"More Irish people killed more Indians than anyone else"

You'll find the same with any foreign forces the Irish joined.
Even through our domestic (domesticated by the Brits) British colonial involvement, we no doubt oversaw serious abuse and slaughter of Africans, Asians and Arabs on their own soil. Just research the amount of Irish in the officer class of the British Forces and it becomes very obvious.
We may never have colonised, as a sovereign state, but as one of the 'home nations' as it were, we certainly did.

Why should it be "our" history?

If an Irish person emigrates and does some heinous crimes somewhere else in the world - why should we, the people who stayed in Ireland have any kind of responsibility or even association with same? Most of these people don't even have any modern day descendents who are Irish.

neris wrote: »

The way its normally spun when in comes to native populations and the Irish is the Irish were always friendly towards the natives and it was British or Americans who were going around killing natives and beating slaves from Africa.

Incidents like the the Cincinatti Riots and New York Draft Riots put paid to the "We were a sound bunch of lads" narrative and the falsehood Irish were universally liked and tolerated.
Of course Irish slaughtered native Americans and competed and fought over resources and jobs with African Americans. There were ugly incidents between Irish and Chinese in railroad construction gangs.

I remember reading 'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee' some years ago and being shocked at the number of Irish names who enthusiastically took part in the genocide of the indigenous people of North America. It had not occured to me before that Irish people and other Northern Europeans had contributred to that shameful episode of history.

I don't think anyone has systematically studied this question but what bugs me about this kind of anaysis is that it supposed that the Native Americans lost their lands and way of life due to genocide. In some areas there was true ethnic cleaning but even if there wasn't, even there was no killings, the end result would be the same. The 90% die off from disease and the huge numbers of European immigrants doomed them. The real cause was not ethnic cleaning, it was dispect of Native Americans natural rights to their land.

Can you edit the poll? Some people learnt ofIrish involvment as kids or teenagers through their own reading

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

. . . The real cause was not ethnic cleaning, it was dispect of Native Americans natural rights to their land.

How is dispossesing people of their land, so forcing them to move off it and allow it to be settled by a different people, not ethnic cleansing? Genuine question.

Post famine Irish or Scots Irish like Andrew Jackson?

Peregrinus wrote: »

No. I think you are conflating two very different periods of history.

The plague of epidemics followed first contact/exploration; it was rapid and severe. But "rapid" is the key word here; from about a century after first contact the population was recovering again - i.e. from the early 1600s. And the repopulation of the land with new, changed societies - e.g. the plains Indian culture - was extensive. As well as acquiring smallpox from Europeans, Native Americans acquired domesticated horses, and this completely changed their way of life, enabling different, and very successful, patterns of land use, settlement and migration.

It was another two hundred years or more before European settlers on the Eastern seaboard began their aggressive westward expansion and settlement program. They were not settling in depopulated lands, but in repopulated lands, of which the well-established indigenous people had to be disposessed.

Indian populations had recovered from 90 percent losses to smallpox etc ... you have figures for that?

Also what was the carrying capacity of the land for the plains indian lifstyle.
Did they possess the lands in terms of settlements or use them as hunting etc lands periodically.

odyssey06 wrote: »

Indian populations had recovered from 90 percent losses to smallpox etc ... you have figures for that?

Lookit, we don't have figures for the 90% losses. These are estimates. Since we don't know what the population numbers were before the plagues, it's impossible to say whether they later recovered or exceeded that leve.

But it's irrelevant whether population numbers had recovered to the numbers before European contact; all that matters is that they had recovered to the point where the indigenous people were occupying and exploiting the land. Which we know they were, not least the US had to engage in a variety of treaties with them and wars with them in order to clear the land for settlement.

odyssey06 wrote: »

Also what was the carrying capacity of the land for the plains indian lifstyle.
Did they possess the lands in terms of settlements or use them as hunting etc lands periodically.

What of it? Neither of these questions are relevant. It doesn't matter whether the indigenous people farmed the land, formed urban communities or exploited it as hunter-gatherers (and in fact they did all fo these things in different places); all that matters is that they occupied their land and one way or another they had to be driven off it to accommodate white settlement. You might argue that the white settlers populated the land more densely and farmed it more intensively and you might (or might not) be right, but so what? This is a very different claim from the one you are advancing above and, even if it is true, it hardly amounts to a justification or vindication.

I think the only relevance these points might have is that, if the indigenous people were few in number and population density was low, that would make them weaker, and so make it easier for the more numerous white settlers to dispossess them; it makes it easier to deny or disregard their rights. But that is hardly a point you would wish to make, I think.

odyssey06 wrote: »

Yet you said they recovered. It was your claim.

I never said that they had recovered to the previous level - just that they had recovered enough to repopulate the land.

