Disease Transfer at Contact

Abstract

Disease transfer at between peoples is attracting increasing research and interpretive attention from anthropologists, historians, ethnohistorians, Native Americanists, and medical doctors. Historically, massive and frequent disease transfers resulted in a crash in the Native American population and contact shock in the Americas (81:2; 82). Mooney (69) explicitly recognized the impact of epidemic diseases on Native North Americans. Anthropologists of the 1930s ignored that aspect of Mooney's native population analysis, while arguing instead about population magnitudes. Physiologist S. F. Cook (24) began in 1937 to publish studies of the impact of Old World diseases on Native North Americans. Even though Cook collab­ orated with archeographers, 1 anthropologists of the period ignored his epide­ miological publications. Anthropologists may have been reluctant to recognize that Darwinian evolutionary theory applies to human beings (76:37), regard­ less of human culture. In 1966, I pointed out methodological flaws in anthropological analyses of Native American population magnitudes that ignored the biological reality of Old World contagious diseases during post-Columbian times (32). Ten years later, a critical bibliography on Native North American historical demography reemphasized the crucial role of Old World contagious diseases (33) in what

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