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Under a Creative Commons license Open access Highlights• Combines multiple methods estimating pre-Columbian population numbers. •Estimates European arrival in 1492 lead to 56 million deaths by 1600. •Large population reduction led to reforestation of 55.8 Mha and 7.4 Pg C uptake. •1610 atmospheric CO2 drop partly caused by indigenous depopulation of the Americas. •Humans contributed to Earth System changes before the Industrial Revolution. AbstractHuman impacts prior to the Industrial Revolution are not well constrained. We investigate whether the decline in global atmospheric CO2 concentration by 7–10 ppm in the late 1500s and early 1600s which globally lowered surface air temperatures by 0.15∘C, were generated by natural forcing or were a result of the large-scale depopulation of the Americas after European arrival, subsequent land use change and secondary succession. We quantitatively review the evidence for (i) the pre-Columbian population size, (ii) their per capita land use, (iii) the post-1492 population loss, (iv) the resulting carbon uptake of the abandoned anthropogenic landscapes, and then compare these to potential natural drivers of global carbon declines of 7–10 ppm. From 119 published regional population estimates we calculate a pre-1492 CE population of 60.5 million (interquartile range, IQR 44.8–78.2 million), utilizing 1.04 ha land per capita (IQR 0.98–1.11). European epidemics removed 90% (IQR 87–92%) of the indigenous population over the next century. This resulted in secondary succession of 55.8 Mha (IQR 39.0–78.4 Mha) of abandoned land, sequestering 7.4 Pg C (IQR 4.9–10.8 Pg C), equivalent to a decline in atmospheric CO2 of 3.5 ppm (IQR 2.3–5.1 ppm CO2). Accounting for carbon cycle feedbacks plus LUC outside the Americas gives a total 5 ppm CO2 additional uptake into the land surface in the 1500s compared to the 1400s, 47–67% of the atmospheric CO2 decline. Furthermore, we show that the global carbon budget of the 1500s cannot be balanced until large-scale vegetation regeneration in the Americas is included. The Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas resulted in a human-driven global impact on the Earth System in the two centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution. KeywordsSouth America Central America Vegetation dynamics Disease epidemics Archaeology Land use change Carbon cycle dynamics Anthropocene De-population Great dying Cited by (0)© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Go deeper into the history of the Indian Act and the founding of the Residential Schools system. Last Updated: September 5, 2019
The Indian ActLaws can take abstract ideas and implement them in real life. A law makes following a rule mandatory, and law enforcement ensures that people obey that rule. But while laws can provide order and protection, they can also express prejudice and be used to discriminate. The Indian Act of 1876 granted the Canadian government control over many aspects of Indigenous Peoples’ lives, including the management of housing, health services, the environment, and other resources on reserves. In this photo, an indigenous Canadian woman is on a reserve, 1930. In 1876, the British North America Act united three British colonies into the first four provinces of the Dominion of Canada, providing Canada with its own government and federal structure. This new Canadian government inherited the colonial legacy of Great Britain, including two legislations: the Gradual Civilization Act of 1857 and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869. Both aimed to force Indigenous Peoples to give up all ties to their heritage via the acquisition of Euro-Canadian education or by leaving the reserve and becoming owners of private property. Since the 1830s, the British authorities, and later the Canadian government, had set up reserves to settle the Indigenous Peoples and remove them from areas the newcomers desired to settle or develop. The reserves were small, unproductive land tracts where the Indigenous Peoples were forced to live by the act. Eventually, the Canadian Parliament consolidated the Gradual Civilization Act and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act into the Indian Act of 1876. This new legislation, which still exists today despite its many amendments, brought Status (registered) Indians under federal jurisdiction. The Department of Indian Affairs, formed by the act, governed nearly all aspects of the lives of First Nations communities, including band membership, reserve infrastructure and services, systems of governance, culture, and education. The Indian Act of 1876 created the legal category of Status Indian , a category that had long-lasting implications for the First Nations of Canada. Once it entered into law, the act imposed a single common legal definition, lumping together different nations and languages into the broad category of First Nations. What does it mean to be a Status Indian? The original document of 1876 defined someone as being legally Indian if that person fit these descriptions: First. Any male person of Indian blood reputed to belong to a particular band; A key element was the law’s definition of who was Indian and what Indianness was. (The term Indian was used several centuries before—the law simply formalized its use. It is worth noting, however, that none of the many clans, bands, alliances, and nations ever called themselves Indian.) According to the Indian Act of 1876, the “only individuals who could consider themselves Indian were those who could prove they were related, through the male line, to individuals who were already Status Indians,” writes Bonita Lawrence. Thus the policy created “new” members of society whose legal status, rights, and limitations were defined by law; the Indian Act made formal a new Canadian group. Equally powerful was the Indian Act’s power to exclude. Among the groups that were not considered Indians were the Inuit and Métis people. Individuals could easily lose their status, and “without Indian Status and the band membership that goes along with it,” Lawrence notes, “Native people are not allowed to live on any land part of an Indian reserve in Canada. . . . They cannot take part in the life of their own community unless they have Indian Status and hence band membership in that community.” In fact, she writes, “the colonial act of establishing legal definitions of Indianness, which excluded vast numbers of Native people from obtaining Indian status, has enabled the Canadian government to remove a significant sector of Native people from the land.” 2 The Indian Act has been reformed many times since 1876. Over the years, its most offensive clauses were repealed or altered, including those restricting the movement of individuals outside of reserves, outlawing indigenous ceremonies, and discriminating against women. But to this day, the Indian Act continues to regulate significant parts of life for Indigenous Peoples in Canada, such as band membership, taxation, band governance, elections, rights to land and other resources, and education. But however bad this legislation is, it recognizes the First Nations of Canada’s legal relationship with the Canadian government and affirms their rights and status not as minorities but as independent groups. 