Population history of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas: Difference between revisions

While epidemic disease was a leading factor of the population decline of the American Indigenous peoples after 1492, there were other contributing factors, all of them related to European contact and colonization. One of these factors was warfare. According to demographer Russell Thornton, although many people died in wars over the centuries, and war sometimes contributed to the near extinction of certain tribes, warfare and death by other violent means was a comparatively minor cause of overall native population decline.<ref>War not a major cause : Thornton, pp. 47–49.</ref>

 

 

There is some disagreement among scholars about how widespread warfare was in pre-Columbian America,<ref>{{cite book |author=W. D. Rubinstein |title=Genocide: A History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nMMAk4VwLLwC&pg=PA12 |year=2004 |publisher=Pearson Education |isbn=978-0-582-50601-5 |page=12}}</ref> but there is general agreement that war became deadlier after the arrival of the Europeans and their firearms.{{Citation needed|reason=Actually the scholarly consensus is that Amerindian warfare and violence was highly evolved prior to the arrival of Europeans. See War Before Civilization by Keeley. As well as North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence. Chacon Edit.|date=October 2019}} The South or Central American infrastructure allowed for thousands of European [[conquistador]]s and tens of thousands of their [[Indian auxiliaries]] to attack the dominant Indigenous civilization. Empires such as the [[Inca]]s depended on a highly centralized administration for the distribution of resources. Disruption caused by the war and the colonization hampered the traditional economy, and possibly led to shortages of food and materials.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.worldhistory.org/Inca_Government/ |title=Inca Government |last=Cartwright |first=Mark |date=Oct 2015 |website=[[World History Encyclopedia]] |publisher=Knights of Vatican |access-date=19 July 2017 |quote=Eventually 40,000 Incas would govern some 10 million subjects speaking over 30 different languages. Consequently, the centralised Inca government, employing a vast network of administrators, governed over a patchwork empire which, in practice, touched local populations to varying degrees.}}</ref> Across the western hemisphere, war with various Native American civilizations constituted alliances based out of both necessity or economic prosperity and, resulted in mass-scale intertribal warfare.<ref>{{cite book |author=W. D. Rubinstein |title=Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous Allies in the Conquest of Mesoamerica |year=2012 |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press; Reprint edition |isbn=978-0-8061-4325-5 |page=1}}</ref> European colonization in the North American continent also contributed to a number of wars between Native Americans, who fought over which of them should have first access to new technology and weaponry—like in the [[Beaver Wars]].<ref>Increased deadliness of warfare, see for example Hanson, ch.&nbsp;6. See also [[flower war]].</ref>