Native American disease and epidemics facts for kids

Before Europeans arrived, people in the Americas had some diseases. But because there were fewer people, fewer animals that could pass diseases to humans, and less travel between groups, serious sicknesses didn't spread easily.

This changed when Europeans came to the Americas. They brought many new diseases with them. These diseases had a huge impact on Native American life, especially during the colonial period and the 1800s.

Europe and Asia were like busy highways for people and goods. Wars and trade, like the Silk Road, helped diseases spread across these continents for over 1,000 years. Some diseases even jumped from animals to humans. Because Europeans had been exposed to these sicknesses for so long, many of them had developed some protection, or "immunity." But they still carried these diseases when they traveled to the Americas.

Native Americans often caught these new diseases through trading or meeting with Europeans. The sicknesses then spread far into Native American communities, even without direct European contact. Wars and enslavement also helped diseases move from one group to another. Since Native Americans had never been exposed to most of these diseases before, they had no immunity. This led to very high death rates. Many Native American societies were deeply affected and changed forever. This terrible event is sometimes called the "virgin soil effect."

European Contact and New Diseases

When Europeans arrived and settled in the Americas, it led to something called the Columbian exchange. This was a big exchange of things between the "Old World" (Europe, Asia, Africa) and the "New World" (the Americas). Europeans brought new tools, animals, plants, and ways of life. They also took plants and goods back to Europe. For example, potatoes and tomatoes from the Americas became very important foods in Europe and Asia.

However, Europeans also accidentally brought many new infectious diseases. These included smallpox, chickenpox, cholera, the common cold, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, measles, scarlet fever, typhoid, typhus, and pertussis (whooping cough). A form of tuberculosis was already in South America, but new types arrived.

These diseases caused huge outbreaks among Native Americans. Many people became sick, disabled, or died. Europeans often carried these diseases without showing symptoms. Or they had only mild sickness because their ancestors had been exposed to them for centuries. Explorers and colonists often passed diseases to Native Americans without knowing it. The arrival of African slaves and busy trade routes also helped spread these sicknesses.

It's hard to track exactly how these infections spread. There were many outbreaks, and not all were recorded well. Old stories about epidemics are often unclear. A rash with a fever could be smallpox, measles, or scarlet fever. Many epidemics happened at the same time, making it hard to know the exact cause of deaths. However, Smallpox was the most damaging disease brought by Europeans. It caused the most sickness and deaths among Native Americans.

The first well-recorded smallpox outbreak in the Americas started in Hispaniola in late 1518. It quickly spread to Mexico. Some estimates say that one-fourth to one-half of the people in central Mexico died.

Native Americans often believed that illness came from being out of balance with their spiritual beliefs. They thought disease might be caused by a lack of spiritual protection. Or it could be from an object put into the body by sorcery, or if a person's free soul left their body. For example, Cherokee spiritual beliefs say animals can cause disease as revenge for being killed. Sometimes, disease was seen as punishment for not following tribal traditions. Spiritual leaders called shamans used their powers to try and cure diseases. Most Native American tribes also used many medicinal plants and other natural things to treat sickness.

Smallpox: A Deadly Disease

Smallpox was very deadly for many Native Americans. It caused huge outbreaks and hit the same tribes again and again. After it arrived in Mexico in 1519, it spread across South America. It devastated Native groups in what are now Colombia, Peru, and Chile during the 1500s.

The disease spread slowly northward because the northern Mexico desert region had few people. Smallpox reached eastern North America separately when colonists arrived in 1633 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Local Native American communities soon got the virus. It reached the Mohawk nation in 1634 and other Iroquois tribes by 1679. Between 1613 and 1690, the Iroquois tribes in Quebec suffered 24 epidemics, mostly from smallpox. By 1698, the virus had crossed the Mississippi River. It caused an epidemic that almost wiped out the Quapaw Indians of Arkansas.

Smallpox often spread during wars. A 15-year-old captive named John McCullough wrote in 1756 about the Lenape people. He said they attacked a settlement where smallpox was present. Many Lenape got infected and died. Those who got sick after returning home were moved out of town and cared for by someone who had already had the disease.

By the mid-1700s, smallpox was so severe that it stopped trade and talks between groups. In 1762, Thomas Hutchins wrote in his journal from Ohio's Fort Miami: "We are Rendered very miserable at Present on Account of a Severe Sickness that has seiz'd almost all our People, many of which have died lately, and many more likely to Die..." He also noted that the Shawnee people were too sick to meet him.

During the siege of Fort Pitt on June 24, 1763, Delaware leaders met with British officials. They warned of many Native Americans coming to attack the fort and asked the British to leave. The fort commander, Simeon Ecuyear, refused. Instead, he gave gifts of blankets, a silk handkerchief, and linen. These items were from the fort's infirmary and were infected with smallpox. This was allegedly done to spread the disease to nearby tribes. However, the Delaware leaders seemed not to have caught smallpox later. A smaller smallpox outbreak had already started that spring. About 100 people died from it among Native American tribes in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes area in 1763 and 1764. It's not known how effective this attempt at biological warfare was. Smallpox spreads mainly through respiratory droplets when people are close, not usually from objects like blankets.

