（上）北美被欧洲人殖民，留下了大部分白人人口，但墨西哥也被欧洲人殖民，为什么他们不以白人为主?

Wes Frank
There is a lot of political narrative floating around on this topic, but the key thing to understand is that the population density of tropical and sub-tropical North America in 1492 was, as best as any credible historian can estimate, fifty times the population of temperate North America. The agricultural “tool kit” of indigenous Americans allowed for dense populations and cities in Mexico and and Central America, but not in temperate or sub-arctic North America.

关于这个话题有很多政治类说法，但关键是要明白，根据任何可信的历史学家的估计，1492年北美热带和亚热带地区的人口密度是温带地区的50倍。美洲土著的农业“工具包”允许墨西哥和中美洲得以人口密集并形成城市，在温带或亚北极的北美却没有。
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Hernando Cortes led a military expedition to conquer Mexico in 1519. The expeditions of the other conquistadores seeking to emulate his rise to wealth and fame were also military forces, built around companies of several hundred soldiers, fully equipped with steel armor and weapons. Everyone else on those expeditions, other than the priests, were servants providing support for those soldiers. The conquistadores invaded and conquered regions with populations in the hundreds of thousands, establishing themselves as great landowners, with access to as many native women for themselves and their men as they could marry, coerce, or buy. Spanish women came to those colonies later, of course, thousands of them, along with Spanish men either as workers or servants, but most of the population of Mexico and Central America was always indigenous and most of the gene pool was indigenous, regardless of Spanish officials and elites who tried to pretend they were not Mestizo or Criollo and were were actually of the purest Spanish descent.

赫尔南多·科尔特斯于1519年率领一支军事远征队征服墨西哥。其他试图效仿他获得财富和名声的征服者的远征也是军事力量，由数百名士兵组成，全副武装，装备有钢铁盔甲和武器。远征队的其他人，除了牧师，都是为士兵提供支持的仆人。征服者入侵并征服了拥有数十万人口的地区，将自己确立为大地主，他们可以为自己和同伴娶、胁迫或购买尽可能多的土著妇女。当然，后来有成千上万的西班牙女性来到这些殖民地，还有西班牙男性作为工人或仆人，但墨西哥和中美洲的大部分人口都是土著，大部分的基因库都是土著，尽管西班牙官员和精英们试图假装他们不是混血儿或克里奥罗人，实际上他们是最纯正的西班牙后裔。

The wastage of Eurasian diseases in the Spanish empire did not change the genetic mix in the mainland colonies of North America to any great degree. The loss of millions of natives to smallpox and measles still left millions of survivors. Spanish immigration and the forced immigration of hundreds of thousands of African slaves into Caribbean and coastal colonies changed the mix of “blood” greatly in some of those colonies and less in others.
While American history books describes men like Ponce De Leon, Hernando De Soto, and Francisco Coronado as “explorers,” their expeditions were organized as military invasions, not as exploration. They were looking for rich lands to conquer. When they could not find any gold or cities worth looting, they pillaged the villages they found and massacred thousands of natives, often out of sheer spite. Along the way, they spread Eurasian diseases all across temperate North America.

在西班牙帝国，欧亚疾病的损耗并没有在很大程度上改变北美大陆殖民地的基因组合。数百万当地人死于天花和麻疹，但仍有数百万幸存者。西班牙移民和数十万非洲奴隶被迫移民到加勒比和沿海殖民地，极大地改变了一些殖民地的“血统”混合，而另一些殖民地的“血统”则相对较少。
虽然美国历史书将庞塞·德莱昂、埃尔南多·德索托和弗朗西斯科·科罗纳多等人描述为“探险家”，但他们的探险实质是军事入侵。他们在寻找富饶的土地来征服。当他们找不到任何值得掠夺的黄金或城市时，他们就会掠夺他们发现的村庄，并屠杀成千上万的当地人，通常是出于怨恨。一路上，它们把欧亚疾病传播到了温带的北美。

The Spanish gave up on conquering temperate North America after 1542 because they found nothing worth conquering. No gold, no cities, and, importantly, not enough natives to subdue and enserf so they could establish themselves as wealthy grandees. The English, Dutch, and French began establishing colonies from Virginia to Quebec beginning in 1607, a half-century later, attempting to settle lands the Spanish were ignoring. Their expeditions had few or no soldiers. They explored by dealing carefully with the natives they found living in villages and along rivers. When they wanted to establish forts and villages, they purchased or traded for the rights to the land they were building on.

