Genocide :: essays research papers

In the article, Columbuss Legacy Genocide in the Americas, by David E. Stannard, the theme can be identified as wayward to popular belief that the millions of native peoples of the Americas that perished in the sixteenth century died not only from disease brought over by the Europeans, but also as a result of mass murder, as well as death imputable to working them to death.Stannard starts out the article by citing contemporary examples of U.S. presss position of worthy and unworthy victims. He gives examples of worthy victims in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Croatia and unworthy victims in East Timor. The author states that the native peoples of the Americas never have been labeled worthy. And recently, American and European denials of guilt for the most absolute genocide in the history of the world have assumed a new guise. The author quotes anthropologist Marvin Harris, describing the devastation through the westerly Indies and throughout the Americas as accidental, an unintended conse quence of European exploration. Epidemic disease undeniably contributed to the carnage, but in many volumes of testimony the European explorers detail their homicidal intentions and actions. The slave drivers of the day calculated that it was cheaper to work people to death by the tens of thousands and then replace them than it was to maintain and feed a permanent captive grate force. The Europeans saw the Indians as block in the pathway to unlimited access to North Americas untouched bountiful lands. After the mass deaths due to epidemic, new settlers and explorers purged Indian villages, burn entire towns, and poisoned whole communities. They also engaged a farsighted genocidal tactic of preventing the population from recovering, by abducting the women and children and selling them into slavery in markets in the Indies. After about fifty years of this, the numbers in Indian nation had diminished significantly.