Crosby im the director of the kansas city public library. Its a pleasure to have paul here to talk about cherokee medicine and colonial germs, the topic of his recent book. We are honored to have him here and are equally honored that this is cosponsored by the Kansas City School of Medicines Department of history and philosophy. This is a great topic and when im interested in because at least on my mothers side of the family, we claim to be part cherokee. Her grandmother claimed to be half cherokee. So i am particularly interested tonight. Im also particularly interested because this is a big part of the history of this part of the world. Many of you will know about the trail of tears and the march of the Cherokee Nation into kansas and oklahoma. What you probably dont know but what you will hear tonight is some of the history of some of the cherokee before they were sent by Andrew Jackson and others across america in the trail of tears. This is not just a story of victimization, but it is that as well, not just the victims of government, but of disease and cultures coming into contact. What we must remember about the cherokee and native populations is that they had many encounters with the white settlers who came from europe. They had to recreate themselves over and over again as a culture and civilization. The cherokees in particular are a good example of that. Tonight, you will hear about that. I want to tell you a little bit about paul kelton. Moments like this, i go to the website, ratemyprofessor. Com. I found that professor kelton has been rated an a minus. Im wondering why he was not in a, so i looked at the website and there are statements after statement one of the best professors ive ever had, a great besser, excellent teacher. So i did not understand why there would be a minus and then i found statements he forces you to do your homework. [laughter] crosby classes are mandatory. This is really hard work. So now i understand why there is a minus. He is the author of many articles in prominent journals and two books beyond germs from the university of Arizona Press and the topic of tonight, cherokee medicine an indigenous fight against smallpox. Its a pleasure to welcome him to talk to you tonight. [applause] profesor kelton its good to be speaking to an audience that actually wants to be here. Hopefully i will get that a. I want to thank the kansas city public library. This is an idea from the department of history and philosophy and i would like to thank them for setting this up. And thank you all for coming out tonight. I think its Opening Night for the nfl tonight. Im just glad the chiefs are not playing. Thank you and thank you for that wonderful introduction. I have been looking forward to speaking to you about my but. This has been a work in progress for quite some time. I started doing this a long time ago and got off some other projects and came back to it. I think the inspiration came in 1996 when i was looking for pigs in the library. At that time, the university of oklahomas library, is looking for a dissertation topic. The hot moment came as i read through some grainy microfilm of letters. He worked among the cherokees and i was looking about those pigs for references to pigs or see if i can find how cherokees conceived of this animal. It was an animal europeans introduced after 1492. He had run across references to cherokee women keeping eggs and pigs and feeding their people with pigs as early as the 1750s. This is a time in which cherokees were suffering from a depletion of wild game animals. This struck me as something of a found them. That native peoples were adapting to the changes resulting from european colonization. Instead of pigs, i found this this is a description of a smallpox ceremony the cherokees had made part of their medical ritual after being introduced to what was the most dangerous disease europeans brought to the americans and its indigenous inhabitants. I had never read anything like and i will give you a second to read this. [laughter] prof. Kelton the smallpox ceremony captivated me as did the larger collection of the rich materials and papers the papers have been published by the university of nebraska press, but perhaps it was good for me at the time, not good for my eyes, that they had not been published. Scholars had given smallpox little attention. So what did they record about the cherokees and smallpox . Is papers offered a glimpse into how cherokees conceived of smallpox, with a believed cause the epidemics of the disease, and what they did to protect themselves from this deadly germ. Let me get to the heart of this talk by summarizing what i learned. Cherokees had a name for smallpox that is a kind of double predisposed to evil. It appears to be a malevolent entity, different from the variety of ordinary spirits that move from each level of the cosmos. One cherokee referred to it as a kind of people with the females being the color of a ripe poke berry. The female gave the infection from someone who touch her fine red temples. They only slept at midnight and roamed the pats people ordinarily traveled. Still, they were tools of larger entities. Likely the thunder boys who lived in the Western Skies. The cherokee conceived of the Western Skies and the west in general is a place of death and darkness represented by the color black. It was likely the thunder boys that led it to send upon the cherokees when they committed transgressions. Transgressions were not as the missionaries interpreted it, as individual sins, but collective transgressions. People who