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Of the diseases introduced from these Eastern Hemisphere, the greatest early killers of American Indians were smallpox, typhus, and measles with smallpox probably being the most devastating of the three (Thornton, 1942). Europeans quickly learned of Indians susceptibility to diseases, and in 1763 British officers led by Lord Jeffrey Amherst sent blankets infected with smallpox to Ottawa's and other tribes in deployment of early biological warfare tactics (Mihesuah, 1996). Tuberculosis and alcoholism have more likely headed the list of more recent killers of American Indians. The destructiveness of alcoholism is linked to the current high mortality rates of American Indians from suicide, accidents, diabetes, and liver disease. .
Without doubt, the biggest factor in the demise of the American Indian is due to diseases introduced from the Eastern Hemisphere (Thornton, 1942). But when these diseases were intentionally employed on the Indian people by representatives of the U.S. Government clearly displays an overt act of racism and an outright attempt at racial formation. Which is a socio-historical process by which racial categories are created and inhibited by the perpetuation of one race and the transformation or destruction of others (Schaefer, 1996).
Military action: U.S. Government vs. Native Americans .
Indians who survived the biological invasion soon faced armed foes. While warfare was not very significant compared to disease in the overall decline in American Indian population, many tribes were brought to the brink of extinction by war. To be more accurate would be to say genocide by the Anglo-Americans in the name of war (Thornton, 1942). Genocide in the name of war is a common mask in so called civilized societies. For example the battle at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, were several hundred men, women, and children are massacred was not a battle as the government would like us to believe, it was genocide (Brown, 1970).
