Saving the Native Americans -- the contagious disease problem

Tom Veil

It was inevitable that, at some point, contagious disease would spread to North America. As biologists and Jared Diamond readers know, in addition to the argonomic humilities that pre-Columbian North Americans suffered -- only Australia had fewer domesticable plants and animals -- they also had the blessing and curse of having an entire continent that was virtually free of non-tropical diseases. This was a blessing at first, but when Columbus and Cortez showed up, it meant they would start dropping like flies.

Now every red-blooded AH'er loves a good "Natives thrive!" TL. But how do you handle the inevitable spread of contagious disease?

Would it be better to have it strike sooner, or later? Are Spain, Portugal, and England unique for seeing the plagues as a sign that God preferred them, or would any Old World colonizing nation have responded the same way?
(I have some ideas of my own, but in the interest of getting the broadest discussion possible, I'll withhold them until I hear from all of you.)
 

Fabilius

You need contact with the old world at an early point. Really early point.

Having settlers with less technology, bringing with them diseases and also domesticated animals which the natives could grab from them.
 

Umbral

The easiest way would be to have them exposed earlier. A failed colony of the old world would have done it. The Romans, Carthagians, and Chinese are popular, I have suggested the Minoans, other options would include the Tartessians, Egyptians, anyone you fancy really.

The failed colony options also allows the transfer of some piece of tech or livestock you feel the Americas really need.

Other options I do not see explored much is the retention and expansion of the knowledge of vaccination, which was lost several times. Veddic medicine knew about it as I recall. (The efficiency of the practice, not the theory behind it)

Combine the two, and the Americas get both plague and vaccination at the same time. Good incentive to retain the knowledge. An America later on which were as far ahead in medicine as they were in astronomy...

But if that were to include disease, it may require more epidemics.

A slightly longer viking presence with more trade could introduce diseases, without changing much else. Gives them 500 years to adapt and recover. Failed colony again.

Most european nations would have seen the plagues as gods approval. Buddhists may have felt differently, not sure.
 

rewster

As a possible counter to the "earlier is better" theory, how about a significantly later Contact date, after more modern germ theory has arisen? You could have smallpox and other diseases being actively eradicated (or have been eradicated) prior to contact if the POD is right (it may have to be pretty early on). I have proposed this idea before in this thread but here it is again.
 

Umbral

rewster said:
As a possible counter to the "earlier is better" theory, how about a significantly later Contact date, after more modern germ theory has arisen? You could have smallpox and other diseases being actively eradicated (or have been eradicated) prior to contact if the POD is right (it may have to be pretty early on). I have proposed this idea before in this thread but here it is again.
Click to expand...

It is an interesting thread. If you settle for variolation, what you need would be to have the knowledge make its way from India to early Rome, and become widespread there. That should embed it in later european thought.

Good variolation laws in Rome would make a significant difference.

Smallpox could still not be exterminated, thoug, that takes too global an effort.

The notion of "Cowpox in a virgin field" is interesting too.

Vikings were well into dairy, as I remember.

Vikings bring cows to Vinland, and the natives like the idea. They take the animals, which have serious cowpox. Might change things quite a bit.
 

Strategos' Risk

Don't certain ATLs have certain somewhat benevolent exploring civlizations, like the Chinese, teach the tribes they come into contact with the basics of smallpox vaccination?
 

Homer

If the Vikings land in Vinland and establish colonies there, would it be possible to keep them up there? If the Vikings spread stories about Golden cities in the Americas, that would attract even more people than OTL.

Would it be plausible to have long-lasting Viking colonies in Vinland that do not establish any sort of contact to native tribes in the Caribean?

And how fast could plagues spread from Vinland through America?
 

Tom Veil

rewster said:
That's odd, because over half of the food crops we eat today originated in the Americas. I'd say that's a disproportionate amount given the size of these two continents versus the collective size of Eurasia/Africa. What the Americas lacked were readily productive grain crops like wheat and rice, and of course draft animals.
Click to expand...

