Disease and Depopulation Among Native Americans in New England

1
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

• 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.

• 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

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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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