The Impact of Imported European Infectious Diseases on Aboriginal Health

1. The Impact of Imported European Infectious Diseases on Aboriginal Health David M. Patrick, MD, FRCPC, MHSc

2. Let’s Turn Travel Health Around • We concern ourselves with the health of travellers. • What about the visited? • And … what if the travellers never leave?

3. History is Full of Travelling Plagues • Siege of Kaffa,1346 • Invading Tartars came down with plague • Before retreating, catapulted dead comrades into city • Began a plague outbreak that spread across the face of Europe

4. Images of BC First Nations

5. Why Did Emily Carr See This?

6. Outline • History and Who Tells it • First Nations Health Pre-Contact • First Contact • Colonial Period • Lessons for today?

7. History in Perspective • The story-teller today, has European ancestry • Cook / Vancouver had high ideals but were still part of a then active British imperial mind set • Thompson – honoured his native wife and refused to trade in alcohol

8. Origins: Land Bridge or Coastal Migration

9. Evidence for Land Bridge and/or Southward Coastal Migration • archeology • skeletal/dental patterns • mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome sequencing

10. There Are Other World-Views

11. Nisga’a Tradition We believe that the Creator - through His messenger Txeemsim - brought the life-giving sun to a bleak twilight world of hunger, deprivation and war. Txeemsim taught people how to inhabit the land and interact with animals without disrupting the cycle of life. This Nisga'a hero also taught people how to build houses to survive long winters, to defend the land, and to organize themselves into a coherent, moral society. Above all, Txeemsim taught us to respect the land and its creatures, core values of Nisga'a life today.

12. Haida Tradition • Speaks of a treeless land, lower sea levels – conditions that would have been in place during the last ice age • A verbal tradition that speaks to a generation just waking up to global warming.

13. Culture Pre-Contact • 1/3 of Canada’s pre-contact native population • Eleven main language groupings • North West Coast: Nootka, Coast Salish, and the Kwak'wala Speaking Peoples

14. Pre-Contact Culture • Interior - the Kootenay, Carrier • Tsimshians ranged the northern coast • Tlingits occupied southern Alaska and northern British Columbia. • The Sekani and Beaver occupied the eastern region of the north while the Haida lived on the Queen Charlotte Islands.

15. Contact Throughout the Americas • Asymmetrical effects • Why? Jared Diamond’s Guns Germs and Steel • Endemic disease • Domestic animals • Spread of technology • And what about colonization itself?

16. Reasons Cited from First Nations Sources • Environmental degradation • New pathogens • Social disruption • Persecution

17. Was the Northwest Coast Protected from Infectious Disease? • Rocky Mountains and vast Pacific Ocean • By the late 18th century, residents may already have met some diseases of Europeans through cross continent aboriginal trade routes. • Like the fated Mississippian culture?

18. Pre-contact Health in BC • Hunter-gatherer societies thought to have been healthier than larger settlements with agricultural base • Dyphillobothrium and roundworm from shell midden

19. Pre-contact Health in BC • Treponemal infections in the prehistoric record for the Strait of Georgia and Prince Rupert Harbour dating between 1500 B.C. and A.D. 500. • Trachoma and leprosy are documented for the early contact period and may have been present in pre-contact Northwest North America. • Tuberculosis has been documented for a number of pre-contact Aboriginal groups but is as yet not known for British Columbia until after contact when first reported among the Nuu-chah-nulth at Nootka Sound in 1793. Newman 1976 in Boyd, R. (1985). The introduction of infectious diseases among the Indians of the Pacific Northwest, 1774-1874. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Pullman, Washington: University of Washington, p. 39.

20. First Contacts • Unrecorded contacts (Chinese, Drake?) • Spanish, British and Russians • Seaborne Fur Trade • Overland Fur Trade

21. Nootka Sound • Mowachaht and Muchalaht peoples had a rich existence and culture based on whaling and river fishing. • 1774, Juan Hernandez traded near Estevan Point, • 1775, Bruno de Hezeta, in the "Santiago," and the "Sonora," under Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, cruised by the North Pacific coast.

22. Royal Navy at Nootka • Sustained contact began with Captain James Cook and crew on the H.M.S. Resolution and H.M.S. Discovery. • Anchored in Resolution Cove, Nootka Sound on March 31, 1778. • Met Chief Maquinna • Cook claimed the territory for Britain, but did not start a permanent settlement there. • Soon sparked a fur trade, involving first nations in sustained contact with Europeans and Americans.

