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bramflakes comments on Open thread, 16-22 June 2014 - Less Wrong
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None of that will stop them dying like flies to smallpox.
Oh and also, giving up traditional ways of life to live like the Americans didn't work out so well for some of the Cherokee. They played by all the rules, but as soon as prospectors found gold on their land they were pushed aside.
Strikes me that adopting Western customs and technology (such as the smallpox vaccine, Jenner, 1798) would have been exactly the right solution to that issue too.
As for the Cherokee - I agree they tried. But they were still too weak to stand up for themselves. My suggestion is not "play by the white man's rules and hope he treats you nicely." It's "copy the white man's ways so you have the strength to resist him."
Huh, I didn't know the smallpox vaccine came about that early.
Either way, there were still plenty of nasty diseases from the Old World that had (or still have) no vaccines, like cholera, typhus, typhoid, measles, malaria, influenza, leprosy and bubonic plague. Their cumulative effect sapped native societies of their vigor, and this would have persisted even if they adopted the kind of sanitation technologies that Euros brought.
The reason it took Europeans until the 19th century to conquer the African interior was that disease was so difficult to overcome. Until quinine was developed, the half-life of a British garrison on the Gold Coast was less than 18 months. With this severe a disadvantage, I don't think there's anything the native Americans could have done, no matter how enlightened their chieftains.
I've heard it went better for the Cherokee than for other tribes, which is why the Cherokee are the ones most people have heard of.
The most successful tribe at adapting to the conditions of European settlement were the Comanches, who dominated a huge region of the west for about 100 years.
Yes - compared to other tribes they did the best. But it'd be pretty depressing to be a chieftain in 1800 knowing that that's the best you can do.