西班牙人在1542年后放弃了征服温带北美，因为他们发现没有值得征服的地方。没有黄金，没有城市，更重要的是，没有足够的当地人被征服和奴役，不足以成为富有的显贵。半个世纪后的1607年，英国人、荷兰人和法国人开始从弗吉尼亚到魁北克建立殖民地，试图在西班牙人忽视的土地上定居。他们的探险队几乎没有士兵。他们小心翼翼地与生活在村庄和河边的当地人打交道。当他们想要建立堡垒和村庄时，他们购买或交易他们所建造的土地的权利。

The indigenous peoples of this part of North America had seen their societies devastated by European diseases. Allowing these small bands of fifty to a hundred Europeans to set up trading posts on the sites of abandoned coastal villages gave the local rulers access to steel tools and guns, wool and linen blankets and clothing, metal cooking pots, axes, knives, fishhooks, and other sundries that gave them advantages in dealing, peacefully or violently, with other tribal communities living inland. The Europeans built and lived in their own towns, partly out of racism, but mostly for their own security and safety. They were few in number, dependent on each other for the skills and labor to build their European-style farms and towns. Not being soldiers, they needed to stay together to defend against natives who might want to relieve them of their European manufactures by force. The indigenous peoples of North America were no less prone to violence and pillage than the Spanish or English.

北美这一地区的土著人民目睹了他们的社会被欧洲疾病摧毁。这给予50到100个欧洲人组成的小团伙在废弃的沿海村庄的遗址上建立贸易站，使当地统治者能够获得钢工具、枪支、羊毛、亚麻毯子、衣服，金属炊具，斧头，刀，鱼钩和其他杂物，使他们在与其他居住在内陆的部落社区进行和平或暴力交易时具有优势。
欧洲人自己建造城镇自己居住，部分原因是出于种族主义，但主要是为了自己的安全。他们人数不多，互相依赖技能和劳动力来建造他们的欧式农场和城镇。他们不是士兵，他们需要团结在一起，以抵御可能想要用武力夺走他们的欧洲制造业的当地人。北美的土著民族与西班牙人或英国人一样，也同样倾向于暴力和掠夺。

图：17世纪中期纽约的奥尔巴尼

The founder of New France, Samuel De Champlain, estimated that there were only ten thousand natives left in the entire Saint Lawrence valley in 1608, the population having been ravaged by disease in the decades before his arrival. The Dutch in New Netherlands found similar numbers in the Hudson River valley. The population of the Powhattan Confederation, which controlled much of what is now Virginia and Maryland when the English founded Jamestown in 1607, may have numbered fifteen thousand. Their attempts to subdue or eradicate the English in Virginia failed, as they could never put enough warriors in the field to eradicate any of the English settlements scattered along the Virginia estuaries.

新法兰西的创始人塞缪尔·德·尚普兰(Samuel De Champlain)估计，1608年整个圣劳伦斯山谷只剩下1万名土著居民，在他到来之前的几十年里，这些人一直受到疾病的蹂躏。新尼德兰的荷兰人在哈德逊河谷发现的土著人数也类似。1607年英国人建立詹姆斯敦时，波瓦坦联盟控制了现在弗吉尼亚和马里兰的大部分地区，当时的（土著）人口可能有1.5万人。他们试图征服或消灭弗吉尼亚的英国人，但失败了，因为他们从来没有在战场上集结足够的战士来消灭散布在弗吉尼亚河口的任何英国人定居点。
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The Puritans who settled New England in the 1620s estimated that there may have been fifty thousand natives in the river valleys and forests around them, a country as large as England itself. They purchased more land as more as more of them sailed over the Atlantic, year after year. Eventually the native communities were simply outnumbered, unable to make any sort of concerted resistance to the European invaders. Massachusetts and Connecticut grew constantly through the colonial period with only a few months of conflict with indigenous communities and a few hundred violent deaths on either side over the course of the first seventy years of colonization.

