At the end of the American Revolution, a delegation of Cherokee leaders trekked to Virginia in hopes of ending conflict with the former colonies. While there, one of the Cherokee headmen asked a rhetorical question of the American commissioners: “Look back and recollect what a numerous . . . people we were.” He continued to ask how “we have been continually . . . decreasing, and are now become weak. What are the causes?” For most Americans, both then and now, the answer would likely be disease, specifically smallpox. According to the Cherokee, however, it was not disease but “War, and [the] succeeding invasions of our Country” that had triggered their decline (215). This exchange cuts to the very heart of this book, in which Paul Kelton argues that Euro-American colonialism, rather than inadvertent contact and interaction, was responsible for the spread of deadly disease throughout native North America. In...
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