Native American disease and epidemics
The history of Native American disease and epidemics is fundamentally composed of two elements: indigenous diseases and those brought by settlers to the Americas from the Old World, which transmitted far beyond the initial points of contact, such as trade networks, warfare, and enslavement. The contacts during European colonization of the Americas were blamed as the catalyst for the huge spread of Old World plagues that decimated the indigenous population.
Epidemics of smallpox, typhus, influenza, diphtheria and measles swept the Americas subsequent to European contact, killing between 10 million and 100 million people, up to 95% of the indigenous population of the Americas.
Background
Although a variety of infectious diseases existed in the Americas in pre-Columbian times, the limited size of the populations, smaller number of domesticated animals with zoonotic diseases, and limited interactions between those populations hampered the transmission of communicable diseases.Most Old World diseases of known origin can be traced to Africa and Asia and were introduced to Europe over time. Smallpox originated in Africa or Asia, plague in Asia, cholera in Asia, influenza in Asia, malaria in Africa and Asia, measles from Asian rinderpest, tuberculosis in Asia, yellow fever in Africa, typhoid in Africa, herpes in Africa, zika in Africa, and mumps. Furthermore, a form of tuberculosis has also been identified in pre-Columbian populations, by bacterial genome sequences collected from human remains in Peru, and was probably transmitted to humans through seal hunting.
One notable infectious disease that may be of American origin is syphilis, which originated in the Americas before 1492. However, another journal titled History of Syphilis recorded that this disease was also originated from Africa.
In 1493, the first recorded influenza epidemic to strike the Americas occurred on the island of Hispaniola in the northern Spanish settlement of Isabela. The virus was introduced to the Isle of Santo Domingo by the Cristóbal Cólon, which docked at La Isabela on 10 December 1493, carrying about 2,000 Spanish passengers. Despite the general poor health of the colony, Columbus returned in 1494 and found that the Native American population had been affected by disease even more catastrophically than Isabela's first settlers were. By 1506, only a third of the native population remained.
Another epidemic disease which is believed by modern era experts to be indigenous was Cocoliztli epidemics, which is suspected to have been caused by climate change. Cocoliztli epidemics usually occurred within two years of a major drought. The epidemic in 1576 occurred after a drought stretching from Venezuela to Canada. Proponents of this epidemic’s outbreak suggest the relationship between drought and outbreak which is reflected by the increased numbers of rodents carrying viral hemorrhagic fever during the rains that followed the drought. At least 12 epidemics are attributed to cocoliztli, with the largest occurring in 1545, 1576, 1736, and 1813. Soto et al. have hypothesized that a sizeable hemorrhagic fever outbreak could have contributed to the earlier collapse of the Classic Mayan civilization. However, most experts believe other factors, including climate change, played a larger role.
The only disease which the native Americans have historically shown high immunity against is scarlet fever.
File:Ancient sick native american.jpg|thumb|upright|Nineteenth-century American artist's conception of a medicine man caring for a sick American Indian, from an 1857 book illustration.
The arrival and settlement of Europeans in the Americas resulted in what is known as the Columbian exchange. Europeans also took plants and goods back to the Old World. Potatoes and tomatoes from the Americas became integral to European and Asian cuisines, for instance.
But Europeans also unintentionally brought new infectious diseases, including among others smallpox, bubonic plague, chickenpox, cholera, the common cold, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, measles, scarlet fever, sexually transmitted diseases, typhoid, typhus, tuberculosis, and pertussis. Each of these resulted in sweeping epidemics among Native Americans, who had disability, illness, and a high mortality rate. The Europeans infected with such diseases typically carried them in a dormant state, were actively infected but asymptomatic, or had only mild symptoms, because Europe had been subject for centuries to a selective process by these diseases. The explorers and colonists often unknowingly passed the diseases to natives. Historians agreed that when colonists settled for the very first time at Jamestown, it was one of the coldest periods for the last 1000 years, while the area of Roanoke suffered the largest drought of the past 800 years. The shortage of foods led the colonists to came into conflict with the indigenous population. Such conflicts and cold weather contributed much to the spread of diseases; as colder weather helped the parasite cells of malaria which carried by those European settler hosts, who further transmitted by local mosquitoes to develop faster. Those malaria spread into Native Americans, causing many deaths among them.
