56 million died as a direct consequence of contact with europeans
That is a different claim than "killed", it is still probably false but I won't commit to debate that until you admit that "direct consequence" is not the same as "killing".
I will post this from my initial attempt to trace sources:
colonists certainly would have liked to wage such a war and did talk about giving infected blankets and such to the indigenes, and they may even have done so a few times, but by and large the legend is just that, a legend. Before the development of modern bacteriology at the end of the 1 9'h century, dis-eases did not come in ampoules, and there were no refrigerators in which to store the ampoules.... As for infected blankets, they might or might notwork. Furthermore, and most important, the intentionally transmitted dis-ease might swing back on the white population.... These people were dedicated to quarantining smallpox, not to spreading it.3
On July 22, about a month after the deceptive gift, Trent wrote in his journal: "Gray Eyes, Wingenum, Turtle's Heart and Mamaultee, came over the River told us their Chiefs were in Council, that they waited for Custalugawho they expected that Day."' This entry, which is ignored over and over again in historical accounts, shows both recipients of the soiled material alive and well-smallpox should have hit them by that time.
This illustrates the silliness of acting like a few isolated instances of biological warfare (and indeed it was in a time of war) were the downfall of millions of people.
The key information is that the time of the siege of Fort Pitt was long after contact, a century after all those people supposedly died. Natives and settlers were in near constant contact at this time. They traded constantly, they employed each other, they married each other, they traveled together, and lodged with each other.
Nobody was following effective quarantine measures (kinda like covid lockdowns) and the spread of every disease was inevitable under those circumstances. If every other war somebody tried to spread a disease intentionally it may or may not succeed (in this case it apparently failed), but that's a drop in the bucket at this point in history.
The natives who lived or died because of disease would have lived or died regardless when there were so many vectors.
It's not like diseases only killed one race:
"Neither Amherstnor Bouquet actually tried germ warfare. The attempt to disseminate small-pox took place at Fort Pitt independent of both of them.Smallpox and the Indians were a dangerous and unhappy combination.In 1773 George Croghan, who handled Indian affairs at Fort Pitt, commented that "the Small pox itts very fatal to them and allways will be, Till they become Civilised, as Till then they Cant be brought to keep themselves Warm, and adopt Such meshurs as is Necessary in that Disorder." Croghan's observationis a criticism of how Indians dealt with fevers and diseases such as smallpox-hoping that a dousing with very cold water would cure them. This technique was ineffective against smallpox. For that matter, everything the British tried failed too until the development of inoculation, which involved giving a patient a weak case of smallpox so that the full power of the disease would be avoided. However, even inoculation sometimes proved fatal and it remained controversial among the colonists. A few years after the Fort Pitt episode,rioting against inoculation rocked Norfolk, Virginia; that colony soon severely limited the procedure. During the French and Indian War, smallpox attacked both the Delaware Indians and the colonists of Pennsylvania."
and there can be no doubt that many of them were killed by person to person violence
some estimates are 10 million
but even it it was "only" 6 million
or maybe even 2 million
2 million is still a very high estimate.
it doesn't really change the equation
What equation would that be?
56 million >>> 2 million and two million people being killed in war or self-defense is not genocide
