11. In the years directly preceding the arrival of English settlers aboard the Mayflower, the indigenous population of New England was all but destroyed as a result of infectious outbreaks of a European disease
A classic example of a “virgin soil epidemic”, in which “the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologically almost defenseless”, the years prior to English arrival in New England saw the indigenous population of New England suffer one of the deadliest disease outbreaks in history. Between 1616 and 1619, the Wampanoag, inhabitants of modern-day Massachusetts and Rhode Island, were decimated in what was later proclaimed by early English settlers as divine intervention to cleanse the land prior to white arrival on the continent.
Originally thought to have been smallpox, although now suggested to have been a form of leptospirosis, the illness was introduced to the indigenous tribes by contact with French traders to the north. Resulting in a mortality rate close to guaranteed, with no viable medical treatment available, it is estimated that population losses were in excess of ninety percent. One should not entirely absolve European colonists of responsibility, however, for viral outbreaks in the Americas. Some, notably the deliberate use of smallpox as a biological weapon against indigenous peoples during the Siege of Fort Pitt in 1763, were purposeful acts of unquestionable genocide.