The Parallel Lives

 Christopher Columbus’s three ships—the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria—first landed on a beach of a small island within the Bahama Islands, in the Caribbean Sea, on October 12, 1492. The natives called their tiny island, Guanahani, but Columbus re-christened it San Salvador.

     The ninety men aboard the three ships had sailed from Palos, Spain on August 3, 1492. Thus, Columbus had guided the men west across the Atlantic for 71 days, in mainly calm weather. 

     Columbus wanted to believe that he had stumbled upon the east Indies, perhaps Malaysia or Indonesia, so anxious was he to find a shorter trade route that linked India and China to Europe.

     Hence, Columbus called the natives “Indians,” a name that stuck most unfairly, because India lay thousands of miles west of the Bahamas. Although Columbus did not know it, he had bumped into two continents, North and South America, unknown then in Europe.

      What was the native population in 1492, of North America, including central America, Mexico, the United States, and Canada? The numbers are difficult to determine, because the natives kept no records, no books, no statistics.

     One historian named Alan Taylor explained in his 2001 book, “American Colonies: The Settling of North America,” that in early 20th century, certain “low counters” pegged the number at 10 million people in both North and South America. 

     By the late 20th century, the “high counters” doubled that number to 20 million. Some daring “high counters” insisted upon a number as high as 100 million.

     Most scholars today settle for a number near 50 million, which is half the number that the bold “high counters” had insisted upon, but five times the number that the former “low counters” had settled for. 

     As for the numbers north of the Rio Grande, in the future U.S. and Canada, researches argue that there were at least two million Native Americans, but perhaps as many as ten million.

     What happened during the 20th century that prodded scholars to revise their numbers higher?

     First, scholars pointed to evidence for a dramatic depopulation of the Native Americans that occurred throughout the 16th and into the 17th centuries, a cruel result of Columbus’s arrival..

     Second, they found evidence that proved that much of North America was more densely populated than was first believed.

     In 1890, the United States census recorded a total Native American population of 237,196, a number that stuns. It fell from between two and ten million down to a quarter of a million. 

     One environmental historian of the twentieth century, Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., said in his 1972 book, “The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492,” that this population collapse was “surely the greatest tragedy in the history of the human species.”

     What caused the collapse? Alan Taylor explains, “The breath, blood, sweat, and lice of the colonizers, and of their livestock and rats conveyed deadly pathogens that consumed Indians who lacked the immunological resistance of past experience. 

     “The greatest killers were eruptive fevers, smallpox, measles, and typhus, but Indians also suffered from respiratory infections, including whooping cough and pneumonia. Chickenpox killed Indians of all ages. One disease might weaken a victim, but another disease would kill.”

     Alfred W. Crosby labeled these Columbian exchanges of diseases, “virgin soil epidemics, those in which the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore almost defenseless.” A fact, these exchanges were one-sided.

     Native Americans suffered and died in far greater numbers than did the Europeans.   

     On Monday, October 13, the nation celebrates Columbus Day. Four states, including Nebraska, co-celebrate Columbus Day and Indigenous People’s Day, a day to reflect upon what happened 533 years ago.