SECT. II.] DISEASES. 145 



The American Indians may, possibly before the arrival of the 

 whites, have been visited by pestilential epidemics, but it is 

 chiefly after the arrival of the whites that epidemics of various 

 kinds, and especially the small-pox, have raged among them. 

 No race seems to have suffered so much from the small-pox as the 

 Americans, whilst the Negroes have at all times been little 

 liable to this epidemic. On the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and 

 upon the Antilles, which were first visited by the whites, the 

 small-pox first appeared, and contributed much, perhaps most, 

 to the depopulation which took place in the large West Indian 

 islands. In the northern parts of the continent they appear to 

 have spread (about 1630) a few years after the arrival of the 

 first settlers, and the natives knew well to whom they were 

 indebted for this fatal gift. In New England the natives 

 thought that the whites carried the small-pox poison in bottles 

 for the destruction of the Indians a fable which was encour- 

 aged by the settlers in order to make themselves feared. Thus 

 Dobrizhoffer quotes the expression of the Indians of South 

 America : "The whites are truly good people; they have given us 

 a rich compensation in the small-pox for the gold and silver 

 they have carried off." The following statements, by no means 

 complete, may give some idea of the devastation caused by 

 small-pox. Of the North Indians nine-tenths perished by it. 1 

 The Mandans were, with few exceptions, carried off in 1837; 

 the Blackfeet diminished from 30,000 or 40,000 to 1,000. Si- 

 milar devastations occurred among the Crow Indians, Minatar- 

 rees, Camanchees, and Eiccarees ; among the latter many killed 

 themselves after recovery, from grief at being disfigured. 2 The 

 Omahas lost two-thirds of their tribe. 3 The Indians in Cali- 

 fornia did not fare better (Schoolcraffc) ; in the Missions one- 

 half are said to have perished. 4 In South America the fate of 

 the natives does not seem to have been less hard. Small-pox 

 epidemics raged among the Indians of Paraguay and Gran 

 Chaco, 6 among the Puelches (D'Orbigny), the Corroados, the 



1 Hearne, " E. v. Prinz Wallis-fort bis z. Eismeer," p. 168, 1797. 



2 Schoolcraft, " Hist, of the Ind. tribes." 



3 Washington Irving, " Astoria," p. 119, 1838. 



4 Wilkes, " U. St. Expl. Exped.," v, p. 172, 1845. 



5 P5ppig, " E.," ii, p. 452. 