forgot to perform their ceremonies or practice their ceremonies and thus they lost spiritual power that protected them on earth. When they were expected to be one of their near one of their villages, the cherokees performed a smallpox ceremony which is the improbable as a show of a medical and improvisation of a medical ritual. The chosen priest gathered herbs into a communal pot and the group of seven chosen individuals carefully maintained the fire. The community consumed medicine and the grease sacrificed a buck and perform divination. They generated the ceremonial fire by rubbing two pieces of us jyrki chose basswood basswood because a counter spelled spirits on the west side. The medicine was infused with spiritual powers capable of defeating the creations. They called upon a variety of other spiritual varieties. What jumped out at me most as i read the description of the smallpox ceremony was this. Throughout the seven days that it lasted, participants had strict prohibition on their movements. Because it round common pants and rested for a short time at midnight, people could not safely travel. Individuals could only move from their townhouse or dwelling to acquire food. If people had to leave the village, they left their town only at midnight and traveled through the woods rather than the main route. This ceremony shut cherokee villages off from the outside world, limiting contact. I did not understand the full meaning of smallpox ceremonies features when i first read it. After 17 years, im sure i still dont understand everything and there are things i will not understand. But at the time, one thing was quite clear to me. There is more to understanding the experience of Indigenous Peoples with introduced diseases than what scholars at the time were teaching us. My search for pigs, in some sense was a revisionist exercise. Cherokee women keeping hogs complicated the historians acclaimed interpretations of how europeans came to displaced Indigenous Peoples and him and and dominate so much of the globe. This articulated in his seminal works, published in 1972 and later reissued, and another in 1986. These works in terms of crosbys overall work explains that wherever europe introduced diseases could flourish, native populations plummeted and their land was easily acquired by newcomers. Pigs played a role. They were a weedy species. When they were let loose their wound up in the best needed fields. In that woods they are eating wild food sources that wild game depending upon, and the wild game would have to move on. Pigs put native people in a vulnerable position. Those cherokee women and herds of swine were teaching me something else. Natives were adapting and surviving. I did not envision my search for archival pigs would lead me to question what i thought was an unquestionable part of the columbian exchange. That is, natives could do very little to protect themselves against the most dangerous of european introduced weedy species. The smallpox virus, or very a lot major viriola major. Im sure many of you has anybody read this article . Im sure you have. But as a graduate student, and many generations of students have read this and referred to the ideas as the verdant soil thesis. Many of you have not read this, i suspect it is its ideas sound familiar. Let me summarize out third crosbys Alfred Crosbys thesis. According to crosby, natives were immunologically almost defenseless. Have practiced that all day and i nailed it. [laughter] they were immunologically almost defenseless against communicable diseases. The defenses, antibodies created after surviving an infection, were universally absent in native bodies in 1492, because the diseases that would cause production were absent. Smallpox was not in america before europeans brought it. Many other diseases were not here either. After 1492, germs found their way into native communities, which virgin soil epidemics occurred. Employee the metaphor of a wild fire, Crosby States the initial appearance of these diseases is as certain to have set off deadly epidemics, like dropping lighted matches into tender, certain to cause fires. The germs even outpaced the colonizers. Crosby maintained diseases spent spread beyond the purview of observers igniting outbreaks and went unrecorded. The demise of Indigenous Peoples was a historical accident. This is Alfred Crosby saying this, not me. The colonizers exercised Little Agency in the catastrophe and where the unwitting beneficiaries. He boils this down in 1986 in his magnum opus. In other words, it was the idea that europeans came, their simple arrival, accidentally bringing germs, led to the unintended consequence of germs spreading like wildfire way beyond where they initially settled, sweeping aside in dg needs and opening the americas. Indigenous people. 