23. Maquinna and Cook at Nootka Sound

24. Spanish Connection • The Spanish later set up a base at Nootka under the command of Quadra, who had claimed the coast of Alaska for Spain. • In 1792, Captain George Vancouver, with his ships Discovery and Chatham, arrived at Nootka Sound to regain control under the terms of the Nootka Convention. • Commenced working together at the task of mapping and exploring the coast.

25. Vancouver

26. The Epic Explorations of David Thompson

27. Observations of the Overland Explorers • Thompson and Fraser observed epidemic among Plateau groups around Kamloops in early 1800s. • “deadly form of violent distemper” meningitis?

28. The Overland Fur Trade

29. Post-contact • Smallpox • Influenza • Dysentery • Diphtheria • Typhus • Yellow fever • Whooping cough • Tb • Syphilis

30. Chief Weah of Masset: • “It first came from the north land, from the Iron People who came from the land where the sun sets. Again it came not many years ago, when I was a young man. It came then from the land of the Iron People where the sun sets …. This foe we could not see and could not fight. Our medicine men are wise, but they could not drive away the evil spirit.” From Collison WH 1915 In the Wake of the War Canoe. London: Seeley Service and Co, p 67-68

32. Estimated Decline in Aboriginal Population in North America Based on Data from Ubelaker 1992

33. From Fur Trade to Colonization • The Hudson's Bay Company built Fort Victoria in 1843, and the colony of Vancouver Island was established in 1849 when the entire island was leased to the HBC. • In 1858, BC Gold Rush • Mainland colony of British Columbia in 1858. Governor James Douglas, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company and governor of Vancouver Island, became the new governor of British Columbia. • In 1866 the colony of Vancouver Island was combined with the colony of British Columbia, with Victoria becoming the provincial capital of British Columbia on April 2 1868.

35. Fort Victoria

37. Was Colonization More Important than Contact? • Initial contacts linked to fur trade and missionary activity. • Access to trade goods • Longer term dependence on external technology: • Over-trapping • Logging • Mining • Over-fishing • Crowding • Potlatch banned

38. Royal Proclamation of 1763 • "... Whereas it is just and reasonable and essential to our Interest, and the Security of our Colonies, that the several Nations or Tribes of natives with whom We are connected, and who live under our Protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the Possession of such parts of Our Dominions and Territories as, not having been ceded to purchases by Us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as their Hunting Grounds..."

39. Treaties in BC • Policy of negotiation under Governor James Douglas. • 1864, new Land Commissioner Joseph Trutch initiated widescale surveying throughout the province to satisfy the white settlers' appetite for land. • Treaties - British or Canadian governments and bands largely never concluded them in BC • Those written were not always good (peoples moved from lands etc) • Reserves for natives on the basis of four hectares per family

40. Smallpox Outbreak of 1862-63 • 1/3 of native pop (20,000) estimated perished by Duff • Others argue a 62-90 percent decline for Northwest Coast between 1835 and 1890 • Adults too sick to care for children • Central Coast Salish largely escaped – had been immunized at that point – Missions • Haida from 7000 to 741 by 1881 • Abandoned villages.

42. Smallpox Outbreak of 1862-63 • Cowpox vaccine available as early as 1830’s. Why did we still see devastating outbreaks 40 years later?

43. Residential Schools • Removal from family • Attempted assimilation • Widespread abuse • High MORTALITY from infectious disease.

45. Nisga’a Summary In 1793 a British sea captain named George Vancouver, seeking a northwest passage to the Orient, sailed into Ts'im Gits'oohl (Observatory Inlet) where he was met by Nisga'a chiefs. Greetings were exchanged and within years a thriving trade in sea-otter pelts prospered along the coast. When overharvesting killed the coastal fur trade, European fur traders scrambled after land-based furs such as beaver. By the mid-1830s fur traders were coming through the mountain passes from the east. In 1858 the colony of B.C. was established. Lured by the Gold Rush Europeans arrived by the boatload. But they brought with them smallpox, influenza, tuberculosis and measles which ravaged native populations. During the 1830s and 1860s whole villages were devastated, as natives had no natural immunity to diseases they had not encountered before.

46. Nadir Between 1835 and 1906, diseases cut the population in half. In 1871 B.C. joined Confederation and administrative responsibility for natives was transferred to the federal government under the British North America Act, although authority over land and resources remained with the province. This jurisdictional dichotomy has been one of the greatest problems for natives ever since.

50. Epidemiology of Infectious Disease • Host • nutrition (starvation, diabetes, obesity) • less natural resistance to European strains • Agent • more virulent • Environment • Crowding • herd animals • industrial work places • Social disruption