Negative Effects Of European Diseases On Native Americans

The arrival of Europeans in the New World had a strong negative impact on the native population. The natives were horribly treated by the Europeans. Bartolome de las Casas wrote that the Spanish were unnecessarily violent to the Natives, which is impressive considering Bartolome himself lived in the New World. He was not accusing from the outside, but was a first person witness (Doc 2). Many Natives were also killed off just by the diseases Europeans brought with them. Diseases such as smallpox infected and killed a large percentage of the Native population (Doc

David Jones realizes their immune systems were weak, and he presents the question why: is it possibly because they were malnourished, exhausted, and stressed out due to Europeans? He speaks in detail about Indians being defenseless to pathogens, through homogeneity, and how their fates depended on their entire environment. Combined with their vulnerability, “it could well be [assessed] that the epidemics among American Indians, despite their unusual severity, were caused by the same forces of poverty, social stress, and environmental vulnerability that cause epidemics in all other times and

The diseases the Europeans brought with them affected the indigenous negatively because it killed a large portion of the population in a painful way. The Natives had very little diseases before the Europeans invaded their land. Unlike people in the Old World, the Natives did not farm cattle or pigs and did not live near the animals they did have. They never had the opportunity to develop immunities to diseases that the cattle and Europeans carried when they came upon their shores. The diseases spread quickly and attacked the indigenous in gruesome ways. Smallpox caused sores to erupt on their skins that were so painful that an Aztec account states that “[the sick] could only lie on their beds like corpses” (Document 4). The pain would not

People were living in a time with very little medicine to help fight disease that was responsible for the death of many people. Before people from around the world began settling in the New World, disease and sickness was under control. The Native Americans were immune to common sickness that was commonly present since they were born. Being immune to a sickness means your body is already resistant to the infection and has the proper needs to fight the infection. When settlers came from Europe, they were carriers of different diseases and that they are immune to. When they came in contact with the Native Americans, they spread diseases like smallpox, measles, chicken pox, malaria, yellow fever, and influenza. These are strong diseases that the Native Americans were not immune to. Ninety five percent of the Native Americans in North America were killed by these diseases brought over from the Old

Disease was a major factor in the change of the Native American culture. When the Europeans came they brought diseases that the Native Americans immune systems had never faced before. These diseases wiped most of the Native Americans. Some of the diseases were Smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever. However there was one disease that was taken back to Europe, and that was Syphilis. The diseases brought to the New World weakened the Native American population so they were easier to conquer by people like Pizarro and Cortes.

The diseases that the European explorers brought over, and the effect they had on the Native Americans, were by far the worst parts of the Columbian Exchange. While some people may believe that war and mistreatment of the Natives were what caused 80-95% of them to perish, the actual cause was diseases like measles and small pox. According to Dinesh D’Souza, before the Europeans arrived, there was between 15 and 20 million Indians, but 150 years later, there was only a small amount left. In “The Crimes of Christopher Columbus”, D’Souza adds that since the Indians hadn’t seen those types of diseases before, they had not yet developed any resistance or immunity to them. The purpose of that statement is to explain why so many Indians were affected

The Europeans exploration of the Americas has changed the course of history forever. Before the “discovery” of the Americas, the Eastern world was entirely separated from the West. People in Europe, Africa, and Asia traded exclusively amongst themselves, and likewise in the Americas. After the Spanish and the Portuguese had explored and claimed much of the new world, things began to change considerably. The new world became a colony for European nations to provide raw materials for them and help their economies. This affected the lives of many natives who had already been living in the Americas. Many were killed by the diseases the Europeans brought over, and some were even killed by the Europeans for sport. Despite these negative outcomes, there were some good effects from this. The Europeans earned many new goods, such as pineapples, potatoes, turkeys, and tomatoes. The Europeans also brought over some goods, such as many types of livestock (cattle, horses, and chickens) as well as some fruit and

    Old World diseases were transferred European sailors to Native Americans. The diseases played at least as big of role in defeating the Native Americans as advanced weaponry did (Craig). In the first 20 years after the first encounter, wherever the Europeans went, large numbers of Native Americans died. The most deadly disease was smallpox, killing millions of people. Bubonic plague, typhoid, typhus, influenza, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, malaria

When the English, French, and Spanish explorers came to North America, they brought terrible changes to American Indian tribes particularly in the way of new diseases. Native peoples of America had no immunity to fight the diseases that European explorers and colonists brought with them. Diseases such as measles, smallpox, influenza and chicken pox were deadly to American Indians. The Europeans were used to these diseases. They had antibodies that built up over the centuries to ward off these diseases, but the American Indians had no resistance to them at all. Sometimes the illnesses spread through direct contact with colonists. Other times, they were

On top of killing them for not converting to Christianity or Catholicism, stealing their resources, and taking advantage of their kindness they were also carrying diseases that would harm them majorly. Some of the other diseases carried by the Europeans to the New World were bubonic plague, scarlet fever, diphtheria, cholera, pneumonic plague, yellow fever, mumps, typhoid, typhus and pertussis. The three diseases that killed the most Native Americans were measles, whooping cough, smallpox and influenza. The Native Americans would arrange religious ceremonies and they would heal the infected people. When they found out the religious healing ceremony didn't work the Native Americans started to lose faith in their religion. This made some of the Native Americans convert to the religion of the Europeans. The Native Americans would take sweat baths thinking they would cure them but all it did was increase the mortality rate of the diseases. They saw that the diseases did not affect the Europeans and they thought that the European's religion was powerful enough to heal them because of the immunity. Some Native Americans also commited suicide since they felt like an outcast due to the skin disfigurement caused by

The reason why the Native Americans were hit so hard by this disease was because their immune systems were not strong enough to protect their bodies from contracting these diseases. When the Europeans landed they brought diseases with them that were completely foreign to the Native Americans immune systems and they were not ready to deal with all of the European diseases and as a result the Native Americans acquired these diseases that they could not prevent or cure.

The Europeans brought about diseases that initially never transpired in the Native Americans communities. Indian [Native Americans] population of 10 million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would ultimately be reduced to less than a million. Huge numbers of Indians would the from diseases introduced by the whites. (Zinn 14). An example of such was smallpox associated with a Spanish called Herman Cortes and his army when they came to America in 1521. Europeans were also responsible for bringing about other diseases such as influenza and measles to healthy Native Americans.

I found another interesting fact about the smallpox, it can live on cloth for years, therefore it first hit the American Indians prior to ever meeting the European people (Ojibwa, 2009). Consequently, as the American Indians could not cure these diseases with healing part of their religious ceremonies, they began to lose faith. After I read your post, I was interested in finding out if any Europeans educated the American Indians regarding these diseases, such as smallpox, and provided any help with containing the disease. I have found that they did begin a vaccination program for smallpox, for the American Indians around 1800. But, they took care of their own first, the Europeans began vaccination programs for themselves around 1721 (Ojibwa,

The consequences of European contact with the Native Americans had grave consequences surpassing the expectations of both sides. However, while the Europeans were able to overcome most of the initial problems surrounding the contact, the Native Americans endured the effects for much longer which led to the decline of Native American power in North America. Both biological effects such as the impact of diseases, and cultural effects including the formation of new societies and the European influence, had devastating effects on the lives the Native Americans had formerly known. While some of the effects of contact could be seen as positive, overall the negative effects from Native American contact with the Europeans proved to outweigh the

And death is something that ran rampant through the native population. The Indians were not able to combat these new afflictions because they were new to their systems. Small pox, whooping cough, chicken pox, scarlet fever, influenza and many more had long been around in Europe and the colonists had developed resistance to most of them. (Crosby, 198)