SEATTLE – If it had been only one skeleton, But what construction workers stumbled upon went beyond anything Men and women lay in ritual embrace. Infants were buried ”This is just the tip. There could be thousands of people buried there," said The arrival of Europeans in the late 1700s and early 1800s marked the beginning If there were a Hall of Fame for Genocide, the European In the Latin regions of America, although genetic Without genetic or acquired resistance to old European The diseases spread like wildfire, crossing both continents These bodies in Washington represent direct physical from the Boston Globe<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Frances Charles, chairwoman of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, counts cedar boxes holding tribal ancestors’ remains unearthed by work in connection with reconstruction of the Hood Canal Bridge, a state Department of Transportation project. STEVE RINGMAN PHOTO SEATTLE – If … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/elwha.jpg\")
\n Frances Charles, chairwoman of the Lower Elwha Klallam
\n Tribe, counts cedar boxes holding tribal ancestors’ remains unearthed
\n by work in
\n connection with reconstruction of the Hood Canal Bridge, a state Department
\n of Transportation project. STEVE RINGMAN PHOTO<\/em><\/p>\n\n
\n the project would have continued. Even a few dozen skeletons might
\n not have been enough to persuade Washington state officials to abandon
\n a
\n $283 million bridge-repair project along the Strait of Juan de Fuca,
\n about 65 miles northwest of here.<\/p>\n
\n ever found in the Pacific Northwest: an ancient Indian village dating
\n back 17 centuries, with lodges, dance halls, and cemeteries containing
\n hundreds
\n of skeletal remains. Nearly 300 complete skeletons have been unearthed,
\n many of them buried in clusters, including entire extended families.<\/p>\n
\n with mothers, the young and the old lay side by side, as many as 11 in
\n a grouping.<\/p>\n
\n David Rice, a senior archeologist for the Army Corps of Engineers in
\n Seattle, who characterized the site as potentially the largest prehistoric
\n village
\n and burial grounds ever found in the United States.<\/p>\n
\n of a devastating decline for the region’s Indians. Smallpox and other
\n European diseases wiped out 90 percent of the native population, scientists
\n say. Rice thinks the mass graves at Tse-whit-zen resulted from these
\n illnesses.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n extermination of the American Indians would surely have a featured
\n spot. Although impossible to accurately rank human genocide in terms
\n of total dead, anthropologists agree that the indigenous population
\n of the area which now holds the United States at the time of contact
\n (1492) was between 10 and 15 million. In an almost teutonic display
\n of efficiency, 400 years later there were fewer
\n than 300,000 left.<\/p>\n
\n intermingling made extermination problematic, ethnicide was employed
\n as a non-lethal sidekick to partial genocide. In both North and South,
\n the dominant cultures have escaped full responsibility for the ‘cides
\n due to the inadvertent collaboration of nature.<\/p>\n
\n favorites like smallpox and syphilis, the Indians were decimated by
\n disease and dropping like flies before the invading Christians ever
\n laid a baptizing hand on their heads. <\/p>\n
\n in a death march that made the European Black Plague look like a mild
\n flu season. 60-90% fatality rates were common, complex societies fell
\n apart, survivors wandered and reverted to savagery. Between the time
\n Columbus’s crew hit the beaches of Atlantic South
\n America
\n (1492)
\n and
\n when Pizarro
\n invaded
\n Pacific
\n Peru
\n 40 years
\n later the diseases had beaten him to the punch. The Inca Empire was
\n dying from exotic European diseases, explaining in large part how 200
\n pestilent Spanish thugs could conquer an advanced civilization with
\n millions
\n of inhabitants.<\/p>\n
\n evidence of the greatest genocide this hemisphere has ever seen. It
\n will be interesting to see how this story develops, and we will try
\n to keep
\n an eye on it.<\/p>\n