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  1. AD 1493–1550s
    Native peoples begin dying from European diseases
    Diseases unknown to them spread rapidly among Native peoples, who lack immunity to viruses and bacteria ...
  2. AD 1520–62
    ‘Virgin-soil’ epidemics devastate Native populations
    “Virgin-soil” epidemics sweep through populations with no prior exposure to a particular infectious ...
  3. 1761
    First known influenza pandemic from the Americas begins
    Influenza is one of the diseases that Europeans brought to the New World. Unlike previous influenza ...
  4. 1775
    Smallpox strikes again in North America
    As the American Revolution begins, epidemic smallpox spreads across North America, killing hundreds ...
  5. 1832
    U.S. vaccinates Native peoples on the frontier against smallpox
    Congress passes the Indian Vaccination Act and appropriates $12,000 to hire physicians to vaccinate Native ...
  6. 1833
    Whooping cough crosses the Great Plains
    Whooping cough spreads across the U.S., killing babies and children, for whom the infection is particularly ...
  7. 1834
    Mexico denies return of mission lands to Chumash
    In California, the Mexican government frees the Chumash, who had been enslaved by the Spanish in California ...
  8. 1848
    Successive epidemics spread across U.S., Alaska, Hawai‘i
    In September, a series of deadly epidemics, including measles, whooping cough, and influenza, sweeps ...
  9. 1848
    California Gold Rush brings miners and diseases
    Some people from the Miwok, Maidu, and Nissenan tribes help James Marshall dig a millrace at Sutter’ ...
  10. 1854
    ‘Red men will be numbered with the dead,’ physicians state
    The American physicians Josiah Nott and George Gliddon theorize in their book Types of Mankind that ...
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