Disease+that+ravaged+the+West

__**Disease that ravaged the West**__

__Prior Knowledge__ __Research Questions__ __My research strategy__
 * __Who?__ Settlers in the West
 * __What?__ Disease that impacted the settlers
 * __Where?__ The United States of America
 * __When?__ The late 1800's
 * __Why?__ Why there was disease in the U.S.
 * __How?__ How certain diseases got into the U.S.
 * __How did this impact the class topic or vice versa?__ This is a very serious topic. Some diseases introduced into the U.S. killed hundreds of settlers on trails to other places. The class topic is Westward Expansion, and this is a very important, but deadly subject.
 * __Who?__ Who settled in the West?
 * __What?__ What diseases ravaged the West?
 * __Where?__ Where did some of the diseases originate?
 * __When?__ When did the diseases spread?
 * __How?__ How did the diseases spread?
 * __How did this impace the class topic or vice versa?__ How does this relate to the Westward Expansion?
 * __Who?__ I will ask Ms. Horn and Ms. Brem for help in locating information.
 * __What?__ Expert websites, databases, encyclopedias, books, textbooks.
 * __Where?__ The CTMS and public library, on any other computer for online resouces.
 * __When?__ During class or outside of class if I need to.
 * __How? I__ will use my thesis statement and research questions to figure out what to look for and what to take notes on.
 * __Key words for reaseaching__ "Disease" "Disease in the West" "Disease that ravaged the West" "Western Disease"

Disease infuenced Westward Expansion by impacitng mostly Native Americans and reducing thier already scarce population. There were many serious diseases, creating new cures and medicines.
 * __Disease__**

Some common diseases were very deadly and fatal. An example is smallpox. " No other disease ravaged Indian peoples more than the dreaded smallpox. The first major pandemic in the nineteenth-century West occurred in 1801-1802 among tribes in the Central and Northwestern regions of the continent. This epidemic devastated people along the Missouri River with particular ferocity. Between 1836 and 1840 another epidemic swept the Northern plains, killing many, including thousands of Blackfeet, Pawnees, and Mandans." (Leiker, James N) This affected the West in a very tragic way. It massacred thousands of Native Americans and decimated settlers. "Medical science had no vaccination for the other great scourge of the nineteenth century: cholera. Merchants and sailors transported the disease, believed to have emanated from India, to the United States in 1832, where the poor sanitary facilities of Eastern cities allowed it to thrive. During the 1849 California Gold Rush, travelers carried the bacterium along the Santa Fe Trail and other overland routes. Migrants' notoriously filthy hygienic habits caused them to eat spoiled meat and to drink and bathe in waste water. These conditions proved ideal for the spread of cholera. Yet unlike the contagious smallpox virus, cholera's danger lay less in its actual spread than in how it struck at undernourished populations." (Leiker, James N) This shows an other type of danger in the West, and invisible one. This disease specificly attacked malnourished people and destroyed population in the West. Other diseases ravaged the Western territories. "Westerners contended with many other ailments as well. Malaria, tuberculosis, measles, scarlet fever, mumps, influenza, and whooping cough were common. If settlers had the luck of living in the vicinity of a military base, they could seek help from the post surgeon. Military doctors frequently prescribed mercury and calomel (a laxative) in the hope of purging infectious matter. Yet since trained physicians rarely traveled to remote areas (and since many of these diseases were untreatable at the time), pioneers learned to fashion home remedies. In mining camps or wagon crews any person with a meager knowledge of animal birthing or bone setting could be called on to render medical advice. Many Western diseases conferred long-term immunity to survivors, an advantage that Native Americans did not share." (Leiker, James N.) This shows how terrible the treatment for some diseases were and how primitive they are compared to today.

