I think it’s safe to say that because of the nature of Viking trade (them mostly going to other places rather than lots of traders visiting them), the ones who contracted deadly diseases in foreign ports probably just dies there. Also, the timeline for measles from biological clocks indicates that it likely only developed towards the end of the Viking period anyway.
But I think the overwhelming factor here would be lack of urbanization in the Viking homelands. Even if some trader brought a disease back, it would burn itself out killing people in his local area before it could spread. This is not to say there *weren’t *urban centres in Viking Age Scandinavia, but nothing like the urbanization of High Medieval and Renaissance Southern Europe or Britain.
Just to double down on what Northern Piper posted: “the government” did not do so. Especially if that means the American government. The British did that one time. Although Lord Amherst was Commander-in-Chief it was a wartime decision, not a governmental policy. That doesn’t mitigate the decision; that sentence mischaracterizes it, however.
Another fascinating source was the exhibit about the smallpox epidemic in Victoria BC in the museum there. Not sure if it’s still there over 20 years later, but…
At one point, smallpox became infectious in Victoria. Visiting bands of natives picked it up; it struck suddenly and simultaneously in many of the groups. One exhibit recounts a newspaper story of how a group of (white) children playing in the forest near their home found a group of a dozen or more Indians dying in the forest. They’d been in town trading, started home, and all became sick at the same time - so they put their canoe ashore and camped out as best they could in the forest, where they died.
Some made it home, in which case the whole village would die off unless there was someone there to minister them who was immune. (After all, when you’re ravaged by fever for several days, not eating or drinking is a sure route to fatality - not to mntion the risk of exposure if you can’t tend a fire and it’s the wrong season).
Was there a similarly destructive wave of epidemic disease among Australian aborigines after the British arrived? What about among the Pacific islands? I seem to recall reading that Tahiti was hit hard.
You know, I have been pointing that out for decades. But scientists are human too, and if a correlation fits what they want to believe, then that’s good enough. Take the Quaternary extinction event, one “scientist” (Paul S. Martin)noticed that hey, Megafauna in North America went extinct around 10000 years ago, and Clovis man arrived in America about 10000 years ago! Ipso Facto, that proved that humans killed all the megafauna with their little spears! This “overkill” or the “blitzkrieg model”. and it’s still accepted by many despite the fact that both dates* are wrong, there’s no such correlation, and it has been debunked and disproven time and time again. (This is not to say that humans didn’t have a role in the extinctions, of course, they may well have. )
So, what would be needed in this present case is evidence that the natives died due to European diseases. Certainly there is evidence this occured, such as Colibris * Smallpox epidemic on the Northwest coast in the 1770s. *, altho since that occurred before the discovery of that area, we can’t know who was responsible.
Oddly in that case the natives said “dreadful misfortune befell them. … One salmon season the fish were found to be covered with running sores and blotches, which rendered them unfit for food. But as the people depended very largely upon these salmon for their winter’s food supply, they were obliged to catch and cure them as best they could, and store them away for food. They put off eating them till no other food was available, and then began a terrible time of sickness and distress.” Smallpox doesnt occur in fish and can’t spread from fish to humans. In fact, I cant think of any disease that spreads from fish to humans. odd.
I don’t suppose there is any possibility that the story itself is wrong, since it seems to be scientifically impossible. Or do stories always trump science?
The story may be true, but that doesn’t mean the natives correctly attributed the sickness to the right cause. As someone said above, correlation does not necessarily equal causation. Considering that there’s a much more plausible cause (Spanish expeditions in the 1770s spreading smallpox), I’d say we should go with that until someone finds a fish disease that humans can catch.
The Spanish launched several explorations up the Pacific North-west coast in the 1770’s, from their base in New Spain: Spanish expeditions to the Pacific Northwest. The first expedition made it to Haida Gwaii, now part of British Columbia, while the third expedition made it to Alaska.
Did you even read the article? :dubious: TheHeceta (Hezeta) expedition reached Washington and southern Alaska in 1775. The article mentions that contact with Russian traders or Indian traders from inland might have spread smallpox to the area as well. In any case, smallpox can spread in advance of direct contact with Europeans.
As far as I know, there is no known disease of fish that would produce the described symptoms in humans. The fish disease and following smallpox epidemic were almost certainly a coincidence.
I don’t think that’s correct. First there was the expedition of Juan Pérez, who went all the way up to the Queen Charlotte Islands (now known as Haida Gwaii) in 1774. Then there’s the expediton of Bruno de Heceta in 1775. He sailed all the way up to Sitka Sound. AIUI, it’s the latter expedition that is thought to have spread the smallpox.
(ninja’d on this, but I’ll leave it in anyway.)
As far as I know, it doesn’t cause those symptoms in fish. I think it’s more likely to be some kind of virus that infected those fish. Not an expert, though, so could be wrong.
Right, as a marine biologist I know that. But like I said some “red-tide like food poisoning.” There are other toxins that can affect humans besides red tide.
Still, if you accept the story, the fish caused it- which is unlikely. But then it’s only the story that makes it smallpox.
You can’t blithely accept half the story and blithely reject the other half.
Perhaps it was some other toxin. Perhaps it wasnt smallpox.
It makes no sense for you to have even mentioned red tide if you knew anything about it. How does food poisoning produce skin lesions?
Since you are a marine biologist, how about providing an actual fish disease that produces the same kind of skin lesions in fish and humans.
This is completely illogical. You can accept the two descriptive parts to the story independently: that there was a fish disease, and a human disease. The connection between them was an assumption by the Indians, which doesn’t have to be true.
How about offering some alternative hypotheses that fit the facts. And I stress, fit the facts, unlike the absurd idea that it was red tide.
You don’t bother given a source of context for this quote, so I had to look for it. I found that it originated in the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 1897, Second Series, Volume III, p 85ff, by Professor C. Hill-Tout, “Notes on the Cosmonogy and History of the Squamish Indians of British Columbia.” He talked to an old Indian historian of the tribe, possibly 100 years old, although even if he were that age (unfounded) he was not himself alive for these incidents, which were tribal history of no fixed time at all. The stories told went through an interpreter. Hill-Tout says he did not get a fifth of the whole of the story because of the difficulties in translation. The stories, which go on for about four pages, are all about misery, starvation, snow, and disease.
They may as well be bible stories about the flood or the seven lean years. Nothing about them can be taken as literal description, although certainly times of misery, starvation, snow, and disease befell the Squamish in their history.
There is nothing to attest to smallpox in any way in that story. It cannot be connected to any particular disease. Using this story to assert that the Indians knew smallpox before the Spanish came is at best totally fraudulent pseudoscience.
Actually DrDeth got the quote from the article I linked to in post #30. Thanks for locating the original source.
The article I linked to provides a lot of independent evidence for the presence of smallpox among Northwest Coast Indians, including eyewitness accounts by European and American explorers, between 1787 and 1806 (Lewis and Clark). The authors proposes that the disease was probably brought in by the Spanish expeditions of the 1770s (although possibly by the Russians or by other Indians). The inclusion of the account is merely to provide a native oral history that may indicate a major epidemic took place in the area about that time. That account is not necessary to the conclusion that major smallpox epidemics swept the area after contact with Europeans, which is what I cited it for. DrDeth’s post has served mainly to muddy the waters instead of clearing things up. He’s the one alleging that the epidemic happened before the arrival of Europeans, in direct contradiction to what the article says, on what basis I don’t know. I think he simply must have misread the article.
