|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In 40,000 pages of Ward Churchill's work, the lynch mob is focussing on stories about individual whites and their role in genocide. Within that, the critics point to Thornton's book above as not supporting stories that are most upsetting the lynch mob. It has to do with what is being referenced in footnotes. Ward Churchill correctly claims that Thornton's work provides ample support for the type of numbers Ward Churchill has used in discussing epidemics that killed indigenous people of North America. The additional question of individual mechanism is vexing the lynch mob, which has shown no concern for problems of their overall story, just stories at the individual level. Hence, when the lynch mob reads Ward Churchill footnotes, it only looks for details on individual mechanisms of genocide. The lynch mob is united in defending individual white historical reputations, particularly settlers and military. In cases where smallpox appears with a virulence, the holocaust revisionists deny the racial pattern of smallpox deaths consistently in their arguments against Churchill. If we might typify this sort of argument, Churchill says there was a smallpox epidemic, finds potential white people with the infection or infected articles and points to them as guilty; whereas, the lynch mob needs a letter a la Amherst admitting to intentions to kill someone. In MIM's opinion, Ward Churchill proceeds by finding an overall pattern of fact and then knowingly looks for details that approximate the "mechanism" individualists want to hear about in history. Many Anglo individualists find this approach to be wrong by nature, but the alternative is troubling. If there is no individual-level detail or detail that would convince a court today, does that mean we have to say smallpox did not occur in the 1600s at all or that it appeared by magic means, out of nowhere? We argue that the approach of using induction when a general pattern of fact is already known has to be deemed wrong, especially when holocaust revisionism is the potential result, as we are seeing in Colorado politics with a great regularity now.
MIM has checked on allegations made against Ward Churchill regarding Russell Thornton's work, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. Russell Thornton's work has been at the center of accusations by Ward Churchill's critics saying he should not have referenced Thornton in a manner that the Anglo literalists do not approve of. In the process of reading Thornton's book, MIM found additional evidence regarding the stupidity of some of the University of Colorado's formal complaint against Churchill--what MIM calls the "GOCC" report, for Great Oppressor Cultural Counterrevolution.
MIM readers will find that the Thornton book in question is about many of the same types of issues that come up with China's Great Leap Forward and alleged Maoist killing of "millions." How big was the indigenous population and how did it die? In the end, MIM has held steadily that we must have knowledge of demography and epidemiology-- those sorts of subjects to know what happened in the Great Leap. The same is true of the situation with the genocide of indigenous peoples of North America, except that the quality of historical evidence is generally weaker concerning a question where no central census was even attempted in the case of North American indigenous people since 1492, while in China under Mao there were systematic census efforts. These issues involved are also similar to the question of how many Iraqi deaths can be attributed to the U.$. war and also the causes of the infamous Ethiopian famine deaths of recent years.
By way of passing, the GOCC report says without any evidence:
"Professor LaVelle contends that Professor Churchill willfully distorts the scholarship of both authors to buttress his claims concerning Indian statistical extermination.46 Although that issue is not central to the allegation before us, the Committee’s reading of Limerick’s and Thornton’s original writings finds that Professor LaVelle is correct in this instance as well: those authors do not support Professor Churchill’s claims."It is amazing that anyone could read Thornton and not see a wide range of estimates of population and native exterminations covered and countless disclaimers on the quality of the population estimates. Thornton's work definitely does support the numbers that Churchill reported for dead. For that matter, the GOCC report is flatly wrong on its page 79: "No other source for the number of deaths is given." This again sounds like an illiterate's reading of demography. Thornton's work itself is largely a review of existing professional work. If the GOCCers needed more "sources," they could have consulted any number of people mentioned by Thornton. It's an absurd accusation, because Thornton himself is not some timeless census official who watched the indigenous people from Jamestown to now. Thornton's book is largely a review, so this accusation against Churchill by the GOCC has no point.
Although we went to Thornton's book to examine a different issue, we found that "Allegation C" or "Allegation 9" which the University of Colorado kangaroo committee supported by its own standard of "preponderance of evidence"--is more of the same strange combination of literalism and law that makes the University of Colorado bureaucracy a self-inflicted joke.