Gershom Hicks, a captive of the Shawnee and Delaware, reported in 1764 that smallpox had been widespread among the Native Americans since the previous spring. He said 30 to 40 Mingoes, many Delawares, and some Shawneese had died from it.

In the mid-to-late 1800s, as more European-Americans traveled west, at least four smallpox epidemics hit the Plains tribes between 1837 and 1870. When these tribes learned about "white man's diseases," many tried to avoid contact with newcomers and their trade goods. But the desire for metal pots, skillets, and knives was often too strong. Native Americans traded anyway and accidentally spread disease to their villages. In the late 1800s, the Lakota Indians called smallpox the "rotting face sickness."

The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic started in San Francisco and reached Victoria. It devastated the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. More than 50% of the people along the entire coast died. In some areas, the Native population dropped by as much as 90%. Some historians have called this epidemic a deliberate genocide. They say the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia could have stopped the epidemic but chose not to, and even helped it spread.

How Diseases Affected Population Numbers

Many Native American tribes suffered huge losses of life. On average, 25–50% of a tribe's members died from disease. Some smaller tribes almost disappeared after a severe disease outbreak.

For example, before Cortés arrived in Mexico, its population was around 25 to 30 million. Fifty years later, the Mexican population was only 3 million, mostly due to infectious diseases. A 2018 study estimated that 55 million Native people died after Europeans arrived in the Americas starting in 1492. By 1700, fewer than 5,000 Native Americans remained in the southeastern coastal United States. In Florida alone, an estimated 700,000 Native Americans lived there in 1520, but by 1700, there were only about 2,000.

Some scientists today suggest that the huge drop in Native American populations and the reduction of farmed lands during the 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s might have contributed to a global cooling period known as the Little Ice Age.

The population loss was so great that it led to the idea of the Americas as "virgin wilderness." By the time many Europeans began to settle, Native populations had already dropped by 90%. This meant many settlements disappeared, and farmed fields were left empty. As forests grew back, colonists got the impression that the land was an untouched wilderness.

Disease had both direct and indirect effects on deaths. High death rates meant fewer people were left to plant crops, hunt, and support the community. Important knowledge about farming and gathering food was not passed on to survivors. Missing the right time to hunt or plant crops affected the food supply. This made communities weaker and more likely to suffer from the next epidemic. Communities facing such crises often couldn't care for people who were disabled, elderly, or very young.

In the summer of 1639, a smallpox epidemic hit the Huron Native Americans in the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes regions. The disease reached the Huron tribes through French traders from Québec. After the epidemic, the Huron population was reduced to about 9,000 people, roughly half of what it had been before 1634. The Iroquois people, south of the Great Lakes, faced similar losses after meeting French, Dutch, and English colonists.

During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30% of the Northwestern Native Americans. The smallpox epidemic of 1780–1782 caused huge devastation and population loss among the Plains Indians.

By 1832, the United States government started a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans. In 1839, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs reported on the deaths from the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic. He believed that the number of deaths for the upper Missouri River Indians, estimated at 17,200, should be doubled for all those who died east of the Rocky Mountains.

Some historians, like David Stannard, argue that focusing only on disease makes it seem like the deaths of millions of people were accidental. He says that the destruction was not accidental but was caused by diseases and intentional actions together. Another historian, Andrés Reséndez, suggests that slavery was a major cause of death for Native people in the Caribbean between 1492 and 1550, even more than diseases like smallpox or influenza.

How Diseases Caused Disabilities

Epidemics killed many people, including those with disabilities. They also left many survivors with new disabilities. For Native American communities, disabilities had real effects on daily life and society. For example, scarlet fever could cause blindness or deafness. Smallpox epidemics led to blindness and scars that changed skin color. Many Native American tribes valued their appearance, and the skin changes from smallpox deeply affected people's feelings about themselves.

Studying Ancient Diseases Through Archaeology

Scientists who study ancient life can see signs of disease by looking at bones. However, this only gives a limited view. Most common infectious diseases, like those caused by germs such as staphylococcus and streptococcus, don't leave marks on bones. Tuberculosis is rare to find in bones, and its diagnosis through bone analysis is debated. To understand the health of a whole community, scientists look at diet, how often infections happened, hygiene, and how waste was handled. Most diseases came to the Americas from Europe and Asia. A type of tuberculosis was found in people before Columbus arrived, through DNA from human remains in Peru. It was likely passed to humans through seal hunting.

Images for kids

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  Nineteenth-century drawing of a medicine man caring for a sick American Indian.

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  Sixteenth-century Aztec drawings of victims of smallpox (above) and measles (below).

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  Graph showing how the population in central Mexico dropped because of many epidemics.