ABSTRACT
Eliminationism began long before there was even an America. The roots of America's history are bathed in the blood of an eliminationist impulse imported from Europe - and we have never quite outgrown that legacy. Although life in pre-Columbian America was not exactly nonviolent or idyllic, most Amerindian societies were relatively healthy. This good health was precisely what made them so vulnerable to conquest. The debate over Indian removal became a turning point in Americans' relations with the Indians and perhaps more importantly, it was a precursor in its North-South division and the pitting of human rights against states' right to the debate over slavery that eventually precipitated civil war. The English callousness about the spread of the disease reflected the European eliminationist impulse, which had already manifested itself over the preceding centuries in various Jewish pogroms, particularly during the Crusades. It was embodied at the outset by the view of the Native Americans as subhuman.
