Disease emptied native villages years before settlers occupied their maintained lands

Evidence

A tsunami of disease swept the Oregon coast in the 1830s, the germs traveling faster than covered wagons could. Smallpox and measles came to the Native peoples, diseases for which they had no more resistance than did grass before a fire. By the time the squatters arrived around 1850, most of the villages were ghost towns. Settlers’ diaries record their surprise at finding a densely forested place with a pasture all ready for their livestock, and they eagerly set their cows out to fatten on the native grasses. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 888

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Strong eco-justice evidence: epidemic depopulation preceded and enabled land seizure, while settlers misread maintained prairie as ‘natural’ pasture.
• SEED: Essay angle: how the temporary ‘ghost town’ window let settlers inherit landscapes the dead had stewarded, collapsing management into ‘empty land.’
• XREF: connects to: Disease, not Spanish brutality, destroyed the native peoples of the Americas — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1902; Disease, not Spanish brutality, destroyed the native Arawak population.; American settlement was a history of dispossessing native peoples — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 273

Broader Connections

• Disease, not Spanish brutality, destroyed the native Arawak population. #corroborates (0.90)
• Disease, not Spanish brutality, destroyed the native peoples of the Americas #corroborates (0.85) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1902
• American settlement was a history of dispossessing native peoples #complicates (0.80) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 273