Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 08:29:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: dicconf <dicconf at radix.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Third Friday Minutes
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

On Sun, 24 Apr 2005, Robert MacIntosh wrote:

> Excuse me? Urban legend? Sorry - wrong. The estimated population of North
> America prior to the European invasion was nearly 200 million. By the time
> of the American Revolution, almost 300 years later, North America native
> population was less than 100 million. What do you think? They all get taken
> by Aliens and ferried to other planets? They were certainly not killed by
> the Europeans.

They were created so they could be "killed", after all.

Who on earth told you that the entire North American continent could
sustain a population of 200 million hunter-gatherers?  This is one of the
fables cooked up by the hate-ourselves fringe of the Greens.  Do you have
any idea what the space and sustenance requirements for hunter-gatherers
are?  The Mound Builders of the Ohio-Mississippi area, where the Amerinds
had their densest population, amounted to barely 20,000,000 by the most
generous estimates, and they were sedentary farmers.  We probably caused
the deaths of around forty million American Indians, which was maybe 70-80
percent of the population.  That's atrocious enough to make me queasy,
without inventing fabulous numbers to exaggerate White Guilt.

-- Dick Eney