1616 — Yellow Fever, Wampanoag btw. Provincetown, MA / Narragansett Bay, RI– 45,000

 

–45,000  NIH. Native Voices. “Timeline…1616: Yellow fever kills two-thirds of…Wampanoag.”

 

Narrative Information

 

NIH: “AD 1616: Yellow fever kills two-thirds of the Wampanoag.[1] European traders carry yellow fever to the Wampanoag Nation, located on the Atlantic coast between what is now known as Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. An estimated 45,000 die—two-thirds of the nation. Elders and children are hardest hit. The loss of elders endangers the language, as does the loss of children to carry it on. The diminished population is less able to defend its territory and its culture from incursions.”  (U.S. National Library of Medicine. Native Voices. Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness. “Timeline.”)

 

Another View

 

Marr and Cathey Abstract: “In the years before English settlers established the Plymouth colony (1616–1619), most Native Americans living on the southeastern coast of present-day Massachusetts died from a mysterious disease. Classic explanations have included yellow fever, smallpox, and plague. Chickenpox and trichinosis are among more recent proposals. We suggest an additional candidate: leptospirosis complicated by Weil syndrome. Rodent reservoirs from European ships infected indigenous reservoirs and contaminated land and fresh water. Local ecology and high-risk quotidian[2] practices of the native population favored exposure and were not shared by Europeans. Reduction of the population may have been incremental, episodic, and continuous; local customs continuously exposed this population to hyperendemic leptospiral infection over months or years, and only a fraction survived. Previous proposals do not adequately account for signature signs (epistaxis, jaundice) and do not consider customs that may have been instrumental to the near annihilation of Native Americans, which facilitated successful colonization of the Massachusetts Bay area.”

 

Source

 

Johnson, Madeleine. “The Pilgrims Should Have Been Thankful for a Spirochete.” Slate, 10-20-2012. Accessed 3-4-2017 at: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2012/11/leptospirosis_and_pilgrims_the_wampanoag_may_have_been_killed_off_by_an.html

 

Marr, John S. and John T. Cathey. “New Hypothesis for cause of Epidemic among Native Americans, New England, 1616-1619.” Emerging Infections Diseases (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), Vol. 16, No. 2, February 2010, pp. 281-286. Accessed 3-4-2017 at:

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/16/2/09-0276_article

United States National Library of Medicine. Native Voices. Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness. “Timeline. AD 1616: Yellow fever kills two-thirds of the Wampanoag.” Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services. Accessed 9-17-2012 at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/197.html

 

 

 

 

[1] This is stated rather authoritatively. We have seen other theories as well as a 1916-1999 time frame for the disease which carried off so many Natives. Madeleine Johnson in “The Pilgrims Should Have Been Thankful for a Spirochete.” (Slate, 10-20-2012), writes that Leptospirosis, from rat urine, “conveniently cleared coastal New England of Native Americans just prior to the Pilgrims’ arrival…”

[2] Everyday life.