Not all disappeared: Disease and southeastern Indian survival, 1500-1800.

Abstract

Southeastern Indian survival depended on four factors. First, smallpox came relatively late to the Southeast, failing to become epidemic until the 1690s. Second, when epidemics struck with full force after the 1690s, Indians were not affected equally. Geography and the nature of diseases gave interior confederacies advantages over coastal, piedmont, and Mississippi Valley groups. Third, the Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws were able to compensate for population loss by absorbing, capturing, or conquering smaller groups. Fourth, the Southeastern Indians took social and cultural actions that protected themselves from the full impact of epidemics. They enacted quarantines within a culturally-prescribed religious context and avoided certain areas that were experiencing epidemics.

Following the introduction of European and African diseases, Native Americans suffered dramatic population loss. The four powerful confederacies of the interior Southeast, the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, however, withstood the epidemiological onslaught. How these groups survived repeated epidemics is the central question of this dissertation.