1620年代在新英格兰定居的清教徒估计，在他们周围的河谷和森林里可能有5万土著居民，这是一个和英格兰一样大的国家。年复一年，随着越来越多的人横渡大西洋，他们购买了越来越多的土地。最终，土著社区寡不敌众，无法对欧洲入侵者进行任何形式的一致抵抗。马萨诸塞和康涅狄格在殖民时期不断发展，在最初的70年殖民期间，双方只与土著社区发生了几个月的冲突，双方都有数百人死于暴力。
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While the mass of the English, Dutch, and French who colonized North America lived in their own towns and villages, there was always a frontier to those settlements and thousands of Europeans who traded, trapped, and hunted along that frontier. Those Europeans, from Morton of Merry Mount in Massachusetts to the French Coureur des bois in Canada to the Dutch fur traders of Fort Albany, routinely intermarried with Native Americans. By the end of 17th Century there were populations of “half-bloods” or Metis all across eastern North America. Some of them assimilated into European-American society, some into Native American society. The population of Native Americans in temperate North America was continuously ravaged by European diseases, dropping to less than a half-million in the 18th Century.

当殖民北美的英国人、荷兰人和法国人生活在他们自己的城镇和村庄时，这些定居点总是有一条边界，成千上万的欧洲人沿着这条边界进行贸易、诱捕和狩猎。这些欧洲人，从马萨诸塞州梅里芒特的莫顿到加拿大的法国人，再到奥尔巴尼堡的荷兰皮草商人，经常与美洲原住民通婚。到17世纪末，北美东部到处都是“混血”或梅蒂斯人。他们中的一些人融入了欧美社会，一些人融入了美洲原住民社会。居住在北美温带地区的印第安人不断受到欧洲疾病的侵扰，在18世纪减少到不足50万。

At the same time, the European-American population just in the British coastal colonies was nearly two million. Thousands more were landing every year. The British and Germans who made up most of this population had no indigenous ancestry, no interest in acquiring any, and no reason to go out of their way to interact with what remained of the Native American population east of the Mississippi. They were prospering on their own, in their own European way, and expected to found one or more nations in North America through their own works for their own children. Native Americans were being swept aside, and few of their many great leaders could expect to do anything about it.

与此同时，仅在英国沿海殖民地的欧裔美国人就有近200万。每年还有成千上万的人登陆。英国人和德国人构成了这一人口的大部分，他们没有土著血统，也没有兴趣获得任何土著血统，也没有理由特意与密西西比河以东剩余的美洲土著人口互动。他们以自己的欧洲方式独自繁荣，并期望通过自己的工作为自己的孩子在北美建立一个或多个国家。印第安人被排挤到一边，他们众多的伟大领袖中很少有人能对此有所作为。

图：肖尼族印第安人的蓝夹克和特库姆塞领导了印第安人最后一次重大尝试抵御成千上万的欧洲定居者以保卫俄亥俄州的国家；肖尼人自1924年以来一直居住在俄克拉荷马州，成为美国公民
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Addendum: The map below, based on descxtions from scholarly texts, shows the approximate distribution of the indigenous population of the Americas in 1492:

附录:根据学术文献的描述，下面的地图显示了1492年美洲土著人口的大致分布:

Paul Ithurralde
Wes, you seriously need to turn this into a tight, concise novel called something like
“The no bullshit history of North America”
Always love your stuff.

楼主，你真的需要把它变成一个紧凑，名字就叫：《正儿八经的北美历史》
永远爱你的内容。
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Bill H
Good answer- I mostly agree, but a few comments.
The conquistadores relied heavily on allied “native” soldiers in their conquests. The Spanish constituted small vanguards within large armies. A signif8cant majority of soldiers were from allied peoples.
The European settlers in North America were not as peaceful as described - the colonies alternated between peace and war as they expanded. Multiple wars were fought in the early 17th century in both New England and Virginia (again the Europeans relied on allies, but to a lesser extent).

