What diseases did Native Americans spread?
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.
Many Woodland people planted crops such as sunflowers, corn, pumpkins, squash, and beans and built permanent wooden homes. Nevertheless, Indians in the Woodland period still relied primarily on hunting, fishing, and gathering.
Along with measles, influenza, chickenpox, bubonic plague, typhus, scarlet fever, pneumonia and malaria, smallpox spelled disaster for Native Americans, who lacked immunity to such diseases.
They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent, killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans. Smallpox is believed to have arrived in the Americas in 1520 on a Spanish ship sailing from Cuba, carried by an infected African slave.
Among the "new" infectious diseases brought by the Europeans, smallpox was one of the most feared because of the high mortality rates in infected Native Americans. This fear may have been well-founded, because the Native Americans were victims of what was probably one of the earliest episodes of biological warfare.
In the healthiest cultures in the 1,000 years before Columbus, a life span of no more than 35 years might be usual. In examining the skeletal evidence, paleopathologists rated the healthiest pre-Columbians to be people living 1,200 years ago on the coast of Brazil, where they had access to ample food from land and sea.
The land was full of animals; the sea was full of fish. Most of the villages were located near the Ocean. Wood was plentiful, and the natives of the areas used the woods to build large homes. One of the unique innovations of the Indians of the Northwest was large canoes that could hold 50 people.
The earliest populations in the Americas, before roughly 10,000 years ago, are known as Paleo-Indians.
Native American Myopathy (NAM) is a genetic disease as well as a genetic disorder caused by a unique gene mutation that almost exclusively effects American Indians. Myopathy is the general term that oversees both a large and diverse group of diseases that can all be defined as a muscle disease.
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.
Why did diseases like smallpox affect Native Americans so badly?
Many of the diseases, such as syphilis, smallpox, measles, mumps, and bubonic plague, were of European origin, and Native Americans exhibited little immunity because they had no previous exposure to those diseases. This caused greater mortality than would have occurred if these diseases been endemic to the Americas.
Because their populations had not been previously exposed to most of these infectious diseases, the indigenous people rarely had individual or population acquired immunity and consequently suffered very high mortality.
| Non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native, Male, All ages | Percent |
|---|---|
| 1) Heart disease | 19.4% |
| 2) Cancer | 16.4% |
| 3) Unintentional injuries | 13.8% |
| 4) Diabetes | 5.9% |
17th Century—European settlers bring smallpox to North America.
Around 3000 BC the sexually transmitted syphilis emerged from endemic syphilis in South-Western Asia, due to lower temperatures of the post-glacial era and spread to Europe and the rest of the world.
Many or most Indians, whom the authors classed as 'alive' when first mentioned, between December 4, 1780 and March 23, 1781 (often because they had not yet been exposed) soon became ill with smallpox. Almost all of those who contracted smallpox, died.
Previous genetic work had suggested the ancestors of Native Americans split from Siberians and East Asians about 25,000 years ago, perhaps when they entered the now mostly drowned landmass of Beringia, which bridged the Russian Far East and North America.
White Wolf, also known as Chief John Smith, was believed to have lived from 1785 - 1922. He was considered to be the oldest Native American to have ever lived, dying at the age of 137.
About 25,000 years ago, Native Americans' ancestors split from the people living in Siberia. Later, they moved across a land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska, making it into the Pacific Northwest between 17,000 and 14,000 years ago.
Native Americans had a life expectancy of 71 years, according to a recent CDC study -- compared to Hispanics at 82 years, whites at 78.8 years, and Blacks at 74.8 years.
How old did the average Native American live?
Johnson said then that the average age of death for an American Indian was 44, compared to a U.S. average of 65 – half again as long as that for Native Americans.
The Comanches, known as the "Lords of the Plains", were regarded as perhaps the most dangerous Indians Tribes in the frontier era.
Vikings settled in North America in the 10th and 11th Centuries. Shortly after arriving, the Norse warriors were clashing with local tribes. It would be the first time Europeans would fight against Aboriginals.
American Indian or Alaska Native A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community attachment.
The Aztecs were the Native American people who dominated northern Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest in the early 16th century. A nomadic culture, the Aztecs eventually settled on several small islands in Lake Texcoco where, in 1325, they founded the town of Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City.