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Genocide of the American Indians Was Millions of Native Americans Killed in One of the Worst Cases of Imperials Slaughtering Locals to Grab Land for Elites. 

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The genocide of the American Indians by the American settlers was massive as they applied what was labeled the Indian Removal policy to make way for new settlements.

American Indians were captured and killed or simply forced from their land.

Statistics show that the American Indian population in North America in the 1500s was approximately 12 million.

By the early 1900s there were hardly more than 237,000 American Indians left on this continent, as a result of one of the worst massacres of a population in history.

David E. Stannard, a historian at the University of Hawaii, states that the American Indians went through the “worst human holocaust the world had ever witnessed, roaring across two continents non-stop for four centuries and consuming the lives of countless tens of millions of people”.

Due to the massive elimination of so many people there exists both in the United States and Canada a great deal of discrimination, bigotry and hidden anger.

Once Columbus and the settlers reached North America, the world for Native Americans would never be the same.

The genocide of the American Indians would continue unabated for many years, as these indigenous people were removed to make way for new settlements.

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The Start of Genocide

After Columbus left North America, the European settlers slaughtered thousands of American Indians whenever they stood in the way of expansion, as whole villages were wiped out in mere minutes without regard to the lives of the people, and very rarely were the lives of the Native Americans ever spared during these massacres.

The Indians attempted to move out of the way of the settlers whenever they could, but there was no where in North America that the colonists didn’t want to take over the land, and in 1830 the Removal Act came into effect and the genocide of the American Indians continued with even more ruthlessness.

In 1838, in an event called the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee population was forced to march from their land, with most of them being killed in the process.

Moving the people from their land caused many deaths, while many more Indians starved to death because they couldn’t find food or couldn’t survive the harsh conditions they were forced to live under.

Still others died from disease and from being hunted like animals by the settlers.

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American Expansion

As the American settlers moved further into the west, the United States government decided to make cattle ranchers and farmers of the Native Americans.

The government knew this was a way to destroy the Indians, as taking away the life that was known to them would beat them down.

The settlers also destroyed the plants and animals they knew the Indians relied on for survival.

As gold was discovered in the west in the state of California the settlers grew even greedier and huge masses migrated west.

Perhaps one of the most disastrous and harmful acts against the Native Americans was the destruction of the buffalo population, which had been hunted to the point of extinction.

This action contributed to the genocide of the American Indians since they relied on the buffalo for their survival.

Buffalo were hunted by the American settlers because of the value of their hides and also because they were standing in the way of all the settlers moving to the west.

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Destruction of Native Americans

The genocide of the Native Americans is still denied by most people today.

United States history has played down the murder of hundreds of thousands of Indians by the settlers, saying instead that they died in great numbers because of disease, while painting the settlers as heroes, rather than monsters, as they paint the Nazis, who killed far fewer people in the Holocaust.

Those American Indians remaining on the continent have been treated unfairly and with a great deal of discrimination.

As much as the United States government has tried to compensate the Indians for the loss of their lands, it can never be enough to make up for the massacre of their ancestors.

The concept and laws of genocide came into international law in 1948 when the countries around the world finally took notice of the victims of Nazi Germany. 

The Holocaust of World War II would come to be the main model for genocide.

What’s important to remember is that genocide didn’t only happen in European countries, but all around the world as countries and governments attempted the cultural extinction of people they felt were disposable.

The genocide of the American Indians was direct discrimination against a population of native people who the colonists wanted to destroy so they could claim the land.

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