New Way to Look at Illegal Immigration

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by Liberal

But certainly a case can be made that the European immigrant stole the Native's homeland by sheer force.

Certainly, in many cases. In other cases the land was depopulated of its indigenous inhabitants by a phenomena known as population collapse (see Jared Diamond's books). Disease and warfare among the Native tribes decimated huge tracts of land.

The De Soto and the De Leon expeditions across the South both came across large villages made up of wooden homes - all completely abandoned. What had happened was that the Spanish first established resupply points at the mouths of large rivers along the coast to support the upcoming inland expeditions years ahead. These depots inevitably became centers of friendly trade.

What no one at the time knew or could possibly understand was that trading outposts between such divergent human cultures would also be vectors of disease. The Natives trading along the Gulf coast contracted Old World diseases for which they had no immunity.

The plague (mostly small pox) was carried inland. By the time the conquistadors made the inland journeys following a long and slow route up from Mexico the diseases had ravaged the Native communities. ... and ticked off not a few Natives. A similar pattern can be found all across North, Central and South America. De Soto and De Leon didn't "conquer" anything. They just wandered through a depopulated wonderland that actually left them amazed.

Everyone likes to focus on the "cowboys and Indians" and conflict. Conflict was a large factor, obviously. But what gets lost are the effects of population collapse and cultural assimilation. I'm just "some white guy" - but I have 2 great grand mothers who were Cherokee.



My great-grandmother Lizzie (Elizabeth) Trammel. I never met her husband, my great-grand-father (who was "half breed") as he died just months before I was born. But believe me, she was NEVER "conquered."

They chose their lives and lived long and left more than a few descendants (my older brother was the 50th "offspring" of this union). We should discuss the injustices, but not everything was an injustice.