Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing

Chapter 1
Rather than experiencing the natural progression of cultural change and evolution, they were artificially
thrust backwards into decline and breakdown. Mortality was mostly due to disease; in particular,
influenza and smallpox epidemics. Early de-population, especially in the Caribbean Islands, can be
equally attributed to severe and inhuman treatment generated by early Spanish conquest and slavery.
The French and English who followed had somewhat different interests, but they also expressed little
consideration toward the survival of Indigenous people or their cultures. In fact, the colonists often saw
high mortality rates of Indigenous people as a gift from the Christian God who wanted the land cleared
of pagan Indians and freed up for use and development by his chosen people (Cook, 1998). For the
arriving colonists, the world’s people and territory, including the newly discovered Americas, were to be
divided up between those who were Christian and those who were not (Vecsey, 1996). Those who were
not would simply be converted at once, at any cost and by any method, and many Indians died in the
subsequent conversion process. The Spanish were of the opinion that it was better the Indians die as
baptized Christians, than live as heathens without the knowledge of God (Hemming, 1978).
In 1492, an estimated ninety to one hundred and twelve million Indigenous people lived on the American
continent, which would have included as many as eight to ten million people living on the Caribbean
Islands, twenty-five million people living in what is now Mexico, twenty-eight million in South America,
and perhaps fifteen to eighteen million living in what is now the United States and Canada (Vecsey,
1996). Dobyns (1983) has provided the most generous estimates of total numbers, and Ubelaker
(1988) has provided the lowest population rate at 1,894,350, for what is now the United States (Macleish,
1994). Deneven (1976) has suggested a low population rate of 8.4 million. There are many estimates,
some high, some low, but it is not the purpose of this study to finally determine what the most correct
population estimates were, as they are being contested almost every year and it is impossible to get
consensus or expert comment on these figures. Nevertheless, there is general agreement that mortality
losses were staggering, that cultural impacts were profound and that an entire continent of people was
severely traumatized, with the question of that trauma and its historic and generational impacts and
implications being the main concern of this research. The original population levels and complete
cultural integrity have never been restored to any of the many tribes and cultures impacted by the
arrival of the Spanish and other Europeans who followed. Though “the sheer loss of people [in Medieval
Europe] was devastating (Europe reeled for a century after the Black Death … [with an estimated 42
million people dying]) but … was also disease a political assassination squad … removing kings, generals,
and seasoned advisors at the very time they were needed most” (Wright 1992:14), the American continent
suffered an even deadlier fate.
The first smallpox (variola virus) epidemic began among the remaining Indians on the island of Hispaniola
(christened Santo Domingo by the Spanish) in the Caribbean Islands during December 1517, twentyfive
years after initial contact with the Spanish. Of the estimated eight to ten million native Caribbean
inhabitants living on Hispaniola in 1492, there were only twenty-eight thousand left after the epidemic
of 1518. By the middle of the sixteenth century, they were almost all gone. By late May of the year
following the epidemic, the greater part of those natives who managed to survive the ravages of
enslavement and mine work had succumbed to smallpox (Dobyns, 1963). By that point, the arrival of
smallpox probably mattered little to the people of Hispaniola because the bulk of their population had
already died in the influenza epidemics that repeatedly hit them immediately after contact. They would
never recover from the disease, warfare or the crush of enslavement. By 1550, the entire Indigenous
population in that region would be gone (Cook, 1998).
12