An Aside on Diseases

Before white men came along and screwed everything up for the Native Americans, the indigenous tribes of North, Central and South America enjoyed a fair amount of good health, and as a result, were stronger, taller and more robust than the Europeans. And there were good reasons for this: They ate healthy, natural and organic food which were not saturated with pesticides, chemicals, salts, preservatives, fillers or deep-fried, except for Fry Bread, and their meat, most of which was wild, was not artificially fattened or confined to small quarters.

The women also got plenty of sunshine and exercise either by working on their gardens and crops, gathering fruits and vegetables from nature (plenty of walking, reaching and bending),  carrying around infants in cradle-boards, pounding meat into thin strips for drying, grinding corn or acorns, or by setting up their own teepees.  The men got plenty of sunshine and exercise, too, via hunting, fishing, sports and waging war. The eighteen million Native Americans who lived in the United States before white men got here weren't all compacted into small cities where diseases can easily spread, but were spread out across the entire country. Cahokia, the largest Native American city in North America, had a population of only about 40,000 at its peak, which is less populated than Joplin, Missouri.  Otherwise, most tribes consisted of, at most, about two hundred people in small villages scattered across the countryside, and this, too, confined diseases to a relatively small area.

On the other hand, as much as the Native Americans' healthy lifestyle worked for them, after the white men brought European diseases to the New World, their tribal lifestyle worked against them. Because they felt very strongly that no one should go hungry, food was shared with the entire tribe, and shared food can transmit diseases. They also felt that no one should have to suffer alone, and so when someone fell ill, that person was not quarantined, but was visited by his or her friends and family members, who also fell ill.  Furthermore, while most Native Americans tried to avoid white men like the plague, others could not manage to stay away from the white merchants who sold them things that they found that they could not live without, like nice cotton material and cast-iron skillets. Therefore, those tribes-persons who bought things from the traveling salesmen spread diseases to whomever they came in contacted with. Sweat lodges and menstrual lodges, too, by their very nature, served as incubators for diseases, and later so did poverty and lack of access to medical care.

Additionally, while tribal shamans and native healers could handle some of the minor diseases and those related to stress, they were helpless against Smallpox, Measles, Scarlet Fever, Typhoid Fever, Typhus, Influenza, Pertussis, Tuberculosis, Cholera, Diphtheria, Chicken Pox, and sexually-transmitted diseases. Some of these diseases, like Measles and Chicken pox, if contracted by children, do not usually result in death, but others, like Tuberculosis, are deadly no matter what the person's age. And what Native American disease was bestowed upon the whites for their gift of "civilization?"  Possibly Syphillis, but scientists are still debating it.

To make matters worse, if a Native American managed to survive the diseases brought to them by the invading Europeans, sometimes he or she chose to commit suicide rather than live with disfiguring scars, blindness or deafness that might have accompanied the disease.  And some of those diseases caused other secondary problems, like encephalitis and brain damage, kidney problems, heart problems, meningitis, pneumonia, gastrointestinal bleeding, breathing problems, paralysis, sepsis, toxic shock syndrome, spontaneous abortions and chronic infection.  And if his or her entire family had been wiped out by Smallpox, for example, suicide might seem like a good option whether he or she were suffering from long-term physical symptoms or not.

Now, white people were aware that the Native American folk were contracting these diseases, and many of them felt badly about it and tried to do something about it, especially after vaccines came out in the middle of the nineteenth century. Others, not so much. The Calvinists and hardline Christians blamed the Native Americans for their illness by saying that the genocide of Native Americans was God's Plan for European domination.  Why? Because the "godless" Native Americans were not Christians and had not been baptized or married in a Christian church, even if they had enjoyed a deeply spiritual life and had married in accordance with the customs of their tribe.  Therefore, in the hardline Christians' tight little minds, Native Americans were living in sin, and deserved whatever disease they got, even though it was the white man who had brought it to them.

Other white men, who were naturally immune, somehow conveyed the impression that it was only because of the blessings of the Christian God that they hadn't succumbed to the illnesses that wiped out entire tribes, and if the Native Americans would just join their church, then God would smile upon them and bless them with immunity, too.  Unfortunately, in many places, the Native Americans who joined the missions succumbed even more quickly to diseases because of their overcrowded and badly-ventilated living-quarters, and one Spanish priest opined that something had to be done because Smallpox was depriving the mission of much-needed slaves.  

Even if Native Americans didn't catch Smallpox and the like, they still ran the risk of catching something lethal from the domesticated animals that white men had brought with them from Europe. White men had been living side-by-side with their animals for thousands of years and, through natural selection (because those who lived were stronger, more resilient and immune, and able to pass on their immunity to their children) didn't succumb to the diseases that those animals might have carried. But on this side of the Atlantic, there were no domesticated cattle, horses, chickens, pigs, goats, sheep, geese, donkeys, and, if one considers them "domesticated," cats. And some of these animals carried pathogens which, if spread to pregnant women through contact with fecal matter, led to spontaneous abortions which led to a decrease in the number of tribal members. And some of these diseases were just plain deadly to people in general, especially when contracted by infants, the elderly, or people whose immune systems had already been compromised.

These diseases and their carriers is as follows: Tetanus: horses, donkeys and sheep; Salmonellosis: horses, sheep, cows, pigs and goats; Ringworm: horses, sheep, cows, pigs and goats; Anthrax: horses, cows and donkeys; Brucellosis: horses and cows; Leptospirosis: horses, cows, pigs and goats; Cryptosporidiosis: horses, sheep, cows, pigs and geese; Vesticular stomatitis: horses and cows; West Nile Virus: horses, chickens; Equine encephalitis: horses; Contagious ecthyma: sheep and goats; Toxoplasmosis: sheep and geese; Q-Fever: sheep, cows and goats; Campylobactor: sheep, geese, pigs; Dermatophilosis: cows; E-coli: cows, goats, pigs and geese; Giardiasis: cows; Pseudocowpox: cows; Tuberculosis: cows; Listeriosis: cows; Salmonella: chickens and geese; Influenza: pigs, donkeys, geese; Yersiniosis: pigs; Psittacosis: goats; Giardia: geese; Listeria: geese, and Pasteurella Multocida: geese.

Nor have Native Americans escaped the ravages of modern life. Even though the above-listed diseases can be prevented by keeping the enclosures clean and the run-off away from human consumption, and even though childhood vaccinations have drastically reduced the outbreaks of things like Smallpox, Measles and Tuberculosis, Native American still catch diseases to which not even white men and women are immune.  Heart disease, Cancer, Type II Diabetes and Liver Disease are the top four killers of probably all North Americans, regardless of ethnic origin. In this country, largely because of the radical change in their lifestyle, Native Americans also suffer from obesity, substance abuse, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, COPD, child molestation, depression, domestic violence, teen pregnancies, hepatitis, hypertension, alcoholism and HIV/AIDs, and in South American countries, they also have to deal with malaria, typhoid, dengue fever and yellow fever.

The Native American community is aware of these problems and has tried to address them. Since about 78% of the Native American population in the United States lives off the reservation, there are many urban Native American clinics that provide services to tribal members and sometimes even non-tribal members. They may offer HIV services, classes in nutrition and wellness to combat Type II Diabetes, WIC and SNAP, counseling for substance abuse and alcohol, job training, positive parenting, counseling for domestic violence and mental illness, life skills, medical care, dental care, and smoking cessation. But, as it is with all things government-funded, whenever there are cutbacks in the budget, it is safe to assume that cuts will be made to programs that help Native Americans, both on and off the reservation.