american-holocaust

NOTES 305121. Ibid., p. 143. See also, Alden and Miller, "Unwanted Cargoes," pp. 42-43.122. Hemming, Red Gold, pp. 143-44; Stuart B. Schwartz, "Indian Laborand New World Plantations: European Demands and Indian Responses in NortheasternBrazil," American Historical Review, 83 (1978), 51.123. Schwartz, "Indian Labor and New World Plantations," 55-56, 76.124. Jones, Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule, p. 276.125. Varner and Varner, Dogs of the Conquest, pp. 87, 178.126. See J. Eric S. Thompson, Maya History and Religion (Norman: Universityof Oklahoma Press, 1970), pp. 48-83; and Sherburne F. Cook and WoodrowBorah, "The Population of Yucatan, 1517-1960" in their Essays in PopulationHistory: Mexico and the Caribbean (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974),Volume Two, pp. 1-179. The mere fact of Maya survival is testament to theirresiliency; that so much of their culture and their forms of social organizationcontinue to thrive, despite nearly five centuries of genocide that persists to this day,is a mark of truly astonishing cultural strength. In Guatemala today, for exampledespiteongoing genocidal warfare against them-the native people continue tospeak at least twenty-two distinct dialects of their ancestral Maya tongue. Fordiscussion of a range of social and cultural continuities in this region, see RobertM. Hill and John Monaghan, Continuities in Highland Maya Social Organization:Ethnohistory in Sacapulas, Guatemala (Philadelphia: University of PennsylvaniaPress, 1987).127. J.H. Elliott has estimated that about 118,000 Spaniards had settled in theNew World by 1570; at that rate more than 150,000 would have been in place bythe turn of the century. Elliott, Imperial Spain, p. 176. More recent estimates putthe figure at closer to 200,000 and perhaps a bit more, although there also was avery heavy traffic in returnees to Spain. See Peter Boyd-Bow~an, Patterns of SpanishEmigration to the New World, 1493-1580 (Buffalo: State University of NewYork Council on International Studies, 1973), p. 2; and Magnus Morner, "SpanishMigration to the New World Prior to 1810: A Report on the State of Research,"in Fredi Chiappelli, ed., First Images of America: The Impact of the New Worldon the Old (Berkeley: University .of California Press, 1976), Volume Two, pp.737-82. The estimate of Indian dead is calculated from pre-Columbian populationestimates for these regions of between 65,000,000 and 90,000,000. The formerfigure is the most recent estimate, that of Russell Thornton; the latter is the midpointof the most widely quoted range of figures, that calculated by Henry Dobyns.See Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population HistorySince 1492 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), pp. 22-32; andHenry F. Dobyns, "Estimating Aboriginal American Population: An Appraisal ofTechniques with a New Hemispheric Estimate," Current Anthropology, 7 (1966),395-416. This range of estimated native dead may be too conservative, however,for two reasons. First, Dobyns may be correct in now believing that his originalestimates were too low, as discussed in Appendix One. And second, this calculationis based on approximately 90 percent decline rather than the more conventional95 percent and more over the span of a century or so. This was done toaccount for native peoples not contacted until after the beginning of the seventeenthcentury, although all the major population centers-which accounted for