VIRGIN SOIL THESIS

The virgin soil thesis (VST), coined by historian Alfred W. Crosby, proposes that the population decline among Native Americans after 1492 is due to Native populations being immunologically unprepared for Old World diseases. While this theory received support in popular imagination and academia for years, recently, scholars such as historians Tai S. Edwards and Paul Kelton argue that Native Americans "'died because U.S. colonization, removal policies, reservation confinement, and assimilation programs severely and continuously undermined physical and spiritual health. Disease was the secondary killer.'"^[10] According to these scholars, certain Native populations did not necessarily plummet after initial contact with Europeans, but only after violent interactions with colonizers, and at times such violence and colonial removal exacerbated disease's effects.^[11]

Native_American_genocide_in_the_United_States

Thursday, October 02, 2025 09:21AM