Since smallpox was already

ity and callousness, that were chiefly responsible for sweeping aside indigenes and opening the Neo-Europes to demographic takeover,” Crosby wrote.

Paul Kelton thinks focusing too much on disease is giving the colonizers a pass.

In a paper for the June edition of The Journal of American History, Kelton and co-author Tai S. Edwards argue that through war, legal maneuvering and debt peonage, “the colonizers bear responsibility for creating conditions that made natives vulnerable to infection, increased mortality, and hindered population recovery.”

“Let’s not give disease exclusive agency in allowing Europeans to take over,” Kelton said in a recent interview. “In certain circumstances, it allowed them to establish beachheads. It worked synergistically with other aspects of colonialism. But, end of the day, there are human beings that are making decisions. And why are these decisions being made? Europeans seeing something they want and using whatever means they can to get it.” Even biological warfare. In the spring of 1763, Delaware, Shawnee and Mingo warriors laid siege to Fort Pitt, the site of presentday Pittsburgh. When Delaware emissaries tried unsuccessfully to convince the English to surrender and leave, English trader and militia captain William Trent sent them away with two blankets and a silk handkerchief from the fort’s smallpox infirmary.

present before the siege, Fenn and others think it is unlikely that Trent’s “gift” had the desired effect. But Fenn says it is hard to overstate the role disease played in the conquest of North America.

In August, Native descendants from all over New England and beyond were set to converge on Plymouth — to dance and drum around a ceremonial fire, march through the town, and make offerings of tobacco and sage in homage to Massasoit and King Philip. The Ancestors March was listed as a “signature event” on the Plymouth 400 calendar.

“We were looking forward to it so we could actually speak our truth,” says Troy Currence, a powwow or medicine man from the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe of Cape Cod. “That we’re still here. We’re not a destroyed people.”

Sadly, the coronavirus — which has disproportionately impacted Native communities across the country — has also put these plans on hold until at least next spring. Meanwhile, they are sharing their history online.

Currence takes the pandemic as a sign that the country, and the world, are in need of a correction.

“Eventually, if you don’t take care of Mother Earth and live in balance,” he says, “the natural law is always going to win.”

DAVID GOLDMAN/AP The Mayflower II, a replica of the original Mayflower that brought the Pilgrims to America in 1620, is docked last month in Plymouth, Mass., after undergoing extensive renovations.