20s, yous the 15 have smallpox spreading out of mexico into canada and down to south america. Crosbys virgin soil thesis not only explains why diseases spread so fast over great thesis distances but also proposes why extreme mortality occurred. Smallpox caused a serious and potentially lethal illness for anyone, whether native american, european or african. But in europe, the germ was endemic. It was permanently there, and often contracted during childhood. When it struck previously unexposed populations in america, it affected all age groups. According to crosby, this led to the collapse of social services, as men and women in the prime of their lives became ill and no one was there to care for the sick, acquire food and protect from enemies. Mortality rates also scored because natives did not know how to respond. He argues traditional customs, though effective against precolumbian diseases, where rarely so against infections from of the abroad. He also said they had no conception of contagious diseases, could not practice quarantine and did not do so until europeans introduced them to this. He characterized native healers as inept and ignorant, and susceptible to destructive reactions. These responses, crosby concludes, where as fairly as the germ themselves. You can see from this description of his work, i have spent a lot of time summarizing it because it has been something that if you were a student of history, you understated and incorporated it into your lectures. If you are writing about Indigenous Peoples, this is a beginning point. But you can also see, when i read the smallpox ceremony and why i became captivated, the cherokees response to one of colombian exchanges of disease did not match what i had been taught. And i knew i needed to turn my attention away from the pigs and look instead for germs. Look at evidence of them in the archival, archaeological and ethnographic records for what such evidence could tell us about the indigenous experience with germs and whether this evidence sustained the virgin soil thesis. Questioning the virgin soil thesis would be no easy task. It helps great interpretive sway and continues to do so in the scholarly and popular literature. It serves as a convenient explanation of one of world historys most important phenomenon, the dispossession of Indigenous People and the placement of european and african populations in the americas. Jared diamond, for example, relied heavily on crosbys work. Probably a third of you have read this book. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for history. He takes crosbys ideas and runs with it. He articulates this, saying it was advanced and destroyed the native communities before europeans could even get there. Similarly, charles mann. They take these ideas and run with them. Mann won the National Academy of texaco words for the year and claimed native tribes were destroyed these weapons their opponents could not control and did not know they had. Mann also use a colorful simile to demonstrate his point. Smallpox irradiated through the incan empire like inc. Spreading like ink spreading through tissue paper. Again, referring to the idea that out of mexicom smallpox 1520s. N the when through central america, arrived in peru before cortez showed up and the disease was out of control. You get the image that nothing could stop it. Again, you can imagine having read the description of the smallpox ceremony, i knew i had something of significance. But i did not immediately question all assets of the virgin soil thesis. I focused on only one particular part of the thesis originally. That was the suppose it enough news of natives dealing with that was the suppose it in that miss of natives dealing with the disease. I found that what i thought, was ample evidence among not only the cherokee, but their neighbors, the muskogees, choctaws and chickasaws, to show Indigenous People conceptualize smallpox in their cosmology. They did construct a ceremony and the even practiced quarantine when individuals became infected. They had quarantine practices that predated european arrival. This research culminated in a 2004 article, in the journal of etna history. I will not ask how many people have read that. [laughter] at the same time that im dealing with the cultural response, disease, im interested and diseases themselves. How do they spread . This came with the encouragement of the doctor at the Indian Health services in oklahoma city, and a faculty member at the university of Oklahoma Health sciences center. This is serendipitous. A friend of mine in the masters of Public Health program by chance suggested i contact him and talk about my project. I did, and goodness. In our initial meeting i explained in the virgin selfiess and the idea of the version soil thesis and the idea of hemispheric pandemics. He got this puzzled look on his face. It was as if i had told him that ancient aliens had visited the earth and built the pyramids. Something no reputable venue of history would give the time of day. In other words, he was immediately skeptical. I was not skeptical at the time, this was in the late 1990s. You have these hemispheric pandemics. But as i was talking to him, he pulled out a book, a disease manual. He went through it and to the section on smallpox and began reading. He wouldnt know it off the top of his head, because think goodness, he has not had to treat it, it has been eradicated across the globe since the 1970s. Nonetheless he went through the manual, and started reading to me details about smallpox. One caught the nasty germ by breathing in the virus, usually directly from an infected person acceleration. Exhalation. Once infected, the virus is incubated for 1014 days before symptoms appear. During this time the disease was not contagious. It was contagious once the symptoms of. And was contagious for about two weeks. As a historian in training, i dont give these facts much attention. I knew it was deadly, i knew it started with an extreme fever and got its name by the gruesome pustules, but i dont think i fully comprehended it was much more different to catch then influenza, but could be spread further due to its unique nature. But these facts matter. I found my senior colleagues had not given the much attention, either. Historians, anthropologists, and journalists, particularly