Why where Native Americans helpless to smallpox?

Answer 1

ina nutshell: lack of proper antibodies in their mother's milk(colstrum) and/or genetic immunitity issues ...

europeans had centuries of exposure to be plagued with the pox and those susceptible were 'Darwin-ed' out by selective 'surviving' (hence the eruo-mother's milk antibodies slant) ... the native Americans got hit with it all at once and it spread like wildfire through a population never exposed to it before and hence devoid of any kind of immunities to it.

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from WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States#Initial_impacts

European settlers brought diseases against which the Native Americans had no natural immunity. Chicken pox and measles, though common and rarely fatal among Europeans, often proved deadly to Native Americans. Smallpox, always a terrible disease, proved particularly deadly to Native American populations.[8] Epidemics often immediately followed European exploration, sometimes destroying entire villages. While precise figures are difficult to arrive at, some historians estimate that up to 80% of some Native populations died due to European diseases.[9]

In 1617-1619 smallpox wiped out 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Indians. As it had done elsewhere, the virus wiped out entire population groups of Native Americans. It reached Mohawks in 1634,[10] the Lake Ontario in 1636, and the lands of the Iroquois by 1679. During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30% of the West Coast Native Americans.[11][12] Smallpox epidemics in 1780-1782 and 1837 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plain Indians.[13][14]

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8. ^ Native American History and Cultures, http://www.meredith.edu/nativeam/setribes.htm Susan Squires and John Kincheloe, syllabus for HIS 943A, Meredith College, 2005, accessed September 19, 2006

9. ^ Smallpox epidemic ravages Native Americans on the northwest coast of North America in the 1770s.

10. ^ Dutch Children's Disease Kills Thousands of Mohawks

11. ^ Smallpox

12. ^ American Indian Epidemics

13. ^ The first smallpox epidemic on the Canadian Plains: In the fur-traders' words

14. ^ Mountain Man Plain Indian Fur Trade