Evocative post in the Kilt Accessories forum - some thoughts

[Norbydog]

Just to add a little.

I had a college professor, in West History, who was a member of the Sioux Rosebud Tribe. She called the contact between Europe and North America, "The Columbian Exchange". She said that although it is highly published that European diseases killed many American Indians; but the tribes that had contact with Europeans also gave the explorers diseases. I am fairly certain, but do not hold me to this, that the American Indian population exposed Europeans to syphillis. That is her account, not mine. But I have some belief in it, as I do not recall learning of any European being diagnosed with syphillis prior to 1492.

Just food for thought.

P.S. Oh yeah, she also taught that horses and cattle were not native to the Americas, and cows were deadly, manical beasts before they were domesticated, much like the hippo is today.

[MacWage]

P.S. Oh yeah, she also taught that horses and cattle were not native to the Americas, and cows were deadly, manical beasts before they were domesticated, much like the hippo is today.

If you've ever been to a dairy farm (with the cows, NOT ON A TOUR), you will soon learn that the cows are dangerous, but VERY STUPID. To stop a charging cow, extend your arms holding a piece of wide fabric. The cow STOPS (it can't tell the difference between a piece of fabric, a brick wall, and larger beast). I was told not to show fear and I would outwit the cow.


I know some deseases went from the natives to the Europeans, but can't recall which ones. They were, however, much less deadly than than the ones that went from Europeans (for they included most of the pathagens from Europe, Asia, and Africa) to the natives.

Now, most of us are immune to many of them and are "used" to the rest.

[Riverkilt]

Thanks Norbydog, that was my question too. Which diseases went from Native American to European settlers?

As many Whites in North America, I am descended from Mayflower passengers on both sides of my family. I know from reading about their struggles that many perished from disease before the ship landed. Was amazing that they lived at all prior to Native contact. Remember reading they buried their dead in unmarked graves so the Native peoples would not see how their numbers had diminished from disease.

Native people did give Whites tobacco. A plant with the most addictive drug known to man, nicotine. Smoking tobacco to get nicotine kills about half a million Americans a year...so Native folks are still fighting back.

White folks countered with booze, but booze only kills about a hundred thousand Americans a year...

Might not be long before the Native peoples finally win their continent back if we keep on smoking.....

Ron

[Scott Gilmore]

Thanks Norbydog, that was my question too. Which diseases went from Native American to European settlers?

... booze only kills about a hundred thousand Americans a year...

Might not be long before the Native peoples finally win their continent back if we keep on smoking.

Alcohol and smoking are child's play - virtually insignificant when the scale of the events that took place in the Americas five-hundred years ago are considered soberly (absolutely no pun intended). There is nothing to suggest that an exchange of diseases took place. Europeans seem to have had superior resistance to epidemics because of the variety of cultures, animals and races that existed within contactable distances in the European-African-Asian continents. The Americas, by comparison, were and had remained relatively, but not completely isolated for thousands of years.

The insidious nature of the situation becomes clear when it is understood that "smallpox visited before anyone in South America had even seen Europeans." It turns out, the source of the epidemic was the Caribbean, on the island of Hispaniola in the last couple of months of 1518.

There it killed one third of the native population before moving on to Puerto Rico and Cuba. Smallpox made landfall on the continent near what is now Veracruz, Mexico.

Therefore, by the time Europeans reached much of the New World, it was already depopulated. As a result, population estimates were too low by a significant factor. Calculations of the effects of the epidemiological catastrophe made with better knowledge of these events indicate that "about 95 percent of the people in the Americas died" in the first 130 years of contact with Europeans.

When carefully studied, the inevitable conclusions are stunning. The "Central Mexican plateau alone had a population of about 25 million. By contrast, Spain and Portugal together had fewer than ten million inhabitants. Central Mexico [...] was the most densely populated place on earth, with more than twice as many people per square mile [as] China or India."

What happened in the New World was, it has been said, "the greatest destruction of lives in human history." In light of all this, a little tobacco and alcohol being exchanged seems a bit insignificant. Sorry if I missed your point though. I'm just a little shaken by what I've read - the scale of it all.

Oh, and incidentally, by all accounts, syphilis originated in the near east, not in the new world. It apparently was the gift of domesticated animals to their shepherds for being, how shall we say ... a bit too "intimate" with the animals in their charge.

Regards,
Scott Gilmore

[Scott Gilmore]

Oh, and incidentally, by all accounts, syphilis originated in the near east, not in the new world. It apparently was the gift of domesticated animals to their shepherds for being, how shall we say ... a bit too "intimate" with the animals in their charge.

After posting this last night I did some more reading and indeed there is a well presented theory that syphilis did in fact originate in the New World. As with much, if not all of what's been discussed in this thread it is certainly an unsettled issue, but I stand corrected. Sorry.

Regards,
Scott Gilmore