The Importance Of Native Americans In North America

However, the Native Americans didn’t just use these resources they garnered solely for food - they used the resources in several aspects of their lives, specifically for health. The Native Americans were dependant on the use of plants and other resources found in nature to use for curatives. Historians often attest that these curatives were far superior to the ones that Europeans used, and thus the span of life for Native Americans was often longer than that of the European people (The People). However, upon Native American and European contact, the Europeans introduced new, foreign diseases that were deadly because the Native Americans had never been exposed to these diseases, and thus did not have natural immunities to them. This was the same for other infectious diseases introduced to the Europeans, namely syphilis. Although, the amount of Europeans affected by syphilis was not even near the amount of Native Americans killed by some of the European diseases brought over in the Columbian exchange. Bartolomé de Las Casas commented on the epidemic of European viruses that killed thousands of Native Americans: “Who of those in

Culture wasn’t the only thing that the Europeans brought over to the Americas. Along with their customs and rules, came the diseases that the Native American’s have never been exposed to. The Europeans brought many communicable diseases such as small pox and measles which were transmitted to the Native Americans through trade goods or someone infected with them. This quickly annihilated most of the Native American population.

Native Americans never came in contact with diseases that developed in the Old World because they were separated from Asia, Africa, and Europe when ocean levels rose following the end of the last Ice Age. Diseases like smallpox, measles, pneumonia, influenza, and malaria were unknown to

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

When the European travelers came to America they brought over may diseases including small pox, influenza, measles, and Scarlett fever. The Native Americans had never been exposed to these diseases before consequently they did not have antibodies to fight of these diseases which meant that many people would die from the exposure to the various diseases. The introduction of these diseases created a high death toll in the Native American population, killing more than half of the original population.

Hundreds of thousands of natives during the Conquest period died from epidemics because of a lack of medical knowledge, not because colonists decided to use disease to kill natives. Native responses to disease, such as sweat lodges, worsened disease mortality rates. Spanish physicians first arrived in the New World during Columbus’ second voyage. However, inadequate opportunities for formal medical instruction and the lack of medical knowledge at the time meant that physicians were unable to help prevent the spread of disease in native communities. Although colonists benefited from epidemics, they did not intentionally spread disease to kill natives and destroy native

When European explorers first came to America and encountered the Native Americans, the Native Americans were very friendly towards them. But these Europeans brought diseases such as smallpox and measles. The Native Americans had never encountered these diseases,

The Columbian Exchange began as people from the Old World and New World began to interact with one another. Natives had many valuable items such as gold and corn, which contributed to one of the many positive effects the New World had on the Old World. Population rapidly increased in Europe and Africa due to new crops, and eventually caused China’s population to triple (America’s History, pg43). The English settlers brought wheat, apples, and grasses for the livestock to graze on. One of the less desirable results of the Columbian Exchange was the exchange of diseases. Along with domesticated animals, which enriched the Native diet, Europeans brought smallpox, measles, influenza, malaria, and yellow fever (The Columbian Exchange, pg1). These diseases devastated Native populations as countless people fell at the hands of new illnesses. Thousands died of mysterious disease, and it got to the point where tribes ran out of people to make fires, fetch water, and bury the dead (The Columbian Exchange, pg1). Native suffering did not stop there. White brutality, alcoholism, and the killing and driving off of game also took a toll on them. While the colonists did suffer from American diseases such as syphilis and Chagas Disease, the deaths from that are insignificant to Native

    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

During the Columbian Exchange, Europeans brought a large variety of unknown diseases to North America, such as small pox, mumps, typhus, chicken pox, measles, and influenza. Europeans developed immunity to these diseases after constant exposure to them, Native Americans, however, were susceptible to them. As a result, European contact with Native Americans resulted in the death of millions of indigenous people. Eventually, the once prosperous American Indian societies became depopulated within a small period of time.

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

The indians had no immunity to the sickness that Europeans were bringing to their land. The most common ones were smallpox, influenza, measles, and chicken pox.[http://ncpedia.org/history/early/contact] The natives were not used to these diseases, their immune system was not prepared which resulted with the death of entire villages. sometimes the diseases were transmitted by making simple physical contact with the colonists. Other times, the sickness would spread as Indians traded with one another.

Many major epidemics originated from diseases of domesticated animals: measles, influenza, typhus, and bubonic plague (Diamond, 1997). Centuries of living near livestock had basically inoculated European settlers against these diseases. Only those Europeans who could survive a plague outbreak were able to pass on their genes, leading to successive generations being less susceptible to the illnesses. According to Diamond, smallpox was a major player in the European invasion of the New World. Native Americans, however, did not have cattle, only llamas. They had never been exposed to smallpox. It decimated their populations. Historians estimate perhaps 95% of pre-Columbus Native Americans were killed by European diseases (Diamond, 1997). Because these epidemics spread in advance of the Europeans themselves, it made it that much easier for the European invaders to defeat the dwindling survivors.

When the European travellers came to the New World the natives were healthy and living well, but that soon changed. Prior to the Europeans coming to the Americas, the natives were heavily isolated, so they had very little contact with the outside world. Due to this fact, disease was rarely an epidemic, it was more endemic, or native and less lethal disease. So, when the europeans arrived the natives mortality rate from disease increased. This is due to the natives immune system not being adapted to the pathogens that the europeans brought over. Some disease that the europeans brought are Smallpox and Syphilis. After the diseases arrived in

Historically the treatment of Native Americans has been highly problematic, especially throughout the colonization of the New World. Although, when colonising some Europeans took a merciful and sympathetic approach to the Native Americans, generally the treatment towards the indigenous people was not humane. Not only did the Native Americans die at the hand of the settlers, they also died from diseases that had been brought to the new world by explorers for which they had no immunity. In some cases diseases such as smallpox wiped out entire tribes. Together, the introduction of diseases and the actions of the European settlers had devastating effects on the Native Americans.