Here is an example of something the University of Colorado GOCCers expect us to take seriously:
"Professor Churchill does not provide even 'circumstantial evidence' to support his claim that the disease was smallpox or tell his readers by what logic he reached this conclusion. Hence his claim is unsubstantiated."Professor Churchill does not need "circumstantial evidence": smallpox was the leading cause of death of indigenous peoples as Thornton states over and over again. Smallpox is in fact the default argument if we are to take Thornton seriously, and doing so would actually be important to the GOCC argument, because GOCC needs to be able to distinguish "natural" smallpox from war-related smallpox if it is going to have any chance of a decent argument against Churchill at all. As it stands, the GOCC report is a mish-mash of arguments about causation mostly leading to a holocaust revisionist position by default.
Quite contrary to the GOCC findings, one correct practice for the question would indeed be to recognize smallpox deaths as the reigning champion of causes to attribute the pattern of indigenous deaths to. Thornton himself references smallpox over and over again as first in the line of causes of death. For example, smallpox was the "the greatest"(p. 44) of the early killers of indigenous people. "Smallpox was still the most deadly."(p. 78)
The committee trying to fire Ward Churchill spoke as if there is an alternative theory where no one died. This implicit method of discussion has to be brought out and exposed to light of day, because it is connected to creepy holocaust revisionism and eugenics, the real reason for the popularity of the attack on Churchill: there is no appropriate "neutral" alternative for a situation where tribes were wiped out. If there is to be a discussion of "Allegation C"'s substance, there has to be a point about smallpox. That is where Churchill enters.
In fact, if there is to be something disputed or discussed, it is the cause of death. There is no room for leaving open the possibility that nothing happened with the Wampanoags, but that is in fact what the GOCC is doing when it says Churchill "fabricated" the story of smallpox. If the GOCC just wanted to defend a plague story of death for the Wampanoags, that would be one thing, but calling the smallpox explanation "fabricated" is not intelligent and just reeks of literalism or formalism.
The GOCCers' own report points to Thornton, who alludes to dispute over the Wampanoag disease in question; yet, the GOCCers still had the nerve to say that Ward Churchill should be fired for taking a side in that dispute that the GOCCers say lacks a "preponderance of the evidence." If the choice is between atheoretical literalists with an implicit alternative theory that nothing happened and a Ward Churchill who says the documentation was poor but John Smith was around, then we need to acknowledge, "if the facts contradict the theory, then so much the worse for the facts." We can say that, because we know the overall factual situation if not the exact details at the individual level. It is simply an acknowledgement of the poor quality of the historical record.
That's not to mention that there is no reason to fire a professor because he does not abide by the "preponderance of the evidence" on a question, as if behaving as a judge or jury in a civil trial is the standard for remaining on a faculty. If scholars were fired every time they did work on something where there was a minority of evidence, existing theories would never change--even if we presume that faculty have always accurately chosen where the preponderance of evidence lies.
Russell Thornton's work says over and over again that smallpox was the leading cause of death among indigenous people of North America until the 20th century, but the GOCC report footnotes on page 31 reference a few select pages of Thornton, not the first three chapters where he is discussing population size, decline of population and the survey of population decline causation. In the first half of the book, Thornton lists smallpox consistently as first among diseases and by the flaw of his own reasoning separating disease and war, this fact stands out all the more in Thornton's work in undermining GOCC's report. Yet what does the University of Colorado bureaucracy do after claiming to have reviewed Thornton's work? It raises as one of the main questions in its "Allegation C" inquisition: "Was smallpox the disease that caused the epidemic among the Wampanoags in 1616-18?" This is the scandal of "Allegation C" that we are supposed to be worried about.
What the committee does not ask is that given that overall it has been determined by Thornton no less that smallpox was the leading cause of death of indigenous peoples overall, why is it not the burden of proof on others to show that it was NOT smallpox that killed the Wampanoags?
Saying that there was no cause of death or no death is not acceptable. If there were to be a leading theory or leading alternative theory of the Wampanoag epidemic, it would have to be smallpox. Either there is no discussion of the cause of death--not true according to Thornton as GOCCers admit on page 37--or smallpox has to be discussed. There is no third option where we decide that nothing happened. Imputing smallpox is a more intelligent answer than imputing that nothing happened, the implicit standard in the criminal trial reasoning of the GOCC pettifoggers, led by a former prosecutor.