3 Few indigenous activists would like to see it simply go away before settling the relationship between the Crown and First Nations on a better foundation. The Residential SchoolsIn the crowded and understaffed residential schools, the physical and domestic chores performed by students were critical to keeping the schools afloat. Here, children are seen cutting logs at Fort Resolution Indian Residential School in the Northwest Territory. The Indian Act of 1876 made the education of First Nations groups a federal responsibility. The government was authorized to contract with the different provinces as well as with church authorities to establish boarding schools for indigenous education. The Indian Act empowered the Minister of Indian Affairs to enroll and place all indigenous children (excluding, for many years, the Métis) in school. Then Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald was very clear about the need to sever the connection between the students and their indigenous communities: “When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with his parents who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write.” 4 Until 1883, “Canada did not have a residential school system,” but rather, had “a series of individual church-led initiatives to which the federal government provided grants.” 5 Based on these pre-Confederation religious boarding schools, the government sought partnerships with representatives of the Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and other churches to operate the schools and carry out this mission of Indian education for the state. Education was to be the primary tool to “civilize” the First Nations and prepare them for life as mainstream European-Canadians. 6 A far cry from the boarding schools for Canada’s privileged children, the residential schools were, in fact, built on the model of “reformatories and jails established for the children of the urban poor.” 7 But from 1883 onward, the government sought a system to enroll all First Nations children in schools. Day school and “ industrial schools ” were to serve alongside the residential schools to meet the challenge. Roughly 150,000 indigenous students (mostly from First Nations communities) went to residential schools, although a great number of indigenous students attended day schools. While both types of schools espoused the mission of civilizing the Indigenous Peoples and were run by the churches, the residential schools left the most painful marks on Indigenous Peoples in Canada. 8 The government’s residential schools system began with a modest budget of $44,000 a year in 1883. This money, however, mostly came from cuts to government spending on other indigenous community needs. Thus, the funding of the system was marked by the reluctance of the government to fully invest in the program. Not long after the residential schools system emerged, critics began to denounce its economic utility, its care for student health, its limited academic success, and its failure to create a cadre of young “assimilated Indians.” By the 1940s, the failure of the system as a whole was evident. The residential schools struggled with poor funding, poor and unsuitable nutrition, unsanitary conditions, and poor medical care. Students lived in crowded dormitories and were rarely isolated when sick. This practice made the schools prone to outbreaks of diseases, and they were hit hard by tuberculosis and flu epidemics, including the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Overall, more than 6,000 students died in the residential schools. 9 The death toll of so many students from tuberculosis and other diseases in the schools recently prompted a heated debate about Canada’s responsibility for these deaths. paperclip Explore the motives, pressures, and fears that shaped Americans’ responses to Nazism and the humanitarian refugee crisis it provoked during the 1930s and 1940s.
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Most teachers are willing to tackle the difficult topics, but we need the tools. — Gabriela Calderon-Espinal, Bay Shore, NY What caused the destruction of Native American culture?Losing Indian lands resulted in a loss of cultural identity, as tribes relied on their homelands as the place of ancestral burial locations and sacred sites where religious ceremonies were performed. Without their lands, nations lost their identities, and their purpose.
What was the main reason for the destruction of the Native American population during the age of exploration?When the Europeans arrived, carrying germs which thrived in dense, semi-urban populations, the indigenous people of the Americas were effectively doomed. They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent, killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans.
What proved most destructive to Native American populations?Smallpox was the disease brought by Europeans that was most destructive to the Native Americans, both in terms of morbidity and mortality. The first well-documented smallpox epidemic in the Americas began in Hispaniola in late 1518 and soon spread to Mexico.
What caused the greatest number of Native American fatalities after the arrival of Europeans?In terms of death tolls, smallpox killed the greatest number of Indians, followed by measles, influenza, and bubonic plague. Smallpox: The most deadly European disease was smallpox, a disease almost unknown in today's world but common prior to the twentieth century.
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