The introduction of African slaves and the use of commercial trade routes also contributed to the spread of disease. Waves of enslaved Africans were brought to replace the dwindling Indigenous populations, solidifying the position of disease in triangular trade.
Since there were numerous outbreaks and all were not equally recorded, historical accounts of epidemics are often vague or contradictory in describing how victims were affected. A rash accompanied by a fever might be smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, or varicella, and many epidemics overlapped with multiple infections striking the same population at once, therefore it is often impossible to know the exact causes of mortality. Smallpox was the disease brought by Europeans that was most destructive to the Native Americans, both in terms of morbidity and mortality. The first well-documented smallpox epidemic in the Americas began in Hispaniola in late 1518 and soon spread to Mexico.
Reactions of the Native Americans
Native Americans initially believed that illness primarily resulted from being out of balance, in relation to their religious beliefs. Typically, Native Americans held that disease was caused by either a lack of magical protection, the intrusion of an object into the body by means of sorcery, or the absence of the free soul from the body. Disease was understood to enter the body as a natural occurrence if a person was not protected by spirits, or less commonly as a result of malign human or supernatural intervention. For examples, Cherokee spiritual beliefs attribute disease to revenge imposed by animals for killing them. The Mapuche in Araucanía regarded the epidemic as a magic brought by Francisco de Villagra to exterminate them because he could not defeat them in the Arauco War.In some cases, disease was seen as a punishment for disregarding tribal traditions or disobeying tribal rituals. Spiritual powers were called on to cure diseases through the practice of shamanism. Most Native American tribes also used a wide variety of medicinal plants and other substances in the treatment of disease.
Forced settlements and disease spread
in Florida, Spanish settlers forced indigenous groups into strictly controlled settlements. Since the early 16th century, these people were exposed to new diseases brought by Europeans, including smallpox, measles and typhus. A mix of involuntarily relocations and European-imposed changes to agriculture and resolution patterns also created ideal conditions for the spread of infectious diseases, leading to catastrophic declines in the number of the population.The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation of Native American tribes in the 1830s from Eastern Woodlands to the west of the Mississippi River. This relocation ordered by the government primarily targeted "the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole" nations Approximately 100,000 native Americans were removed from their families and 15,000 died during the removal and journey west. The journey west consisted of 5,045 miles across nine states. Many people lost their lives on this rigorous forced journey. Cholera was one of the reasons for the deaths of Native Americans during the Trail of Tears. Traveling by steamboat was a common way to travel and cholera was present in the waterways used by the steamboats. It is estimated that 5,000 Native Americans died of cholera on this journey to areas west of the Mississippi.
Effects
On population
Many Native American tribes suffered high mortality and depopulation, averaging 25–50% of the tribes' members dead from disease. Additionally, some smaller tribes are threatened with extinction after facing a severely destructive spread of disease.Epidemics of smallpox, typhus, influenza, diphtheria and measles swept the Americas subsequent to European contact, killing between 10 million and 100 million people, up to 95% of the indigenous population of the Americas. Estimates of mortality range from one-quarter to one-half of the population of central Mexico.
One of earliest examples was what followed Cortés' invasion of Mexico. Before his arrival, the Mexican population is estimated to have been around 25 to 30 million. Fifty years later, the Mexican population was reduced to 3 million, mainly by infectious disease. A 2018 study by Koch, Brierley, Maslin and Lewis concluded that an estimated "55 million indigenous people died following the European conquest of the Americas beginning in 1492." Estimates for the entire number of human lives lost during the Cocoliztli epidemics in New Spain have ranged from 5 to 15 million people, making it one of the most deadly disease outbreaks of all time. By 1700, fewer than 5,000 Native Americans remained in the southeastern coastal region of the United States. Even after the two largest empires of the America continent, the Inca and the Aztecs, were devastated by the virus, smallpox continued to spread further In 1561; The epidemic reached Chile by sea, when a ship carrying the new governor Francisco de Villagra landed at La Serena. Chile had previously been isolated by the Atacama Desert and Andes Mountains from Peru, but at the end of 1561 and in early 1562, it ravaged the Chilean natives. Modern time estimates by experts put the number that the Chilean natives lost its 20-25 percent of their population. The Spanish historian Marmolejo said that gold mines had to shut down when all their native laborers died.
