this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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Both can be (and are) true, while the Europeans and later Americans did many things that would now be classified as genocide and ethnic cleansing, the majority of the native population simply died inadvertently of diseases. It’s actually unlikely that the Europeans would have been able to so thoroughly conquer the Americas if the native population would have survived the first wave of diseases.
This makes me think you did not read the full article and the timeline. Of course the indigenous people survived the first wave of diseases. The majority did not die out, This is why the colonizers were later fruatrated with the situation of trying to expand into more land. There are so many historic books about the systematic elimination of "Indians". The diaease trope is what is taught in american school so we can feel detached from their ultimate demise. But if you don't have time to search and read, just look at this wiki link on how many were genocided rather than the paltry few you think were left over from disease. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Indigenous_peoples