writing in the 1990s in the wake of the Clinton Tenney all quincentennial of columbus voyage. That they raced through dispersed population, jumped across mountains and deserts, leapt over contested boundaries between warring peoples. These are actually words i found in textbooks, prescribing diseases. Lastly, diseases inflicted mortality rates unheard of in human history, some people referring to 90 of native populations being wiped out. Dr. Hayes is very skeptical as i was myself. I asked dr. Hayes about blankets, the idea that colonizers deliberately infected native peoples with blankets contaminated with smallpox. He explained to me that viruses, people with smallpox, were susceptible to heat and humidity, and conditions had to be just right for transmission, including smallpox which could be conveyed by way of scabs from victims that were bundled in cloth materials. But this had to be under the right circumstances, Cool Temperatures and low humidity. Since that fateful meeting with dr. Hayes, i have had the control of diseases manual by my side every time i write about diseases. The major take away is that each disease has a unique nature, and we cannot just expect each and every disease to corrupt like wildfire. This led me to read more deeply on the history of diseases, epidemics, human health and medicine, and led me to become quite skeptical of all aspects of the virgin soil thesis. The work of the historian david jones has also been important in the development of my thinking. This is another one of those serendipitous moments. I think it was in 2002, my colleague invited me to a talk at the university of kansas medical school, by professor jones of harvard. I had not heard of professor but i later time, learned that he was working on a book. I almost decided not to go. I had carried my infant daughter that night and i do not want to have the hassle of finding a babysitter. But he talked me into it, so i hired a babysitter, made the trip to kansas city. Thank goodness i did. Professor jones emphasized how a generation of scholars had misread the virgin soil thesis to mean, natives lack genetic immunity, and thus inadvertently supporting racist views of white europeans were able to conquer. Genetic immunity implies somehow that people in europe and africa and asia had gone through generations of natural selection, exposed to diseases, survived and they are passing on superior genes to offspring that will allow us ring to deal better with diseases. Genetic immunity is very rare. A disease has to be a very ancient disease for genetic immunity to develop. Smallpox is a relatively new disease in terms of human. Evolution. It has not been around long enough for the community to develop. It is unprovable, how can you prove there is genetic immunity . Nonetheless scholars were falling into the trap by inflating acquired immunity with genetic immunity and saying indians lack immunity, which is nonsense. Genetic immunity was not appropriate from a scientific point of view, and focusing on the lack of immunity on the skirt of social and Economic Security social and economic factors, particularly poverty had created Historic Health disparities. What i concluded from my research and serendipitous learning, is we had the wrong focus. Instead of focusing on the naivete of native bodies, the focus should be on disease ecology. That is, native vulnerabilities stand not simply from lack of acquired immunity, but depended on a number of ecological variables. For example, the extent to which communities were connected to the outside world through trade intercourse. Also, how communities were built. Were they composed of dispersed homesteads overlarge areas or nuclear, in a small compact village . Once infected, chances of death also become the ecological question. Lacking acquired immunity does not lead to death automatically. One must consider Overall Health based on nutrition, pathogen load, and trauma. These ecological variables, moreover, are subject to historical change. Colonization would play a part. That is where i hope to move the debate with my first book. I will not ask him the people have read it. [laughter] 2007,s work published in i ask these questions. Did native communities in the south have a preexisting disease ecology that made them vulnerable to diseases introduced far away, and if so which diseases . How did european colonizations affect disease of various groups . I found it was improbable that the deadliest diseases europeans introduced, including smallpox, affected native peoples living great distances from point of first contact, or had only fleeting direct contact with europeans. Simply because europeans showed up does not mean they bring smallpox and does not mean it will spread. The evidence, documentary, archaeological and oral history indicate the first catastrophic epidemic that occurred in the native southeast, did so in the 1690s, later than what other historians have been saying. This was because the english had by that time, built a massive slave trade network that link indigenous communities to the larger atlantic world. In other words, the english changed disease ecology of the native southeastern communities in such a way to make them vulnerable to widespread epidemic and catastrophic mortality. I can illustrate this with three slides. The colony of virginia was bottled up, for the first couple of decades of history. They begin to expand out and make contact with native groups in the carolina piedmonts. People that spoke a sioux language. They had an allied tribe, soon i