Why were Indians so vulnerable when they discovered North and South America?

In the era of "great voyage", the southern Europeans who came to the American continent did not have such an "immigrant" mentality as they do now, but pursued the possession and plunder of the existing wealth in America by conquest and killing. These Europeans brought muskets and horses. For the first time, American Indians saw horses and monsters riding on these gods. Not only that, American Indians did not know how to make iron, and their farming ability was extremely low before entering the Iron Age. Bare-handed resistance can be used to describe the imbalance of that era. Losing rich plains and hiding in the mountains will undoubtedly lead to serious large-scale famine. Therefore, in retrospect, hunger has a more practical effect on Indian genocide than killing, although hunger is also the result of the arrival of Europeans.

All this happened long before the arrival of western Europeans and northern Europeans. Indians suffered unprecedented killing and pillaging, which took place in Central and South America, where the degree of urbanization was relatively high, and there was a ruling social form of kingdom and quasi-state. The Spanish have not set foot in North America, but the civilization in North America is basically tribal, and it has not reached the high level of social civilization in Central and South America. This can be seen from the absence of huge urban sites and spectacular temple buildings in North America. Without these, it means that there is no hierarchical social system and no coveted wealth concentration.

When Protestants arrived at the coast of North America, the social development there was extremely low and it was in the stage of tribal civilization. Tribal civilization is not farming civilization to a certain extent, and fishing and hunting are its main economic forms. Tribes, not only have no monarch, no kingdom, no territory, but more importantly, there is no property right system of land and no power map under sovereign jurisdiction. The story that happened in North America is very different from the conquest of Central and South America, and it is also absolutely different from the modern civilization with land property right system and national sovereignty and its understanding. Obviously, without the land property right system, there is no land ownership; No territory, no invasion.

Of course, this does not mean that there is no tribal ownership of land in tribal civilization, nor does it mean that vast mountains and rivers are valuable to local indigenous people. But there is no doubt that the ownership in this sense is abstract, which is different from the ownership in the modern legal sense and is a conflict and offset. Modern legal system can't provide protection for primitive land ethics and ownership, which will inevitably aggravate the conflict between the two civilizations. Obviously, it takes a process to adjust between two civilizations until a compromise is found. In this process, conflict and confrontation are inevitable. In a word, abstract ownership has not been recognized and protected by modern rule of law.

[Transferred from Iron Blood Community/]

The conflict between two civilizations means violence and war. However, because the Indian civilization in North America is tribal, it also determines that war and violence are an example, both between tribes and between new immigrants, unlike the unified war between civilized countries and the war between the kingdoms of Central and South America and the invaders. Tribes can migrate, avoid disasters through migration, and escape through migration. So the war violence between them is also different from the resistance and conquest under the concept of land and political power today. Therefore, the war and violence brought by new immigrants are not the first reason for the sharp decline of India's population.

The reason for the sharp decline in the population of Americans, especially North American Indians, is the infectious diseases brought by new immigrants. For tens of thousands of years, Indians have been completely isolated from the outside world, which makes their immune system immune to new pathogens. However, smallpox, an infectious disease, has been raging in Asia and Europe for thousands of years, and people still can't get active immunization without vaccination. Until the discovery of vaccinia immunity, human beings have been helpless about smallpox. It has been a long time since the discovery of the new continent. After hundreds of years of efforts, smallpox was completely eliminated until the end of the last century. Smallpox, diphtheria, measles and other diseases are the most fundamental reasons for the sharp decline of American Indian population. It's like Genghis Khan going west. Although the slaughter and plunder were heavy, the plague he brought was more harmful than all the deaths caused by wars at that time, and the population dropped sharply.