Virgin Soils Revisited

Excerpt from Jones' article, Page 56-57:

"The decimation of American Indian population that followed European arrival in the Americas was one of the most shocking demographic events of the last millennium. Indian populations declined by as much as 95 percent in the first century after in the first century after the arrival of Christopher Columbus; prompting one historian to conclude that “early America was a catastrophe – a horror story, not an epic.” This collapse established the foundation for the subsequent social and political development of American history Since the earliest encounters of colonization, colonists and their descendants have struggled to explain how and why depopulation occurred. They have debated the role of race, politics, and even genocide. All have concluded that infections diseases, introduced by Europeans and Africans, placed a decisive role. American Indians suffered terrible mortality from smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, and many other diseases. Their susceptibility led to American Indian decline even as European populations thrived.

…. It is now possible to revisit the theory of virgin soil epidemics and reassess the many possible causes of American Indian susceptibility to European pathogens. The confusion can be untangled by surveying and resynthesizing diverse research about Indian depopulation. A review of the literature of colonization shows the prevalence of simplistic assertions of no immunity and their possible ideological appeals. It also demonstrates the importance of defining the specific claims contained within the theory of virgin soil epidemics and evaluating each of the separately. Recent immunological research has clarified the different mechanisms that can compromise human immunity. Parallel work by biological anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians has elucidated the details of the mortality of specific Indian populations. Taken together, this work suggests that although Indians’ lack of prior exposure might have left them vulnerable to European pathogens, the specific contribution of such genetic or developmental factors Is probable unknowable. In contrast, the analyses clearly show that the fates of individual populations depended on contingent factors of their physical, social, and political environments. It could well be that epidemics among American Indians, despite their unusual severity, were caused by the same forces of poverty, social stress, and environmental vulnerability that cause epidemics in all other times and places. These new understandings of the mechanisms of depopulation require historians to be extremely careful in their writing about American Indian epidemics. If they attribute depopulation to irresistible genetic and microbial forces, they risk being interpreted as supporting racial theories of historical development. Instead, they must acknowledge the ways in which multiple factors, especially social forces and human agency, shaped the epidemics of encounter and colonization…” (56-57).