答得好，我基本同意，但想补充几句：
1.征服者在他们的征服中严重依赖盟军的“土著”士兵。西班牙人在大军中组成了小型的前锋。绝大多数士兵来自盟国民众。
2. 在北美的欧洲定居者并不像描述的那样和平——随着殖民地的扩张，他们在和平与战争之间交替。17世纪早期，在新英格兰和弗吉尼亚发生了多次战争(欧洲人再次依赖盟友，但程度较轻)。

Wes Frank
All true. What always struck me researching this topic was how minor the conflicts were between Native Americans and European colonists on the Atlantic coast. Americans learn about “King Phillips War” in colonial Massachusetts in school, but not that this followed a half-century of relative peace in the region. The Dutch asserted their power in the New Netherlands in “wars” that involved raiding that caused a few dozen fatalities on either side. The Powhattan did what they could to contain the growth of colonial Virginia, raiding English settlements for years, but even this prolonged conflict generated only a few hundred casualties. De Soto’s march across what would become the American southeast in 1539–1542 probably killed more Native Americans than the English and Dutch colonials killed in a century and a half.
The American mythology of “Indian wars,” at least as it pertains to the eastern half of the country, was mostly established by the Iroquois, who harassed indigenous and Europeans alike through much of the 17th Century, and the French and Indian Wars, which saw the northern British colonies regularly raided from Canada from 1688 to 1763.

所有这些都是正确的。在研究这个话题时，让我印象深刻的是，在大西洋海岸，美洲原住民和欧洲殖民者之间的冲突是多么的微不足道。美国人在学校里学习过马萨诸塞殖民地的“菲利普国王战争”，但不知道这是在该地区半个世纪的相对和平之后发生的。荷兰人在“战争”中宣称他们在新尼德兰的权力，其中包括突袭，导致双方数十人死亡。波瓦坦人尽其所能遏制弗吉尼亚殖民地的发展，他们袭击英国人的定居点长达数年，但即使是这场旷日持久的冲突也只造成了几百人的伤亡。德索托在1539年至1542年进军美国东南部，杀死的印第安人可能比英国和荷兰殖民者在一个半世纪内杀死的还要多。
美国神话中的“印第安人战争”，至少是关于这个国家东半部的战争，主要是由易洛魁人发起的，他们在17世纪的大部分时间里骚扰土著和欧洲人。还有法国和印第安人战争，从1688年到1763年，英国北部殖民地经常从加拿大一带南下发起袭击。
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Paul Ithurralde
Well, lots of native action in the War of 1812 as well.

在1812年的战争中也有很多土著行动。

Wes Frank
The Ohio Valley Wars from 1774 to 1814 was the true high point of Native American resistance to European encroachment on their lands. Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, and Tecumseh had a fighting chance to establish some sort of large scale protectorate for Native American tribes under either American or British rule. It just didn’t work out.
The more famous Plains Indian Wars, roughly fought out between 1862 and 1879, were a doomed effort by plains tribes to prevent the settlement of the Great Plains by European-Americans. From the point of view of Western nations, it was a domestic tribal insurrection, like those that took place in the 19th Century in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Australia, and various parts of Africa. Everyone knew what the national boundaries were and foreign governments stayed out of these conflicts.

1774年至1814年的俄亥俄河谷战争是美洲原住民抵抗欧洲人入侵他们土地的真正高潮。小乌龟、蓝夹克和特库姆塞本来有机会在美国或英国的统治下为美洲土著部落建立某种大规模的保护国。只是没有成功。
更著名的是“平原印第安人战争”，大约发生在1862年到1879年之间，是平原部落阻止欧洲裔美国人在大平原定居的、注定失败的努力。从西方国家的角度来看，这是一场国内部落起义，就像19世纪发生在墨西哥、智利、阿根廷、澳大利亚和非洲各地的那些叛乱一样。每个人都知道国家的边界在哪里，外国政府都在远离这些冲突。

Bill H
I think it is more than “it just didn’t work out” is too mild. Neither Britain nor the US seemed capable of allowing independent states or protectorates. They both did not consider the tribes to be capable of being a true nation. The British were trying to limit US expansion into its claimed territory, with the general intent of settling it themselves at some point.
I guess if the tribes had been militarily more successful, the British might have b been forced to consider an autonomous protectorate in Northern Michigan, but even then I think it likely London would sell them out in a treaty with the US.

