I'm in an anthropology class that studies Native American cultures prior to, and after, the arrival of Columbus. My Professor stated that Columbus killed around 6 million Native Americans, only a small portion of which stemmed from the smallpox disease. This was supposedly in a 2-3 year period, so they would have to kill tens of thousands every single day. When someone called him out on the implausibility of this claim, he kind of moved away from the subject. I'm not a fan of Columbus, but that number seems ridiculously high to me.
/u/gnikivar2 found the source that makes a very bad argument for this idea. Credit to him for that.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30131245?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
This source is very bad. It takes the most ridiculously high estimations of the pre-Columbian population of Hispaniola, which is 8 million, and then says that a single primary source's estimate of 500,000 in 1500 means that Columbus must have killed 7.5 million people in 8 years. Population estimates vary incredibly wildly, so it's best to be sceptical of any assertion that relies so heavily on one specific estimate.
Obviously, the answer here is just that the 8 million figure is wrong. Any sort of honest analysis of pre-Columbian population must consider all of the scholarship on the topic and choose a median, not cherrypick the highest possible number, and then cite one primary source from 1500 to say "7.5 million DEFINITELY died."
"Return To Hispaniola: Reassessing a Demographic Catastrophe" is a detailed look at the historiography of Hispaniola's population, and the author hazards a guess at 160-270,000 pre-Columbus. They also note that the high estimates of its population (1 million+) rely almost entirely on primary sources that were themself repeating hearsay, which itself was based on extrapolated headcounts when the Spanish only controlled small parts of the island, 20 years after the fact. And those counts may not have even happened anyway.
Back to the article in question:
So, using the best available documentary information and meth- odologies, the evidence seems to support Cook and Borah's estimate of some eight million Taino residents on the island of Espaiola in 1492.
Credibly high estimates of population on Hispaniola in 1492 would be around 500,000. Not 8 million. By "best available documentary evidence" he's referring to a book from 1969 that takes exaggerated numbers which were at best hearsay-based guesses at face value. In said book, they pretty much make the most ridiculously high estimations that they could possibly loosely justify, including, for example, 25,000,000 people living in what would become New Spain (more accepted estimates would be anything from 3-8 million to 17-18 million. As you can see, they're so wide as to be almost useless.). The linked article takes this clearly flawed book as a gospel of sorts.
To estimate the number of indigenous people who were killed under the governorship of Col6n, we just need some simple arithmetic. If Fonseca's count of five hundred thousand dates, as seems probable, to the arrival of Bobadilla in Espaiola in 1500, the number would fit rather precisely into Cook and Borah's extrapolation curve dating back to the precontact population estimate. Subtracting these two estimates puts the total deaths of the indigenous people of Espafiola at seven and a half million people under the direct regime of Cristobal Colon
Some overexcited scholars estimated 8 million on Hispaniola 50 years ago, and a single primary source from 1500 estimated 500,000. It obviously doesn't then logically follow that Columbus killed 7.5 million, it logically follows that those estimates should both be taken with a grain of salt. There were not very many Spanish people in the Caribbean at that time, and the natives were hardly just domesticated animals without any agency that gleefully lined up to be culled in a production-line slaughterhouse. Killing 7.5 million people, or even 2 million, would be physically impossible if "only a small amount were from disease".
It is unlikely that there were even more than a few million natives in the entire Caribbean. If this is indeed the source that your professor had in mind, then there you go.
Unless, of course, the prof was referring to the idea that Columbus was somewhat responsible for more than just what occurred under his direct administration, such as his implementation of systems of tribute and forced labour that became entrenched in the Spanish colonial mentality. I would say that is a perfectly valid position, but one that requires a lot of caveats, rather than just big scary numbers.
In conclusion, be skeptical of any claim that relies on specific population figures in the pre/post Columbian Americas. A good claim that utilises population estimates would be "native populations sharply declined", for example, as a catastrophic decline is reflected whether there were 20 million or 80 million people there pre-Columbus. When certain estimates are so much higher than the others that you can use them to make arguments that wouldn't otherwise hold, that's when we need to ask questions.
I also just want to add a disclaimer that I personally believe Columbus was terrible and directly responsible for massacres, so please don't take my post the wrong way. 8 million or 1000, he was a horrible murderer who I don't believe should be glorified in any way.
Hi Everyone, this is your friendly neighborhood mod team reminding you that answers must be in-depth and comprehensive. That means they cannot consist soleley of back-of-the-envelop math on the number of people that would need to be killed per day, or by each member of Columbus's crew. These might be part of an answer, but in themselves they are not sufficient. So far we have had 3 comments calculating murder-tallies, 2 comments disparaging the professor and 1 comment asking about removed comments.
/u/CoolNiceMike makes an excellent observation regarding your professor's claim if they were indeed referring to Hispaniola alone. However, as also noted at the end of /u/CoolNiceMike's comment, this claim gains more accuracy if we change the perspective of which we view depopulation in the Americas.
First, let's note something about disease. It is true that diseases played a very major role in the depopulation of the Americas. Unfortunately, many people today put way too much emphasis on this notion that disease did most of the legwork, giving rise to several myths, such as the "bloodless conquest" myth, in where colonizers moved into areas that were already depopulated and they didn't do much conquering at all. Another myth is the "virgin soil" hypothesis, the theory that the Americas were some sort of disease free paradise in where the Indigenous peoples had no immunity to European diseases and that these diseases spread so fast because of this, Indigenous groups were practically wiped out before Europeans even got their area. These myths have led a lot of people to concluding very wrong information about diseases, pathology, and the historical record of what exactly happened in the depopulating of the Americas at the time of Columbus. Diseases are even used as a scapegoat to this effect, which I speak about here.
