User:Smallchief/Market Garden

Great Southeastern Smallpox Epidemic, 1696-1699

The Great Southeastern Smallpox Epidemic, 1696-1699 was the first recorded smallpox epidemic in the southeastern United States. The white colonists and black slaves in Virginia and South Carolina were impacted, but the greatest impact was on the Native Americans (Indians) of the southeast, killing in some cases more than one-half their populations. The epidemic spread from Virginia in 1696 to South Carolina in 1697 and by 1699 the effects of the epidemic were felt as far west as Arkansas. Because of the smallpox and later epidemics, slavery, and war, the Indian population in the "South" (not defined as to precise area) has been estimated to have deceased from 199,000 in 1685 to 90,000 in 1715.

You can cite the same source more than once on a page by using named references, also called named footnotes. The syntax to define a named footnote is:

To invoke the named footnote:

Between 1697 and 1699 the epidemic killed 200 to 300 settlers of out a population of less than 5,000.

Epidemics
While it is possible that earlier epidemics impacted the Indian population, the "Great Southeastern Smallpox Epidemic" from 1696 to 1715 had a severe impact on both white and Indian populations of the southeast, but especially on the Indians who had no inherited immunity to this disease of European origin. The epidemic began in Virginia in 1696 and spread along trading paths, reaching the Tunica in Louisiana in 1699. Recurrent epidemics occurred until 1715. A South Carolinian said the "the Small-pox hath killed so many of them that we have little Reason to believe they will be Capable of doing any Harm to us for severall Years to Come." The deaths caused by the epidemic are estimate to have reduced populations of some Indian tribes by more than 60 percent. The deaths caused by the epidemics impacted the slave trade as there were fewer Indians to be captured and enslaved. South Carolinian slave traders responded to the reduction in their supply of potential slaves by forcing Indian tribes to hand over people to them who the tribes did not wish to see enslaved. The Indian resistance to the aggressive traders led to the Yamassee War from 1715-1717.