我认为这不仅仅是“它只是没有成功”，这样说太过温和了。英国和美国似乎都没有能力允许独立国家或受保护国存在。他们都不认为部落有能力成为一个真正的国家。英国试图限制美国扩张到其宣称的领土，总体意图是在某个时候自己解决问题。
我想，如果这些部落在军事上更成功，英国可能会被迫考虑在密歇根北部建立一个自治的保护国，但即便如此，我认为伦敦可能会在与美国的条约中卖掉它们。
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Paul Ithurralde
The widespread use of the tribes by the British as an important casus belli for the war is also something usually ignored by many modern folk. Impressment, maaayyybee, invasion of Canada in order to conquer the place while Britain was busy with Napoleon? Absolutely.

英国人广泛使用”部落”作为发动战争的重要理由，这也是许多现代人通常忽视的事情。在英国忙着对付拿破仑的时候，为了征服加拿大而通过强制征兵以入侵加拿大?棒极了。

Wes Frank
As near as I can tell, London didn’t really approve of colonial officials conspiring with tribes on the other side of colonial boundaries, but they didn’t do much to interfere with it. This was similar to British policy in Africa and Asia, so a lot of British empire-building on both of those continents was triggered by local officials.

据我所知，伦敦并不赞成殖民地官员与殖民地边界另一边的部落合谋，但他们也没有做太多干预。这与英国在非洲和亚洲的政策相似，所以英国在这两个大陆上的许多帝国建设都是由当地官员引发的。

B Henderson
And there’s a bit of Anglo/Dutch emphasis that’s not extended to the French. Jacques Cartier established a French trading post and immigrant’s living area near Tadoussac where the Sagenay river joins the St. Laurence in 1735. The French had been living there and making use of the native tradition of trading at this open and easily-reachable place for 85 years before the first English person stepped onto Plymouth rock. In just years, there was a vast network of travel and trading paths along the north side of the St. Laurence (and extending off of there) all the way to the Great Lakes with further French influence moving far beyond. All this happened when Sir Walter Raleigh was just a boy.
It’s good as far as it goes, in fact, the best summary I’ve ever seen of what happened in what’s now the US, but ….

有一点对盎格鲁/荷兰人的强调没有延伸到法国人身上。
1735年，雅克·卡地亚在萨格奈河与圣劳伦斯河交汇的塔杜萨克附近建立了一座法国贸易站和移民居住区。在第一个英国人踏上普利茅斯之前，法国人已经在这里生活了85年，并利用了在这个开放而容易到达的地方进行贸易的当地传统。
在短短几年里，沿着圣劳伦斯河的北侧(并从那里延伸出去)形成了一个巨大的旅行和贸易通道网络，一直延伸到五大湖，法国的影响进一步扩大到更远的地方。这一切发生在沃尔特·罗利爵士还是个孩子的时候。
事实上，这是我所见过的关于现在美国发生的事情的最好的总结，但是……

Manqing Li
You brought up some fundamental difference between the Spanish conquistadors and the European colonizers to North America. Spanish conquistadors allied with some natives people to fight and conquer the other ruling native tribes/nations. They wanted to control and exploit both the land and the native people. The European colonizers to north America just wanted to take the land “cleanly”. They'd rather import African slaves later to meet the shortage of labors.

你提到了西班牙征服者和北美的欧洲殖民者之间的一些根本区别。西班牙征服者与一些土著民众结盟，对抗并征服其他统治的土著部落/国家。他们想要控制和剥削这片土地和当地人。
到北美的欧洲殖民者只是想“干净地”占领这片土地。他们宁愿以后进口非洲奴隶来解决劳动力短缺的问题。

Jack Willmore
Finally a realistic and well balanced view of American history without drawing monster or victim narratives. Life was hard for everyone always is the first thing that people should understand about living during those times. Small pox was before microscopes and germ theory, there wasn’t anything anyone could have done and during this American historical period it’s been said that up to 300 million people died worldwide of the same diseases, the American indigenous were not special, just more susceptible

最终，在没有描绘成怪物或受害者叙事的情况下，对美国历史有了现实而平衡的看法。每个人的生活都很艰难，这是人们在那个时代应该明白的第一件事。天花在显微镜和细菌理论出现之前，没有人能做任何事情。
在美国的历史时期，据说全世界有3亿人死于同样的疾病，美国原住民并不特别，只是更容易感染。