Impact of Europe on Native American Population Paper

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The arrival of Europeans on the North American continent impacted Native American indigenous people in ways that have been discussed in written material of eyewitnesses 500 years ago, as well as anthropologists and historians in recent times. The science of human evolutionary genetics has now provided confirmation that the arrival of Europeans on the North American continent catalyzed a demographic disaster for Native American indigenous peoples. New evidence indicates that although the population collapse was dramatic and severe, it did not result in the complete elimination of these populations. This new field of study, called genetic anthropology, provides a perspective on Colonial American that now requires globalized perspective, as the cultural and geographic elements of European settlement in the New World are detectable through DNA analysis for the first time.

For an estimated 15,000 years, Native American indigenous people populated the North American continent prior to the arrival of European explorers and settlers in the fifteenth century. After European arrival, Native American populations began to be negatively impacted through a number of factors. Some of these involved violence, such as warfare, and enslavement by white aggressors through a desire for a native labor force.

The other factors were passive ones, involving the lack of Native American immune system defense against the spread of epidemics of diseases carried to the New World by Europeans in the form of measles, smallpox, and influenza (Balter). These diseases, which had been common in Europe for generations, had already been encountered by the white Europeans or their ancestors. While whites had immune systems that provided some protection against the diseases, Native Americans had no prior immune system experience with them, and consequently, they died in large numbers, without the need for aggression by the Europeans in many cases.

Although some historians have speculated that Native American populations had declined by as much as 90% after continuous waves of European settlement commenced, genetic science now provides a way to detect actual population fluctuations. Balter (2011) reported the results of a genetic analysis of Native American mitochondrial DNA demonstrating that a sudden and sharp decline in population did occur at the time of the first European contact. This confirms archival reports of a "widespread and severe" contraction in the Native American population approximately 500 years ago. Historical documentation written by eyewitness observers in the New World at the time of the post-Columbus era described a Native American population in demographic collapse. "The historical record of population collapse in the post-Columbus era is just too well documented to doubt the remarkable and negative impact on native peoples", stated anthropologist Clark Larsen (Balter).

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 provides conclusive genetic evidence for the declines, through analysis of the number women of childbearing age living among the Native American tribes at the time (O'Fallon & Schmitz). Modern and ancient mitochondrial DNA from Native Americans was the focus of the analysis, and the study results indicate that the number of these women fell by 50% about 500 years ago (Balter). This study is a strong contributor to a debate that has been ongoing for decades. Most anthropologists agree that by the year 1900, the Native American population living in North America north of the latitude of Mexico had dwindled to a mere 500,000 people (Balter). Yet the number of Native Americans living in this region at the time of the European arrival, around the year 1500, had been speculated to range from 1 million to 20 million individuals. Larsen acknowledged that "The demographic history of the Americas before and after Columbus has been among the most hotly debated topics of archaeology and history" (Balter).

The study was conducted by researchers Brendan O'Fallon, a population geneticist, and Lars Fehren-Schmit, an anthropologist (O'Fallon & Fehren-Schmidt). The study combined analysis of mitochondrial DNA samples taken from indigenous Americans from both North and South America, as well as partial segments of mitochondrial DNA from indigenous Americans living in both locations between 3000 to 700 years ago (Balter). The old and modern genomes were both used in order to calibrate an accurate molecular clock. A molecular clock is derived from changes in the amino acids of proteins throughout the passage of time (Dictionary.com).

Since mitochondrial DNA is passed down only through females, the study results were used to estimate the number of Native American females of childbearing age who were living during the survey data time frames (Balter). The study indicated that these numbers peaked around 500 years ago, and then declined sharply, in what is described as a "population bottleneck coincident with European contact" (O'Fallon & Schmidt). The decline was not permanent; population numbers did subsequently recover, but not to the level that had existed before the European arrival. Some critics dispute the findings of the study, positing that the use of partial mitochondrial DNA fragments and full mitochondrial DNA from living Native Americans represents a flawed methodology (Balter).

Genetic anthropology currently provides the technological means for analyzing the patterns of demographic shock among Native Americans after the arrival of Europeans. It also provides a method for tracking the importation patterns of enslaved African human beings, slaves, as well as white ethnic minority forced laborers, to locations throughout North and South America, and the Caribbean as well.

The island of Bermuda was the site of English settlement beginning in the early 16th century (Gaieski et al.). The island was settled by English colonists within five years of the establishment of the only other English settlement of that time in North America, at Jamestown, Virginia. Shortly after the arrival of the English in Bermuda, tobacco plantations were established on the island.

The tobacco was a lucrative export, since it could be shipped to Europe, where smoking was popular and tobacco could be sold at high profit margins. As a consequence of the need for labor to work this cash crop, Bermuda became the first site for English importation of forced slave labor to the New World. The labor supply was brought to Bermuda in the form of enslaved Africans, indigenous Native Americans, and white ethnic minorities (Gaieski et al.).

In Bermuda today, oral tradition links the heritage of modern residents to a combination of Native American, white, and African ethnology (Gaieski et al.). The white laborers imported to Bermuda included indentured servants, who were contracted out to work through a bidding process which bound them to work for a period of years in servitude. Other white laborers were Irish and Scottish individuals who had been captured in the English Civil War, who were brought to Bermuda as white slaves without a work contract. These individuals were prisoners of war, who would never be released to return home. They worked as slaves until their death (Gaieski et al.).

