I’m not sure that is accurate in terms of overall population ( an argument for sq. miles inhabited might be different ). Most of the peoples of the East Coast for example were agriculturalists, as were many in the Southwest and fringing the Great Plains. The raging argument has always been just how much damage had those population suffered pre-recorded contact by disease. There is definitely some evidence it may have been extensive and tribes we think of today as having been in situ when contact occurred, for example the Creek, may have been recently assembled composites formed from the remnants of collapsed pre-contact societies.
It was my understanding that the “settled” East Coast tribes were not agriculturalists so much as gatherers who didn’t have to migrate because their was lots of food in their immediate area.
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has been explained by Tamerlane.
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please read the OP carefully. He/she mentions that “today Hispanics basically look like Native Americans, at least to a considerable extent.” Hispanics include waaaay more than South Americans, it includes Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. Are they considered part of North America? Yes, but they are most certainly Hispanic. So the discussion about why the fates were different should ALSO include a discussion about colonization in those areas.
Also, South America was also settled everywhere by the “original inhabitants”, even if sparsely in some places. That’s why there are mapuches and others as far down as Tierra de Fuego, and Amazon tribes still in the forests.
Finally, it is a bit weird that, when the OP is mentioning the distinctiveness look of Hispanics, you want to concentrate in South America, which has Argentina, a very stereotypically more European-looking country than the rest of Latin America.
You appear to have been assuming that mountainous areas are necessarily sparsely populated. It was simply an aside to indicate that one should not assume that highland areas necessarily have low population densities in pre-Columbian times. Throughout the tropical and semitropical regions of the Americas the bulk of the population has often been in mountainous areas, both in pre-Columbian times and today.
Tamerlane has given the information. This is actually quite well known to anyone who has done any basic reading on the conquest. See Wikipedia, for example, on the Spanish Conquest of the Inca Empire.
The epidemic is also thought to have reduced the population size of Empire before the Conquest.
While it’s true that parts of the Inca Empire such as the Altiplano and the Atacama were sparsely populated, there was a much greater density in the fertile valleys between the highest peaks. And as I said, a better estimate of the population is 8 to 12 million. In any case maximum area of the Empire at its peak in 1527 is estimated at 2,000,000 km2, which is only around a quarter of that of Australia. (Note that only maybe third of modern Bolivia was included in the Empire, and very little of Colombia.)
Your claim was “The Inca were never a large population to begin with.” This is blatantly wrong. The total population of the Empire was at minimum about 60% of that of Spain, and probably considerably larger.
Who said “North America’s more temperate climes” supported comparable population to pre-Columbian South America (assuming by North America you mean the present US and Canada, and not Mexico)? They didn’t.
As has already been said, the densest populations in the Americas were not in temperate areas but rather in highlands in the tropics and subtropics, in both Mexico and the Andes.
Again, your posts seem to be extrapolating from modern population patterns, rather than any knowledge of the historical situation.
Cite? Actually it was almost certainly colonized north to south over much of its width. But we don’t really know it’s exact pattern.
This still doesn’t explain why the Great Plains, which you cited as a reason for the easier settlement of North America, were then and remain one of the most sparsely populated areas of North America.
That was the case on the West coast, particularly coastal CA and the Pacific Northwest. There there was sufficient natural resources to support stable populations such that horticulture was unnecessary.
However in the eastern and midwestern sections of North America the cultivation of maize, beans and squash were established to varying degrees between 700 and 1200 A.D… It was not quite as intensive as in the southwestern regions ( which had started experimenting with supplemental crops as early as 1500 B.C., with more regular efforts with cooler-adapted strains after 500 B.C. ), probably in part because it was much easier to grow back east. So it remained “women’s work” in those areas as a subset of traditional gathering. But the impact was pretty significant socially - one reason later generations of Iroquois women could manipulate ostensibly male-controlled war councils was purportedly because of their absolute control of crop production.
Thank you for the correction.
At the time of European arrival, the great majority of peoples in the Americas were settled agriculturalists (or at least, they moved their fields only periodically). This includes the eastern US as well as regions such as Amazonia.
The idea that the Americas were inhabited mostly by hunter-gatherers at the time of contact is completely incorrect. Hunter-gatherers were confined mainly to areas unsuitable for agriculture, such as the subarctic and arctic, or areas with an abundance of marine resources like the Pacific Northwest of North America where enough food could be collected without farming.
Look at the settlement patterns - not just the question of families. Early North American settlements basically found sparsely inhabited land - miles of forests with occasional Indian village. These villages may have had a clearing areas with fields, but by and large the area was woodlands, effectively “unused” in European eyes. The natives were tolerant because they were not concerned about losing a square mile or two (at a time) of their massive hunting grounds to the newcomers. they were willing to trade an area the size of Manhattan for a few beads and trinkets. The British and French newcomers were working in an area very much like home - same sort of ecology and climate, could grow the same crops, etc. By the time each tribe realized these newcomers were spreading like the plague (apt) it was too late.
Roughly the same pattern worked in the Caribbean. the sparse number of locals meant they could take the islands quite easily. the mainland was not the same. In the tropics, they encountered impenetrable, unfarmable rain forest with swamps and mosquitos, or areas already heavily populated and heavily farmed. Unlike the smaller islands or New England where the land was there for the taking, trying to force a hundred thousand agricultural people off their land and only food source meant you had to be ready to fight 100,000 desperate people. More likely they let them be, simply replaced their government and collected the agricultural tithes.
This seems to be the pattern in a lot of the tropics, from the Americas to the Philippines to Indonesia and India. The population was too dense for even the Spanish to slaughter; instead of recreating the mother country with immigrants, they simply took over as the new overlords and used the locals as serfs.
