7. The North American epidemics of the 17th and 18th centuries
Throughout the 17th century, the newly arrived Europeans and the American Indians suffered a series of epidemics. Most of them were of smallpox or measles. The Europeans were better equipped to resist the illnesses, though they were often fatal to children and the elderly. For the Indians, they were almost always fatal. Near the end of the century, yellow fever joined the previously mentioned diseases. Indians in contact with settlers carried the diseases far into the hinterlands, where it spread among the various tribes, carried by traders and warriors. In 1732, the year George Washington was born in Virginia, a major flu epidemic swept the European settlements, killing thousands of settlers as well as the local Indian tribes.
The new settlement of Savannah in the Georgia colony was changed by the several epidemics which struck there in its first decade of existence. The colony adopted a policy of inclusion, allowing Jewish settlers to remain in the settlement. Initially, the colony’s founder, James Oglethorpe, opposed Jewish settlers. When a group including a doctor, a Portuguese-Jewish physician named Samuel Nunes, proved to be useful in treating settlers suffering from various diseases they were allowed to stay. Georgia was founded as a haven for debtors freed from England’s prisons; by the 1740s it became tolerant of religious refugees including French Huguenots and Lutherans from Germany. Opposition to Catholics continued, largely out of fear of Catholic Spain.