numbers we have are pretty wide, but the 100 million number itself isn't really bad history.
I highly recommend 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann for more information.
Edit: On second thought this might indeed be bad history if the original intent of this meme is to say that the US specifically killed 80-100 million natives. That would very much be bad history.

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Dittohead not! said:

Notice it doesn't say "North America." or "what is now the US." It's possible that there were that many native Americans altogether, counting all of the tribes of what is now the US and Canada plus the Aztecs, the Inca, and all of the smaller groups in between. However, it's not like anyone took a census before the Europeans started spreading their diseases among the native Americans who had no resistance to them, so no one really knows how many there were. Right off hand, I'd say your "historical fact" is more hysterical fact.

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I did notice that, and forgot to mention it, but "American" usually means the United States area specifically. If they meant all of the western hemisphere, then I believe they should have clarified.

MrT said:

Here is the top comment from Reddit regarding this meme.

This really isn't bad history. It's not great history, but it's not really wrong either.
It's now estimated that between 80-100 million native people may have been killed as as result of the diseases which swept through North and South America.
A Spanish priest by the name of Bartolomé de las Casas wrote in the mid 16th century that he estimated that his countrymen had killed 40 million natives.
The worst part of this history is the certainty in which it treats the numbers. We can't know for sure, and the estimates of the numbers we have are pretty wide, but the 100 million number itself isn't really bad history.
I highly recommend 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann for more information.
Edit: On second thought this might indeed be bad history if the original intent of this meme is to say that the US specifically killed 80-100 million natives. That would very much be bad history.

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Possibly. If the number is intended to mean all of the western hemisphere, which I highly suspect, but if it is, then many of those numbers were from disease. Still bad, absolutely, but most of that was not intentional, and thus not genocide. Certainly doesn't equal "slaughtered".

Not really my original purpose, but stumbled across this and found it interesting.

Don't Blame Columbus for All the Indians' Ills

Don't Blame Columbus for All the Indians' Ills - NYTimes.com

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its estimated at around 100 million for both north and south america, but every official source will say there is no way to know, settlers didn't report every single massacre, or take the time to estimate populations they were about to slaughter accurately, also the native american genocide continued well into the 1900's especially with the homesteading act, and arguably continues today especially in south america and the caribean islands so were talking about over 400 years of oppression, and genocide, making the actual numbers impossible to measure, its most likely much higher than 100 million

lb_on_teh_cb said:

eh, facts dont matter too much apparently.

its interesting that they brought christianity into it for some reason so i wonder who the target is.

also, will they be showing the same ads in central and south america because im guessing similar went on there

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I just wrote about this in another thread.
All Christians are violent in the same way that all BLM supporters are violent. Don'cha know?
Oh. And all atheists must be serial killers who defile the dead as well as a note. Because one did...

radcen said:

Possibly. If the number is intended to mean all of the western hemisphere, which I highly suspect, but if it is, then many of those numbers were from disease. Still bad, absolutely, but most of that was not intentional, and thus not genocide. Certainly doesn't equal "slaughtered".

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yeah but "slaughtered" sounds better

radcen said:

Is this meme factually correct? The part I'm focusing on is the claim of 100 million "slaughtered". A quick check says that the Native American population north of the Rio Grande River was estimated to be only 7 to 10 million total in 1700, and 2.3 to 7 million in 1492.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of stuff that European settlers did that was repugnant, and that shouldn't have been done, but the 100 million number suggests that Native Americans would have had to be popping out babies like rabbits for any genocide to even come close to that number.

View attachment 67197359

I have other concerns with the truthfulness of this meme, also, but am focusing only on the numbers here. I may or may not address my other concerns later in the thread.

ETA: Note that the meme claims truth, but no one was willing to step up and put their name or a source to it.

Click to expand...

Sorta true, but very misleading.

We do not really know the total population of "Native Americans" killed by various settlers claiming their land. Some estimates are that high, others are not near that. We cannot discount that we are talking about more than English and French settlement, but also Spanish and several others. Also, Europeans and Africans brought with them various diseases that did enough damage in their own right.

Lastly, despite all the hype to the contrary Native Americans had their own pockets of social organization. As such they were often in some condition of conflict or war with competition Native Americans. For both land and resources, right of claim, and so forth. What we do not have is anthropological or archaeological evidence that there was some utopian world where everyone in the Americas got along... then all of a sudden settlers showed up and ****ed it up. We have far more evidence that there was hunter-gatherer type migrations and competition for food and resources. Been that way ever since North Americans showed up by crossing the Bering Land Bridge from the last Ice Age allowing movement from what is now Siberia to Alaska. A common theme for Native Americans was migration to conditions, and competition for them.

