Examines imported diseases and their impact on Pacific Northwest Indigenous peoples
In the late 1700s when European colonizers arrived on the Northwest Coast, they reported the presence of vigorous, diverse cultures--Tlingit, Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl), Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), Coast Salish, and Chinookan--with a population conservatively estimated at more than 180,000. Just a century later the population had plummeted to only...