First off, many of the crops in the article you cite are from South America. I was discussing the paucity of the North.

Furthermore, the Americas have lots of kinds of crops, but not many of any of them. Corn was the only grain to have anything but a local spread -- potatoes, quinoa, and goosefoot all had regional limitations that required medieval levels of technology to overcome -- and corn is, compared to wheat and rice, extremely hard to grow in mass quantities.

With fauna, the situation is even worse. Llamas and caribou have extremely limited ranges, dogs are too small to be effective except in limited situations, and the other large animals were not domesticable.
 

Tom Veil

Strategos' Risk said:
Don't certain ATLs have certain somewhat benevolent exploring civlizations, like the Chinese, teach the tribes they come into contact with the basics of smallpox vaccination?
Click to expand...
I have seen several TLs like that, both on AH and in publication. I maintain a healthy skepticism, however, about whether the explorers really would be that benevolent, or whether the author is betraying a little bit of ethnic chauvinism. The Chinese, for instance, had such a strict division between Chinese and Barbarian that I suspect they would segregate and marginalize the Natives, similar to the usual British method.

That's not to say that I think it's impossible or even implausible. Frankly, if the Reformation went differently, and a more humble Christianity like the Quakers or Mennonites dominated, I think the British would have been very kind to the Natives -- witness early Pennsylvania, as well as Canada's relatively enlightened treatment of Natives.

As Umbral said, I suspect the Buddhists would have been quite accomodating. The survival of pockets of "traditionalist", or hunter-gatherer, societies in Southeast Asia is a good piece of evidence in their favor.
 

Tom Veil

Homer said:
And how fast could plagues spread from Vinland through America?
Click to expand...

I don't know the answer to this, but to any (professional or armchair) biologist who wants to venture a guess, I'll add this question -- could a plague come too early? In other words, if the Romans or Egyptians landed in 1 AD and never, ever returned, would the diseases self-perpetuate, or would the very rural nature of most of the Americas mean that the diseases would eventually disappear, and within a generation, the immunities would disappear, too?
 

Strategos' Risk

Tom Veil said:
I have seen several TLs like that, both on AH and in publication. I maintain a healthy skepticism, however, about whether the explorers really would be that benevolent, or whether the author is betraying a little bit of ethnic chauvinism. The Chinese, for instance, had such a strict division between Chinese and Barbarian that I suspect they would segregate and marginalize the Natives, similar to the usual British method.
Click to expand...

It doesn't even have to be benevolent. I thought if there was a carefully and orderly colonization or exploration of the New World, certain nations would have been a little less "oh the natives are all dying from diseases we brought in. Oh well.", and be more like, "Show us where the gold is, here scratch the pus into your skin to keep from infected, you dimwit."
 

Keenir

Banned
Tom Veil said:
I don't know the answer to this, but to any (professional or armchair) biologist who wants to venture a guess, I'll add this question -- could a plague come too early? In other words, if the Romans or Egyptians landed in 1 AD and never, ever returned, would the diseases self-perpetuate, or would the very rural nature of most of the Americas mean that the diseases would eventually disappear, and within a generation, the immunities would disappear, too?
Click to expand...

yes.

heck, if the plague came in 1300 or 1350, and the Spaniards came at 1400 on the dot, the diseases would've pretty much disappeared by that point too.
 

Tom Veil

Keenir said:
why would they not explore/seek ties/expand southwards?
Click to expand...
A stable Vinland colony almost certainly would seek ties southwards. But it's possible they won't succeed. Considering they were wiped out in OTL for fairly robust reasons like climate, most ATLs should have them hanging on rather than thriving I'd think.

Still, if they pull it off -- if the Norse are making annual or more frequent trips north and south along the atlantic coast -- they will utterly revolutionize Native life in the same way that the pre-Plymouth privateers did. There will suddenly be an overpowering incentive to build merchant-based cities along the east coast, instead of fishing-based villages -- but a couple centuries earlier, meaning the cities will have time to develop. That suddenly makes the haphazard British approach to colonies look ... well, outgunned.
 

