I follow your same skepticism but I shared the article to denounce the outrageous and completely fictional figure of MILLIONS dead which only has emerged relatively recent.

The idea of smallpox infection has been debunked thoroughly about a century ago when the last epidemic took hold in the US, AFTER forced inoculation, and the doctor who debunked it was arrested and I believe imprisoned after he demonstrated that smallpox does not transmit from any contact with infected. Back to the topic of "genocide", if anyone is to be blamed for that it's the Natives themselves who had by that point eradicated countless tribes and which continued after the settlers arrived to systematically massacre each other, unlike any European conflicts to date, where the Natives would genocide everyone and engage in cannibalism, and this policy of genocide was carried out on the settlers as well, killing especially women and children and enslaving the men. The vast majority of attacks on Natives were as retaliation for murders and attacks on settlers who had nothing to do with the Natives.