Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing

Chapter 1
In areas that now constitute the United States, records of death and depopulation were equally grim.
Journal entries by French colonists living on the St. Lawrence River are worth noting since they appeared
to have kept accurate records on the affairs of Aboriginal people. “Between 1634 and 1640, a series of
epidemics broke out, with smallpox being a principle component” (Cook, 1998:194). “By 1640 there
were only 10,000 Huron left out of an estimated 20,000 to 35,000 in the early 1600s … The Iroquois
themselves suffered a similar fate two decades later” (1998:195-196). Taking into consideration the
number of cases and estimates of death since the introduction of smallpox to North America, it would
not be unreasonable to consider a seventy per cent or higher overall mortality rate.
Cook (1973) argues that medical implications of European-Indigenous contact fall into two categories.
The first category consists of the well-known epidemics of 1518 to 1519, 1617 to 1619 and of 1633,
which killed close to one hundred per cent of the Indigenous people in specific areas of the continent.
The second category consisted of chronic disease and its long-term effects on the Indigenous population,
which steadily contributed to weakening Indigenous health. Habitual food scarcity and chronic illnesses,
including tuberculosis, pneumonia, dysentery and venereal disease, continued to undermine the surviving
population. Long-term chronic illnesses produced physical disturbances (such as displacement) that, in
turn, were exacerbated by the effects of civil disorder, beginning with the first century of non-Aboriginal
occupation. These endemic maladies, coupled with warfare and social instability, further undermined
an already struggling Indigenous population and sapped moral and spiritual resistance. Cook (1973)
accepts a relatively low estimate of the American Indian population in New England, although his
conclusions about rates of mortality among these people alone, as late as the seventeenth century,
remain shocking no matter what the original population base might have been. In his estimation, the
fact that there are any Native descendants alive today loudly declares the stamina of Indian endurance
and highlights a will to live in the face of huge and opposing odds.
In 1717, the Governor of New York held a conference at Albany, with representatives of the Five
Nations of the Iroquois. In his address, he expressed sympathy to the Iroquois for their loss of friends
and family due to smallpox. He then pointed out that, as Christians, they believe being inflicted with
a disease is considered punishment for their “misdeeds and sins” (Leder, 1956). This message was not
well received by the Five Nations people who were well aware of the source of the disease. By the late
1700s, the Indians were all too aware of what the source of the disease was and were not impressed with
the explanation. In reply to the threat of further illness, they responded: “they intended to dispatch
someone to Canistoge, Virginy, or Maryland to find out who had been sending the contagion and to
prevent them from doing so” (Duffy, 1951:334).
Death by disease was not the only problem the Aboriginal people were facing. Their numbers were also
being extirpated by increasing warfare. In the battle among the Europeans, new Americans and the
Indigenous people, there is little doubt who came out the losers. As the United States Bureau of Census
asserted in 1984:
[I]t has been estimated that since 1775 more than 5,000 white men, women, and children
have been killed in individual affairs with Indians, and more than 8,500 Indians. History,
in general, notes but few of these combats. The Indian wars under the Government of
the United States have been more than 40 in number. They have cost the lives of
19,000 white men, women, and children, including those killed in individual combats,
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