How big a part did European diseases play in the Jamestown story?

How big a part did diseases play in the Jamestown story?

(Page started 10/28/2018)

I've wondered about this question a lot, but the evidence for a good answer has been hard to come by. This page will likely take me a while to complete, as I'll have to find and acquire source material for reliable information. Meanwhile Wikipedia has some decent information related to the more general question of how disease impacted Native Americans across the continent. For that, look at Wikipedia's:

The following paragraphs will have little organization as I look for references in each of the source books that I have. Hopefully, there will be some coherence here someday soon. [Scroll to the bottom for new paragraphs re. Beyond Germs (2015), added 6/2022]

From Helen C. Rountree (2005), Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown

On expected life span
"In both cultures [Powhatan & English] thirty-year-olds were middle-aged, and some of these women were grandmothers. Many women died in childbirth, so that women;s life expectancy was lower than men;s (that was worldwide until recently). So many people lost a wife, mother, or daughter in childbed that a young woman;s death -- like Pocahontas at age twenty-one -- was not so great a tragedy as it is today, except for those closest to her." Rountree, p. 11,

My comment:
Rountree puts it somewhat indelicately, but it seems reasonable that during a period when life expectancy was around 40 years old (various sources for that figure, with variations) that a death after successful childbirth might appear to be a modest victory. Still, dying at 21 would have been at the presumed mid-point of a life, which is fairly tragic. Also, we should note that both Powhatan (Wahunsenaca) and his brother or half-brother, Opechancanough, lived far longer. Powhatan lived to be roughly 72 (exact age unknown), and Opechancanough lasted until roughly the age of 92! (Also, for comparison, John Rolfe 37 years; John Smith 51 years, Thomas Rolfe 65 years)

Comparison to Mayan and Inca culture mortality
"Pre-Columbian Virginia was not a disease-free environment, but the people's living conditions were far healthier than those in English cities, so that epidemics of alien diseases could not wreak nearly the same havoc that they did in urban Mexico and Peru, which endured an estimated 90 percent mortality. (7) Corroboration comes from archaeology in Virginia, where no mass burials of articulated skeletons (i.e., people who have just died) have been found. If anything, the foreign invaders, coming from unhealthy living conditions and meeting new 'bugs' in Virginia, would suffer a higher mortality." Rountree, p. 11

My comment:
I'm with Rountree on the dissimilarity of Powhatan society to Mayan and Incan urban societies. However, I have doubts about that last sentence about greater likelihood of early death among the English. Certainly, the early settlers to Jamestown fared poorly, for a variety of reasons, but the experience of the Indians in New England in The Great Dying makes it clear that European diseases could be devastating to east coast tribes. Also, the lack of archaeological evidence of mass burials in Virginia to date is not proof of their absence.

On the healthy lifestyle of Powhatan Indians when living in their traditional manner
"Powhatan people preferred to live in smallish hamlets, most of them with houses -- and therefore latrines -- scattered among gardens and groves of trees. (10). Contrast that with the densely crowded, filthy European towns and cities of the time. The native people in Virginia also bathed every day, (11) while their contemporaries across the ocean considered bathing unhealthy *and reeked accordingly). Finally, the Powhatans dispersed out of their towns for two seasons each year, instead of inhabiting them year-round." Rountree, p. 11, 12 [Rountree's sources for footnote 10 are Smith (1612), Strachey (1612) and Edward Wright Haile (1998).Her sources for 11 are White (1608?) and Haile (1998).]

My comments:
These are all good points, but we'll still see evidence of illnesses, and very quickly, Powhatan tribes were prevented from living their traditional lifestyle as the population of settlers increased.

On the effect of 'lean times' on Powhatan Indian health
"That choice [the culture of small scale gardening] meant that a limited amount of food was available in hard times such as early summer, after the spring fish runs had subsided but the year's crops had not yet ripened. Even less food was available in really hard times, such as the dry years that are known to have afflicted the region in 1562-71 and 1606-12. (21) Hard times made people thin. John Smith wrote, 'It is strange to see how their bodies alter with their diet, even as the deer and wild beasts they seem fat and lean, strong and weak.' (12) Lean people have fewer reserves to live on if they get sick or if the food runs out. If they are malnourished, they are more likely to get sick. Very lean women often have a harder time conceiving; if they are malnourished, they will have more difficulty carrying fetuses to term. Annual hardship would take its toll on the birthrate, along with other cultural practices that kept husbands and wives apart, such as not sleeping together the night before a deer hunt or for several nights before going to war. Therefore Virginia's human population had never grown as dense on the land as the English one was. And the Powhatan's territory would be seen by the invaders as 'empty,' even though in their own traditional way the native people were using every square foot of it." Rountree, p. 14, 15

My comments:
According to Rountree, Powhatans faced increased likelihood of disease during lean times even when left to their traditional lifestyle. Those lean times must have increased dramatically when settlers took over their hunting grounds, stole and burnt Powhatan corn, and generally disrupted their traditional practices.