who migrated north and moved down to the savanna. They were treating with trading with the cherokees as well. Trading might surprise you. They are bringing guns, ammunition, rum, cloth, all kinds of manufactured material to native communities. What they are getting in return where people. Were people the native tribes are reading other tribes for raiding other tribes for captives and they were taken to plantations in urging your. This created a population plantations in virginia. They created refugee communities moving into alabama and georgia and florida. South carolina expanded this native slave trade. South carolina, charleston was founded in 1670. They ally with many of the groups that had been preyed upon by virginias allies. The creeks and chickasaws, began to raid for captives in the Mississippi Valley and gulf coast. They were purchased by carolinians, shipped along the network to charleston, and tens of thousands of slaves are being sent into the west indies and sold. We often think of slavery in the colonies as people of african descent being enslaved. Of course, that becomes the norm and the volume of african slaves dwarfs that of natives. But indian slavery was a precursor to african slavery. If we go back and look at virginia, and you have that image in your mind, this created a shattered zone. People are moving in greater volumes than ever before. Refugees fleeing, humans trafficked, going from distant locations to places like jamestown. A lot of people on the move. And then when smallpox is introduced in 1696 in virginia, there was a massive epidemic. The great southeastern smallpox epidemic, verified and documents. It covered a vast region. Why did it do so . The volume of human traffic was unprecedented at the time, something that did not happen before europeans came. Moreover, People Living here were vulnerable because they were living in compact, nuclear settlements, victims of slave trades, because they are fearful, need to protect themselves. They are often malnourished because they cannot go out and hunt. In a compact village, they are subject to all kinds of diseases, that were indigenous to the americas like bacterial infections. The great southeastern smallpox epidemic, in other words, was not the consequence of a highly lethal diseased being introduced to an immunologically naive population, but was a consequence of a violent form of colonialism. What i did not do in epidemics and enslavement, was focus on what initially led me to question the virgin soil thesis in the first place. The evidence of how natives responded creatively and effectively to novel diseases. This is a tough decision for me. I had originally planned on reworking the f no history article at the chapter of the book no histo ethno history article at the last chapter of the book. I arrived at this decision after carefully considering how a chapter based on reworking this article would have been seen as an addon that distracted from a focused thesis based on disease ecology. The addition of native response would seem tacked on like, by the way, natives had medicine to deal with the diseases. In retrospect, i think i made the right call based on the reasons i gave you, but i would not be telling the truth. I needed to wrap things up. The tenure clock was ticking. If i did not get the book done, i would not be employed. I sent it to the press, and it got published. I got tenure, thank you. And i have enjoyed being at ku ever since. Not that i did not enjoy before i got tenure. I was happy that the book garnered positive reviews in terms of challenging the idea of epidemics. However, part of me was unsatisfied that i had not given the part of the story which natives actively responded to disease any attention. Readers learned nothing of the cherokees smallpox ceremony. Epidemics and enslavement also ended up being a book quite different from what i thought i would write about amid my graduate training. I always thought i would write a book about indigenous survival to illustrate how a midto traumas of colonialism, resilient indigenous groups used their own agency to protect himself and cultures, and survive as distinct peoples. Those of us who did graduate training in the 1990s embraced the call to focus on agencies, we went to uncover native voices and beyond the pictures of helpless victims. I began to be wary of this call, when i had classes of my own to teach. As i thought more about the ethics of teaching, what is right for a teacher to discuss, and what should be left out . What does a teacher emphasize and what does one downplay . We cant cover everything, we have to make choices. The importance of thinking deeply about the ethical dilemmas of teaching history became quite obvious to me in a particular moment in my First Experience constructing a large lecture class at the university of oklahoma. I taught a survey of u. S. History from the civil war to 220 students, most of them freshmen. I carefully crafted a series of lectures from the book i read in my graduate seminars. The one that i thought represented the most uptodate and accurate view of American History. One of the lectures that i wrote was on African American culture in the antebellum south, with the goal of showing how slaves preserved the dignity and self preservation within the institution of slavery. I talked about religion, folktales, kinship, the arts of resistance, how slaves would mock their masters without the masters knowing it. I talked about a number of things that represented africanamerican agency. I thought i did a great job. Perhaps i