Why then did Native Americans succumb in such vastly disproportionate numbers? Quite possibly it was because their susceptibility to disease was greatly increased by the multiple kinds of structural violence that accompanied European colonization, such as: “overwork in mines, frequent outright butchery, malnutrition and starvation resulting from the breakdown of Indigenous trade networks, subsistence food production and loss of land, loss of will to live or reproduce (and thus suicide, abortion and infanticide).”32
