What diseases were Native Americans not immune?

Against the alien agents of disease, the indigenous people never had a chance. Their immune systems were unprepared to fight smallpox and measles, malaria and yellow fever. The epidemics that resulted have been well documented.

Why did Native Americans have no immunity to smallpox?

Many of the diseases, such as syphilis, smallpox, measles, mumps, and bubonic plague, were of European origin, and Native Americans exhibited little immunity because they had no previous exposure to those diseases. This caused greater mortality than would have occurred if these diseases been endemic to the Americas.

What diseases were native to the New World?

Diseases such as treponemiasis and tuberculosis were already present in the New World, along with diseases such as tularemia, giardia, rabies, amebic dysentery, hepatitis, herpes, pertussis, and poliomyelitis, although the prevalence of almost all of these was probably low in any given group.

Why were American Indians vulnerable to European diseases?

Native Americans were also vulnerable during the colonial era because they had never been exposed to European diseases, like smallpox, so they didn’t have any immunity to the disease, as some Europeans did.

Was syphilis a New World disease?

The epidemiology of this first syphilis epidemic shows that the disease was either new or a mutated form of an earlier disease. Some researchers argue that syphilis was carried from the New World to Europe after Columbus’ voyages, while others argue the disease has a much longer history in Europe.

How did the Native American population decline?

War and violence. While epidemic disease was by far the leading cause of the population decline of the American indigenous peoples after 1492, there were other contributing factors, all of them related to European contact and colonization. One of these factors was warfare.