I have long believed that the native peoples of the Americas, Africa, and the South Seas began suffering from infectious diseases as soon as they came into contact with European colonizers. In fact, many people ask me how so many healthy people can get sick so quickly.
My answer, which isn't a very good one, was that in traditional cultures that didn't come into contact with infectious diseases, people didn't need to build strong immune systems while growing up. Strong body, keen eyesight, good hearing; And I theorized that these people are much more vulnerable to the effects of sugar when they do consume it because they have never consumed sugar and therefore do not need a super powerful pancreas to produce large amounts of insulin.
This explanation is just another version of the “immunological inadequacy” and “lack of genetic resistance” arguments that allow doctors and public health officials to ignore malnutrition, a major cause of disease in both the Old and New Worlds.
Malnutrition as a cause of infectious diseases
I recently learned that native peoples did not immediately contract infectious diseases when they came into contact with Europeans. For example, fishermen and early explorers visited the northeastern seas along the Atlantic coast in the 15th and 16th centuries, but there is no historical commentary on the presence of disease or epidemics among native peoples during that period.
In his article “Historical and Scientific Perspectives on the Health of Canada’s First Peoples” (2007), Raymond Obomsawin states, “The primary purpose of this early contact was to exploit natural resources for commercial purposes, thus reducing the risk of physical weakness or disease. The evidence suggests that it would certainly have caught the attention of some of the indigenous people.” Instead, these early reports marveled at the health and robust constitution of Native Americans.
Obomsawin notes that the first recorded outbreak of plague among Native Americans living in the Ottawa Valley occurred between 1734 and 1741.
Champlain founded the first European settlement in Quebec on the banks of the St. Lawrence River over 100 years ago, in 1608, and it was not until the 1800s that smallpox, measles, influenza, dysentery, diphtheria, typhus, yellow fever, whooping cough, and tuberculosis emerged. . , syphilis and various other “fever” were widespread among the indigenous population.
By the mid-18th century, Native American life was in serious disarray. As a result of intensive trapping, game populations were decimated, severely affecting the availability of food and hides needed to make clothing and shoes. During this period, sugar, white flour, coffee, tea, and alcohol arrived on trading ships, which the colonists traded with the Indians for furs.
The same pattern prevailed on the West Coast, where salmon catches were greatly depleted in the mid-1800s. These Northwesterners spoke of “sickness boats” or “plague canoes,” Spanish and British seagoing vessels arriving with increasing frequency.
They brought smallpox, but they also brought food that made them vulnerable to smallpox. Early 100-foot sailing cargo ships could carry up to 800,000 pounds of “goods.” Or perhaps I should say “defective.”
Tribal peoples, who depended heavily on buffalo, were not affected until the early 1870s. By the early 1870s, the animals had been depleted due to exploitation and deliberate campaigns to kill the herds on which they depended.
Transformation of Indigenous Health
According to a Canadian government report, “The shift of Indigenous peoples from good health to poor health, which had impressed travelers from Europe… was further exacerbated by the decline of land sources of food and clothing and the collapse of traditional economies.” .
The situation worsened as mobile people were confined to small plots of land with limited resources and opportunities for natural sanitation. “The situation has worsened again as long-standing norms, values, social systems and spiritual practices have been undermined or outlawed.”
As for the Plymouth Colony, the Pilgrims were not the first Europeans in the area. European fishermen had been sailing off the New England coast for most of the 16th and 17th centuries, coming into contact with significant Native Americans, and the beaver pelt trade began in the early 1600s, before the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620.
In 1605, the Frenchman Samuel de Champlain compiled an extensive and detailed map of the area and the surrounding area, showing that the village of Patuxet (where the village of Plymouth was later founded) was a thriving settlement.
From 1617 to 1618, shortly before the arrival of the Mayflower, a mysterious epidemic wiped out up to 90% of the Indian population along the Massachusetts coast. Although history books blame the epidemic on smallpox, analysis suggests it may have been a disease called leptospirosis.One (Even today, leptospirosis kills nearly 60,000 people each year.)
Both wild and domestic animals can transmit leptospirosis through urine and other body fluids. Rodents are the most common vectors, and beavers are rodents. During the spring, both male and female beavers secrete a sticky, pungent substance called castoreum to attract other beavers, often depositing it in small “scent piles” near the runways leading to the beavers' lodges.
Hunters used castoreum to scent traps to catch beavers, and it was also traded with Europeans, who valued it as a base for flower-scented perfumes. Perhaps the earliest case of this disease was a type of Beaver Revenge spread by leptospirosis organisms in Castorium. In other words, compensation for exploiting the species and hunting it to near extinction!
Anyway, the point is that the epidemic that caused so much suffering arrived only after a period of nutritional decline. Fear and despair almost certainly played a role.
Most infectious deaths caused by water shortage
When disease broke out in a village, the sick often had no one to care for them, as they were often abandoned by those who were still healthy. Unable to obtain water for themselves, they usually died of thirst. This may explain why mortality rates are much higher among Native Americans (typically 90%) than among Europeans (typically 30%).
This does not mean that exposure to new microorganisms does not play a role in causing the spread of infectious diseases. However, these new organisms are unlikely to cause disease in well-nourished individuals with strong immune systems.
The modern diet is nutritionally poor
Now let’s fast forward to today. We have children who are extremely undernourished. Both poor diet and vaccinations can weaken the immune system. (For an explanation of how vaccinations weaken the immune system rather than strengthen it, see Tom Cowan's book “Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness.”)
And thanks to vaccinations, we are seeing the emergence of new, more lethal forms of diseases, such as measles and whooping cough. Dr. Cowan and many others are predicting a large-scale resurgence of infectious diseases, outbreaks of infectious diseases against which modern medicine may be powerless.
Dear parents, please be forewarned and protect your children. Feed nutrient-dense foods, especially those rich in fat-soluble activators, and refuse vaccines.
About the author
Sally Fallon Morell is the author of the best-selling cookbook “Nourishing Traditions” and several other books on diet and health. She is the founding president of the Weston A. Price Foundation (westonaprice.org) and founder of A Campaign for Real Milk (realmilk.com). Visit her blog at nuriousingtraditions.com.
