Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing
by Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux, Ph.D. and Magdalena Smolewski, Ph.D.
by Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux, Ph.D. and Magdalena Smolewski, Ph.D.
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Chapter 1<br />
In addition, once the Indigenous population on Hispaniola, the surrounding isl<strong>and</strong>s, South America<br />
<strong>and</strong> Mexico became too depleted of healthy Indians to keep up with Spanish dem<strong>and</strong> for slaves, the<br />
Spaniards began to import black people from Africa (Newman, 1976). Various outbreaks of epidemics<br />
<strong>and</strong> pestilence can also be traced through historical records to black people being brought from the<br />
African continent into the area as slaves <strong>and</strong> left on Cape Verde <strong>and</strong> other Caribbean Isl<strong>and</strong>s. Spanish<br />
attribution of epidemics to black slaves brought from the Cape Verde Isl<strong>and</strong> via Panama is contained in<br />
their own records <strong>and</strong> provides strong evidence that at least one epidemic, which spread southward<br />
from Cartagena, was in fact introduced this way (Dobyns, 1963).<br />
The Jesuit provincial reports of May 20, 1590 indicate that the epidemics eventually reached Chile.<br />
Immediately after their arrival, the epidemics wrought total havoc, not only among the hostile Araucanian<br />
Indians, but also among the Spanish. Local episodes of epidemics continued into 1591 <strong>and</strong> many<br />
people died on the Peruvian coast south of Lima. Smallpox mortality among these Indians has been<br />
placed at fully three-quarters of their population (Dobyns, 1963). In the spring of 1619, epidemic<br />
smallpox broke out again in Chile, causing an additional death toll in the neighbourhood of 50,000<br />
individuals. This contagion reappeared once more in the autumn of 1620, again causing huge mortality<br />
<strong>and</strong> overwhelming fear among the Natives (Dobyns, 1963).<br />
Until 1720, recurrent measles <strong>and</strong> smallpox epidemics struck approximately every seven to eleven years<br />
in these regions, until almost the entire Indigenous population was wiped out. Reports in the Archdiocese<br />
of Lima in 1720 indicated Indian mortality alone reached 72,800 people; <strong>and</strong>, for many years thereafter,<br />
the epidemic of 1720 was Peru’s most terrible plague that the country had suffered (Dobyns, 1963).<br />
When questioned if there were any survivors, one Indian group simply tossed a fistful of s<strong>and</strong> into the<br />
air.<br />
The disease spread across the mainl<strong>and</strong> with the Spanish, consuming Puerto Rico early in 1519 before<br />
it moved into Mexico in 1520, where it created devastating mortality among the Indigenous people <strong>and</strong><br />
played a critical role in breaking the Aztec military resistance to the Spanish conquest (Dobyns, 1963).<br />
The smallpox virus, along with measles, are described in the medical literature as “crowd type” diseases<br />
because they require a minimum population of 500,000 people to support widespread transmission.<br />
This would suggest that Aztec populations were substantial enough to sustain the virus as it moved<br />
rapidly among them (Newman, 1976). There is speculation that several viruses may have already been<br />
at work prior to Spanish arrival among the Aztec, having travelled along established <strong>Aboriginal</strong> trade<br />
routes throughout the empire <strong>and</strong> weakening any kind of resistance they possibly had; but the Spanish<br />
most certainly brought it with them as well. The disease severely weakened Aztec defenses <strong>and</strong> allowed<br />
the Spanish to defeat them with little or no resistance. The Aztec were a literate people <strong>and</strong> the following<br />
account gives their own graphic description of the suffering they experienced from a smallpox epidemic.<br />
This particular epidemic is recorded as having raged among them for 70 days. The entire empire was<br />
struck down <strong>and</strong> rendered completely immobile by the disease, which killed thous<strong>and</strong>s of their people:<br />
Sores erupted on our faces, our breasts, our bellies; we were covered with agonizing<br />
sores from head to foot. The illness was so dreadful that no one could walk or move.<br />
The sick were so utterly helpless that they could only lie on their beds like corpses,<br />
unable to move their limbs or even their heads. They could not lie [sic] face down or<br />
roll from one side to the other. If they did move their bodies they screamed with pain.<br />
13