Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492–1715 (review)

Kelton’s skillful weaving together of archaeology, epidemiology, historical demography, and economic history, both illustrates the power of interdisciplinary history and provides a fresh interpretation of the native experience with European invaders in what would become the southeastern United States. Historians, Kelton notes, shy away from epidemics because of their apparent accidental nature. “Epidemics after all seem out of human control, whereas other historical events such as wars and revolutions can be seen as the consequences of the decisions and actions, either collectively or individually … of human actors” (121). Although there is no evidence that Europeans deliberately tried to spread diseases to the region’s indigenous peoples during the colonial era, the impact of diseases on natives was not merely the accidental result of Europeans and Africans arriving among a people who had no prior experience with the Atlantic World’s deadliest diseases. “Instead, the larger aspects of colonialism shaped the impact that epidemics had on indigenous peoples” (121).

In the Southeast, the English slave trade, which integrated Native Americans into the Atlantic economy, occasioned the Great Southeastern Smallpox epidemic, which sharply reduced native populations. Ironically, the slave trade destroyed itself. Sharp reductions in numbers reduced supplies, which further declined as small bands joined together to form more powerful and thus less vulnerable confederacies. Finally, the combined impact of the slave trade and epidemic disease led to the native revolt known as the Yamasee War, which persuaded planter-legislators of the dangers entailed in continuing an unregulated trade in native people.

Although Kelton’s work is focused primarily on the Southeast, it has implications for our understanding of the Indian experience with the diseases of the Atlantic world throughout the Americas. Students of other regions would do well to follow his lead in exploring the interaction between epidemic disease and the nonbiological aspects of colonialism. Unfair as it may be to criticize so fine a work, Kelton fails to exploit fully the limited quantitative evidence that is available to estimate either the size of the Southeastern slave trade or the number of Indians enslaved in the region.