did in terms of presentation with the bells and whistles. When i lecture, i do get out in the crowd and walk around and ask people questions. I would probably drive cspan crazy if i did that. So i thought i did a good job. But i remember, i was walking down the aisle and up the stairs, and had this sinking, sick to my stomach feeling. Did i just convinced 220 freshmen that slavery was not that bad . I left out the most important thing. The most important thing is that on a daytoday basis slaves were subjected to inhumane treatment. Having their sons and daughters sold off to other plantations. Being lifted the whim of sadistic overseers. Being raped. That i just convinced the 220 people that slavery was not that bad . Probably be the only introduction to this vast and complex topic. The next class, i taught about the brutality of slavery so that that neededbalance to be in my original lecture. I bring this up because my experiences as a teacher have been crucial to me as a scholar. The stories we tell are important. Book that publish a is front and center in airport shop. It would be great to see cherokee medicine there. Or any of my Friends Books from kc. I am a jayhawk, but i am on the history team. I want to seal my history teammates published. Scholarship informs the next generation of teachers, textbook writers, and online educators. Consequently, we should never lose sight of the fact that our research will shape our future students understand history. Research is important because of that continuing question, will true. Umed to be it can be dangerous if left unchallenged. I wanted to focus on the dangers of overselling native agency or native victimization. The evidence added up to a story le confrontingpeop context thatin the inhibited their ability to protect themselves. The ceremony only went so far as protective measures. They were repetitively invaded by armies using brute force tactics. Germs tagged along with the violence and did a great deal of damage. Through it all, cherokee sustained medicine belong beyond the colonial era. I dont wish to describe the full details of the story. I hope that i faithfully told the story how the book came to be in the academic and public arguments. I hope i have enticed a few of you to read it. Nonetheless, let me offer you a teaser for the remainder of the talk that focuses on a particular type of evidence that is often employed to narrate the diseases impact on Indigenous Peoples. And, the problem of such evidence. A forcefules critique of scholarship based on anecdotes of desperate times and places. And it does that have not been subject to much scholarly scrutiny. When you read about this on the internet and you type in disease, impact on native people, you get a litany of anecdotes on observations of the spanish in mexico in 1520. The peer tins in new england in 1530. These anecdotes put together one new linear narrative of death and destruction without any question of how these anecdotes inform each other and how writers plagiarize each other in narrating this. To illustrate my critique, let me turn your attention to one of these anecdotes that supposedly verifies that an epidemic occurred to the cherokee in 1780. I know not all of you can read it. Forgive me. Is i will recollect for a well to reports of the terrible mortality which prevailed in the Cherokee Nation after the capture of stuarts boat. The wretches paid dearly. When they were attacked with smallpox, they took a heavy sweat and leaped into the river and it died in scores. John carr, the author of this work, was 80 years old when he wrote them in 1857. What he is alluding to is an event that happened 77 years before on march 8, 1780. Dates are important in the story. Some cherokee warriors captured members of the John Donaldson party as they went down to tennessee to their future homes where nashville is today. This is the founding event of the state of tennessee that many great schoolers learn about. The only account that we have is in a journal kept by the leader of the settlement party, John Donaldson senior. There are peculiarities about the journal. The original journal stopped on march 7. The remaining event, march 8 onward, was filled in much later, perhaps in 1820 by his son. Party. Was in the he could be recollecting these events. His son made no mention of the cherokee becoming sick. Says the family at the beginning of the journey some o wo months before the journey was. Iseased with smallpox they would have no idea what happened among the cherokee. In other words. We would have to infer from his journey how the cherokee were infected and how they responded. We would just have to imagine that. It is not hard. But, it is imagination. He began a massive process of remembering a smallpox academic process which became more written about and for significant and more significant. The great historian Theodore Roosevelt published a four publication called the ring of the west the winning of the west. Roosevelt gave a timeframe for these months. Atput the death toll multitudes. This nationalistic narrative made grand, celebratory stories of american expansion. The story of the epidemic of 1780 persists in many relatively recent histories with scholars citing each other. Is poxst case of this americana. ,iting the donaldson journey she claims an epidemic to of swept through the Cherokee Nation. Ox and war, the p were disastrous for the cherokee. The indians soon had to face the onslaught in much the pleated numbers. Depleted it was a virus of determining the winners and conquerors and who they