Theos-Talk Archives (March 2006 Message tt00237)

krsanna wrote:
> Andrew Jackson's presidency and completed much later.  I use the 
> 1838 date as an historical marker because some Cherokee factions 
> voluntarily evacuated their homes to trade land in Oklahoma by that 
> date.  Other factions opposed the evacuation, and this later group 
> took the brunt of the U.S. Army at their doorsteps.   
> The observable fact that Indians had no immunity to European 
> childhood diseases was undoubtedly the inspiration for infecting the 
> blankets.  
	True, but the only case I can find where this actually happened was 
when the British (not the French) did it during the French and Indian 
War, and even then it was to a group that was already infected.

	It should be noted that the technology in the Americas was such that, 
within half a century or so, they would have made contact with the 
Europeans. Having gone through a virtual sterilization chamber 10,000 
years earlier, the native Americans had not gone through the many 
plagues that originated in the Far East and Africa that had ravaged the 
three continents; once contact was made, there was not much that could 
be done to stop the deaths of the overwhelming majority of native 
Americans, even if the Europeans had been completely benign, militarily 
speaking. By the time the Europeans got to North America, they were 
dealing with a post-apocalyptic society.

	Bart