DIRECT EUROPEAN IMMIGRANT TRANSMISSION OF OLD WORLD PATHOGENS TO NUMIC INDIANS DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

As the leader ofthe Church ofJesus Christ of Latter Day Saints during that denomination's initial colonization of the Great Basin, Brigham Young had a unique opportunity to observe Mormon effects on the region's Native Americans. Yet, scholars have largely ignored his laconic demographic summary and its many implications. The analysis that follows reconstructs components of the epidemiological patterns Young witnessed. Mormons led by Brigham Young first colonized aboriginal lands of Numic speaking peoples in 1847. They settled on the shores of Great Salt Lake, already well known to the trapper-traders who had been working in the Rocky Mountain region and dealing with Indians there. In 1847, the United States was at war with Mexico. The following year, Mexico ceded much of its northern territory to the United States under the Treaty of GuadalupeHidalgo. That cession brought under United States sovereignty the area to which the Mormons had fled. The Mormons were in search of a geographically isolated refuge2 where they could escape the religious and economic persecution they had suffered in New York, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri. Upon finding oases to colonize, however, the Mormons imposed their behavioral standards on the Native inhabitants.