Not Jamestown, but nearby ...

From James Horn (2010), A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke

On epidemic reported during first Roanoke expedition of 1584-86
[During the first expedition to Roanoke (1584-86), a colony was established on Roanoke Island in 1585. While some soldier-settlers remained in Roanoke, an expedition captained by Philip Amada departed to explore the Chesapeake Bay.]
"Relations between the English and the Secotans had deteriorated rapidly during the three or four months that Amada's expedition was away. Tensions arose owing to the continuing dependence of the colonists on the Indians for food, which during the winter months was increasingly difficult to supply. Yet the most important reason for the souring of relations was the terrible toll inflicted on the Secotan population by European diseases since the beginning of the fall. Epidemics, perhaps smallpox or influenza, swept through the region and claimed many lives. Thomas Hariot later reported in his account to Raleigh the deadly impact of the outbreak. As the English moved from town to town, 'the people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some towns about twenty, in some forty, in some sixty, and in one six score, which in truth was very many in respect of their numbers.' With no natural immunity to the diseases and no means of curing them, Indian priests could do little other than pray to their gods for relief and hope the sickness would pass." Horn, p. 89-91

The following passage is from Gary Warrick's 2003 article "European infectious disease and depopulation of the Wendat-Tionontate (Huron-Petun)" published in World Archaeology, Volume 35, 2003 - Issue 2: Archaeology of Epidemic and Infectious Disease.

This is not about Powhatan tribes, though we may expect there to be similarity. I cannot state with any certainty the degree of similarity. The article's main point is that depopulation of East Coast Indians (specifically the Wendat-Tionontate, or Huron-Petun), came as a result of European immigration from the 1630s and after. There was not a major de-population prior to European arrival based on archaeological findings.

"In the 1630s, shiploads of European colonists began arriving along the Atlantic seaboard. Infected children of these first colonies are believed to have been responsible for initiating a continuing series of disease epidemics among interior Native groups of the Northeast (Snow and Lanphear 1988). In seventeenth-century Europe, most acute crowd infections were childhood illnesses. Typically, most children would have been exposed to measles, smallpox, whooping cough, and other contagions by 5 years of age (Burnet and White 1972: 95). In 1629, there were only 117 residents of New France and about 500 in New England and 300 in New Netherland (Delage 1993: 243, 258; Trudel 1973: 165). Between 1630 and 1640, 700 colonists settled in New Netherland and 13,400 in New England (Delage 1993: 243). In contrast, New France added only 120 colonists in the 1630s (Delage 1993: 243). This suggests that most of the European diseases that inflicted such devastation on the Wendat-Tionontate probably originated from newly arrived Dutch or English children after 1630.

Early seventeenth-century France, England, and the Netherlands were unhealthy places to live, especially in the towns and cities. France’s population was stagnant (Grigg 1980: 55–7), suffering famine in 1630 and disease epidemics in 1625, 1637, and 1638 (Delage 1993: 257–8). The rise of urbanization in Western Europe in the early 1600s (10 per cent of France’s population, 15 per cent of England’s, and 50 per cent of Holland’s were in towns of over 5–10,000 people (Grigg 1980: 95, 110, 156)) elevated the rates of epidemic disease and mortality (Wrigley 1969: 96–7), as reflected in a decline in both life expectancy at birth and total fertility rate from 1600 to 1650 (Livi-Bacci 1992: 84). Between 1612 and 1664, plague attacked the citizens of Amsterdam on nine separate occasions (Grigg 1980: 160) and attacked Paris on five occasions (Delage 1993: 258). Unfortunately for seventeenth-century Native America, the cities and towns of Western Europe produced the bulk of North American colonists. In fact, overseas emigrants from south-eastern England in the early 1630s were predominantly (up to 80 per cent) urban artisans and their families (Grigg 1980: 98). Similarly, 40–60 per cent of French emigrants in the 1630s came from urban areas (Charbonneau and Robert 1987). The generally poor state of health of Europe’s town and city dwellers in the early 1600s, the dramatic rise in colonization of North America between 1625 and 1640, and the predominantly urban origin of the first colonists of New France, New England, and New Netherland explain why the Wendat-Tionontate and their neighbours were decimated by European disease after and not before 1630.

The first encounters of Native Americans and European disease most often took the form of locally severe outbreaks. In north-eastern North America, Native population densities were relatively low and most Native nations lived in clusters of compact villages separated from other nations by hundreds of square kilometres of forest, i.e. deer hunting territories. Although all Wendat communities were within one or two days’ walk of one another, the Wendat-Tionontate homeland was 21–8 days by canoe from Montreal and more than 40 days overland during the winter (i.e. 600 kilometres). A network of trails connected the Wendat-Tionontate to the Neutral (4-to-5-day walk or 120 kilometres) and beyond to their Susquehannock allies (at least 30 days overland or 800 kilometres). The Wendat-Tionontate were hostile with most of the Five Nations Iroquois. In turn, the Five infectious disease and depopulation (p. 270)

Nations fought with the Algonkian groups to the north and east (Mahican) and with the Susquenhannock to the south (Heidenreich 1990; Trigger 1985). This essentially isolated the Five Nations from European contact in the sixteenth century and interrupted the human chain of contact that could have carried European disease inland from the Atlantic Coast.