would be. There is a problem with this. There is no evidence dated to 1780 that the Cherokee Nation had an epidemic of smallpox. Records report on happenings among the cherokee that year and are no references to the disease within their nation. Fin along with other scholars thisuckered into using mythology as fact. That is not her fault. Contaminateds are with frontier mythology. Americana is a great book, but there are stories that we are told from generation to generation that are not, in fact, true. We cannot assume that no epidemic occurred in 1780. It is possible is that it made its way into the Cherokee Nation and spread through a small village. It is possible that the british, who were on hand and working , it ishe cherokee possible the disease escaped among them. I am skeptical, but it is possible. What i am assumed thats what i concerned about is that to demic, this epi cherokees would have responded with more, this idea that they jumped into frigid water and died in scores, you hear that constantly in literature. That should raise a red flag. People who are writing this read what other people have written about it and incorporate it into their story. Theyre plagiarizing. Moreover, no discussion of this hypothetical epidemic should take place outside of the violent context of the American Revolution. The cherokee suffered tremendously because they chose to fight against the americans and took military aid from the british. Invaded militia in 1776 the Cherokee Nation numerous times with scorched earth the colonial violence made winners and losers,. It was the violence. If smallpox had come, it wouldve happened in a violent context. Contemporary scholars would readily knowledge the horror the natives faced in the brutal warfare waged against them. The fabricated memory of a tennessee settler should no longer be allowed to cover up the revolutions unsettling legacy under the veil of smallpox. Indeed, this fabricated memory serves, i think, as a metaphor for the to town via my book for the totality of my book. To make them as the virgin soil theis does complicates european invasion of america. Thank you. [applause] we be happy to take your questions. Can you please go to the microphones . Heres one right here. Professor, it has been said that the europeans were able to colonize africa, but not occupy africa. Do you accept that if germs were not part of the equation, that we would not of been able to occupy north america either . We might have been able to colonize it, but not occupy or indians,ith american that the germs is what proper ow . Ber so l do you believe that to be true . Im not seeing germs played no role. They obviously play a catastrophic role. The role saying is they played cannot be seen outside of this context. When you reconstruct epidemics, they grow because you see expansion of trade or military conflict. In the french and indian war, it was a violent time where native peoples are vying fighting each other. You get the spread of these diseases. Place aca, the disease different role than in africa. In africa, youre dealing with tropical diseases. Those really struck the colonizers first before the natives. They are no more temper climate in a moreica temperate climate in north america. Did native American Indian diseases that the europeans were in anydy for take out significant way the europeans . Was there any . Not necessarily. There were certainly diseases in the americas. These were your typical bacterial infections. Worms, fungus, some waterborne diseases. Whenever europeans came and youled, i dont know why would want to settle in jamestown, it was a swamp. Area in whichn an typhoid, malaria, and other diseases took a toll. Malaria was obviously introduced. Typhoid, we are not sure. It did do daily work on europeans. It was a consequence of settling in very unhealthy areas. There is not an equivalent to smallpox in america. Many look at syphilis as a example. Syphilis was probably ubiquitous before 1492. The latest scholarly thinking is that it is not american. Could you that the memap back up . The original . The one that shows the outline of the Cherokee Nation . This one . I think it was the last map. The epidemic . Yes. Ok. I am from Southeast Texas. It is my understanding that it is it is covered their there were not cherokees in Southeast Texas. I apologize. That thetanding was natives in Southeast Texas died from smallpox. Since they are not included there with their roots, i dont know whether do you have any opinion . Did they die of different diseases . I dont necessarily have an opinion, and informed opinion. If we are going to examine that impacted diseases in Southeast Texas, we want to look at how those settlements were built. What was the nature of their contact with europeans . Where they hunted as a source of slaves . We know there is a thriving Human Trafficking going on from new spain with rates going up and texas. Raids going up into texas. That is where i hope my scholarship has an impact. Does the model i have painted for the southeast apply to every region . Probably not. But, it is time that we start exploring these regions instead of employing the metaphor of virgin soil. Along those lines, i point you to may be the book m osquito. It is really good. It is about yellow fever and malaria. The slave trade. How that impacted. The other thing i want to say is about mexico and cortez and the rumor that thehe before cortez and wiped out indian populations, native mexican populations, and inhe got there, answering that about whether you think that is true or