This again cuts to the lack of theoretical and methodological understanding among Ward Churchill's critics. The committee cuts to bourgeois individualist origins, and particularly the "mechanism" known as John Smith. Yet saying that they are not satisfied with the evidence connected to John Smith would not rule out smallpox, nor even John Smith. The argument stems from the "timing" of John Smith's appearances, as if historical records from that time were never known to be confused or inaccurate.
The vast majority of killings of indigenous people were not documented by the killer names and the deceased's names. To adopt the method that the John Smith documentation is weak and therefore nothing happened is holocaust revisionism. Perhaps this holocaust revisionism is not as blatant as denying the millions killed by Hitler, because our records and overall reach of communications from centuries prior to the 20th were much weaker. Nonetheless, it is not Thornton saying there is not a huge pattern of death to describe. As it stands, the GOCCers regularly imply that somehow people just died or even worse, that there is no question and maybe no deaths. John Smith is not here on criminal trial. There is only a question of what explanation is better in piecing together our limited knowledge of a past without a census! The appropriate question and standards have to be used.
Ward Churchill does not say so, but Thornton's American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492 is atheoretical. What is probably upsetting the literalists is that Thornton separates disease and war in his discussion while often mixing them in individual sentences. For example,
"European contact and colonization introduced disease, including alcoholism; warfare and genocide; geographic removal; relocation; and destruction of ways of life."Our literalists were probably happy separating disease and war, especially if doing so left John Smith innocent. The literalists may imagine that Ward Churchill did not see the semicolons in the above and therefore did not read Thornton literally correctly.
A potential clash of theories is set up in Thornton's book, but there is rarely any evidence offered to make that clash operative. Thornton's book reviews the range of professional opinion, but typically floats above the review without engaging potential clashes. It is a nice book for patting other professionals on the back, but it lacks something in the theory department. Ward Churchill patted Thornton on the back and then tried to bring out a real clash.
It's not surprising that based on Thornton's atheoretical work, various literalists and bourgeois historians work their magic where the alternative is that nothing happened in the Wampanoag epidemic. The nothing alternative suits those used to running criminal trials where one alternative is "innocent." Yet, as we said John Smith is not on criminal trial here, so the GOCC is wrong to pit nothing-happened against what it calls Ward Churchill's "speculation." Again defending plague as a mechanism is one thing, but pointing to John Smith and saying Ward Churchill "fabricated" is creepy. It's the same kind of question of Democrats versus Republicans or Hitler versus his one-time number two Strasser: the quality of the two sides both determines the quality of the argument had. Ward Churchill provides some debates that do not lead to holocaust revisionism.
Nor is this a civil trial where we have to choose between plague and smallpox or face the consequences of losing our jobs as judges. There are only better and worse theories. Smallpox versus plague, starvation or alcoholism or even more accurately indigenous versus settler causation of death. Academic dispute as it is in this day when Ward Churchill obtained his life-time contract is long-term, without a trial date. If the record is poor, there is nothing wrong with pitting plague versus smallpox via settler.
As the GOCC acknowledges, Ward Churchill points out that there are better and worse degrees of documentation. It is not Churchill trying to evade that. De facto it is Churchill's critics trying to evade the quality of evidence. If we cannot pin down a written confession from some Anglo, then war-induced smallpox is considered a "fabrication." It is obvious where such a "method" will lead.
Epidemiologists and demographers do not generally sit around arguing about individual transmitters of disease, especially concerning such poorly documented and distant periods of time. Hence, had Ward Churchill not mentioned John Smith at all, a leading hypothesis would still have to be smallpox, bourgeois individualist historians be damned. GOCC's question--and half of its allegation-- regarding that should be out-of-bounds from inception. "Allegation C" is therefore proof of GOCC incompetence. We are talking about how millions of people disappeared over time, not whether John Smith persynally took an axe to them all. Such an argument fit for a court is a distraction from what has to be accomplished in epidemiology.
