A holiday to honor someone who owned hundreds of slaves for over 50 years,

[hfojvt]

173. according to Thornton

most of it had nothing to do with blankets.

In his book "American Indian, Holocaust and Survival: a population history since 1492" he shows on page xvii a chart showing population of native Americans. It shows

1. about 5 million in 1492
2. down below 3 million by 1600
3. down to about 1.5 million by 1700

I would note that, according to that, over 70% of the population had died off by 1700. 40% of the loss happened before there was significant European settlement. Over the next 200 years the population dropped down to about 200,000 before rising to over 5 million today (including those with SOME native american ancestry). There was a fair amount of warfare between 1600 and 1700, but European population of the US was only about 250,000 by 1700.

I would say that disease was doing its work without any help from blankets.