Were Native Americans doomed to be wiped out by disease?

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In summary: The exchange of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old and New Worlds had a profound impact on the populations in both regions.So, while it's certainly true that the arrival of new European diseases killed off a lot of Native Americans, the exchange of disease also helped to reduce the populations of both sides.
  • #1
wasteofo2
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I'm currently reading 1491, a book which tries to piece together what the Americas were like pre-columbus.

One of the main points of the book is that estimates that the Americas had several million people at the point of European arrival are ridiculously small, due to the fact that European diseases spread throughout the Americas much faster than European conquerers did. So the conquerers of the Aztecs, Incas etc. all encountered populations that had been dramatically reduced by the spread of European disease, possibly by 90-95%.

There were many European diseases that the Native Americans had no natural defenses to, and they were all introduced within a very short time frame, meaning that the indigenous people didn't have anywhere near the time as populations to adjust to these new diseases, and were easily conquered by Europeans.

My question is, was this inevitable?

There is no way the Americas could have stayed isolated from the old world, at some point contact was inevitable, and with that contact, the spread of diseases.

Is there any reasonable alternative path history might have taken that would have allowed the Native Americans to adjust to these diseases?

Does anyone know about Native American immunology today? For instance, in Peru or Bolivia, do indigenous populations STILL have greater susceptibility to old-world diseases?

Obviously many people in the Americas have mixed ancestry, which helps boost immunity, but have ''pure'' indigenous populations developed resistances that their ancestors lacked in 1491?
 
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  • #2
And why weren't the Euros wiped out by native American diseases? Was it a matter of the NAs coming from a much less diverse gene pool than the Euros?
 
  • #3
brocks said:
And why weren't the Euros wiped out by native American diseases? Was it a matter of the NAs coming from a much less diverse gene pool than the Euros?

I've always wondered that too. Are there any records of disease going the other way (NA to Europe)?
 
  • #4
brocks said:
And why weren't the Euros wiped out by native American diseases? Was it a matter of the NAs coming from a much less diverse gene pool than the Euros?
What Native American diseases are you referring to?
 
  • #5
Evo said:
What Native American diseases are you referring to?

I don't think brocks refers to anything in particular. However, it seems logical that separated populations have their own sets of diseases. We know of some of those that were present in Europe, as they were described in many written European sources from the period, I guess if we know nothing about the diseases of NA that because there are not many equivalent sources in Americas (perhaps something from Maya, but nothing further north?).

Following that logic it looks at least probable that some NA diseases should be able to bring havoc to Europe.
 
  • #6
brocks said:
And why weren't the Euros wiped out by native American diseases? Was it a matter of the NAs coming from a much less diverse gene pool than the Euros?
European colonizers WERE wiped out, in large numbers by "native american" diseases.
It was regarded highly hazardaous to go to the colonies in the early centuries.

The relevant point is that it was the "motherlode" of the Native American gene pool that was infected by the Europeans, while the motherlode of the European gene pool was kept safe from native american infection (only the tiny subset of European colonizers met that infection).

Furthermore, new European colonizers, although on their own at risk for being infected by native american disease would to a much larger extent than their native american counterparts intermarry with survivors of native american infections (i.e, "old" colonizers).

In short, the Europeans had a constant influx of disease-carrying individuals that was primarily lethal to the original population, and this colonizer population quickly became resistant to the diseases of the New World as well.
The motherlode of the European gene pool remained safe and unifected back in..Europe.

In contrast, the new diseases brought on by the Europeans wrought havoc in the core population of the native americans, and their immunization rate was for too long too low relative to the infection rate.
------------------------
As for whether the native americans was "doomed", of course not.
If the native americans had colonized Europe (and not the other way round), you'd see an extermination by disease of Europeans equally bad, and we would all be Aztecs by now..
 
  • #7
arildno said:
As for whether the native americans was "doomed", of course not.
If the native americans had colonized Europe (and not the other way round), you'd see an extermination by disease of Europeans equally bad, and we would all be Aztecs by now..

I'm not sure this is entirely true. According to Wikipedia's article on the Columbian Exchange:

Before regular communication had been established between the two hemispheres, the varieties of domesticated animals and infectious diseases that jumped to humans, such as smallpox, were strikingly larger in the Old World than in the New. Many had migrated west with animals or people, or were brought by traders from Asia, so diseases of two continents were suffered by all. While Europeans and Asians were affected by the Eurasian diseases, their endemic status in those continents over centuries caused many people to acquire immunity. By contrast, "Old World" diseases had a devastating impact on Native American populations because they had no natural immunity to the new diseases.
 
