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Native American Disease EpidemicsBy Matthew H. LeePrior to the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492, the population of North America was in the millions. Estimates on the exact number range between 2 and 40 million, but whatever the population was prior to the end of the 15th Century, by the end of the 19th Century, it was significantly lower. Wars and famine brought about by natural disasters certainly account for some of these losses, but a vast majority is attributed to illnesses brought inadvertently to the New World by European settlers and explorers and their African slaves. Exact numbers of disease related deaths among the Native Americans may never be known, but many sources estimate the native population of North America in 1900 at about a half million. (Metzler 1992) In the centuries prior to the discovery of North America, Europe had seen many losses already from various diseases including measles, influenza, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, chicken pox, yellow fever, whooping cough, and most significantly – smallpox and bubonic plague. The reason that the population of Europe didn’t see as drastic a decrease as that of North America is that over the centuries preceding, the population had built up some degree of immunity to the various diseases. Europe was more densely populated than North America in the 15th Century, so diseases – and eventual immunity - could be passed around more readily across the entire population. In fact, by the 18th Century, nearly all Europeans had smallpox in their lifetime, and some 30% had died from it (Wiki 2008). The inhabitants of North America had been isolated by vast distances and natural barriers and prior to the first visit of Europeans, had little or no exposure to any of these. When Columbus landed on the island which he dubbed Hispaniola – currently the island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic - he found a peaceful population of native people whose numbers ranged between a very low estimate of 100,000 and a very high one of 8,000,000. Regardless of the actual number, within a mere 40 years the population had dropped to an astounding 600 (Corbett 2001). This incident is a good example of the effect of a destructive microbe on a virgin host population – or a “naive population” as it is often referred. On a side note, it is also the reason that the current day population of Haiti is mostly black; with the native population decimated, Spaniards had to import African slaves to replace the native pool of labor. The diseases which infected and ultimately decimated this peaceful population are believed to be smallpox and tuberculosis (ISTF 2008). There are two major problems with precise historical data concerning diseases and disease-related mortality amongst individuals or groups. One is that the microbes which cause the different maladies were not known until the late 19th century, so oftentimes diseases were identified only by the set of symptoms that were evident, and there are diseases with similar symptoms. The other is that the effect of one disease on an individual or a population can vary depending upon other factors, such as concurrent exposure to another pathogen or an otherwise weakened immune system due to malnutrition or other factors. Even with this in mind, it is evident that smallpox was responsible for the tragedy in Hispaniola and other places on the mainland as well. Smallpox is a viral infection which is only present in humans. It is spread through close contact with infected persons by inhaling the droplets of moisture expelled from coughing, sneezing, or just breathing. It can also be spread through contact with bodily fluids left on eating utensils or even blankets or clothing. Upon infection, there is about a 12-day incubation period followed by the appearance of sores in the mouth and nasal cavity. These sores break open in a few days releasing large amounts of the virus into the mouth and ultimately to the lungs where they further multiply. Sores begin to form on the face and neck, and then slowly spread to the body and extremities. An infected person is contagious throughout the course of the disease, but especially so during the period when the sores break open and leak fluid. In the Europeans smallpox epidemics, the mortality rate averaged 30% leaving the survivors scarred from the lesions (Wiki 2008). Another disease responsible for many deaths amongst the Indians, tuberculosis, is also spread through close contact with infected persons. Unlike smallpox though, it is a bacterial infection and although highly contagious, had a slightly lower mortality rate and a more complicated disease progression. The bacteria that causes tuberculosis has a very slow reproductive cycle compared to other microbes, about 16 – 20 hours compared to E. Coli with an average reproductive cycle of 20 minutes (Wiki2 2008). Additionally, not all individuals infected with tuberculosis develop the disease right away or at all. Measles, a seemingly tame disease by today’s standards, is another viral infection which was responsible for nearly as many deaths in North and South America as smallpox. Although not inherently as deadly as smallpox, it is highly contagious, and when outbreaks occur, care resources become overburdened. And with most of the population infected during an outbreak, there are not enough healthy individuals left to process food, care for crops and livestock, and sustain other community functions. These secondary factors account for a similar mortality rate of 30% or more in some communities. Around 1518-1519, smallpox spread from Hispaniola to Cuba and then Puerto Rico, where it killed over half the population in just a few months. Shortly after that, the disease was spread to the mainland of Central America, ostensibly by an African slave aboard one of the Spanish ships commanded by Panfilo de Narvaez. His mission was to see that Hernando Cortez, who had left months prior, was