How did European diseases and epidemics affect Native Americans?
European diseases and epidemics pervade many aspects of Native American life, both throughout history and in the present day. Diseases and epidemics can be chronicled from centuries ago when European settlers brought forth diseases that devastated entire tribes.
What is the leading cause of death for Native Americans?
The leading cause of death of Native Americans is heart disease. In 2005, it claimed 2,659 Native American lives. Heart disease occurs in Native American populations at a rate 20 percent greater than all other United States races.
How did Native Americans react to the smallpox epidemic?
Native Americans came to see this smallpox epidemic as a true turning point in their history. The time before the arrival of the Spanish was remembered as a veritable paradise, free of fevers, smallpox, stomach pains, and tuberculosis. When the Spanish came, they brought fear and disease wherever they went.
What are the health concerns of Native Americans?
Native Americans share many of the same health concerns as their non-Native American, United States citizen counterparts. For instance, Native Americans leading causes of death include "heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries (accidents), diabetes, and stroke".
What disease affected the natives?
As Native peoples travel waterways by canoe to trade and share news, they unknowingly take the germs to neighboring tribes. Measles, mumps, chickenpox, smallpox, diphtheria, influenza, pneumonia, typhoid, and the common cold reach Florida and Cuba and begin their deadly march through populations across the hemisphere.
How did the exchange of diseases impact Native Americans?
The impact was most severe in the Caribbean, where by 1600 Native American populations on most islands had plummeted by more than 99 percent. Across the Americas, populations fell by 50 percent to 95 percent by 1650. The disease component of the Columbian Exchange was decidedly one-sided.
How did smallpox affect the natives?
If smallpox was severe among the whites, it was devastating to the Native American. Smallpox ultimately killed more Native Americans in the early centuries than any other disease or conflict. 2 It was not unusual for half a tribe to be wiped out; on some occasions, the entire tribe was lost.
What role did disease play in the conquest of the Americas?
Contrary to popular belief, it was not the European guns or fierce soldiers that conquered the native Americans, but instead it was the common childhood illnesses brought from the Old World by the European conquistadors. Diseases such as smallpox, measles, and typhus annihilated most of the American native populations.
What diseases were prevalent in the Americas?
These waves of epidemic disease might have included smallpox, influenza, measles, mumps, dysentery, typhus, and pneumonia. The precise impact of smallpox and other European diseases throughout the Americas is difficult to document or comprehend.
What diseases were introduced to the Americas by Europeans?
The catastrophic epidemics that accompanied the European conquest of the New World decimated the indigenous population of the Americas. Influenza, smallpox, measles, and typhus fever were among the first European diseases imported to the Americas. During the first hundred years of contact with Europeans, Native Americans were trapped in ...
What diseases were in the Andean region?
European diseases probably preceded European contact in the Andean region. A catastrophic epidemic, which might have been smallpox, swept the region in the mid-1520s, killing the Inca leader Huayna Capac and his son. Subsequent epidemics struck the region in the 1540s, 1558, and from the 1580s to 1590s. These waves of epidemic disease might have ...
What did Native Americans see before the Spanish arrived?
The time before the arrival of the Spanish was remembered as a veritable paradise, free of fevers, smallpox, stomach pains, and tuberculosis. When the Spanish came, they brought fear and disease wherever they went.
What was the death rate of the Arawaks?
The Spanish estimated that death rates among Native Americans from smallpox reached 25 to 50%.
What was the impact of the contact between Europeans and Native Americans?
Contact between Europeans and Native Americans led to a demographic disaster of unprecedented proportions. Many of the epidemic diseases that were well established in the Old World were absent from the Americas before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. The catastrophic epidemics that accompanied the European conquest ...
How long ago did humans first arrive in the Americas?
Some scholars believe that wandering bands of hunter-gatherers first crossed a land bridge from Asia to the New World about 10,000 years ago . Other evidence suggests that human beings might have arrived much earlier, but the earliest sites are very poorly preserved. In any case, migration from Siberia to Alaska might have served as a "cold filter" that screened out many Old World pathogens and insects. In addition, except for the late development of a few urban centers, primarily in Mesoamerica, population density in the New World rarely reached the levels needed to sustain epidemic diseases.
How did Native Americans get diseases?
Native Americans often contracted infectious disease through trading and exploration contacts with Europeans, and these were transmitted far from the sources and colonial settlements, through exclusively Native American trading transactions. Warfare and enslavement also contributed to disease transmission.
What are the effects of Native Americans?
While subject to the same illnesses, Native Americans suffer higher morbidity and mortality to diabetes and cardiovascular disease as well as certain forms of cancer.
How did smallpox affect Native Americans?
Smallpox was lethal to many Native Americans, resulting in sweeping epidemics and repeatedly affecting the same tribes. After its introduction to Mexico in 1519, the disease spread across South America, devastating indigenous populations in what are now Colombia, Peru and Chile during the sixteenth century. The disease was slow to spread northward due to the sparse population of the northern Mexico desert region. It was introduced to eastern North America separately by colonists arriving in 1633 to Plymouth, Massachusetts, and local Native American communities were soon struck by the virus. It reached the Mohawk nation in 1634, the Lake Ontario area in 1636, and the lands of other Iroquois tribes by 1679. Between 1613 and 1690 the Iroquois tribes living in Quebec suffered twenty-four epidemics, almost all of them caused by smallpox. By 1698 the virus had crossed the Mississippi, causing an epidemic that nearly obliterated the Quapaw Indians of Arkansas.
What were the leading causes of death in Alaska in 2005?
The leading causes of death by percentage for Native Americans and Alaska Natives for 2005. Heart disease accounted for 25% of deaths, cancer 22%, accidents 19%, diabetes 7%, liver disease 6%, suicide 6%, respiratory diseases 6%, stroke 4%, homicide 3%, and influenza and pneumonia 3%.
Why did Native Americans have amputations?
Because of vascular and nerve damage from diabetes, Native Americans suffer a higher rate of lower extremity amputations than European Americans. In studies of the Pima tribes, those with diabetes were also found to have much higher prevalence of periodontal disease, and higher rates of bacterial and fungal infection.
What is the leading cause of death for Native Americans?
The leading cause of death of Native Americans is heart disease. In 2005, 2,659 Native Americans died of this cause. Heart disease occurs in Native American populations at a rate 20 percent greater than all other United States races.
How much more likely are Native Americans to drink?
Native American men are about as likely to be moderate to heavy drinkers as white men, but about 5–15% more likely to be moderate to heavy drinkers than black or Asian men. Native Americans are 10% less likely to be at a healthy weight than white adults, and 30% less likely to be at a healthy weight than Asian adults.
