HAPPY indigenous people day!

[sir dooble]

"It is believed likely that some form of inoculation was developed in India or China before the 16th century."
and white people came to america at the very beginning of the 16th century

Indians/Chinese invented basic innoculations.
White people came to America.

You do know that India/China is as far away from Western Europe as America is, right?
News travelled exceptionally slowly in the 16th century, even given the rise of the printing press. This is the period of the Tudors. The renaissance had not occured in Europe yet. It was still the end of the Medieval period. Knowledge was still almost exclusively in the hands of the church and sometimes government.

There was almost no knowledge of the spread of diseases, besides sick people spreading them and them apparantly originating from dirt/bad smells(which isn't even strictly true).
They most certainly had no idea that Europeans would have a natural resistance to their diseases and still bring them along, and that Native Americans would be succeptible to them due to having never been in contact with them.

It would be immoral to bring a disease and spread it to someone knowingly, but the initial European explorers of the 16/17th centuries had no idea that they were doing so.

[Ad Bot]

[TacoTuesday]

Incorrect, that was done intentionally many centuries later by the united states.

As far as inoculant goes. The wiki was pretty ambiguous and didn't say what they tried to inoculate in the 16th century. Even then, news did not spread that quickly back then. You have to remember that tv and internet did not exist back then and the only way to travel long distances was by boat. Even that is pretty slow because you have to rely on sails.

British officers did this to whipe out Native Tribes in 1763. It wasn't just the United States.

[SeventhSandwich]

That's everyday silly.

Even before white colonized the Americas, the natives were killing each other and enslaving other tribes. I prefer that version of the natives of the stereotypical liberal version where natives are portrayed as peace lovers who smoked weed and were about peace. The same holds true for Africa where Africans traded captives from other tribes to the Europeans in exchange for gold, food, guns, clothes, etc.

But they weren't that violent really at all. The biggest source of Native American violence was on the east coast and south-eastern region of North America, where you had big farming societies that would get raided by other tribes. But that's only part of the millions of natives living all over the Americas.

In comparison, Columbus would cut off native's hands, sell them into slavery, turn their women into prostitutes for his soldiers, and he set in motion a centuries-long genocide where basically all of the native population would be killed off at some point. This is one of the few appropriate instances on the internet where I can say that you're essentially arguing for something on the same level as saying, "Well, some of the Jews killed in WWII were probably violent criminals!". Not Godwin's Law.

edit: oh god there's more

As far as diseases go, no one knew why people got sick or how they spread. To the Europeans if someone got sick, they thought they had been cursed by god or their blood was bad. They weren't forced on to the natives, but because of frequent contact they ended up getting easier spread. At the same time, the colonials received diseases that they had not encountered before.

We have actual letters dating back from the 1760s that show instances where Native Americans were deliberately infected with smallpox in order to wipe out their communities. Also, give me one example of a serious illness the colonists received from the Native Americans.

[Harm94]

But they weren't that violent really at all. The biggest source of Native American violence was on the east coast and south-eastern region of North America, where you had big farming societies that would get raided by other tribes. But that's only part of the millions of natives living all over the Americas.

In comparison, Columbus would cut off native's hands, sell them into slavery, turn their women into prostitutes for his soldiers, and he set in motion a centuries-long genocide where basically all of the native population would be killed off at some point. This is one of the few appropriate instances on the internet where I can say that you're essentially arguing for something on the same level as saying, "Well, some of the Jews killed in WWII were probably violent criminals!". Not Godwin's Law.

You see the people have this thing ingrained in their minds that the natives were just dancing around all happy and white people showed up to do bad things. As I mentioned before both sides were violent and peaceful.

illness the colonists received from the Native Americans.

Yellow fever, Bejel, Syphilis, Pinta, and Chagas.

Also please do share those letters with us. I'm curious about use of the ancient use of bio warfare.

[SeventhSandwich]

You see the people have this thing ingrained in their minds that the natives were just dancing around all happy and white people showed up to do bad things.

I think the more firmly-ingrained idea is that the Native Americans suffered because they refused to 'assimilate' with the good white guys, which is a lot worse in light of the reality.

Yellow fever, Bejel, Syphilis, Pinta, and Chagas.

I might dispute Chagas but although those other diseases are serious, they pale in comparison to how smallpox spread among the Native Americans.

[SeventhSandwich]

Also please do share those letters with us. I'm curious about use of the ancient use of bio warfare.

This website run by the University of Dayton has some interesting examples, and they were even nice enough to scan the original documents.

http://academic.udayton.edu/health/syllabi/bioterrorism/00intro02.htm

[WaterOre]

I might dispute Chagas but although those other diseases are serious, they pale in comparison to how smallpox spread among the Native Americans.

When syphilis was introduced to Europe, it had names like "the Great Pox" and "[Group country hates] Disease"
it killed large numbers of people during the renaissance
it was untreatable and deadly

[SeventhSandwich]

When syphilis was introduced to Europe, it had names like "the Great Pox" and "[Group country hates] Disease"
it killed large numbers of people during the renaissance
it was untreatable and deadly

thanks for the info but Chagas is not syphilis, and it only became a major problem in Brazil, not Europe.

[ZombiLoin]

Didn't the native population of the America drop from 50 millions to less than 4 million after 50 years of European colonization or am I mistaken?

[Harm94]

It was a pretty drastic decline. It takes about 10 days for small pox symptoms to show up. So you could be trading fur with the Europeans, contract it during the trade. Make contact with other tribes and your family and infect all them and you don't even know you are sick until it is too late.

[SeventhSandwich]

Didn't the native population of the America drop from 50 millions to less than 4 million after 50 years of European colonization or am I mistaken?

That statistic is kind of misleading because it seems to imply that out 50 million Native Americans infected with smallpox, 4 million lived. It was much worse than that since there were tribes farther inland that didn't come into contact with the disease until much later. The native societies along the East coast lost like 99% of their population or something.

[ZombiLoin]

Can we all unilaterally agree that the Conquistadores and people who burned indigenous writings and histories were loving docks?

[SeventhSandwich]

Can we all unilaterally agree that the Conquistadores and people who burned indigenous writings and histories were loving docks?

hope so

[Aces]

The native Americans see Columbus day as a celebration towards the oppression of the native americans... Tumblr irl

God forbid Native Americans are mad at the fact that people are celebrating a richard of a man who caused their ancestors to suffer.

[beachbum111111]

So are we only talking about North American natives or are we also talking about the Aztecs and the incas?