still loyal to the Spanish throne amidst his discovery of the Aztec Empire and its bountiful riches. The epidemic that ensued facilitated Cortez’s easy victory over the Aztecs, with a relatively small force of some 400 Spanish. Around this same time, the smallpox epidemic reached other islands in the Caribbean and parts of the Central American mainland, where it typically killed over half of the native populations. By the 1530’s the disease had reached the Incan Empire in South America, an event which facilitated the conquest there by Francisco Pizarro in 1532. The disease traveled north through Mexico, along with a measles epidemic, that reached into some native populations in what is now the southwestern United States. Hoping for a conquest similar to those of Cortez and Pizarro, Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto landed with an army of 620 men and 223 horses in Florida, probably not far from Tampa Bay in 1539 (Conrad 2008). Once ashore, De Soto established a base, and moved his army north. In his trek through Florida, he encountered numerous groups of Indians inhabiting intricate societies. He brought along with him a written document called the “reqerimiento” which he read in Spanish to all who he encountered. Among other things, the document stated that the land now belonged to Spain and the inhabitants fell under the jurisdiction of the Spanish crown. His entourage included clergy members that were sent along in order to implement another requirement of the document, which was to convert the native populations to Catholicism. De Soto continued north and west, and by 1541 had reached Arkansas and had possibly sent scouts as far as Missouri. Their expedition was not without hardships. By 1541, De Soto had lost about a third of his men and decided to return to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, where he would build ship to return to Cuba. But along the way, he himself fell ill with a fever and died. Since he had convinced many Natives that he was a god in order to gain their support, his men decided to sink his body to the bottom of the Mississippi River to conceal his death (Caddell 2008). His successor, Luis de Moscoso, decided to attempt to march westward to Mexico. But the journey proved arduous, and the force returned to the Mississippi to spend the winter of 1542 on its banks. The following spring, the survivors built two large boats and used them, along with some Indian canoes, to travel the river down to the Gulf, thus ending the expedition. The De Soto Expedition, although unsuccessful in their primary goal to find vast riches, would forever change the history of the once great cultures of the Southeast. Sadly, their complex mound-building societies would never be seen again. This was due not because of direct violence of the Spanish, but once again because of disease. It is estimated that from 33% to 75% of the Indians inhabiting the Southeast died from contact with foreign disease the most destructive of these diseases being smallpox (Caddell 2008). The Spanish took this as a sign from God that they were destined to conquer these people as if He were handing the Natives over to them. In the area north of Mexico, in what is now the American Southwest, the spread of disease was somewhat more restricted than in the Southeast due to the dry climate and the physical distance between communities. Because of this, many communities escaped the initial Mexican epidemic of smallpox and measles brought ashore by Narvaez circa 1520. Although there is very little evidence of widespread epidemics in the southwest at the time, the number of pueblos in the region did decrease from around a hundred in 1540 to about 20 by 1700. Interestingly enough, it was in Francisco Vasquez de Coronado who recorded the initial number of pueblos in 1540 during his expedition of the area. Coronado had been dispatched by the viceroy of New Spain (in Mexico City) to lead an expedition north in search of the fabled seven cities of gold. He brought along with him an army of about 900, which included about 600 Indian people from Mexico, and also horses, cattle, and sheep. It seems reasonable to assume that among those 900, plus the various animals, that there were some who were infected with diseases that then spread to the many pueblos along his route. In 1545, the first of two major epidemics of an entirely different disease swept through Mesoamerica. The second of these came in 1576. It was clear that it wasn’t smallpox or any other familiar disease, but rather a hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola. The Natives called this disease Cocolitzli. There is no definitive information on the source of this virus, but it is doubtful the disease was brought over by the Spanish. Hemorrhagic fevers are viral infections that strike with sudden intensity, rarely respond to treatment, have very high mortality rates, then vanish as mysteriously as they came. The symptoms include moderate to severe bleeding from the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears, plus internal bleeding caused by breakdown of the capillaries. Typically, victims do not die from the bleeding although it is severe in some cases, but rather from the eventual breakdown of the nervous system. The initial symptoms are fever, fatigue, and dizziness, but within a few days the person falls into delirium and finally a coma (Stutz 2006). During both of these Cocolitzli epidemics, many people starved to death because there were not enough able people to care for the sick, dispose of the dead, or procure food. It is believed that the virus that caused Cocolitzli had lain dormant in animal hosts, most likely rodents. In the years prior to these outbreaks, long periods of drought have been documented through tree ring analysis. These droughts would have contained the population of rodents, forcing them to accumulate wherever they could find water. Initially, only a small percentage may have been infected, but when forced into close quarters the virus was transmitted