There will always be mixing between the nobility and the serfs.
besides, the tropics seemed to lean toward plantation model of cash crops, rather than independent self-supporting yeoman farmers. The Europeans were not about to emigrate to be plantation slaves, while English and French surplus population were happy to go over to the New World to essentially have the same farming life as back home.
Plus we need to point out the Spanish obsession with GOLD meant they were less concerned with building a new country; while establishing colonies as clones of the motherland seems to have been the goal of the settlers in the English and French territories.
Plus the English governments seem to have been quite tolerant of dissident religious factions under the crown as long as they were 3,000 miles away, while Spain did not appear to tolerate religious dissent even in remote colonies. No separation of church and state.
Huh? No, the Spanish had wars and scuffles from the beginning. One of the first military settlements in the Caribbean was in the Dominican Republic. When the next ship passed by to check on it, it had been attacked by the locals. Unfortunately, Spanish had disease, guns, and horses, compared to the fewer weapons that people in the Caribbean (and rest of continent) had. Yes, the land they appropriated in the Caribbean they turned initially to gold mines and later into agricultural land.
With the big empires, not only did the warfare technology from the Spaniards was more advanced, but they also took advantage of internal instability and disease (befriended enemies of the Aztecs, for example, or civil war strife with the Incan empire).
Good point. Cahokia’s big problem appeared to have been waste disposal. Wiki says that the death rate was quite high. It was so unhealthy it relied on “social and political attractions” to bring in new people - you know, like Vegas.
At its largest it had from 6,000-40,000 inhabitants. From the above, it appears that a good number of those people did disappear - died from infectious disease as you say. It looks like a number of tribes were forced west and northwestward by the Iroquois moving in to claim their former homelands along the Ohio river for hunting territory. This was after Cahokia’s time though.
The population of the West Indies wasn’t sparse when Columbus arrived. It quickly became so because of disease, warfare, and forced labor by the Spanish. The indigenous population fell so fast and became so low that the Spanish soon began to import slaves from Africa, which is why many of the Caribbean islands have populations with a much greater percentage of African ancestry than those of the mainland.
From here (web site of the Delaware Tribe of Oklahoma) :
Now, I’m not saying that the above should be accepted on blind faith. I’m quoting it to suggest there may be another way of regarding it than that the Lenni Lenape sold the island of Manhattan for ~$24 worth of beads and trinkets.
I think this is generally true for how Native Americans viewed the use of the land. The land was not “owned” by any individual. Instead tribes, groups, or perhaps families had recognized usage rights to farm, hunt, or fish in particular areas. When they made agreements with Europeans, it was from their point of view only for the use of the area. There was no concept of land ownership or private property as was recognized by Europeans.
When European settlers found sparsely populated woodlands on the East Coast of North America, that was only because populations had declined drastically before the first waves of colonization even happened. Explorers introduced multiple waves of epidemics and whole towns and villages were wiped out.
In threads like these I always like to point out that the traditional story of Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims is an almost perfect microcosm of the story of the settlement of North America. They found a perfect spot to start a farming village. Because that spot was an Indian farming village that had been abandoned a few years ago, because the entire population of the village had died of smallpox except one person, Squanto. He was living with a neighboring tribe but when new people arrived he decided to move back to his village. I don’t know how people in America can believe that Indians were mostly hunter-gatherers when every schoolchild is told the story of how Squanto saved the Pilgrim from starvation when he taught them to grow native american crops using native american techniques.
And these strangers weren’t quite strangers since Squanto had been kidnapped at a young age and brought to England and taught english. He went back and forth across the Atlantic several times before eventually returning home, only to find that all his people were dead.
But anyway, the point is, the east coast of North America was densely populated with farmers, not hunter-gatherers. Multiple waves of epidemics, one after another, depopulated the continent and disrupted the existing social structures, making it possible for European colonists to establish permanent footholds.
How much of it was because the Spaniards wanted to convert the Indians to Christianity and the English (and Dutch and other Northern Europeans) basically just wanted them out of the way. I know this is tied into the idea of settling families vs just men, but weren’t the attitudes of religious conversion different, too?
Religious conversion was secondary to conquest and quest for gold, minerals, and stuff they could take back to Europe and export.
The Spaniards HAD just come out of Reconquista, basically taking over and expelling Moors (and Jews) who had lived for centuries in their peninsula. But the religious part was secondary still to the military conquest part.
In fact, much of what we know from some of the groups, particularly those in the Caribbean, come from accounts and stories that were collected from the missionaries. Some of those missionaries were one of the first voices against the poor treatment, explotation, and extermination of the natives. Some, like Las Casas, advocated African slavery instead, while a few advocated no slavery whatsoever.
I think that is true. Catholicism was an evangelical religion which in Iberia was an arm of the government. All souls must be saved, forcibly if necessary. The English settlements on the eastern seaboard of North America were originally enclaves that were intended to protect religious/moral subcultures which could not find support in the Old World, they excluded others, rather than tried to incorporate them.
I just re-read Albion’s Seed by David Fischer, and one thing I missed the first times was how much of the wars against the native North American tribes were dominated by the “Borderers”, displaced and unwanted themselves in their own country (lowland Scotland, northern Ireland, northern England), and also in the older established settlements of British colonists, all of which shoved them further west as soon as they could. The borderers were by and large an anarchic, illiterate, warlike group with no control from any higher authority, unlike the Spanish or Portuguese. They were not going to ‘civilize’ anyone, and they were the larger part of the westward expansion south of the upper midwest.
Native Americans who didn’t die from disease - why? How about today? Are NAs immune?
None of the diseases are 100% mortality. Those who resisted and survived may have passed on whatever they had that made them immune (or luck). Also, there was mixing with groups who were more immune (Europeans).