Plasma wrote:
Oh yeah, and anyone remember why they were nearly wiped out?
NATURE HAPPENED!
It wasn't so much that colonists destroyed them as much as the history books make you believe (and the stories on Colombus is proof that history books shouldn't be trusted), but that the viruses brought by the colonists that they had evolved to become immune to, killed off all the natives! The colonists lived in large cities where viruses were easy to spread, and so too were immunities!
Anyway, Native Americans were barely more nature-loving and caring than, y'know, most human tribes were and are. There's just a very thick line in terms of social structures between primitive tribes and advanced mass populations.
On the island of Haiti:
"Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners, they hanged or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began... In two years through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead."
By 1650, all of the Arawak people were dead after being worked as slaves on encomiendas for a hundred years.
A firsthand account: As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them...while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months."
They wiped out an entire tribe of people, Plasma.