What happened to the Shawnee when the Europeans came to their land?

Answer 1

When the Europeans came to the lands of the Shawnee, the Shawnee were friendly at first. Then the Europeans decided they needed more land and the Shawnee were pushed further west. There were several battles between the Shawnee and the Europeans over land.

Answer 2

The first thing that happened in most areas was that there were horrible epidemics in wave after wave. These are sometimes called "virgin soil" epidemics. That means the kind that happen when the diseases are new to a population. We don't always know the exact diseases or deaths or times because they spread ahead of the Europeans. One of the earliest recorded was the 1531-33 measles epidemic from Southern Mexico up to the Sonoran desert areas.

When the Pilgrim Separatist arrived in Plymouth in 1621, the whole area had been depopulated by epidemics spread by European cod fishermen. Only tribes that refused to allow them to land and only traded by rope at sea with the fishermen escaped these.

The Timuacan who lived between the barrier islands of what is now Georgia and the area now known as Jacksonville, Florida were 50,000 and then by 1564 reduced to a few hundred.

In 1639 the Huron were reduced from 20,000 to 10,000. This meant that their enemies the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy were able too attack them and drive the survivors to the west.

In just one area, the Northern Plains, between 1730 and 1877, there were approximately fifty epidemics. Before there were more that worked up from Mexico and across from the East coast

In one epidemic alone in 1837-8, on the Great Plains, it is estimated that 2/3 of the Blackfoot population died as well as 1/2 of the Assiniboines and Arikaras, a 1/3 of the Crows, and a 1/4 of the Pawnees. bout 17,200 people died over two years.

There are many records of epidemics all the way into the late 19th century especially in Hawaii and SE Alaska. Even in 1918 flu killed all but eight people in the Iñupiat villiage of Brevig, Alaska.

Everywhere this happened it had devastating effects on culture, politics and relations with other tribes and later the Europeans.