Disease and Depopulation Among Native Americans in New England

• Native Americans in New England were powerful people estimated to have a total population of up to 15 million inhabitants before European contact; a 1990 U.S. census indicates a total current population of less than two million. What happened to these people?

• A great deal of the depopulation is attributed to the diseases that Europeans brought to the New World; mass epidemics decimated or wiped out whole tribes. Yet epidemics throughout history have rarely produced an irrecoverable effect. What else could have happened to drive an entire race to near extinction?

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Genetic Susceptibility• Diseases such as typhoid, smallpox,

tuberculosis, and measles had never been present in North America before European contact and killed a majority of the Natives that contracted them.

• It is difficult to determine whether the Natives had no immunity to the diseases, which is a common assumption, because there are no pure DNA samples from the time to test for the biological theories of genetic homogeneity or compromised immunity.

• Unable to provide a full answer scientifically, researchers look to cultural factors to gauge their influence on depopulation

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Environmental and Social Factors

• Cultural changes after European contact can also contribute to the spread of disease

• The introduction of domesticating animals allowed for diseases to mutate and be transmitted to humans

• The spread of trade, in addition to waves of settlers from many countries also allowed more person to person contact than previously seen

• Increasing agriculture led to deforestation, temperature changes, and livestock overrunning crops

• The Native Americans already subsisted on a malnourishing diet, these factors affected their ability to sustain even that low level nutrition

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Health and Medical Practices• Native Americans had no cures for

such unknown New World diseases• Natives in New England believed the

underlying causes of disease were either supernatural or the result of inappropriate behavior

• Native American medicine of the time involved a combination of religious beliefs and traditional herbal medicine

• Europeans, who appear to have brought with them some level of exposure and immunity, could also offer no cures or medical explanations to the Natives

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War and Religious Convictions

• “The Indians in those parts had newly, even about year or two before, been visited with such a prodigious pestilence, as carried away not a tenth but nine parts of ten (yea, ‘tis said nineteen of twenty) among them: so that the woods were almost cleared of those pernicious creatures, to make room for a better growth.” – Cotton Mather

• Many colonists believed the Native Americans were heathens who God punished with disease for not being Christian, and waged war on the Natives

• Native weapons such as hatchets and bows were no match for European rifles. Also, crucial to population, Natives did not kill women and children in war, which colonists did.

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Social Disorder• The loss of the more susceptible

elderly and children to disease devastated significant portions of the population

• Families were torn apart by death through war and disease, making population recovery difficult

• Tribes lost leaders, as well as elderly, who kept tribal wisdom, causing cultural disorientation and power struggles

• Falling ill caused tribes to miss annual hunting and planting cycles, and have fewer contributing members of society

• As vast numbers of Natives succumbed to disease, it became difficult for tribes to protest the swift European expansion onto Native lands

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