Then within smallpox as a cause of death, there is a further question whether it was war-related smallpox or "natural" smallpox. There is no option of "John Smith innocent," therefore not smallpox. By such a standard most deaths in North America at the time would remain unexplained. It is therefore better, more intelligent--providing more information as economists would say-- to impute some means where something happened. In other words, in looking at any situation of the past since settler contact with indigenous peoples, if one has to guess that "nothing happened" or "smallpox happened," "smallpox happened" is a better guess. It is an educated guess, a kind of guess that people trained in epidemiological methods are already aware of.
The standard for reviewing Ward Churchill's and Thornton's approaches is not criminal trial reasoning. A more appropriate standard would be the reasoning concerning Ethiopian famine. On this question, Thornton's separation of disease and war parallels trying to separate natural disaster and war in Ethiopia's case. In Ethiopia's case, such a separation is under attack. The Wikipedia entry on Ethiopian famine shows some consciousness of disputes over the cause of millions of deaths:
"The government of Ethiopia relies on the foreign exchange generated by exports to service foreign debts, much of which was generated buying military equipment."The Wikipedia entry does not attempt theoretical argument either, but right from the second sentence in the entry, we see politics and militarism discussed as the ultimate cause of possibly millions of deaths. It would be possible superficially to think that drought or other natural disasters caused the millions of deaths, but such an explanation does not stand scientific scrutiny.
One example along the lines of dividing war and Ethiopian famine can be found in a Harvard Gazette article on the subject.(1) When we get into the actual epidemiological literature and the overall political accounts of the period of Ethiopian famines of recent times, we learn a different picture. Here is an example of something two professionals said:
"Our results show that the role of parental education in reducing child mortality is great during famine periods. In the communities devastated by war, however, its impact was significant only when the father has above primary education."(2)Thus picturing mass exterminations as people lined up and shot or scalped can be misleading. There is a question of ultimate causation. In this particular Ethiopia article, what is interesting is not whether individuals "intended" to kill each other, but the overall pattern of death and the causes of that death. It is absurd that the GOCC actually argued against Churchill that John Smith wanted slaves, not to kill them, as if slave-owners did not both kill many slaves and keep them for reproduction and labor.
In many scientific approaches it is rather assumed that the equivalent of Ethiopian John Smiths are around making war and then the pattern of deaths is examined to see what sources were ultimately causal. The GOCCers want us to focus on the poor quality of individual stories and decide that John Smith was "not guilty." Had the GOCCers been Ethiopian, they'd have to be outraged that millions of deaths were attributed to their relatives, many of which are still around as participants in a war that people say is ultimately responsible for millions of famine deaths. An effort on whether John Smith is "not guilty" is neither here nor there. The epidemiologists are trying to say even education matters, so picturing mass extermination even in the famine as just people lined up and killed cannot be what they are getting at.
Frances Stewart at Oxford reflects the prevailing intelligent opinion on Ethiopia, which is not that it is a bunch of desert that acts up sporadically to kill millions through natural disasters. Rather, "The Sudan famines of the 1980s and again in 1998 and the Ethiopian famine of 1984 which millions died, are examples. These indirect economic and social consequences of civil wars are, of course, compounded by direct attacks on civilians, with deaths, injuries and flight resulting."(3) Other epidemiologists then come along and find that massive flight of people can result in sudden concentrations of people in the wrong places that allow for the spread of measles and other diseases usually defeated in better political circumstances. Scientists argue about the direct and indirect causes behind massive patterns of death. They do not imagine that they are going to be able to catalog all the John Smith killings by searching through their descendants' attics. That's called giving white people records too much credit, an uncritical approach. Ironically, Ward Churchill is under fire on this question while Frances Stewart causes hardly a stir, because the idea that Ethiopians are at war or have a civil war goes down relatively easily among the Euro-Amerikan population. Colorado is obviously having a much harder time being objective about itself and the rest of the united $tates. MIM has also pointed out that if one wanted to publish an extrapolation for China on Great Leap deaths based on a single village, one would find CIA funding at the China Quarterly and an editor granted the chair of the Government Department at Harvard. One could misplace the decimal point and overestimate deaths under Mao by 10-fold without any peep from anyone. Yet Ward Churchill comes along and suggests a number of smallpox deaths in a particular epidemic which fits easily within the range of what even Thornton was saying, and every stupid cracker in Colorado is going to learn a couple disagreements Lavelle and Thornton have with Churchill.
