Dwindling Native Populations in the Americas

Great Mortality Among the Wampanoags due to Smallpox, Colonial Massachusetts. 1600s

After Columbus’s landfall in 1492, the Native American peoples were nearly extinguished mostly from disease. More native North Americans died each year from infectious diseases brought by European settlers than were born into their tribes. They fell victim to epidemic waves of smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, chicken pox, yellow fever, and whooping cough. Just how many died may never be known. For North America alone, estimates of native populations in Columbus’s day range from 2-18 million. By the end of the 19C the population had shrunk to about 500 000. 

William Bradford, Governor in Plymouth colony, wrote in 1633.

"I am now to relate some strange & remarkable passages.  There was a company of people [Indians] lived in the country up above in the River of Connecticut a great way from their trading house there…About a thousand of them had enclosed themselves in a fort which they had strongly palisadoed about.  Three or four Dutchmen went up in the beginning of winter to live with them, to get their trade…But their enterprise failed.  For it pleased God to visit these Indians with a great sickness & such a mortality that of a thousand, above nine & a half hundred of them died, & many of them did rot above ground for want of burial.

"This spring also, these Indians that lived about their trading house there, fell sick of the small pox & died most miserably; for a sorer disease cannot befall them, they fear it more than the plague.  For usually they that have this disease have them in abundance, & for want of bedding & linen & other helps they fall into a lamentable condition as they lie on hard mats, the pox breaking & mattering & running one into another, their skin cleaving by reason thereof to the mats they lie on.  When they turn them, a whole side will flay off at once as it were, & they will be all of a gore blood, most fearful to behold.  And then being very sore, what with cold & other distempers, they die like rotten sheep.  The condition of this people was so lamentable & they fell down so generally of this disease as they were in the end not able to help one another, no not to make a fire nor to fetch a little water to drink, nor any to bury the dead.  But would strive as long as they could, & when they could procure no other means to make fire, they would burn the wooden trays & dishes they ate their meat in, & their very bows & arrows.  & some would crawl out on all fours to get a little water, & sometimes die by the way & not be able to get in again.

"But those of the English house, though at first they were afraid of the infection, yet seeing their woeful & sad condition & hearing their pitiful cries & lamentations, they had compassion of them, & daily fetched them wood & water & made them fires, got them victuals whilst they lived; & buried them when they died.  For very few of them escaped, notwithstanding they did what they could for them to the hazard of themselves.  The chief sachem himself now died & almost all his friends & kindred.  But by the marvelous goodness & providence of God, not one of the English was so much as sick or in the least measure tainted with this disease, though they daily did these offices for them for many weeks together.  & this mercy which they showed them was kindly taken & thankfully acknowledged of all the Indians that knew or heard of the same. "

It is widely believed that early European soldiers & sailors introduced bubonic plague, typhus, chicken pox, diphtheria, typhus, cholera, cowpox, measles, whooping cough, & many other diseases to the Americas. Yellow fever & malaria also traveled, originating in Africa & finding their way to Europeans & Native Americans by way of mosquitoes. The tropical rain forests of the Americas became perfect breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that transmitted sickness from infected individuals to healthy ones. These diseases, previously unknown in the Americas, spread like wildfire in the New World.

Historians think that tuberculosis, dysentery, & parasitic diseases were common in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans. Research on early skeletal remains has also given scientists intriguing clues to early New World diseases & treatments. In the 1970s, a pre-Columbian mummified child from Peru was examined, & the skeleton, as well as the preserved soft tissue, showed signs of tuberculosis with remnants of tuberculosis bacilli still in the tissue. 

Native American history was largely transmitted orally, and much of what we know comes from archaeological findings, ethnographic studies, and early European accounts. After the arrival of Christopher Columbus in1492 & the explorers & their ships' crews, there was dramatic decline in Native American populations from diseases brought over by Europeans played a devastating role.

The impact of these diseases is somtimes referred to as the "Virgin Soil Epidemics," where populations were exposed to pathogens for the first time, leading to catastrophic loss of life. This rapid depopulation dramatically altered Native American societies, making them more vulnerable to European expansion and colonization efforts. The loss of elders and leaders also disrupted the transmission of oral histories, traditions, and cultural knowledge, contributing to the loss of invaluable aspects of Indigenous heritage.

Bibliography

Books:

Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Greenwood Press, 1972.

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.

Fenn, Elizabeth A. Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82. Hill and Wang, 2001.

Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Vintage Books, 2006.

Thornton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.

Articles:

Baugh, Timothy E. "Transforming Landscapes: The Impact of Early European Settlement in North America." Journal of American History, 2002. This article discusses the landscape transformations brought by European settlers and their introduction of crops and livestock to the Americas, which were facilitated by the depopulation of Native communities.

Crosby, Alfred W. "The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492." Journal of American History, 1972. Crosby introduces the concept of the Columbian Exchange and its impact on both the Old and New Worlds, particularly focusing on the diseases that devastated Native populations.

Dobyns, Henry F. "Estimating Aboriginal American Population: An Appraisal of Techniques with a New Hemispheric Estimate." Current Anthropology, 1966. This influential article reevaluates pre-Columbian population estimates and discusses the role of disease in reducing Native American populations by as much as 90% after European contact.

Ramenofsky, Ann. "The Problem of Epidemics: Disease and Depopulation in the Early Spanish Empire." Journal of Anthropological Research, 1987. This article analyzes how epidemics, particularly smallpox, facilitated Spanish colonization by weakening and depopulating Native societies across the Americas.