European Colonists and Native Americans:

“So the claims of genocide by disease have almost nothing to do with European actions, apart from their simply reaching the New World. And of course, Europeans of the time had no way of envisioning the continent-wide epidemic repercussions of their actions. Verdict: not guilty.”

“In most of North America, the idea that any one piece of land belonged to any one tribe, for more than 50 or 100 years, is therefore highly questionable.”

“​Let us also acknowledge that Native American society was just as warlike as any other in human history.”

“The anthropologists’ vision of Native Americans as peace-pipe-smoking environmentalists which gained purchase in the 1970s has long since given way to a more Hobbesian portrait of pre-Columbian reality.”

“​The idea that the Europeans stole some land which had belonged in perpetuity to any one tribe is therefore ludicrous.”

“The situation in most of North America was similar to northern Europe on the eve of the Germanic migrations, or western Europe as the Celts were moving across the landscape. Precisely to whom the land belonged in any given century at these periods in history was anyone’s guess.”

“Despite a few sensational cases of duplicity, most of the time, Europeans tried to buy land from Indians, just like they would buy an acre of land in England. If the local chief assented to this and liked the price, where then was the crime?”

“Musket use by natives depleted animal stocks at a higher rate than previously, meaning that the very introduction of firearms might have spelled the doom of hunting and gathering in North America in the long run, even if the Europeans had otherwise left the country alone.”

“Another major structural issue is this: what precisely would our pious anthropology professors have had Europeans do with the New World once they found it?”

“​This is not a joke. Political reality has a way of crashing in on the pipe dreams of liberal academics. The reality is, if the English had not colonized, then the French or the Dutch would have. If the Spanish had not colonized, the Portuguese would have.”

“This would have shifted the balance of power at home, and any European country which had not colonized, would have been relegated to secondary status. And it is easy to overestimate the amount of control that European governments actually had.”

“As soon as the New World was discovered, many fisherman and traders sailed across the Atlantic on their own, in hopes of circumventing tax authorities and scoring a fortune.”

“Long before colonies were established in most regions, the New World was crawling with Europeans whose superior technology gave them an edge in combat.”

“In retrospect, one could in theory be impressed that so many European governments showed a genuine concern to rein in the worst excesses of their subjects, with an express eye to protecting the Indians from depredation."

“The logic was simple: they attempted to protect their subjects at home, in order to secure good order and a better tax base. So they would do the same to their subjects in the New World.”

"​​Population density mattered, a lot, when it came to pre-modern global migrations. China and India were ‘safe’ from excessive European colonization because they had the densest populations in the world and they were likewise largely immune to any diseases brought by Europeans.”

“Sub-Saharan Africa had a lower population density depleted by slave raiding, but they still outnumbered European colonists by a large margin throughout the colonial era—again because European contact did not decimate their numbers through disease the way it did in the Americas.”

“It is worth noting that no one claims that Europeans committed genocide in India, Asia or even Africa, although their technological advantages gave them every opportunity had they actually been of a genocidal mindset (as were for example the Mongols).”

“In fact, the European track record shows them to be almost shockingly un-genocidal, given their clear technological advantages over the rest of the world for a period of several centuries.”

“Few other civilizations, given similar power over so much of the world’s people, would have behaved in a less reprehensible manner.”

“This is not to give Europeans a pat on the back. Rather it is to point out that Europeans are regularly painted as the very worst society on Earth, when in fact they had the power to do far, far more evil than they actually did. Let us at least acknowledge this fact.”

“​The mixed farming/gathering economy of most Native Americans, coupled with vulnerability to Old World diseases, therefore meant that North America was sparsely populated by the time Jamestown was founded in 1607, and unable to replace missing population at a very high rate.”

“​This brings the question of how cultural adaptation works. Many people have been told on social media that Europeans destroyed Native Culture. The problem is this: whenever a good idea comes along, which clearly increases one’s living standards, one tends to adopt it.”

“And who is to say that this adaptation is bad, especially if it results in higher living standards?”

“Even as they discovered America, the Europeans were in the process of adopting dozens of superior Chinese inventions and ideas: paper money, gunpowder, pasta and fine porcelain are only the most famous.”

“Should we accuse China of ‘cultural imperialism’ when they ruined ‘native’ Italian cuisine by introducing Marco Polo to spaghetti?”

“Similarly, Native Americans were quick to adapt the many useful Old World ideas which Europeans happened to carry with them. To reiterate, most of these had not even been invented by Europeans, but had been adopted by Europeans from other Old World cultures.”

“Why grind corn laboriously by hand for several hours a day, when one can use millstones instead? Why hunt with bow and arrow, when one can use a rifle? Why refuse to domesticate cattle, when they provide huge boosts in caloric intake for your family?”

“Why refuse to adopt the wheel, for goodness sake?”

“​By the time Columbus set sail, then, the Old World had dozens of clear technological and institutional advantages, which for the most part, New World populations were eager to adopt as soon as they saw them.”

“Rather than jealously guard their technological superiority, many Europeans were ready to trade anything that Native Americans might want, including firearms.”

“This made it inevitable that New World society would be changed beyond recognition, once sustained contact was initiated.”

“What about Columbus himself? Try as they might (and they have tried mightily), historians have been unable to find any evidence that Columbus was genocidal, or had any particular ill-will towards the Native Americans that he encountered. The guy lived in 1492.”

“We could have forgiven him for literally ‘going medieval’ on any natives that he encountered.”

“This was the same century in which the Mongols were exterminating every Russian, Muslim and Chinese person that they could get their hands on, sometimes slaughtering over 100,000 men, women and children at a go in some of history’s worst blood orgies.”