Sometimes both causes mentioned by Thornton are true simultaneously and not separately-- disease and war, with war being the ultimate cause. Thornton himself admits of the documented cases of biological (smallpox) warfare by settler whites against the indigenous people. For that matter, he admits that the whole Bureau of Indian Affairs used to be a subsection of the "War Department."(p. 133) Hence, Thornton's separation of "disease" and "war" is wrong to begin with, but more importantly it is wrong to categorize causes with the implicit assumption that they are separate when at issue is the clash of evidence regarding those causes.
Without addressing it, Thornton himself provides substantial evidence that war is a better explanation for smallpox dissemination than something else. Thornton admits that genetic theories of indigenous non-resistance to smallpox are not accepted by most scholars.(p. 55) Yet all scholars do accept that at least some war and extermination was going on. We know where that would lead in the Ethiopia case--no need for outrages and political anti-intellectual movements there. Yet in the Colorado case, a general knowledge that whites have been documented to conduct biological warfare against indigenous people and that there is a pattern of deaths that needs explaining is not taken seriously.
Thornton at one point talks about a guess regarding 500,000 direct killings. So when Thornton himself tells readers that the smallpox fatality rate for indigenous people was vastly higher than for white people--we have to ask why. Whites died at a 10 or 15% rate in smallpox outbreaks, says Thornton of New Englanders, but Indians died at 55-90% rates.(p. 64) Why does it seem as if indigenous people are exposed to the disease over and over again while whites seem to survive much better? War as a mechanism explains that pattern and Thornton has already acknowledged that genetics is a minority opinion. What Thornton does not do is set up the clash of war versus genetics. He mentions both but fails to engage the clash that needs to happen regarding his own evidence. When Churchill talks about Amhersts and white forts as an approximation of what is happening in general, he is providing an intelligent guess about something where great historical evidence is lacking and will never provide the answers needed. Once again, Frances Stewart will not be asked to line up every Ethiopian at war and evaluate the historical record. For that matter, Thornton's book rules out very little when Thornton himself says in his first chapter that the range of population estimates is wide because of the poor and incomplete nature of the historical record that researchers wished existed.
Given the evidence provided by Thornton in a survey-sort-of-way without a clash of theories, the scientific choice between war and genetics is set up. War is the better choice. The general answer that Ward Churchill provides of war-induced smallpox is better than the alternatives, not just in one historical context, but overall. In other words, in an overall sense, there is nothing better than what Churchill said that the GOCC offered that explains the pattern of facts regarding smallpox deaths by race.
Thornton himself speaks once along the lines that contemporary researchers on Ethiopia speak:
"The French and Indian War from 1755 to 1763 against the British directly reduced the populations. It also served to spread smallpox."(p. 86)Unfortunately, Thornton did not really draw out the argument about war and disease being separate or war inducing disease or preventing its treatment.
Proving that this or that individual is innocent or undocumented for guilt is not going to change the overall situation and the need for an overall explanation of the pattern of death. Just saying that smallpox is a natural cause is not going to explain the gap in death rates between whites and natives. The trouble with Ward Churchill's critics is that they are used to arguing about individuals and not overall patterns. When they hear Ward Churchill mention "John Smith," they cut to that and only that as if that is all they are capable of getting a grip on. Yet in professional terms, John Smith is taken lightly by demographers, economists and epidemiologists who might find themselves looking at this sort of data.
The same controversy is underlying the Mandan/Fort Clark issue with Ward Churchill. We know the overall picture and it is not the same as for the whites and smallpox, so what could possibly be the reason? The story-tellers cannot find any evidence in self-recorded writings of settlers, "hi, future historians, today I committed genocide." Nor is it just a question of oral sources. The overall result was racist, so what was the explanation? The GOCC committee implicitly believes the truth is whatever can be induced from individual white sources and sticks to that attack doggedly. It is untroubled by a need to provide theoretical contrasts, even when it is known that there is an underlying factual pattern that needs explaining. So the whole question becomes one of poor documentation and the question goes away in the GOCC/holocaust revisionist book. The GOCC won't admit to being holocaust revisionist, but its method leads inexorably in that direction, obviously to appease Colorado Euro-Amerikan taxpayers. We believe it would be more correct to deduce the overall pattern of facts from Churchill's more theoretical approach rather than to leave out the pattern of facts entirely. Thornton himself says his numbers for those killed by war as opposed to disease are only a "guess." For that matter, he points to a wide divergence in estimates of indigenous population.
