The document analyzes debates between scholars ("high counters" vs "low counters") about the timing and impact of epidemics on Native American populations after European contact. It summarizes evidence from primary sources to argue that major epidemics did not reach the Northeast US until the 1616 plague and 1633 epidemics, reducing populations 86-95% rather than in the 16th century as some propose. It also discusses flaws in "high counter" theories and evidence supporting a later arrival of devastating epidemics.

1. Inquiry 1010 DEPOPULATION EUROPEAN CONTACT AND INDIAN IN THE NORTHEAST: THE TIMING OF THE FIRST EPIDEMICS http://www.andreas.blicher.info/images/hochland_paper.jpg

2. COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE http://shop.missmary.com/watermark.php?i=154 http://www.mspong.org/cyclopedia/images/oc_turkey.jpg http://www.wpclipart.com/plants/BW/coffee.png http://www.smallpoxhistory.ucl.ac.uk/images/Smallpox-Case-Wet-nurse1.jpg http://www.wpclipart.com/plants/BW/coffee.png

3. BIOINVASION http://www.guide-to-symbols.com/_images_pub2/vitruvian.jpg http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/virus-human-lysogenic.gif

5. “crowd disease”

6. highly contagious

7. spread by prolonged social contact or body fluids

8. non-contagious incubation period of 12-14 days

9. pustules break out on skin

10. results in skin scars, blindness, male infertility or deathhttp://medinfo.ufl.edu/year2/mmid/bms5300/images/pox2.jpg

12. No gene flow

13. No exposure to pathogens of other world populations

14. Few domesticated animals led to a weak immune systemhttp://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/aencmed/targets/maps/mhi/T045265A.gif

16. what was life like?

17. what culture existed?

18. how did they meet their needs?

19. what biological traits did they have?http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/archeo/oracles/draper/drap1.jpg

21. THESIS Using the timing of the first epidemics of the Caribbean and Mexico we can determine when such epidemics reached the Northeast. With that information we can make a more accurate assumption regarding the size of the native population before these epidemics spread and how much of an effect they had on decreasing their population. X

23. western hemisphere pandemic

24. high mortality

25. wholesale slaughter

26. sporadic over time

27. unabated for 150 years

28. minimal evidence

34. scurvy: Europeans

39. reflects 16th century European theory that disease was spread by “miasmas” (toxic air)

40. Williams may have heard what he wanted too

41. the elder may have been “Europeanized”EVIDENCE: Williams, a European native linguist says that a Narragansett elder told him plagues hit the tribe 4-5 years after earthquakes. Plagues coming in 1568, 1574, 1584 and 1592

43. 1576 epidemic could also have been yellow fever or typhoid

44. no evidence of black rat infestation

45. John Smith, Jacques Cartier and Purchas describe thriving coastal populations in 1604-05EVIDENCE: Plague began in Mexico and spread northward. Symptoms from 1576 Mexican epidemic indicate the plague.

47. no correlation between dated relocations and dated epidemics

48. widely accepted that relocations are a result of depleted resourcesSeneca tribe relocations are evidence of a pandemic EVIDENCE: Combines Williams claim with archaeological relocation evidence and interprets it as proof of pandemic.

50. remaining populations with the “sicknesse”

52. he nor men got ill

54. English brought smallpox

55. Massachusetts tribes from 30,000 to 300 due to plague

56. English destroy Pequots

61. SO WHY THE TIME LAG? http://www.fm.coe.uh.edu/exhibition/screen/images/cortes_sidea_lg.jpg http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/837/5111787.JPG

63. pandemic assumptions are unnecessary and only serve to suppose unrealistic pre-epidemic population sizes

68. Ad Hominem

69. Appeal to Authority

70. Circular Reasoning

71. Confirmation Bias

72. False Dilemma

73. Lack of Proportion

74. Oversimplification

77. THAT’S WHAT IT MEANS? Maybe… Maybe not… FALLACIES? AD HOC RESCUE: “Perhaps he misunderstood what his informant had said, but this interpretation seems unlikely and would in any case deny the only evidence from the Northeast a fair consideration” (Snow and Lanphear 20) “Perhaps Williams was using his own theory of disease causation in the interpretation of an Indian statement. Alternatively, the source might have been a converted Indian repeating something he had learned or telling Williams what he thought the latter wanted to hear.” (Snow and Lanphear 20-21)

78. THAT’S WHAT IT MEANS? Maybe… Maybe not… FALLACIES? CIRCULAR REASONING: “Documentary evidence of epidemics north of Mexico is sparse for the sixteenth century, and our understanding of epidemics there necessarily depends upon assumptions about how they spread (if they occurred at all). The product of our assumptions can only occasionally be tested by documentary or archaeological evidence, and the evidence is so scanty and ambiguous that it can be made to support almost any reasonable hypothesis”(Snow and Lanphear 16)

80. Evidence “scanty”

83. Dean Snow and William A. Starna wrote “Sixteenth-Century Depopulation: A view from the Mohawk Valley” – follows same fallacies

85. Critical: “If Snow and Lanphear did read my actual analysis of the 1556-59 influenza epidemic, then they have deliberately falsified their description of the analysis by not citing it”(Dobyns 288)

86. Believes there is little evidence and some scholars don’t think that evidence matters

90. Henige, David. “On the Current Devaluation of the Notion of Evidence: A rejoinder to Dobyns.” Ethnohistory 36:3 (1989) : 304

92. Snow, Dean R. and Kim M. Lanphear. “European Contact and Indian Depopulation in the Northeast: The timing of the First Epidemics.” Ethnohistory 35:I (1988) : 15-28

93. Snow, Dean R. and William A. Starna. “Sixteenth-Century Depopulation: A view from the Mohawk Valley.” American Anthropologist 91 (1989) : 143