  • #8
A number of colony reports from the 16th to 18th century reported that many new colonizers succumbed to diseases during their first year or two.
I read somewhere that in some parts of America, you had death rates among the first-generation colonizers from 60-80% !

Now, if THAT lethality rate is spreading through the native gene pool on account of new EUROPEAN diseases, you begin to understand the differential disastrous effect of this meeting of (bacterial&human) cultures.

Can't help you with any links, unfortunately, it's been years since I glanced somewhere this argument.

But, it is a scientifically sound principle, and although there is no point denying the existence of relatively more lethal "European diseases" than "native American" diseases, I'm not sure we really need to posit that hypothesis in order to explain the results in a general, non-quantitative manner.

But, just to remind you:

Native Americans had their own brands of lice, rodents, mosquitoes and whatnot that weren't less disease-carrying than their european counterparts.
 
  • #9
Furthermore, concerning domestic animals:

Did the early colonizers bring over that many to begin with?

There is a long, stressful sea voyage, with cramped space, bad water and a shortage problem for food.

To bring over lots of, say, horses and cows represented a large financial investment that also would be very risky, not the least because the animals themselves might easily succumb on the voyage or in their new country.

It would be more prudent for the EARLY colonizers to put faith in their OWN powers of adaptation and domestization, rather than spend their meagre resources of keeping alive large animals that probably woulD die, anyway.

Thus, without having the empirical evidence for it, a suspect that large-scale importation of domestic animals from Europe would be a middle/late-colonization sub-project, rather than an early colonization project.

But, by then, diseases will have spread from the Europeans to the natives by a variety of agents.

Of course, a critical piece of evidence we would need to evaluate this would be what TYPES of new diseases ravaged the native population, when and where..
 
  • #10
arildno said:
European colonizers WERE wiped out, in large numbers by "native american" diseases.
It was regarded highly hazardaous to go to the colonies in the early centuries.

The relevant point is that it was the "motherlode" of the Native American gene pool that was infected by the Europeans, while the motherlode of the European gene pool was kept safe from native american infection (only the tiny subset of European colonizers met that infection).

I think there is a problem with this line of thinking. Once early colonist become accustomed to the American diseases, these would be present in their population, but not dangerous enough to decimate it. However, scroll forward in time, remembering that number of people traveling in both directions grows exponentially. In one or two hundred years European gene pool is no longer safe and isolated, as more and more Americans arrive here - yet I don't remember hearing about any serious epidemy that could be attributed to diseases brought from America.
 
  • #11
Good point I hadn't thought about.
That sort of rules out man-borne diseases as primary native death agents for the colonizers..

Still, colonizers DID succumb in large numbers of disease in the early days, but not later.

It might be that what they actually died of were diseases carried by, for example mosquito specie that went extinct due to drainage of swamps and so on, and thus, would not inject a new disease into the European country in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
 
  • #12
I thought the early colonists mainly died of starvation and conditions caused by becoming very unhealthy due to starvation. The Europeans were not equipped or savvy enough to support themselves in the New World IIRC.

Now I need a cup of coffee and to go dig up stuff to see if I remember my history correctly.

This for now sheds some insight. Starvation, unclean water, malaria...

Fyndeinge of fyve hundrethe men we had onely Lefte aboutt sixty, The reste beinge either sterved throwe famin or Cutt of by the salvages.
George Percy, “A Trewe Relacyon”

http://historynotebook.blogspot.com/2008/02/death-in-jamestown.html
 
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  • #13
arildno said:
Furthermore, concerning domestic animals:

Did the early colonizers bring over that many to begin with?

Early colonizers did indeed bring over domesticated animals, horses and pigs were probably the most common. Horses helped defeat the indians in battle, wheras pigs spread many European diseases. There are many tales of a colonist being the first European to explore an area, bringing his livestock with him, and discovering it very densley populated and simply leaving, since several hundred men couldn't take down huge populations. Maybe a hundred years later, more Europeans come to discover ghost towns, small nomadic tribes etc. Almost definitely wiped out by diseases spread by livestock to humans.

As far as domesticated animals go, Eurasia was VEEEEEERY different than the Americas.

First, Eurasians had much more trade between themselves than did the Americans. There was no ''silk road'' leading from Mexico to Peru, and as such, the domesticated animals of one region of the Americas stayed there. There were no alpacas in Mexico, there were no Turkeys in Brazil. Wheras in Eurasia, domesticated animals quickly spread from China to England.