Smaug

Keenir said:
why would they not explore/seek ties/expand southwards?
Click to expand...

I'm inclined to think that the Vikings would move into the Great Lakes region, and take advantage of thier naval tradition. It wouldn't be much further of a reach for them to find the Ohio or Mississippi Rivers. I would venture a guess that the watershed of the Mississippi covers more than a 1/4 of North America. We wouldn't be talking about people waking around on foot, they could spread out rapidly.
 

Umbral

I'd like to pimp my own TL on that, https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=34545&highlight=Vinland+bountiful

which I will return to, now that there is less pressure on my work/study combination.

Homer said:
If the Vikings land in Vinland and establish colonies there, would it be possible to keep them up there? If the Vikings spread stories about Golden cities in the Americas, that would attract even more people than OTL.

Would it be plausible to have long-lasting Viking colonies in Vinland that do not establish any sort of contact to native tribes in the Caribean?

And how fast could plagues spread from Vinland through America?
Click to expand...

Very quickly. Not quite as quickly as the Black Death in europe, which took advantage of shipping, but as quickly as the plague spread from Asia to europe.

It would be possible to keep the vikings there. All you really need is a less halfhearted attempt, and a better, defensible location. As I recall, in OTL, it was tried by a couple of families in the cold north. A larger group, setteling a bit futher south, perhaps on an wooded island some distance away from the coast, and close to good fishing banks should survive quite well.

There would also be a good window for expansion and entrencing when the diseases hit the natives.

However, just like Greenland, the little ice age would cut them off from Europe at some point.

It is also quite possible to have a colony that does not have (direct) contact with the Caribbean islands. While I am quite certain that someone would go exploring down the coast of Vinland, would the Caribbeans offer anything to keep them coming back?

It depends a lot on how well the colony does, and how much surplus there is for young men to go a-viking. A small colony could find itself stymied by hostile natives, and just hanging on, as said, with no opportunity for voyages much futher than, say, Georgia.

A colony with passable relations with the natives, could expand and develop far greater population density than the natives, also taking immigrants from Greenland as the climate worsened. They might well go into the Gulf of Mexico, and to the Yucatan, up the mississippi, and to the great lakes. The last, I think, absolutely requires good relations with the natives.

Tom Veil said:
I don't know the answer to this, but to any (professional or armchair) biologist who wants to venture a guess, I'll add this question -- could a plague come too early? In other words, if the Romans or Egyptians landed in 1 AD and never, ever returned, would the diseases self-perpetuate, or would the very rural nature of most of the Americas mean that the diseases would eventually disappear, and within a generation, the immunities would disappear, too?
Click to expand...

It depends on a lot of factors I don't think we know. The population density at the time of the contact, and at the point of the contact. The speed of communications and travel in the Americas at the time.

It would also be possible for the plagues to be so virulent that they failed to spread if they were introduced to a small group. If two or more diseases hit, a caribbean island, for example, offers a good chance that all the natives would die befor contacting any other natives.

But at a guess, there is a also a chance they could end up self-perpetuating.
 

Max Sinister

Banned
"but as quickly as the plague spread from Asia to europe."

No, not that fast. Don't forget at this time the Mongol Empire wasn't quite dead yet, and unifying (most of) Asia and E Europe for a while removed all obstacles for trade. Eurasia had caravans, and quite some seafaring too. Old America hadn't. Plague would spread, but slower.
 

Umbral

Well. Trade is not actually neccessary for disease to spread, just contact. Battles will feature lots of blood and wounds, and any other kind of contact will do when the disease is highly contagious. The native americans seem to have had quite enthusiastic trade networks in any case.

However, I belive you are correct. I forgot about the presence of the horse in any case. It should mean that things travel faster in the old world anyway.

The Black Death was probably noted in China in the early 1330s. It got to Europe in 1347. From there, it had spread across the continent in a year.
 
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