Recovery to the previous level is irrelevant. After all, the population of Ireland has yet to recover to its pre-Famine level. You would hardly argue that this means that the land of Ireland is abandoned, unpopulated and available to settlers.

odyssey06 wrote: »

And switch into attack mode when asked for figures to support your claim.

Don’t be dramatic. I haven’t attacked anybody.

odyssey06 wrote: »

And then query any other figures bandied about.
The 90% figure seems to be a widely accepted estimate for losses after contact through disease.

It’s a widely quoted estimate. I’m not arguing with it (though I would point out that it’s the upper end of a range of estimates that have been produced) . I’m just pointing out that neither before the plagues nor before the (much later) white settlements was there anything like a census, so we don’t know (a) what the population was before the plagues, (b) what it was just after the plagues or (c) what it was when the settlement push came a bit over 200 years later. And my point is that we don’t need to know. Even if the (c) figure was substantially lower than the (a) figure, this does not imply that Indian territories were unpopulated and awaiting settlement.

odyssey06 wrote: »

And it's not your claim but figures do seem relevant to the idea that "More Irish people killed more Indians than anyone else."
What Irish people.
What Indians.
What centuries... decades and territories\states did these deaths occur.
What else killed Indians.

I’m not particularly interested in defending the “more Irish” claim. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a very dodgy claim. I was more responding to your claim that “no ethnic cleansing was needed” to facilitate the settlement of Indian territories by white settlers. It certainly was.

Peregrinus wrote: »

What you actually said was this:
This suggest that, because of infectious diseases, previously populated land was effectively cleared, and so was available for settling without needing to be "ethnically cleansed".
I dont' think this is correct at all. Any land that was still unpopulated in the nineteenth century was unpopulated because it was unproductive; it couldn't sustain viable settlement (and as a result hadn't previously been settled by native Americans, and experienced little white settlement). I'm not aware of any area in what is now the US that was settled by indigenous people, cleared by plagues following European contact, and was still empty more than two centuries later when it was (in effect) colonised by the US. But the reverse is true; there are signficant areas that had been sparsely settled before European contact but were much more densely settled by the mid-nineteenth century as a result of the development of the Plains Indian horse cultures (and in fact these are the areas that offered the stiffest resistance to white settlement).

Do you realise you have just quoted two different posters?

And I'm not talking exclusively about the 19th century.

odyssey06 wrote: »

Do you realise you have just quoted two different posters?

God, you're right. My apologies.

odyssey06 wrote: »

And I'm not talking exclusively about the 19th century.

Fair enough. Though I think the "more Irish" claim (which we are both sceptical of) refers to what went on in the nineteenth century, and it is in the nineteenth century that the bulk of Indiand dispossession occurs.

Peregrinus wrote: »

No. I think you are conflating two very different periods of history.

The plague of epidemics followed first contact/exploration; it was rapid and severe. But "rapid" is the key word here; from about a century after first contact the population was recovering again - i.e. from the early 1600s. And the repopulation of the land with new, changed societies - e.g. the plains Indian culture - was extensive. As well as acquiring smallpox from Europeans, Native Americans acquired domesticated horses, and this completely changed their way of life, enabling different, and very successful, patterns of land use, settlement and migration.

It was another two hundred years or more before European settlers on the Eastern seaboard began their aggressive westward expansion and settlement program. They were not settling in depopulated lands, but in repopulated lands, of which the well-established indigenous people had to be disposessed.

Nope. It's you are confused. The thread is about the entire history of New World colonisation. There were massacres towards the end of the 19th century but they were also massacres in the 16th century and Irish present from very early on. There is evidence of plagues hitting far later the early 1600s, even in the second half of the 19th cen but even if there was wasn't, it wouldn't disprove my point. The populations never recovered their numbers, despite substantial cultural change and evolution like the adoption of horse use. There was probably a few areas like on the Plains where horses allowed a net increase exlcuing the impact of plagues but that is an exception.

odyssey06 wrote: »

The 90% figure seems to be a widely accepted estimate for losses after contact through disease.

When you look at the battles between native Americans and European settlers, the numbers involved are minuscule.

Most have less than 2,000 participants total, compared to a Napoleonic battle which could have 100 times more combatants.

The population was either ridiculously small to begin with, or so absolutely devastated that the settlers could easily raise an army larger than the indigenous peoples.

Also that old joker Lord Haw Haw, Nazi cheerleader, was Irish. We're no different to anyone else.

Tinytemper wrote: »

And those Irish people who committed these crimes were rightly vilified and ostracised upon return.

Were they??

Tinytemper wrote: »

Yes.

Care to expand on that?

Tinytemper wrote: »

Yes, they were praised for other deeds but not for their dark history. We don't celebrate this viciousness dispalyed by Irish people partaking in disgusting crimes, unlike other countries.

We celebrate the fact that we colonised Australia and USA though, which wasn't our land. We are no different to any other people.