Further, domesticated animals were simply a more important part of life for Eurasians than Native Americans. Native Americans didn't even have the mutation that would allow for adults to process lactose. Their large civilizations depended much more on agriculture relative to Eurasians.

Eurasians had millenia to become accustomed to the diseases produced by proximity between people and animals, and the Native Americans simply didn't. It WAS a cleaner contienent.

Further, Native American genetic diversity is much smaller than Eurasian, since they were all recently descended from a relatively small settler group within the last 15,000 years or so. Just look at the y-haplotype diversity in the New World vs. the Old World:

[PLAIN]http://statistics.arizona.edu/courses/EEB208-2008/Lecture26/pics/W-MAP.GIF [Broken]

Obviously the New World looks much more succeptible to disease than the Old World judging by how little genetic diversity there was.
 
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  • #14
I bow and scrape before superior arguments, given by others in the thread.
:smile:
 
  • #15
brocks said:
And why weren't the Euros wiped out by native American diseases? Was it a matter of the NAs coming from a much less diverse gene pool than the Euros?
lisab said:
I've always wondered that too. Are there any records of disease going the other way (NA to Europe)?

Couple years ago I read:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465028829/?tag=pfamazon01-20

From a reader review of the book on that page:

"Until the mid-twentieth century, when it was shown that penicillin was an effective treatment, syphilis was one of the most common diseases in Europe and North America. Though the point is still debated, it seems likely that syphilis was the one epidemic Native Americans were able to give to their conquerors in the face of smallpox, measles and the rest that devastated their populations. Unlike the European diseases, however, which were quickly and disproportionately deadly, syphilis, after its sudden and sweeping introduction, quickly mutated into a chronic illness. Though ultimately fatal in some cases, syphilis often allowed carriers to live for many decades after the initial infection, slowly tearing the body apart. It is the story of this disease that has become largely ignored in modern scholarship that Ms. Hayden tells in Pox.

There is much of interest in this book, particularly in the first section. Here, Ms. Hayden recounts what is known of the introduction of syphilis into Europe, including a lively discussion indicating that Columbus himself may have been among the first syphilitics. Even more interesting is her description of the disease itself from the signs of initial infection to the often gradual, extensive and painful deterioration that accompanies the progress of the disease ending in madness and death. She notes that there are two key problems in an analysis of syphilis: the fact that syphilis is "the great imitator" (meaning that its extensive symptoms are often easily mistaken for other diseases, especially as these symptoms may occur decades after the initial infection) and the fact that patients admitting to syphilis was rare because of the social stigma attached. So understanding the full impact of syphilis on Western culture is problematic."

No one worries much about syphilis anymore, so we forget that the time between Columbus's return from the New World and the discovery of penicillin was a 500 year nightmare with syphillis as the unkillable monster. She makes a persuasive case for Columbus and his crew as the agents of introduction of the spirochete into Europe.
 
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  • #16
Montezuma's real revenge?
 
  • #17
There is a fantastic book and tv series called "Guns, Germs, and Steel" You can find it on Netflix Instant. It talks a lot about the reasons for why the Native Americans were never as advanced and why they ultimately perished.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393061310/?tag=pfamazon01-20

http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/National-Geographic-Guns-Germs-and-Steel/70034208
 
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  • #18
Evo said:
Montezuma's real revenge?
Yes, in the sense that it was a devastating disease that went the other way: from The New World to Europe. The negative consequences of contact were not one sided at all. When Columbus sailed back to Europe the first time he was seriously ill with some unknown-to-him disease involving lesions and boils and general malaise. The symptoms were then carried from the city where he landed, by sailors and soldiers (in other words, the usual clients of brothels) to all the cities and countries of Europe, in a systematic chronological way that comes down to us in contemporary accounts. A few decades later it was all over and had taken firm hold. The works of Shakespeare were full of references to "the pox", especially in the form of a curse: "A pox upon you!", "A pox upon your house!" :references to syphilis.

I highly recommend the book, even if you find yourself objecting to her case for any given historical figure having had syphilis, because in laying out her case she paints a picture of those times when syphilis was the dark cloud hanging over Western Civilization's head. In the late 1800's something like 15% of men were estimated to be infected. People endured useless, dangerous cures involving mercury vapor. Children had it passed to them at birth. None of which could be discussed openly. Did James Joyce have syphilis? It doesn't completely matter, because in describing his case she makes it clear what it would have been like for any married man with a career to have the disease in those times, under his circumstances.

