1953] RITZENTHALER, CHIPPEWA HEALTH 175 



INTRODUCTION 



1. THE PROBLEM 



Whenever primitive peoples come into direct contact with Western Civil- 

 ization the result is a sharp decrease in the native population. Factors 

 responsible for this include conquest in which actual slaying occurs by an 

 armed force such as in the Spanish conquest of Mexico, or in more informal 

 liquidation of the native population by civilians such as in the case of the 

 Tasmanians. The chief cause of native depopulation resulting from a con- 

 tact situation, however, lies in the field of health. The introduction of new 

 diseases to a people lacking immunity to them is perhaps the chief cause. 

 Measles, for example, a normal childhood experience to most whites operated 

 as a deadly epidemic when introduced into Polynesia. Smallpox wiped out 

 whole Indian villages, and, in the Great Plague of 1837 which swept through 

 the Missouri Valley, an estimated 10,000 Indians were destroyed in a few 

 weeks (Schoolcraft, Vol. 1, p. 257-8). Tuberculosis, the "Indian killer," a 

 slower, but no less effective destroyer than smallpox, is still rampant among 

 the American Indian. When a new disease did not kill directly, it some- 

 times led to a decline in population by affecting the birth-rate. In Yap and 

 the Marquesas gonorrhea has been a cause of sterility in women and cer- 

 tainly a factor in the sharp decline in the birth-rate. 



The introduction of new foods, clothing, and shelter have also had their 

 effects on native population. The destruction of a native economy often 

 meant that the foods of the conqueror were substituted, and frequently it 

 was the inferior foods, or proper foods used improperly resulting in an un- 

 balanced diet. The introduction of white man's clothing in parts of Oceania 

 was frequent cause of pulmonary diseases and death because the people did 

 not remove the clothing when wet, an unnecessary procedure with theif 

 traditional garments. The effects of a new type of shelter on a primitive 

 population are more difficult to determine. Among some of the nomadic or 

 semi-nomadic American Indians where household cleanliness was neither a 

 necessity, nor a tradition, the shift to a fixed abode while maintaining their 

 traditional lack of concern for household cleanliness undoubtedly had some 

 effect on the introduction and spread of disease. 



All of these factors played a part in the populational history of the In- 

 dians of the United States. The Indian population at the time of the first 

 white contact has been estimated at 846,000 (Mooney, p. 287). This figure 



