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Smallpox Plague In1779
In you own words: how did the smallpox plague of 1779 affect the Native American population? Where did this plague begin? Evaluate how the plague influenced future events.
While today European domination over the Americas might seem like a historical inevitability, this was not the case, neither from the perspective of the native inhabitants or the colonists. Although the colonists may have possessed military technological innovations the Indians did not, frequent trade between the two peoples had leveled this inequity. Many of the tribes had grown strong and wealthy because of the fur trade. Also, some of the Indian tribes were skillful at politically manipulating different groups of whites against one another, although this ability greatly deteriorated after the French-Indian wars. Still, the ultimate death-knell of Indian power was the smallpox epidemic. The immunological profile of smallpox was that a sufferer either died, or emerged from the pox with complete immunity. However, this was a relatively new disease to the Americas, and the Indians had built up no resistance to the pox.
The powerful Northeastern Six Nations Iroquois in 1777 that had proved such an inspiring example of Indian unity and resistance were decimated by the first waves of the great smallpox epidemic. In 1779 the Creeks and Cherokees in 1779 suffered tremendous population losses and were unable to resist the new U.S. federal government's political and military advances upon their land (Richter 2001). The Indians lost economic power as well, as the Crees and Assiniboines saw their control over the northern fur trade ebb away to the Hudson's Bay Company. Through New Spain, the Great Plains, Hudson's Bay, and the Pacific Coast between 1779 and 1782, the pox cut a swathe through the nation, but had a particularly devastating impact upon Native Americans (Richter 2001). The Native Americans lost their political and economic clout, their land, as well as their lives, and, in the very long-term, they also lost their culture to the epidemic brought by whites.
Works Cited
Richter, Donald. Review of Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82. By Elizabeth Fenn. New York, N.Y., Hill & Wang Publishers, 2001. Common Place.
2.3. 2001. February 17, 2009. http://www.common-place.org/vol-02/no-03/reviews/richter.shtml
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