“Instead, we find in Columbus’s journals a general sense of curiosity, of wonder even, and a genuine desire at many points to communicate and trade with natives, whose help Columbus realized he would need if his little expeditions were going to be successful.”

“Let’s remember that Columbus was first and foremost a merchant. His main purpose was to open a trade route to China. Europeans realized that China had better stuff.”

“Like expert businessmen everywhere, Genoese merchants had long since realized that attacking the people you want to trade with is counterproductive.”

“From the get-go, Isabella of Spain expressly forbade the enslavement of her New World subjects. Instead, she showed a genuine desire to bring them into what for her constituted the folds of civilization, as Christian equals.”

“So historians must grudgingly concede that the Spanish Crown, for its part, was likewise not nearly as bloodthirsty, genocidal or racist as they clearly hope to find.”

“The priest Bartholomé de las Casas wrote an eloquent plea to the monarchs of Spain in the 1540s chronicling in detail how wonton adventurers had taken advantage of the lawless situation in New Spain to exploit and slaughter natives against the express will of the Spanish Crown.”

"A few things are worth noting: A) at least some Spanish people already had a genuine sense of compassion for, and desire to save, the Indians. B) Las Casas assumed that there was enough sympathy for his story at the Spanish court that he presented his book to the crown.”

“Las Casas believed, therefore, that compassion for the Native Americans was, or at least could become, the dominant mood at court.”

“​Likewise, the relationship between English colonists in North America and Native Americans was never one-sided. To borrow a phrase from Facebook, the real historical relationship between these peoples is best described as ‘complicated’.”

“The very first Native American chief who encountered the English, Powhatan, almost immediately expressed an interest to live in an English-style house.”

“He considered it to be superior to the types of houses that his own people built, and he was ready to adopt whatever European ways made his life more comfortable.”

“John Smith is supposed to have built him such a house in his capital of Werowocomoco, and to this day a monument called ‘Powhatan’s Chimney’ purports to be the remains of this house.”

“Many such acts of cultural borrowing were at work in English North America. We will say nothing of the many Native American habits that English settlers gratefully adopted, since this would be angrily dismissed as ‘cultural appropriation’ or some other such bad-faith nonsense.”

“​The story of Powhatan is outshined by the biography of his daughter Pocahontas. Of course there is much legend attached to this and there will be a ‘whitewashing’ of the legend.”

“However, we have eye-witness accounts attesting that Pocahontas and other native children were in the habit of turning cartwheels around the Jamestown fort and playing with the boys there.”

“Pocahontas and her friends are credited at one point with bringing provisions into the fort when the colonists were starving. Like any other neighbours, the settlers of Jamestown and the natives of the region had individual personal relationships that lasted for many years.”

“Pocahontas was captured in war, kept under house arrest, and eventually freed. In 1613, she converted to Christianity and took the rather less interesting name of ‘Rebecca’.”

“She was given away by her father Powhatan to the successful Jamestown planter John Rolfe, and the two of them were given an estate totalling thousands of acres by Powhatan himself. Was this land ‘stolen’ from the Native Americans?”

“In 1616 Pocahontas accompanied her husband to England, where she was treated as a celebrity, and an example of how the natives could be ‘civilized’. One can read this suspiciously, as any good Liberal critic is now taught to do, as an act of ‘white superiority.’”

“Or one could accept it at face value, as proof that many English people believed Native Americans to have the same innate human abilities as Europeans. Arguably, this is the exact opposite of racism. (Notice we don’t even have a word for this.)”

EVE NOTE: When I first saw Disney’s Pocahontas in the theater, at the end of the movie, I stood up and cried out “Lady Rebecca Rolfe, ladies and gentlemen!” and started clapping.

“There is therefore little real mystery of what happened to the Native Americans as a culture. They were certainly not exterminated at the behest of any concerted ideology of hatred or European superiority.”

“After the initial disease-caused die-offs, and in spite of a few sensational wars and small-scale massacres, remaining Native Americans adopted so many Old World ‘life hacks’ that most of them were gradually assimilated into European culture.”

“Only a minority stayed ‘wild’ enough to be placed on reservations. Even after that, many enterprising people left for a better life elsewhere. This was done on an individual basis for the most part peacefully and willingly leaving no fuss or much trace in the historical record.”

“The stories of Powhatan and Pocahontas attest to the presence of this pattern at the dawn of English-Native American relations, and it continues to the present day.”

“Now, such a statement would cause an uproar in almost any academic conference room these days. But the majority of the evidence and experience all points in this direction.”

“Who in their right mind would live in the woods, if they could live a far more secure life on a farm? This was the 18th century we are talking about, when life was hard enough for the great majority of Europeans.”

“The Native Americans therefore showed common sense by gravitating towards habits which enabled them individually to survive and thrive.”

“​The question becomes, what good purpose does this calumny against the Pilgrims and other European colonists really serve? I ask this question in good faith. What myth about the Pilgrims needs tearing down with such one-sided ferocity?”

“On this issue, it’s more difficult to see the value of Pilgrim-bashing to today’s Native Americans, apart from making them bitter and resentful, and everyone else feel guilty and ashamed. There are after all very few Native Americans who identify as such.”

[EVE: Because it isn’t *meant* to *help* native Americans. It is meant *only* to re-write the American narrative of being one of unrelenting racism and evil.]

“Whenever there are real grievances, do we need to rewrite the entire history of European-Native relations in the most negative possible light in order to address them?”

“Peel back the veneer, and we often find well-meaning white middle-class writers, whose cries of victimization bespeak an essentialising racialism that they don’t even recognise themselves.”

“Would it not be more productive to be more nuanced, to acknowledge that there have been points of goodwill, friendship, positive communication and — shudder the thought — even mutual benefit, since the very beginning?”