Native American laborers arrived in Bermuda through capture during British raids on Spanish, Portugese, and Dutch colonies, or as captives that had been taken by the English during warfare with Native Americans in New England (Gaieski et al.). These individuals were taken prisoner, and then brought to Bermuda as slave laborers, never to return to their homes.

Existing archival material surviving from the years around 1645 provide accounts by the governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, discussing the fact that Pequot Indians who had been captured in skirmishes with the English had been transported to Bermuda, and sold as slaves there. A relatively unknown fact of New England history was this capture of hostile Native Americans as a result of warfare, and their subsequent exportation to Bermuda for sale as slave labor, by devoutly religious Christian Puritans (Gaieski et al.).

In contrast, during the early years of French exploration of the area of North America that would eventually become known as Canada, enslavement of Native Americans in any form was forbidden by government decree (Blackburn 280). The difference in attitudes between English and French attitudes toward Native Americans has been attributed by some historians to the fact that while the French arrived in North America with the goal of establishing profitable trade with indigenous peoples, the English arrived with the goal of establishing and expanding settlements based in farming, which required an ever greater desire for land. This resulted in the determination by English settlers to eliminate Native American presence from the areas that were desired for settlement.

In genetic studies of children living in Bermuda today, the presence of shovel-shaped incisor teeth, commonly called "Indian tooth", is a visible indicator of Native American ancestry that has been confirmed by genetic analysis. Other genetic indicators show a dominance of West African and white Eurasian genomes, with origins in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and England (Gaieski et al.). All of the individuals imported as human labor capital to Bermuda and other locations in the Caribbean and North America were used to produce products for the Atlantic transit trade in sugar, rice, and tobacco (Wulf, 2011). In turn, European consumer goods were brought to the New World, and eventually, were transported deep into the interior regions, where the items were used for barter between whites and Native American peoples (Wulf, 2011).

The tools of genetic anthropology can now be used to confirm and support much of the oral testimony of the descendants of those who lived in North America 500 years ago. This form of analysis is currently being used to map the details of the transport of enslaved African human beings as labor for the New World (Gaieski, et al.). It can also be used to study population patterns and demographic numbers for the Native American populations of North America, and the impact of European contact upon these populations. This impact has been the source of strong debate among historians and anthropologists, but until recently, archival evidence was the only reliable source of research that was available.

Although written eyewitness accounts from the time describing the contact between Native Americans and Europeans are invaluable, these cannot provide the broad, and now factual, evidence that is present in the very heart of life, that of mitochondrial DNA that is passed down from mother to daughter, and on through female descendants, into infinity. It is now clear that the arrival of Europeans on the North American continent impacted Native American indigenous people in ways that confirm written accounts left by English and Spanish eyewitnesses 500 years ago, which have been analyzed so intently by anthropologists and historians in recent times, but could be confirmed through science.

The science of human evolutionary genetics has now provided confirmation that the arrival of Europeans on the North American continent catalyzed a demographic collapse among Native American indigenous peoples, resulting in a decline in the number of women of childbearing age among these populations. The study by O'Fallon and Schmidt is merely the first of many that will follow, and each one will deliver detailed evidence regarding the lives and deaths of a people who were thought by many to have nearly vanished, through a combination of epidemics and white aggression.

Perhaps the most fascinating implication of the new evidence is that, although the population collapse was dramatic and severe, it did not result in the complete destruction of these indigenous populations. They survived, through marriage and mating with whites and African Americans. They also survived, in some cases, as populations that continued to survive independently. The new field of genetic anthropology could only exist in an era when the human genome has been decoded for the first time in history. Along with the powerful implications of genomic analysis for medicine and other fields of research such as law enforcement, this capacity for analysis provides revolutionary implications for historians and anthropologists.

It compels these researchers to engage in a new, more honest a perspective on Colonial America, involving a globalized perspective that includes the enslavement of Native American, African, and white ethnic minority individuals in order to build the infrastructure of the New World. The evidence for this enslavement, and the attendant human cost in mortality and suffering, is narrated through analysis of human mitochondrial DNA for the first time. Through this scientific process, the history of the ancestors of modern North America commands our respect as never before.

Works Cited

Balter, Michael. (2011). Genes confirm Europeans' blow to Native Americans. Science, 334(6061), 1335.

Blackburn, Robin. The making of New World slavery: from the Baroque to the modern,

1492-1800. Brooklyn, NY: Verso. Print.

Dictonary.com. Molecular clock. Web.

Gaieski, J.B., Owings, A.C., Vilar, M.G., Dulik, M.C., Gaieski, D.F., Gittelman, R.M., Lindo, J.,

Gau, L., Schurr, T.g., & The Genographic Consortium. (2011). Genetic Ancestry and

Indigenous heritage in a Native American descendant community in Bermuda. American

Journal of Physical Anthropology.

O'Fallon, Brendan, & Fehren-Schmitz, Lars. (2011). Native Americans experienced a strong population bottleneck coincident with European contact. PNAS, 108(51).

Wulf, Karin. (2011). No boundaries? New terrain in Colonial American history. OAH Magazine of History, 25(1), 7-12.