The Possible Role of European Diseases in Early Great Lakes History

Adam Berger

European diseases may have influenced Great Lakes history before 1492. The claim cannot be proven, and the case is circumstantial at best. Many scholars directly reject the proposition. However, the possibility bears consideration. Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee traditional histories describe major social upheavals around 1000 CE, the time when Norse people first explored Greenland and North America. Cultural and demographic changes in this early period shaped the later history of the Great Lakes. The timing of events at least leaves open the possibility that diseases that spread from Europe could have factored into Native American settlement patterns before Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) visited the Americas.

European diseases clearly wreaked havoc on the people of the Americas after 1492. In the years after Columbus made his first journey to the New World, regular transatlantic crossings brought Europeans and Native Americans into increasingly frequent contact. Contagions brought from Europe killed Native people on a massive scale. The exact impact is impossible to precisely quantify, as debate remains over how many people were in the Americas before Columbus. Conservative estimates suggest loss of life was 25% to 50% after European diseases were introduced into the Americas.

Pre-1492 contact, far more limited than in the later period, certainly would have caused correspondingly smaller disease effects, but even relatively low levels of novel diseases still could have contributed to major social changes. Consider that the 1918 flu pandemic killed approximately 675,000 people in the United States, which then had a population of about 103.2 million. That means approximately .654 percent of the U.S. population died from the disease, a relatively low percentage, but the social impact was extreme. As has been the case during the Covid-19 pandemic, many infectious diseases are more likely to be fatal to older people. The loss of community elders certainly could have disrupted Native societies in which they were culturally preferred civic leaders who often tempered the more bellicose sensibilities of younger war leaders.

There is also the question of what indications of low-level novel diseases would exist in the archaeological record. A major difficulty with paleopathology is that most infectious diseases leave no diagnostic markers in the archaeological record.  If a small percentage of the Native population, mainly older people, succumbed to diseases that did not leave obvious marks on their skeletons, it would be difficult for archaeologists to determine how they died. The fact that direct evidence of diseases ravaging the precontact Atlantic cost has not been found may reflect the difficulty of detecting certain kinds of disease events that happened so far in the past.   

Anishinaabe emic history relates that they previously lived on the northeastern Atlantic coast, probably on or near the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Sometime around 900 CE, groups of Anishinaabe people began moving southwest into the Great Lakes. Disease was a major motivation for this migration. The migration process is thought to have lasted approximately five hundred years, meaning that they reached western Lake Superior by about 1400 CE.

Traditional history recounts that while living along the Atlantic, they received a prophecy that light-skinned people would arrive. The prophet warned that the Anishinaabe would be destroyed if they did not move, so they must go to a place where food grew on water. Following a series of prophets and signs that guided them, Anishinaabe people gradually migrated into the western Great Lakes, making seven stops along the way. First, they rested on an island in the St. Lawrence River. Second, they stopped at Niagara Falls. Third, they went to the Detroit River. After leaving this place they split into three groups, Potawatomi, Odawa, and Ojibwe. Fourth, they paused at Manitoulin Island. Fifth, the Ojibwe settled at Sault Ste. Marie. With some bands going along the northern side and some on the southern side of Lake Superior, the Ojibwe reached their sixth stop, Spirit Island near Duluth. They made their seventh and final stop at Madeline Island in Lake Superior.

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) culture also preserves a memory of disruption and change in the Story of the Peacemaker. During a long time of conflict and chaos, with various Iroquoian-speaking peoples engaged in wars of retribution, a young warrior lamented the loss of his wife and daughters to violence. This young man, born Onondaga but adopted by the Mohawk, was named Hiawatha [Ayowenta]. As he mourned his family, he contemplated revenge against Tadodaho, an evil cannibalistic sorcerer who ruled the Onondaga people through terror and brutality. To his surprise, a young Huron (Wyandot) man came to his lonesome wilderness retreat. This was Deganawida, the Peacemaker. He taught Hiawatha that there was an alternative to ceaseless cycles of revenge.

Deganawida and Hiawatha traveled among the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca, convincing leaders to accept the Great Law of Peace. The Seneca people agreed after a solar eclipse, considered a sign of great portent. Finally, the time came to plead the case to evil Tadodaho, ruler of the Onondaga. He first refused to listen and offered a violent response, but then had a change of heart when he heard Deganawida sing beautifully about the Great Law of Peace.

The actions of the Peacemaker and Hiawatha, spreading the Great Law of Peace, brought together the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca into the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. This alliance greatly benefited the constituent peoples. Major decisions were now made in a cooperative and democratic manner. Haudenosaunee military power focused outward, as warriors from each nation could travel to engage their enemies without having to worry about resistance when crossing territory of other members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. It was now far more difficult for outsiders to launch raids into the Haudenosaunee heartland, as other members of the alliance would join to resist hostile incursions. By coming together into a system of political coordination and mutual military assistance, the Haudenosaunee grew into one of the most formidable powers in North America. By the 1600s, they came to control the eastern Great Lakes and pushed their enemies west into Anishinaabe territory as refugees.

