where are all the Native Americans?

[Lemons]

Honestly a ton of them died and there weren't that many to begin with, then a lot of them bred with settlers. Honestly I don't think it matters. Pretty much everyone I meet is a mix of many different races. In fact I think it would be kind of weird to meet someone who was like "yep, I'm 100% X!" That's just...really strange.

When the first Europeans came the Native population was close to 300 million in North America

Yea, no. Historians estimate the native population was between 1 and 18 million (from Wikipedia). 300 million is super wrong.

[xylophone]

Honestly a ton of them died and there weren't that many to begin with, then a lot of them bred with settlers. Honestly I don't think it matters. Pretty much everyone I meet is a mix of many different races. In fact I think it would be kind of weird to meet someone who was like "yep, I'm 100% X!" That's just...really strange.



Yea, no. Historians estimate the native population was between 1 and 18 million (from Wikipedia). 300 million is super wrong.

I believe the that figure is the population north of Mexico. The estimates for the Americas as a whole is around 55-112 million. Remember there were entire empires down in S. America.

[Skroe]

The accurate answer is that compared to the vastly more populated central and south America which still has very high indigenous or people of mixed indigenous-european lineages, North America was never population dense.

The biggest factor is probably Geography. The vast rain forest and mountains of South America were imposing barriers that limited the spread (and speed of spread) of European colonization. Many parts of South America weren't even penetrated until the 20th century. Vast parts of the Amazon are still unexplored and there are perhaps hundreds of uncontacted tribes living in there.

North America is very different. The Appalachians provided an expansion-limiting barrier up until the last quarter of the 18th century, but soon faded after the passes because througly mapped. North America also had a barrier in the vast forests that once covered it. Aggressive deforestation and a natively smaller population all conspired to push Native Americans south and west. And as another poster said, infectious disease likely wiped out 90% of North and South American natives. The North being less populated and far more distributed, it is more apparent in its effects on its population.

Most people don't know this, but North America was extremely aggressively deforested during colonization, really up until 1910 when a stronger National Government started building the National Parks system. How agressive was it. Here is a graphic.



And keep in mind, this is over hundreds of years, so trees regrew as well on timescales significant over those hundreds of years.

Calling it "genocide" is a poor use of a politically charged word, however. It was not organized, not the responsibility of one country, kingdom or ethnic group, and took place over many hundreds of years. More like it was what happens when invasive species move into new territory. If anything it is probably more similar to how Humans of Central Asian descent invaded and replaced the existing human populations of Europe that had lived there for many, many thousands of years. The Western Roman Empire, for example, fell in part because the Huns pushed the exploding populations of East Germanic peoples westward, de facto colonizing Europe.

Another good example: Tiawan, Japan and possibly parts of Korea were home to humans of Negtrito or Australoid decent who were later pushed out by colonization from mainland Asia.

And if you go back far enough, ultimately, the first Homo Sapiens out of Europe interbred, replaced, and probably wiped out the Neanderthals in Europe, Denisovans in Asia, and the remnant Homo heidelbergensis in southern Africa. Colonization and population replacement is an essential part of the human story. It's a fact of history, not an atrocity. The world would be unimaginably different, had mankind not done this kind of thing, if there were to be indeed, mankind at all.

[Nakura Chambers]

I've seen a few in my life, including a student I went to high school with. Most of them live on reservations though.

[schwank05]

Well technically if you were born in America you are a Native American. They actually want to be called American Indians, for this very reason. And I live 25 miles from a Reservation of the Lower Sioux Tribe, basically go to a Casino you will see them earning their Millions.

[draganid]

i didnt know they are so hard to find in america. we have lots in canada, the majority of homeless people you see are native. they make up a total of 4% of the population, yet they make up over 20% of the people in our federal prisons. a native in canada is more likely to go to jail than finish highschool. and theres a big group of them that like to hang out on hastings street in my city and literally 24/7 they live on the street and smoke rock. theres also a bunch who hang out by commercial skytrain and think the live some kind of thug life. they talk a lot of shit, get for the most part can't handle their liquor. in my neighborhood, most barfights involve at least one of them

[Zecora]

The accurate answer is that compared to the vastly more populated central and south America which still has very high indigenous or people of mixed indigenous-european lineages, North America was never population dense.

Newer estimates place the North American populations in pre-Columbus times as high as 50 million at most. To the immigrants/invaders (strike according to views) it would have seemed "empty" though, as waves of disease spread out shortly after contact. The signs of this would have faded in the intervening centuries before colonisation of the interior set in. In South America, this process was likely slower, as trade routes were less extensive.

Calling it "genocide" is a poor use of a politically charged word, however. It was not organized, not the responsibility of one country, kingdom or ethnic group, and took place over many hundreds of years.

Have to disagree there, the latter parts of the genocide in the US part of North America for instance, was solely the responsibility of the US government, as both an active participant and the only entity that could have halted the genocide by their own citizens. The practices of the past also remain in place today, evidenced by continuous decisions like the refusal to return the Black Hills to the Native population, and other similar abuse of power.

[mvaliz]

Hahaha, how cruel :P but i quite agree that people should first look in google before asking something in the forum :S

...it's quotes like this that convince me it's not LFD/LFR that killed any WoW community...

When people in a community tell other people to "...just google it"... you don't have a community anymore.

Yes, it's easier to google it. But to quote my favorite Classic Series Doctor Who quote: "A straight line may be the shortest route between two points. But it is, by no means, the most interesting!".

[aztr0]

At the casinos.