not, please consider that the 10 day incubation. Travel a lot in 10 days and be in another community, infected. , they will notll have seen smallpox. The cherokee ritual that you have pointed to was something that maybe one tribe had, but . Ow long did it take to develop was a uniform throughout the Cherokee Nation . That would have been after cortez. I am sorry. I answer those questions the book. Cortez began after his conquests. He began it by instigating a civil war in the aztec empire. They were in a state of civil war when it arrives. Yes, there you have a major epidemic. Thank your for this work. Timely, also. I want to know what was your inspiration to persue this . What extent, if any, was howard sin and inspiration for you howard zinn a source of inspiration for you in this area . The inspiration for this, i have always been passionate about the cherokee in northeastern oklahoma. I do not speak on behalf of the nation, but i do want to tell a story of their survival. That having kind of why i got into their history. Zinn, i of howard admire his passion for the history of american except ionalism. Howy to do that and show germs have become a part of that narrative. Carr talking about cherokee dying of diseases but militia that destroyed dozens of villages . [indiscernible] i think i am cynical by nature. [laughter] it has been years since i zinn. At howard i often find that the virgin lacks thes scholarship upon which to carefully critique the idea. And others were very sympathetic to what happened to these people, but they werent really capable of really peeling it back. This is a team effort. It takes a lot of research to do. Can you go up to the microphone . I see. Im sorry. Real quick, i read somewhere the whites in the United States wiped out Something Like 97 of the native population. ,ow is it that this happened yet if you go to southern mexico, practically everyone you see is an indian . Jive. S not seem to veryll, it is a interesting question that you have to look at the more violent aspects of u. S. History. The different types of colonial regimes. Whereas british and later had a certain type of colonialism based on freeing up land for farming, that type of colonialism was predicated on removing native people, pushing them off the land. He deprived them of resources, basic fertility decreases, the decreases. N ability the cherokee died from disease, whooping cough. They would not have gotten those diseases have been not been forced on the trail of tears. In the Spanish Colonial regime, it was based on exploiting the labor, keeping the natives as a source of labor. That is why you have some of that demographic disparity. That is a simple answer to a complex question. Calledme across a book medicine and folk from dr. D. C. Jarvis. He says because of the ways we have changed our foods, it has changed our bodies, and we are more susceptible to viruses and diseases. I was thinking, when youre talking about the indians coming together with the europeans, did that have something to that, the change from their natural eating of foods to something more artificially produced than they were used to . That is an interesting question. Project,started this going back to the pigs, by looking at changes in jerkcher okee diet. Diseases. Tracks to they go from eating native food to salt pork. Their crops were run over by a neighboring livestock. You have nutritional problems. What he was mentioning was live in ans cannot acid environment, and it is the same whether it is for bird flu or cow disease or people. If we go to the various things as people come and go through the nation, that is going to be something to find more power in. Thank you. One less question. Last question. An opinionrd to form given the history of british imperialism of the british. Appearslamation of 1763 to be dedicated to protecting native american communities. I am wondering, might there have been a better outcome for native americans in the future united well,enerally, im not going to go on record saying i wish the british one. [laughter] this is a difficult question to frame, i say what if the American Revolution had let not succeeded. I do not want to go there. Just wondering, the situation in canada appears to be have been a better outcome for natives than in the United States. Let me respond to that by saying, i did this in the top i am guilty. What britishlize colonialism was scared for his colonialism was many things. It involves settler communities, settler societies in new england. And societies in the south. Were heavily involved in native trading and making alliances with groups like the cherokee. So the cherokee for most of their history did not experience this type of colonialism. They only experience settler colonialism with the americans, the british through that line and the Americas Region very rebellious, one of the strategies the british years and thought about they searcy did implement the army through the cherokee the cree and the mohawks to fight the americans. Interest,he indians at least some of them thought that this is their opportunity to fight back at colonialism. One i doubtsh had that colonialism would have not taken place. People in canada have had a rough time as well. Because this became a settler colonialism, unlike places and other parts of america. [applause] our friends at barnes noble have the book for sale. The professor will be happy to sign your copy. Thank you. You are watching American History tv. All weekend every weekend on cspan3. To join the conversation like us on facebook at cspan history