Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?

by Guenter Lewy,

… the National Museum of the American Indian … the museum’s founding director, W. Richard West, declared that the new institution would not shy away from such difficult subjects as the effort to eradicate American Indian culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a safe bet that someone will also, inevitably, raise the issue of genocide.

The story of the encounter between European settlers and America’s native population does not make for pleasant reading.

That American Indians suffered horribly is indisputable. But whether their suffering amounted to a”holocaust,” or to genocide, is another matter.

… at odds with any such idea is the effort of the United States government … to vaccinate the native population ..against … Smallpox.

To sum up, European settlers came to the New World for a variety of reasons, but the thought of infecting the Indians with deadly pathogens was not one of them. As for the charge that the U.S. government should itself be held responsible for the demographic disaster that overtook the American-Indian population, it is unsupported by evidence or legitimate argument. The United States did not wage biological warfare against the Indians; neither can the large number of deaths as a result of disease be considered the result of a genocidal design.

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