Interlude: What Killed the Wampanoag

This is an accidental interlude in the coronavirus news inspired by Taki Magazine columnist David Cole, who has paused his extremely spicy politico-disease commentary (e.g., Crazy Rich Asians Will Kill Us All) to reflect on the far older epidemiological mystery of what killed the natives of New England four centuries ago now. Cole cites a Slate article making seasonal hay of the story circa Thanksgiving 2012:

The Pilgrim leader William Bradford was already aware of the death toll from “Indean fever.” His scouts had ventured inland and noted “sculs and bones were found in many places lying still above ground, where their houses and dwellings had been; a very sad spectackle to behould.” It’s estimated as many as nine out of 10 coastal Indians were killed in the epidemic between 1616 and 1619.

What killed so many people so quickly? The symptoms were a yellowing of the skin, pain and cramping, and profuse bleeding, especially from the nose. A recent analysis concludes the culprit was a disease called leptospirosis, caused by leptospira bacteria. Spread by rat urine.

That "recent analysis" had been published in the CDC's monthly journal in February of 2010; it postulates "incremental, episodic, and continuous" exposure to leptospirosis introduced by Old World Rattus rattus as the most likely source of the deadly epidemic. PlagueBlog regrets having overlooked the theory at the time, but 2010 was a busy year of crazy Asians killing one another with melamine, and the mainstream press also seems to have missed it.

In defense of the natives contra Cole, PlagueBlog notes that though they eschewed hard-soled shoes, they did bathe far more than the invaders; this otherwise laudable practice was just as likely to give them a cryptic disease invisibly imported into their "sweet brook" as was their semi-shoelessness. It was a lose-lose situation, and not an appropriate metaphor for dangerous modern-day African or Asian superstitions.