One of the most recent and up-to-date works about these deadly pathogens is Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America (2015). This work is a compilation of essays by various experts who work to debunk the above myths and reveal the reality of what happened.
For decades some scholars had acknowledged that certain pathogens actually spread slowly. Crosby (1972:46), for instance, noted in The Columbian Exchange that there was no smallpox in the Caribbean in the first twenty-five years after Columbus. Livi-Bacci (2003:38), who looked closely at records from Hispaniola, has shown that this was not limited to smallpox: "[B]efore 1518 there is no trace of major epidemics" (p. 26).
Now, of course, this does not mean diseases didn't have an impact. As further commented on:
This, in turn, demonstrates another key point, one that has also been carefully documented over the past decade: epidemics were but one of many factors that combined to generate the substantial morality that most groups did experience. As Livi-Bacci (2011:164) observed, "the long-term impact of the new diseases was increasingly severe the more 'damaged' the demographic system and the more crippled its ability to rebound after a shock." Specific case studies have made this case in considerable detail. Livi-Bacci's work on Hispaniola demonstrates this well. Spaniards confiscated Taino labor, disrupted subsistence activities, displaced populations, and undermined living conditions. . ." (p. 28).
So what we have here is a narrative that demonstrates, through evidence, that diseases alone cannot be pinpointed as the sole cause for depopulation, as if it was an incubator of an inevitable downfall. Rather, we must observe other explanations. The most glaring one would be the other major change that occurred in 1492 and the coming years: colonization.
Columbus's "discoveries" put the Americas on the map for the Europeans. It was Columbus who began and even instituted the many practices that helped depopulation the Americas, namely grotesque slavery and wanton killing in the name of subjugation. Perhaps your professor was referring to this - that Columbus gave the signal and set the precedent for how the Indigenous people were to be treated by incoming Europeans. On this, David E. Stannard, author of American Holocaust (1992) examines this.
Columbus finished his letter, describing what he had seen on his voyage, on March 4th of 1493. A printed version of it was published in Barcelona and was widely circulated less than a month later. A month after that a translated edition was circulating in Rome. A month after that a version that set the letter to verse appeared. Others followed in Antwerp, Basel, Paris, Florence, Strassburg, Valladolid, and elsewhere, most of them going back for a second and third and fourth printings . . . Before long, reports were circulating that Satan himself resided on one of those islands in the Caribbean Sea . . . It was only a matter of time before that stereotype of barbarically hostile natives had metamorphosed once again. As best described by its most famous proponent, the eminent Spanish scholar Juan Gines de Sepulveda, the next representation of the New World's Indian was as creatues of a subhuman, Caliban-like nature who were intended by God "to be placed under the authority of civilized and virtuous princes or nations, so that they may learn, from the might, wisdom, and law of their conquerors, to practice better morals, worthier customs, and a more civilized way of life" (p. 64).
This sets the stage for understanding how Columbus and his men, including many future colonizers, were to view the Native inhabitants. After his first voyage, Columbus and his men brought with them from island to island a new proclamation: the requerimiento. This was a statement that was to be read to any encountered Indigenous person that basically demanded they give into Christianity and swear allegiance to the Pope and Spanish Crown. If not, it made it quite clear what was to happen:
Recordings from Columbus's men show the numbers of Indians they were dealing with. Michele de Cuneo writes:
When our caravels in which I wished to go home had to leave for Spain, we gathered together in our settlement 1600 people male and female of those Indians, of whom, among the best males and females, we embarked on our varavels on 17 Februrary 1495, 550 souls.
By the time of Columbus's second voyage, disease was breaking out among the islands that he landed on. Yet, that didn't stop him or his men from continuing to add to the devastation:
Wherever the marauding, diseased, and heavily armed Spanish forces went out on patrol, accompanied by ferocious armored dogs that had been trained to kill and disembowel, they preyed on the local communities - already plagued-enfeebled - forcing them to supply food and women and slaves, and whatever else the soldiers might desire. At virtually every previous landing on this trip Columbus's troops had gone ashore and killed indiscriminately, as though for sport, whatever animals and birds and natives they encountered, "looting and destroying all they found," as the Admiral's son Fernando blithely put it . . . More than 50,000 natives were reported dead from these encounters by the time the Admiral had recovered from his sickness. And when at last his health and strength had been restored, Columbus's response to his men's unorganized depredations was to organize them. In March of 1495 he massed together several hundred armored troops, cavalry, and a score or more of trained attack dogs. They set forth across the countryside, tearing into assembled masses of sick and unarmed native people, slaughtering them by the thousands" (p. 70).
Spanish missionary Bartolome de Las Casas records the following himself:
It was a general rule among Spaniards to be cruel; not just cruel, but extraordinarily cruel so that harsh and bitter treatment would prevent Indians from daring to think of themselves as human beings or having a minute to think at all" (p. 70).
Bartolome de Las Casas would later put the death toll at the hands of the Spanish, not disease, at over 20,000, during this voyage. And it was this type of attitude that set in motion how Indians of the New World were to be treated. Countless decrees, Papal Bulls, and sensational writings coming out of Europe repeatedly declared Natives as being non-human, worthy of subjugation and slavery. And that is what happened. Unfortunately, we may never know true numbers. As pointed out, 8 million was a favorite figure for a long time, but isn't necessarily supported now. Yet, if we take into account the surrounding areas, what Columbus and his men did - in addition to their own killing - was set a precedent for future invaders who would definitely reach a death toll ranging in the millions, deaths that happened far outside the impacts of diseases alone. However, this would have occurred over a longer time span than 2-3 years if we talk about deaths by the sword alone.
Further reading for this can be found here, a suggestion list by /u/anthropology_nerd. These aren't all related to your question, but provide further insight into how these pathogens acted and how we can conclusively say that diseases alone would not have done the damage that people claim.