Indian Signs: Taking the American experience one might ponder on what really is an optimum population
By William Partridge
When Christopher Columbus set foot on American shores in 1492 the North American Indian populated the length and breadth of what is now USA. Semi nomadic and estimated at maybe one million in total, they farmed and they hunted. Tribal conflict was far from unknown in this beautiful and limitless land but courtesy and a developed affinity with the land was what Columbus found. He wrote of the Tainos Indians "So tractable, so peaceable, are these people that ....... there is not in the world a better nation. They love their neighbour as themselves, and their discourse is ever sweet and gentle....."
More Spaniards and later, the British (in 1605) arrived. Such was their parlous state after an arduous Atlantic journey, many immigrants owed their very survival to Indian hospitality. More arrived and land grants, a quite alien concept to the Indians, were agreed. Wasn't the land limitless after all?
Shipload followed shipload. Land began to be taken, not agreed. Dispute flickered and European guns blazed their authority over the east coast tribes.
In 1805 the Lewis Clark expedition reached the Pacific coast. The trickle of immigrants became a stream, became a flood. New iron-built steamers transported European settlers by the million. The settlers themselves tended to be the poor, the dispossessed, the survivors of the 1840's Irish potato famine just some of them. They headed west, over Indian land and over Indian objections. The violence, the betrayals, the greed as well as the courage; Geronimo, Red Cloud, General Custer, Buffalo Bill - all have been well recorded in print and on film. Much less so the Indian way of life.
Ever-present, however, and accelerating as the 19th century wore on, was a relentless tide of land hungry settlers sweeping west and by the end of the 19th century American Indian society was effectively extinct. The European justified this wholesale robbery of Indian land under the slightly sickening title 'Manifest Destiny' - a Darwinian (except that it preceded Darwin's 'Origin of Species') right of superior, Christian Europeans to the rewards of their enterprise, in this case, all of America and the riches within it.
But why such an unequal struggle? The Indian was very different but not basically inferior to the European - given the chance, individuals showed themselves capable of qualifying as lawyers as early as 1850. Simply, the Indian and the immigrants they ended up opposing were products of two separate and very different environments. Although no pacifist, the free-roaming Indian developed no concept of individual land ownership and little of possessions either and the main reason for this (and the big difference between the two cultures) was the abundant availability of land.
The European was a much more competitive fellow. Used to the close and increasing proximity of neighbours and neighbouring nations, a more watchful and belligerent stance was both natural and essential. Thus aggressive land ownership, heightened competition together with the progress it encourages, and war. Upon a clash of the two cultures, it was no contest.
Right until the end, the Indian hoped for peaceful co-existence and agreements honoured. He hoped in vain. Naively, he never began to understand the forces at work within the European. The expanding European masses saw in America what was unavailable at home - land. Sitting Bull, revered Indian leader and victor over Custer in 1876 later said "They made many promises, more than I can remember, but they kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it".
How many emigrate entirely voluntarily? Mass migration is supply driven. What would America and the American Indian be without European population growth which made existence, even survival, untenable for so many at home? Yet how many Europeans even now with the benefit of hindsight would entertain a notion that their own thoughtless procreation sounded the death knell of thousands half a world away, that the children so profusely parented at that time ultimately extinguished life for children elsewhere and out of sight.
Even by our own sympathetic standards, travelling for days without encountering another soul is a fragile pleasure. The European first intruded upon it then decimated it; looked upon the Indian as a heathen and called it Manifest Destiny.
The galvanising, relentless power of population growth is a power that is appreciated historically rather than contemporaneously. Expanding needs demand to be satisfied and sooner or later they will be, be it the appropriation of America or the unwelcome building of a local housing estate. For, alongside those demands inevitably come the tools to satisfy them - the inventions, the arms, the self-centred justifications.
There is sufficient evidence to ponder population growth as one of the great engines of conflict, although ponder is all one can really do in these early days of the science. One can look at the world's recent conflagrations; the Balkans, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Israel - all have a population growth dimension whereas Europe, a hotbed of past conflict, is now more peaceful and this happens to coincide with Europe's decline in population growth.
Taking the American experience one might ponder on what really is an optimum population were peace to be he only yardstick. The population density of pre-Columbus America was an environmentally super-friendly 4 square miles each! Can we do no better than that? Maybe we can't.
For further reading try 'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee' by Dee Brown, first published in GB by Barrie & Jenkins Ltd (1971)
Thank you to the Jackdaw an Optimum Population Trust Publication for this article www.optimumpopulation.org
