For more than 30 years, historians and anthropologists have actively studied the relationship between postcontact Native American population loss and introduced infectious diseases. Over time, the investigation of native population attrition from infectious diseases has become known as demographic collapse. Because Native Americans were immunologically naive for European parasites, they died in significant numbers when exposed. Although the temporal onset of decline varies by region, initial attrition likely occurred in less than one hundred years.
The issue of demographic collapse is the point of departure in this edited volume by Brenda Baker and Lisa Kealhofer. While the editors do not deny that the introduction and spread of infectious agents resulted in sizable or even terminal decline of Native Americans, they do not cotton to blind acceptance of the equation between infectious disease and native population loss. Nor do they think that disease was the exclusive cause of native mortality in postcontact America. Rather, the editors call for a research program that would explore the full spectrum of native conditions that preceded European arrival and may have predisposed some groups to higher rates of infection. They also want scholars to investigate other causes of Native American mortality, as well as the biological and cultural adjustments of survivors.
Taking a hard look at demographic collapse is an important and challenging topic. Although powerful, disease events are not uniform leveling mechanisms; not everyone died. Moreover, it is exceedingly difficult to carry out the research program advocated by the editors. The early post-European period is one of rapid and far-reaching change, and the osteological, archaeological, and historical records of this period are notoriously scare. Consequently it’s easier to assert or assume that people died than to investigate why they died and what happened to the survivors. As George Milner put it: “[we] are still left with two critical unresolved problems: how are we to recognize when and where epidemics struck, and how do we measure their short- and long-term social and demographic consequences?” (p. 201).
The ten articles in this volume have the scope of the editors’ interests. Four articles, including two by the editors, one by Ann Palkovich, and a discussion by George Milner are general in nature. The other six contributions are substantive. The spatial focus is the Spanish Borderlands from St. Catherines island in the southeast to the California missions; the temporal scope spans the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Articles by M. Cassandra Hill, Jay Johnson and Geoffrey Lehmann, Clark S. Larsen et al., and Elizabeth Miller focus on the eastern Borderlands. The other two articles deal with the western Borderlands. Ann Stodder considers the New Mexico Puebloans; Lisa Kealhofer examines the issue of demographic collapse in the California missions. Finally, although four of the substantive contributions rely primarily on skeletal data, archaeological and historical records are also considered.
However, like many edited volumes, the articles in this volume are not uniformly successful in their treatment of demographic collapse. Some articles are excellent and insightful treatments of Native American biology and culture. Others fall short of the mark. Larsen’s work on Guale and Stoddard’s analysis of Puebloans continue to be first rate. The Guale case is especially difficult because by 1680 the entire population had become extinct. Nonetheless, skeletal analyses are used to examine the individuals who survived the initial bottleneck. Data quality curtails the contributions of several authors, including those by Hill, Kealhofer, and Miller. Finally, some articles, like the precontact settlement study of Johnson and Lehmann, seem out of place. While the implications of their study are significant for research on the demographic collapse, the linkage between the study and volume goals are insufficiently specified.
In the end, then, the volume is uneven. It establishes the problem and explores some of the issues surrounding postcontact Native American biological and cultural change. It is, however, neither definitive nor exhaustive. The greatest contribution is the effort to wrestle with a fundamentally important problem.