During the Inca Civil War, it was estimated that the smallpox which transmitted by the Spaniard under Francisco Pizarro killed at least 200,000.
In Florida alone, an estimated 700,000 Native Americans lived there in 1520, but by 1700, the number decreased to only around 2,000 people.
Another notable example was the incident of the so-called The Great Dying in New England around the years of 1616-1619, where the epidemics which carried by European settlers including trichinosis, chickenpox, Influenza, HBD/HDV, Typhus, smallpox, plague, and leptospirosis, resulted in a catastrophic demographic collapse which estimated to of up to 95% casualties of the indigenous population. The Pennacook, an Algonquian confederation in present-day New Hampshire, eastern Massachusetts, and southern Maine, included subgroups like the Naumkeag, Agawam, Wamesit, Nashua, and Souhegan; also afflicted by this so-called "Great Dying", which suspected as leptospirosis from European contact that spread along the Merrimack River. Coastal subgroups, Naumkeag and Agawam, faced 80–90% mortality, their populations falling from 1,000–2,000 to ~100–200 and 500–1,500 to ~50–150, respectively. Inland subgroups like Wamesit and Nashua saw 50–75% losses, reducing the confederation from 10,000–20,000 to under 2,000 by 1619. The disaster disrupted Pennacook society, leaving villages deserted and easing later English colonization. Archaeological evidence shows mass graves and abandoned sites. During this period, outbreaks of diphtheria, dysentery and measles were also reported to have broken out within unspecified tribal group of native Americans.
File:Measles Aztec drawing.jpg|thumb|Drawing of Aztec people suffering from measles epidemic
The population of Mohawk people also hit by smallpox epidemics around 1630s; causing their population to decrease by 63%, from 7,740 to 2,830, as they had no immunity to the new disease. At some point by 1633, smallpox infected the entire tribes and left the Mohawks unable to care for each other or bury their dead.
In summer 1639, a smallpox epidemic struck the Huron natives in the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes regions. The disease had reached the Huron tribes through French colonial traders from Québec who remained in the region throughout the winter. When the epidemic was over, the Huron population had been reduced to roughly 9,000 people, about half of what it had been before 1634. The Iroquois people, generally south of the Great Lakes, faced similar losses after encounters with French, Dutch and English colonists.
During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30% of the Northwestern Native Americans.
The smallpox epidemic of 1780–1782 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians, as the natives in the area contracted the disease from the 'Snake Indians' on the Mississippi. From there it spread eastward and northward to the Saskatchewan River. Its first case was found among the fur traders in October 15, 1781. A week later, reports were made to William Walker and William Tomison, who were in charge of the Hudson and Cumberland Hudson's Bay Company posts. By February, the disease spread as far as the Basquia Tribe. After reading Tomison's journals, Houston and Houston calculated that, of the Indians who traded at the Hudson and Cumberland houses, 95% died of smallpox. Paul Hackett adds to the mortality numbers suggesting that perhaps up to one-half to three-quarters of the Ojibway situated west of the Grand Portage died from the disease. The Cree also suffered a casualty rate of approximately 75% with similar effects found in the Lowland Cree.
By 1832, the federal government of the United States established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans.
The Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1839 reported on the casualties of the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic: "No attempt has been made to count the victims, nor is it possible to reckon them in any of these tribes with accuracy; it is believed that if was doubled, the aggregate would not be too large for those who have fallen east of the Rocky Mountains."