Many other cures and medicine appeared and doctors traveled from town to town looking for patients. "**HERBS AS MEDICINE** Instructions: Boiling spoils herbs. Submerge them in cold water, then steep them slowly. Aloes: Tea made from leaves of the aloes plant was taken in small doses as a laxative and remedy for hemorrhoids. Asafetida: A small amount of asafetida tied in a cloth bag and hung around a child's neck kept communicable diseases away. Asafetida could also be rolled into pills and given for to relieve nervousness and spasms or convulsions. Beets: Juice from red beets was drunk as a cure for kidney stones. Brookline: Tea made from brookline was taken in the spring to help enrich the blood. Camphor and Olive Oil: To relieve croup, a child's chest was rubbed with a mixture of these ingredients (Camphor and Olive Oil) then the salve covered with a square of flannel. Carrots: A poultice of carrots was applied to boils to draw out the infection. Catnip: Tea made from catnip was given to babies with colic or colds. Clover Blossoms: Tea made from clover blossoms enriched the blood." (Pioneer Medicine and Apothecary) This reflects how poorly educated some medical 'profecionals' were compared to todays medical profecionals. This poor knoledge led to the great health care we have today. "On the range, COWBOYS often had to withstand injury through sheer determination. Gunpowder was liberally applied as a cure-all on cuts and other wounds. Cuts that required stiches were generally sewn up with only a stiff drink for anesthetic." (The American West) "A the fear of disease and illness spread, a number of bogus medical practitioners began traveling throughout the West. They hawked useless medicines, praised as "cure-alls" for any number of minor aches and major illnesses. Often these spurious remedies were nothing more than water, or alcohol. However, the phony physicians running these medicine shows often raked in a good deal of money from buyers desperate for relief from pain and illness." (The American West) Many people sold fake medicine to desprate people who was needing cure or relief from many diseases. These people and the diseases they said their medicine could cure shaped the modern medical world today. "Henry Hughes was born on 25th December 1825 at Mold, Flintshire, Wales. He helped with the early settlement of Mendon, Utah in 1859 but did not permanently settle here until sometime later in 1862. He seemed to have served as a natural doctor in Utah, as was the common custom of the time." (Pioneer Medicine and Apothecary) He is one of many surgons or doctors in the West at the time when disease and injury were a modern part of life.

Native Americans had it the worst. They were not immune like the settlers to most diseases that were active, and entire villages collapsed during these rough times. "**Disease took its greatest toll on Native Americans. As contact with whites grew more frequent, Indians became exposed to germs and pathogens for which they had no immunity, and as a result they suffered sickness and mortality rates much higher than whites. Scholars estimate that the American Indian population (within contemporary U.S. boundaries) declined from about 600,000 in 1800 to a mere 250,000 by 1900."(**Leiker, James N) This affected Westward Expansion because although many settlers died of diseases, the Native American population decreased the most and most Native Americans were wiped out. "During the 1770s, smallpox (//variola major//) eradicates at least 30 percent of the native population on the Northwest coast of North America, including numerous members of Puget Sound tribes. This apparent first smallpox epidemic on the northwest coast coincides with the first direct European contact, and is the most virulent of the deadly European diseases that swept over the region during the next 80 to 100 years. In his seminal work, //The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence//, historian Robert Boyd estimates that the 1770s smallpox epidemic killed more than 11,000 Western Washington Indians, reducing the population from about 37,000 to 26,000." ("Smallpox epidemic." HistoryLink.org. Washington State History) This reduced the amout of Native Americans in the West, making it safer for travelers, but destroyed a culture. "dreadful misfortune befell them. One salmon season the fish were found to be covered with running sores and blotches, which rendered them unfit for food. But as the people depended very largely upon these salmon for their winter food supply, they were obliged to catch and cure them as best they could, and store them away for food. They put off eating them till no other food was available, and then began a terrible time of sickness and distress. A dreadful skin disease, loathsome to look upon, broke out upon all alike. None were spared. Men, women, and children sickened, took the disease and died in agony by hundreds, so that when the spring arrived and fresh food was procurable, there was scarcely a person left of all their numbers to get it. Camp after camp, village after village, was left desolate. The remains of which, said the old man, in answer by my queries on this, are found today in the old camp sites or midden-heaps over which the forest has been growing for so many generations. Little by little the remnant left by the disease grew into a nation once more, and when the first white men sailed up the Squamish in their big boats, the tribe was strong and numerous again. (Boyd, 55)." (Smallpox epidemic." HistoryLink.org. Washington State History)

These diseases were indeed tragic, but many helped shape our American life today. Many Native American cultures and tribes were wiped out, but they are still alive, and we are still thriving. Through all of the trial and error of many cures and medicine we now have amazing medical advancements and care.

​ code code Works Cited code //The American West//. Danbury, Connecticut: Grolier Educational, 1995. Print. code code Leiker, James N. //Disease and Westward Expansion (1800 - 1860)//. //Gale Cengage Learning//. Gale, 1997. code code Web. 26 Mar. 2010. . code code "Pioneer Medicine and Apothecary." //mendonutah.net//. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2010. code code . code code "Smallpox epidemic." //HistoryLink.org//. Washington State History, 23 Jan. 2003. Web. 29 Mar. 2010. code code . code Paraphrase || No quotes or paraphrasing used. || Very few quotes or paraphrases included, no parenthetical references. || Some errors in quoting or paraphrasing and/or a few missing parenthetical references. || Several quotes and paraphrased pieces of information in each body paragraph, all with parenthetical references. || 4 || My own grade
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