1585, June-June 1586 — Disease, Natives visited by English from Roanoke Colony, NC >360

>360  Blanchard estimate.[1]

 

Alchon: “Plenty of evidence exists…to support the assertion that after 1492, the native societies of North America were repeatedly ravaged by epidemic infections, and throughout this vast area, French, English, and Dutch colonists frequently noted the devastating consequences of disease on indigenous communities. One of the earliest accounts to describe the impact of epidemic disease on the native population of North America was written by Thomas Hariot, who accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition[2] to Roanoke Island in 1584[3]:

 

Within a few dayes after our departure from everie such towne, the people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some townes about twentie, in some fourtie, in some sixtie, and in one sixe score, which in trueth was very manie in respect of their numbers….The disease was also so strange, that they neither knew what it was, nor how to cure it; the like by report of the oldest men in the countrey never happened before, time out of minde. A thing specially observed by us, as also by the naturall inhabitants themselves.

 

Hariot:[4] “…within a few days after our departure from euerie[5] such towne, the people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some townes about twentie, in some fourtie, in some sixtie, & in one sixe score, which in trueth was very manie in respect of their numbers. This happened in no place that wee coulde learne but where wee had bene…The disease also so strange, that they neither knew what it was, nor how to cure it; the like by report of the oldest men in the countrey neuer happened before, time out of minde. A thing specially obserued by vs as also by the naturall inhabitants themselues.” (p. 41)

 

Sources

 

Hariot, Thomas. A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588). On line edition edited by Paul Royster and digitized by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, as part of their Electronic Texts in American Studies. Accessed 3-4-2017 at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=etas

 

Alchon, Suzanne Austin. A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2003. Google digital preview accessed 3-4-2017 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=YiHHnV08ebkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

 

 

 

[1] Hariot is the only source. If in “some townes about twentie” died can be translated, for purposes of a tally, into at least two towns, then at least 40 people died. Similarly if we translate forty deaths in some towns into at least two towns, then at least 80 died in those towns, and if the sixty who died in some towns is viewed as at least two towns, then 120 died there, and finally since a score is twenty and six score died in one town, we translate that into 120. Thus, for the purpose of deriving a number, we add 40, 80, 120 and 120, to arrive at 360. If Hariot was being accurate, and we are unaware of an accusation of inaccuracy, then there were probably at least 360 deaths, and if “some townes” meant more than two, then the number goes up. If there were additional deaths Hariot was unaware of, then the number of deaths to disease introduced in quick order by the English goes up more.

[2] Funded by Sir Walter Raleigh, who did not actually accompany the expedition to Roanoke Island in 1584.

[3] See Harriot (or Hariot). He was in the colony from June 1585 to June 1586.

[4] The University of Nebraska-Lincoln digital edition notes: “This is on online electronic text edition of the first book published by an English colonist in America. Its author, Thomas Hariot or Harriot, was a cartographer, mathematician, astronomer, linguist, and philosopher, who was a participant in Sir Walter Ralegh’s first attempt to establish a colony in ‘Virginia,’ on Roanoke Island in modern-day North Carolina, from June 1585 until June 1586…”

[5] U’s and v’s were used interchangeably — the word is “every.”