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Before Columbus made his infamous voyage to the New World in 1492, the Americas existed in complete isolation from the rest of the major landmasses of the globe. As Europeans-and later Africans-began to trickle across the Atlantic, they brought with them a whole host of organisms that indigenous Americans had never seen before, from horses, cattle, and chickens to food crops and even weeds. The newcomers also inadvertently brought diseases caused by tiny pathogens that found an entire population without immunity. Epidemics of smallpox, measles, mumps, malaria, typhus, influenza, and yellow fever proceeded to ravage the American Indian population generation after generation. This demographic catastrophe is essential to an understanding of the creation of the Atlantic World, since so many of the European activities in the New World may have been curtailed if the Indians had maintained their numbers and been able to better defend themselves against European encroachment.
This lesson plan will give students a broad understanding of how such a widespread demographic collapse happened and what general effects it had. Then students will study the effects of one specific disease, smallpox, on a specific population: the Huron and Algonquin of New France in the seventeenth century. Finally, students will return to a broader perspective once again by researching the effects of epidemic disease in other parts of the world in the early modern period.
National Standards
Era 1: Standard 2B-Demonstrate understanding of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas
Era 2: Standard iC-Demonstrate understanding of the European struggle for control of North America
Student Objectives
Students will be able to:
1. Understand how the history of the opening of the Atlantic World in 1492 and the history of disease are related.
2. Understand the effects of disease on populations in the Atlantic World, including American Indians, Europeans, and Africans.
3. Understand the difference between epidemic and endemic diseases.
4. Recognize how differences in culture and religion can affect reactions to epidemic disease.
5. Understand the limitations early modern peoples had in dealing with epidemic disease and how modern science overcame many of those limitations in the twentieth century.
6. Read and analyze primary documents.
7. Conduct research on a given epidemic in the early modern world and write creatively about it.
Time
This lesson...