PNW Original Inhabitant Demographic Collapse

* Disease and Europeans

- wherever they went, Euro diseases destroyed indigenous (native)

populations

-> smallpox, influenza, malaria, measles

-> Europeans came from more dense and closely connected

societies

=> an accidental biological warfare factory

- up to a 90% mortality rate in the Americas

* The collapse

- PNW population was anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 before

Europeans

- PNW pop declined by 50-90%, not clearly determined

- disease destroyed Native American groups before Europeans had a

chance to do it more actively

-> smallpox and flu killed whole villages

=> in low-resistance populations, everyone gets sick at once

=> too tired to feed each other, build fires, etc.

=> the old and the young die

=> so many died that they could not all be buried

+> destroys cultural repository AND hope for the future

- diseases spread even before whites arrived

-> traveling sick Native neighbors passed on the germs

- as a result of catastrophe, Native groups were weakened and

disheartened when whites arrived

-> helps to explain why they didn't resist more