Oh, honey. You think it was just an accident? Famously, no. Deliberate policies of forced relocation, like the Trail of Tears. Rewards for killing Native Americans. The deliberate gift of smallpox-infected blankets.
Infographics
Historians like David Stannard and Ward Churchill (yes, controversial, but the math holds up) argue this was a textbook case of genocide. The intent was to clear the land. Period.
So, by the numbers: roughly 50-100 million Indigenous people died in the first 150 years after Columbus. That dwarfs the Holocaust. It makes the Holodomor (4-5 million Ukrainians starved by Stalin) look like a warm-up act.
The Competition? Also Awful
Of course, we have to mention the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It’s not always called a genocide, but if you count the 15-20 million people who died during capture and the Middle Passage? It’s right up there. It’s a crime against humanity on a staggering scale.
Then there’s the Holodomor I just mentioned. Stalin’s famine was a targeted genocide against Ukrainians. “Hell on earth” undersells it.
And the Rwandan Genocide (800,000 people in 100 days) is “smaller” but so fast and intimate it makes your stomach turn. Neighbors killing neighbors with machetes. Doesn’t get more personal than that.