Scholars once dated the founding of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to 1451, though Haudenosaunee sources insisted that it happened far earlier. More recent research suggests that the solar eclipse mentioned in the Story of the Peacemaker occurred in 1142. This earlier date is now considered more likely. As such, the long period of chaos and warfare that opens the tale would have commenced close to 1000 CE.

Norse accounts of the early exploration of North America appear in The Saga of the Greenlanders and The Saga of Erik the Red, written in the 1200s and 1300s based on oral histories. Erik Thorvaldsson, better known as Erik the Red (circa 950-1000), murdered his neighbor in Iceland and was sentenced to three years of exile for his crime beginning in 982. He used the time to explore Greenland, a large body of land approximately 750 miles from Iceland. In 985, Erik led a group of settlers from Iceland to Greenland, establishing a thriving colony.

Around 1000 CE, his son Leif Erikson (circa 970-1020) launched a further expedition that explored the lands to the southwest. Accounts of Leif Erikson’s expedition state that the Norse explorers found three different lands. The first was a barren place of flat stones and mountains or glaciers. They called this Helluland, usually identified as Baffin Island. The second, Markland, a flat land covered in forests, is generally thought to be Labrador. The third place the explorers described, Vinland, was said to be more temperate, and rich in grapes.

On a series of further voyages from Greenland, the Norse tried to colonize Vinland, but the settlement did not last. Norse traditional history records that the Europeans were in contact with Native Americans during this time, possibly ancestors of the Beothuk, a now defunct culture. It is worth noting that Greenland experienced serious disease episodes during the years that expeditions were sent to Vinland. Leif’s famous father, Erik the Red, may have died in such an epidemic.

Relations between the Europeans and Native Americans were first peaceful, with Norse trading fresh milk from their cattle for furs, though the Natives were probably lactose intolerant and felt ill after consuming the hitherto unknown substance. The Norse and their Native American neighbors fell into violent conflict after a Native man was killed while trying to take Norse weapons. The threat of violence from Native people, which the Norse called ‘Skraelings,’ was likely a major factor in the abandonment of the Vinland colonial project about a decade after its commencement.

There is only one confirmed medieval Norse site in North America, L’Anse aux Meadows, located on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland. Excavation at this site in the 1960s revealed several Norse-style buildings that seemed to be used as houses, storage facilities, and boat repair workshops. A small smelting hut seems to have been used only one time, to produce up to 200 iron nails from locally available bog ore. One of the workshops may have contained a loom.  

Identification of the L’Anse aux Meadows site as Vinland is problematic. The accounts in the sagas specifically speak of collecting wild grapes, yet it is not thought that grapes ever grew as far north as Newfoundland. Notably, there is no sign of agriculture or enclosure for livestock identified at the site, features normally present at Norse settlements. Some scholars now think that L’Anse aux Meadows was not a primary habitation site of the Vinland colony per se, but a winter camp and base for exploration.

Floral evidence found at L’Anse aux Meadows does suggest more southernly exploration occurred. During excavation, butternuts and a partly carved butternut burl were unearthed, though the species has never grown in Newfoundland. It may well be that the Norse who used L’Anse aux Meadows as a winter base continued southeast into the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the summer, where both grapes and butternuts can be found growing wild. If Vinland included the area around the Gulf of St. Lawrence, there may have been Norse contact with Native people directly in the area from which the Anishinaabe migrated southwest into the Great Lakes and near well-traveled waterways leading into the Haudenosaunee heartland between Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain.

At present, the most that can be said with full confidence is that Norse, Haudenosaunee, and Anishinaabe traditional histories describe notable events that share temporal and spatial proximity. The two Native cultures underwent changes around the time of Norse exploration of North America that shaped later Great Lakes history. The fact that Europeans and Native Americans had contact around 1000 CE leaves open the possibility that new diseases entered North America at this early date and played a role in these changes. As new data is found, future scholars may better understand the nature of this coincidence of history. For now, though, we simply do not know if or to what extent European diseases influenced Native American history before 1492.

Uncovering this part of North America’s past will require the discovery of further authentic medieval Norse sites in North America, especially around Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Given the embarrassing history of hoaxes, modern replicas, and misconstruction of evidence that has plagued the study of Norse exploration in North America, doing this work the right way is challenging. False leads such as the Kensington Runestone in Minnesota have distorted popular understanding of the topic. A true story of potentially great significance to North American history is yet to be told. Traditional histories provide important clues, but confirmation of this currently unproven theory must rely on carefully authenticated archaeological evidence.