To say that one does not find Thornton claiming war caused widespread smallpox in the Fort Clark issue is possible. To say that the numbers that Churchill claimed as possible dead from smallpox warfare are impossible or that warfare is impossible as the cause--that would be overreading Thornton: evidence for that would be missing. Dispute over individual detail is possible, but dispute on the possibility of war-caused smallpox as the cause of massive exterminations would be much harder to prove against Churchill. Ultimately, the more important argument is not the individual people as mechanisms, but whether Churchill's opponents can explain an overall pattern of fact. In fact, reading Thornton should give one a general idea of the huge size of population differences various methods bring about and the possible room for historical explanations of massive causes of death such as war-induced smallpox.
Thornton provides no systematic proof that disease and warfare are separate in the case of indigenous peoples of North America. It does not appear that Thornton considered it his job to prove the separation of causations; although he is on record as opposing one of Churchill's references to his work. Even saying that indigenous education was poor in explaining European disease would not be accepted by Ethiopia experts of today. First of all, the European disease got there how? By war. Second of all, the resources that indigenous people could have applied to disease education and handling went to defense against Europeans. Even if Europeans had superior means to handle disease, the question would have to be asked why indigenous people did not obtain those means or take them up themselves. George Washington applied means to save his soldiers in the American Revolution. By 1801, vaccination by U.S. Government started.(p. 100) Again, war could be the answer why vaccination did not get far enough. The implicit GOCC idea that indigenous people had an inherent desire to die from disease is not acceptable and fits a racist history-telling. The idea that one or two Amhersts documented themselves and there were no others instead of 1000 others for every single one who documented himself is plainly just gullible. Scientists do not sit around collecting up historical records from slave-owning racists with instructions from the government (available in print today) to kill indigenous people. We have better things to do until someone comes up with a theory that explains the overall pattern of facts other than what Churchill says.
Hence, it is not possible to assume as most of Thornton's work does that war and disease are separate questions. If they are separate questions it has to be proved so. The evidence regarding white and indigenous survival rates leaves open the question that there does need to be some overall explanation. Churchill has an explanation for the gap.
If there is to be an argument with Ward Churchill it is regarding people such as John Smith. Are they worth discussing? Giuliani is a leading candidate for president, because people saw him concretely directing the emergency response to 911. For a large portion of society, the truth is either entirely concrete at that level or not at all. Giuliani's popularity is a reason that John Smith does have to be discussed. Smallpox coming from white infirmaries has to be spelled out. 911 victims have to be called "little Eichmanns" that concretely. That is what is making Ward Churchill the lightning rod, even moreso than MIM.
The trouble with the kind of people liable to criticize Churchill is that they have no method other than historical individualism. We see this over and over again, from the people in Colorado criticizing Ward Churchill for being "white" to the people prepared to say that only one explanation of the Wampanoag is acceptable if tarring John Smith might be the result otherwise. The fact that most whites survived smallpox outbreaks while most natives did not is not on the radar for these Anglo individualists. If an individual family adopted some indigenous people and they all died of smallpox while the white family members did not, then our Anglo individualists might concern themselves. Yet they would just as likely find no historical explanation or documents and drop any inquiry why the indigenous family members died off while the whites did not.
Notes:
1. http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/03.09/09-unicef.html
2. Gebre-Egziabher Kiros and Dennis P Hogan, "War, famine, and excess child mortality in Africa: the role of parental education,"
International Journal of Epidemiology, 30(2001):1-9,
ssrl.pstc.brown.edu/ethiopia/brown_publications/war_famine_child%20mortality.pdf
3. hdr.undp.org/nhdr/hdr_support/hd_insights.cfm