The demographic impact of European epidemics on the Wendat-Tionontate, causing close to 60 per cent depopulation, is congruent with other ‘virgin-soil epidemics’ (Crosby 1976). Aboriginal groups along the Northeast coast of North America were decimated in the early 1600s by European diseases (Carlson et al. 1992; Cook 1973; Snow 1980: 32–5; Snow and Lanphear 1988). Depopulation rates for New England Natives of the early seventeenth century range from 67 to 95 per cent (Snow and Lanphear 1988: 24). Smallpox was the most virulent, with 50–90 per cent mortality rates being recorded for virgin-soil epidemics of this disease (Johnston 1987: 20). The high residential density of Iroquoian villages and communal longhouse life would have hastened the spread of disease and death from secondary infections (e.g. pneumonia) (Burnet and White 1972: 16–17; Crosby 1976: 293–7). The deep spiritual concern for sick relatives, longhouse living conditions, and lack of quarantine are highlighted in an account of Wendat behaviour during the 1639–40 smallpox epidemic by Jesuit Jerome Lalemant:

for the Wendats – no matter what plague or contagion they may have – live in the midst of their sick, in the same indifference, and community of all things, as if they were in perfect health. In fact, in a few days, almost all those in the cabin of the deceased found themselves infected; then the evil spread from house to house, from village to village, and finally became scattered throughout the country. (Thwaites 1896–1901, 19: 89)" (p. 271)

The strange truth about smallpox and Native Americans (June 15, 2019) from Stephen Carr Hampton, Memories of the People
Not specifically about East Coast Indians, but an interesting summary of smallpox among Indian tribes and its use as a weapon by the English and American military.

The Great Dying: New England's Coastal Plague, 1616-1619 - by Mark laskey (July 15, 2014)

Beyond Germs - Native Depopulation in North America (2015); edited by Catherine M. Cameron, Paul Kelton and Alan C. Swedlund; The University of Arizona Press, ISBN-9780816500246

This book does not specifically address what happened in the Chesapeake region to the Powhatan Indians, but I have to think that findings in this book must apply to some degree to the Jamestown story as well. As I continue to research the question of how much disease impacted the Jamestown story, I will keep in mind the following, which is taken from the introduction to this book.

"European colonization introduced smallpox, measles, and other infectious diseases to the Americas, causing considerable harm and death to indigenous peoples. There is no question that these diseases were devastating, but their impact has been exaggerated. Warfare, enslavement, land expropriation, removals, erasure of identity, and other non-disease factors also undermined Native populations. These factors in themselves had a more detrimental impact on some Native groups, and for the indigenous population as a whole, these factors worked in a deadly cabal with germs to cause epidemics, exacerbate mortality, and curtail population recovery. We may never know the full extent of Native depopulation, given the notoriously slim and problematic evidence that is available for indigenous communities during the colonial period, but what is certain is that a generation of scholars has significantly overemphasized disease as the cause of depopulation, downplaying the active role of Europeans in inciting wars, destroying livelihoods, and erasing identities. This scholarly misreading has given support to a variety of popular writers who have misled and are currently misleading the public." p. 3

The first chapter, "Death, Uncertainty and Rhetoric," by David S. Jones, expands on this introductory paragraph. He summarizes the progression of historical narratives re. indigenous depopulation,stating that the earliest accounts offered several explanations, including "intollerable travayle in the golde mynes" and suicide (d'Anghiera, 1516, from 1885 translation).. Bartolome de las Casas (1552) described from personal experience behavior of the Spanish involving "killing, terrorizing,, afflicting, torturing and destroying the native peoples" John Smith favored the hand of God when he wrote, ".it seemes God hath provided this Country for our Nation, destroying the natives by the plague." Other explanations concerning diet, living conditions and behavior were offered by some. Then in the 19th Century, historians such as William Prescott focused on the heroic achievements of the Spanish conquistadors. While Prescott did include disease as a factor, he focused on the technological and cultural superiority of the Spanish in bringing about the demise of the Indians. Then in the late 1800s, scholars working with Native population in the American West began noting a perceived lack of immunity to disease among tribes, giving rise to the "virgin" population terminology. In the 20th Century, researchers (Borah, Cook, Dobyns, McNeill, Crosby) expanded on the lack of immunity factor among virgin populations to account for the massive die-off of Natives. Recent writers, including Crosby, Diamond and Mann, have greatly popularized the idea of epidemic disease being the primary reason for Native depopulation. As a result of these narratives, the prevailing sentiment now is that Europeans were mostly innocent bystanders to Native depopulation as disease opened up land for their appropriation. (Beyond Germs, p. 16-25)

More to come! Sorry, this page still requires a lot of work.