So, turning the OP question around: Were Europeans doomed to the 500 year syphilis epidemic?

That's a pretty interesting question because we have no information on how prevalent it was in the Americas. Did he accidentally stumble onto the area of origin of the disease? Would it have spread from the Carib peoples around the world by other means? Had other Americans found a way of containing it? It's maddening how little we know. (Columbus had literate priests with him who were sympathetic to the natives and wrote letters back to Spain. I guess I would scour those letters to see if the priests asked the natives anything about this mystery disease.)
 
  • #19
Here is another very valuable read, but also from the western narrative:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0773531211/?tag=pfamazon01-20
If the discussion is to broaden and ask why Indigenous people of North America were "wiped out" I think that culture is a fundamental consideration. The direction that any society takes is a product of how it first relates to its world.
 
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  • #20
Evo said:
What Native American diseases are you referring to?
There is some question as to whether syphilis existed in Europe before 1492. Some writers assert that it did not and was brought back by Columbus's sailors, others say that most early references to Leprosy were actually references to syphilis. In any case, there were large outbreaks of syphilis in Europe immediately after the "voyages of discovery".
 
  • #21
To the OP:

I am a full-blood Indian ("full blood" incidentally is a European concept but anyways) and I have three comments to make:

- Yes America (Turtle Island) had several million people and the count is severely underestimated.

- You should not believe written histories about us for several reasons. Our histories were written by our conquerors (would you believe Jewish history written by the Nazis if the Nazis had won?); they are usually compiled from sources/records maintained by those who warred against us; even our current histories are inaccurate - for instance, all recent news reports say that the US/Obama signed the United Nations Rights on the Declaration of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). This is not true; America never endorsed UNDRIP. If current history is misleading, you should not believe histories that are hundreds of years old.

- Our oral histories are what you need to rely on. Oral histories are not like the inaccurate telephone game played by kids. We had clans whose responsibility was to maintain oral histories. A PhD degree takes 4 years or so but these clan members spent entire lifetimes keeping track of our histories. Our oral histories are like the Buddhist mantras/chants which have remained unchanged and accurate for thousands of years. Indians quickly became immune to European diseases. Our oral histories say that we were massacred. The part about being "nearly wiped out by diseases" is a deliberate fiction. If you want to know what really happened, you would need to go down to a traditional reservation and speak to an Indian who is very fluent in her/his Indian language. Seek indigenous histories through indigenous voices.

I won't be following this thread or debating anyone.
 
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  • #22
Indeed it is terribly frustrating trying to glean truth from the histories written by racist conquerors.

What tribe do you belong to? I would love to hear what your oral history tells. I hope you'll care to share.
 
  • #23
  • #24
seeeker said:
would you believe Jewish history written by the Nazis if the Nazis had won?

Good point. On the other hand, I believe very little of the Jewish history written by Jews and preserved for thousands of years in the Hebrew Bible, so I am not inclined to accept Native American oral history just on your say-so.

I won't be following this thread or debating anyone.

I guess if you just want to rant, rather than educate, that's your right.
 
  • #25
The discussion is interesting but the title is misleading. There are many Native American’s today. I don’t see how the term wiped out is appropriate. Additionally whatever the natural impact of disease may have been the impact was escalated by the use of germ warfare. Additionally disease was far from the only stress to native populations. Their scalps were hunted and the environment which once supported them was hunted to near extinction.
 
  • #26
John Creighto said:
The discussion is interesting but the title is misleading. There are many Native American’s today. I don’t see how the term wiped out is appropriate.
Nearly wiped out. 100% didn't die, ''only'' 95-99% did.

John Creighto said:
Additionally whatever the natural impact of disease may have been the impact was escalated by the use of germ warfare. Additionally disease was far from the only stress to native populations. Their scalps were hunted and the environment which once supported them was hunted to near extinction.

All of this happened far after the initial 90% of their population was wiped out due to disease.

When Europeans first landed on the shores of North America, they found the whole coastline heavily populated. They could not set up colonies or make war on these people, there were simply too many of them. A hundred years later, after disease had spread like wildfire, Europeans could then begin waging war on the then ''nearly'' wiped out populations.

The very idea of Native Americans as few, scattered and nomadic is simply a misconception brought about by the fact that disease traveled faster than the Europeans themselves, so that when they first arrived in many areas they found people who were indeed few, scattered and nomadic, because their whole society had recently been destroyed by alien diseases.
 