Now, none of this is an argument designed to get settlers off the hook for their treatment of those who were already here.

There is some truth to the US being a nation built on the theft of land from Native Americans. Same is true of Canada, Mexico, and just about every single nation over all the Americas and surrounding islands (Caribbean Islands and so forth.) The claims of settlers were great land grabs, the treatment of those already here was harsh, and generally speaking were inhumane and grossly unfair to Native Americans.

But the meme you have posted is a bit argumentative, designed to provoke an emotional response by giving us only part of the story and perhaps inflating the numbers of who was really responsible for what.

The "Christians" part is just making matters worse.

Ntharotep said:

All Christians are violent in the same way that all BLM supporters are violent. Don'cha know?

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thats not a good comparison at all, especially since BLM is almost entirely christian and led by mostly pastors and preachers

radcen said:

I did notice that, and forgot to mention it, but "American" usually means the United States area specifically. If they meant all of the western hemisphere, then I believe they should have clarified.

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One would think so, but how else is it possible to come up with a figure of a hundred million?

But generally, the purveyors of memes don't bother to clarify anything. The OP looks a lot like some of the nonsense memes I keep seeing on Facebook. I have Facebook friends who are politically pretty extreme, and they post such nonsense from time to time.

Dittohead not! said:

One would think so, but how else is it possible to come up with a figure of a hundred million?

But generally, the purveyors of memes don't bother to clarify anything. The OP looks a lot like some of the nonsense memes I keep seeing on Facebook. I have Facebook friends who are politically pretty extreme, and they post such nonsense from time to time.

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it is a strange meme.... because technically its also saying hitler wasn't a christian.

Dittohead not! said:

One would think so, but how else is it possible to come up with a figure of a hundred million?

But generally, the purveyors of memes don't bother to clarify anything. The OP looks a lot like some of the nonsense memes I keep seeing on Facebook. I have Facebook friends who are politically pretty extreme, and they post such nonsense from time to time.

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I have FB friends who are actual Native Americans and don't post tripe like this.

Dittohead not! said:

One would think so, but how else is it possible to come up with a figure of a hundred million?

But generally, the purveyors of memes don't bother to clarify anything. The OP looks a lot like some of the nonsense memes I keep seeing on Facebook. I have Facebook friends who are politically pretty extreme, and they post such nonsense from time to time.

Click to expand...

Truth be told, I got it from Facebook, from the wall of a friend who is uber-liberal and just eats stuff like this up. I suspect he liked it and shared it because it said everything he wants to be true.

Most native Americans that died as a result of the Europeans never laid eyes on them. It is estimated that 75-90% of native Americans died prior to a European settlement ever reaching them but instead died of illnesses that spread well ahead of the Europeans themselves. Many early interior explorers found large native settlements that were deserted where all inhabitants were deceased or had fled.

I think many carry the misconception (probably in part due to Hollywood) that we actively engaged the majority of natives in warfare and directly slaughtered them. The truth is most died never having seen a European or by being purposely killed by them.

lb_on_teh_cb said:

yeah but "slaughtered" sounds better

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radcen said:

Truth be told, I got it from Facebook, from the wall of a friend who is uber-liberal and just eats stuff like this up. I suspect he liked it and shared it because it said everything he wants to be true.

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Probably so. Maybe I'll post some of the memes I'm seeing, so we can have a good chuckle and then tear them apart.

Baralis said:

Most native Americans that died as a result of the Europeans never laid eyes on them. It is estimated that 75-90% of native Americans died prior to a European settlement ever reaching them but instead died of illnesses that spread well ahead of the Europeans themselves. Many early interior explorers found large native settlements that were deserted where all inhabitants were deceased or had fled.

I think many carry the misconception (probably in part due to Hollywood) that we actively engaged the majority of natives in warfare and directly slaughtered them. The truth is most died never having seen a European or by being purposely killed by them.

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wouldn't surprise if this is true

but it would also be convenient for me

A lot of the warfare with the Native-Americans wouldn't have happened if the British hadn't ceded vast swathes of their territory to the United States (Treaty of Paris - 1783) without informing or consulting with them.

Historians estimate that before the plague, America's population was anywhere between 20 and 100 million (Europe's at the time was 70 million). The plague would eventually sweep West, killing at least 90 percent of the native population. For comparison's sake, the Black Plague killed off between 30 and 60 percent of Europe's population.

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