during bloody fights. Infected mother rodents then passed the virus to their young during pregnancy. When the rains returned, the rodents bred quickly and spread the virus—through their urine and feces—as they came into contact with humans in fields and homes. Once infected, humans transmitted the virus to one another through contact with blood, sweat, and saliva (Stutz 2006). These outbreaks and other outbreaks of smallpox, typhoid fever, and influenza during the rest of the century were responsible for a total population decrease of about 80%. Meanwhile on the east coast of North America, English ships arrived in what is now Roanoke Island, Virginia. This was not the first English encounter with American Indians, but it was the beginning of the sustained interaction between the cultures. Around the same time, the French were beginning to interact with Indians of the north coast and inland to the Great Lakes region. The Natives of Florida and the rest of the Southeast had already suffered great losses from disease in the wake of the De Soto expedition, and subsequent Spanish expeditions on the southern Atlantic coast, but until the latter part of the 16th Century the northern Indians had been largely spared. With the arrival of the English and French in the mid 16th Century, and to a larger degree toward the end of the century, Natives of the central and northeast coast began to feel the strain of losses from disease. There is little information on specific outbreaks in these early years, but certainly the population decline was beginning. The mystery stems from the fact that in the early years of settlement, the French and English colonies had contact with Indians only in their immediate area, who in turn had contact with Indians further inland. Whereas the Spanish were more interested in exploration in the hope of finding another Aztec Empire, English and French motives were more related to trade and settlement and therefore didn’t initially achieve the depth of penetration that the Spanish had. So when diseases were passed on to these local Indians, as surely they were, the results of these infections on more distant tribes were not readily evident. Later epidemics were more apparent and thus, documented. In the last years of the 16th Century, there was an outbreak of measles amongst the Seneca Indians of New York which killed hundreds or perhaps thousands. The next major epidemic in the region was an outbreak of Smallpox amongst the Indians of Massachusetts Bay in 1617 – 1619 which according to numerous sources, killed some 90% of the population. Had this not occurred, the 1620 landing of the pilgrims aboard the Mayflower at that location may have been met with a greater degree of resistance. At this same time there was an outbreak of bubonic plague that began in Florida and made its way northward, but losses from plague were not as great among the Indians as those from other diseases - certainly not to the degree seen in Europe. Throughout the remainder of the 17th Century, numerous other epidemics struck various tribes of North America including a 1630 smallpox outbreak among the Huron of Ontario and the Great Lakes region which killed over 10,000; a similar outbreak in Connecticut brought by Dutch traders which killed up to 95% of the Natives along the Connecticut River in 1634; a wave of scarlet fever from New England to the Great Lakes in 1637; an influenza outbreak in the Northeast in 1647; 1649, 1669, and 1687 smallpox epidemics in New England; a run of measles in 1658; smallpox among the Iroquois in New York in 1662; and an outbreak of malaria in the Southeast in 1690 (Keoke, Porterfield 2004). These outbreaks continued into the 18th Century in the East. But it was in this century that the western tribes, the Cherokee, Navajo, Apache, Pueblo, and many others began to suffer similar widespread and frequent outbreaks of various diseases. They would come from the Spanish in the South and work their way north and east, or come from the East and go west. The west coast tribes also began to see European disease as well. An interesting topic in the study of these Native American epidemics is the early perspective of many Natives themselves. In the early years of European contact, most Native Americans did not believe that diseases were spread from person to person. Many believed these maladies to be manifestations of bad spirits or punishment for certain behaviors. Even as late as the late 18th Century, tribes of the North Plains believed smallpox to be a personification of the Bad Spirit (Halverson 1996). In that same century, a common belief among the Creeks and Cherokees was that the spread of smallpox was punishment for violations of tribal laws. Other myths and folk legends came about to explain these epidemics, but in time more and more natives began to avoid contact with infected people to defend against the diseases. It seems logical at this point to wonder why Europeans weren’t suffering more heavily from diseases indigenous to North America. They did to some extent, but life in Europe over the preceding centuries was strikingly different. More people lived in crowded cities and interstate travel and commerce had advanced to a much higher degree. Diseases were passed around readily and Europe paid a heavy toll for their greater immunity. There were also advances in medicine and patient care that were unknown to the Natives of North America and more was known about nutrition and hygiene. Many Europeans (and later, Americans) did die alongside the Indian in these numerous scourges in the New World, but losses were less severe. These scattered outbreaks continued to occur throughout North and South America in the 19th and even the 20th Centuries. And truly they have not stopped. Despite advances in medicine and disease prevention, cultures today are still being changed in the wake of disease in the same manner as the American Indian and countless other cultures from before recorded history.
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