  • #27
wasteofo2 said:
When Europeans first landed on the shores of North America, they found the whole coastline heavily populated. They could not set up colonies or make war on these people, there were simply too many of them. A hundred years later, after disease had spread like wildfire, Europeans could then begin waging war on the then ''nearly'' wiped out populations.

The very idea of Native Americans as few, scattered and nomadic is simply a misconception brought about by the fact that disease traveled faster than the Europeans themselves, so that when they first arrived in many areas they found people who were indeed few, scattered and nomadic, because their whole society had recently been destroyed by alien diseases.

How well does the evidence support this? (IT’s not like there was a census back then in North America. Although I suppose they could infer it from geological records.) Also can they rule out other causes like, war between tribes, fires and starvation?
 
  • #28
John Creighto said:
How well does the evidence support this? (IT’s not like there was a census back then in North America. Although I suppose they could infer it from geological records.) Also can they rule out other causes like, war between tribes, fires and starvation?

Here is an article written on the subject: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/2445/
 
  • #29
One of the differences between pre-colombian America and pre-colombian Europe was that Europe was much more densely populated than America. In order for a disease to spread, on the average, each individual must infect at least one other person. For a sparsely populated area, especially one in which different tribes did not associate closely with each other, it would have been difficult for a disease to spread very far. Thus immunity to any particular disease must have been confined primarily to local tribes.

In contrast, when the Europeans arrived, they destroyed the inter-tribe isolation by trading with every tribe they came in contact with.
 
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  • #31
Ryan_m_b said:
This is not a credible source. I know that this is the social sciences forum but please stick to published research rather than magazine articles.

Mann is a credible popular science writer who summarizes a large body of research in his book 1492 and the Atlantic Article, which summarizes much of it. Much more productive for an amateur discussion than digging up a bunch of potentially conflicting journal articles when no one has the expertise to understand on which issues there is consensus and which are currently being debated

Michael Coe,

Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, at Yale University, is recognized for his work on the archaeology and ethnohistory of Mesoamerica, the historical archaeology of the northeastern United States, and ancient writing systems. He is the author of many books on Mesoamerica, including Breaking the Maya Code (Thames and Hudson, 1992; revised edition, 1999).

reviewed the work positively in the American Scientist (http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/the-old-new-world)

writing:

Reading 1491, one soon learns about the horrifying devastation that Old World diseases worked throughout the New World. This was the greatest demographic disaster ever suffered by Homo sapiens. In Mesoamerica alone, only 10 percent of the Indian population was alive a century after the Conquest. As Jared Diamond has made clear in his justly renowned Guns, Germs, and Steel, these scourges ran ahead of the European invaders, so that the seeds of defeat were already planted in empires like the Aztec and Inca even before the conquistadores arrived.
...

Mann has written an impressive and highly readable book. Even though one can disagree with some of his inferences from the data, he does give both sides of the most important arguments. 1491 is a fitting tribute to those Indians, present and past, whose cause he is championing
 
  • #32
I had long thought, from reading popularly here and there, that Native Americans were at such a disadvantage to the Europeans from disease was because Europe had i) the widespread existence of large cities with dense populations and ii) centuries of long distance trade/and or conquest in Europe, Africa and Asia. Travel and dense cities acted together to create more virulent diseases and, over time, build immunity. See going back to Alexander, where he and his armies suffered plagues as they traveled through Africa and Asia, the same tale repeating with subsequent invaders through the centuries. The Europeans and nature thus had several thousand years to both create diseases and adapt to them, a period which the native North Americans in continental isolation never had.
 

1. How did diseases affect Native American populations?

Diseases brought by European settlers, such as smallpox, measles, and influenza, had a devastating impact on Native American populations. These diseases were new to the Native Americans and they had no immunity, resulting in high death rates.

2. Were Native Americans more susceptible to diseases than Europeans?

Yes, Native Americans were more susceptible to diseases due to their lack of exposure and immunity to these new diseases. They also lived in close-knit communities, making it easier for diseases to spread rapidly.

3. Did Native Americans have any natural defenses against these diseases?

No, Native Americans did not have any natural defenses against the diseases brought by European settlers. They had never been exposed to these diseases before, so they had no immunity.

4. Were Native Americans completely wiped out by diseases?

No, Native American populations were not completely wiped out by diseases. While the impact was devastating, some populations were able to survive and rebuild their communities.

5. How did diseases contribute to the colonization of Native American land?

The high death rates caused by diseases weakened Native American populations, making it easier for European settlers to conquer and colonize their land. This, combined with other factors such as warfare and forced relocation, ultimately led to the displacement and marginalization of Native American communities.

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