Note 17 — AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE AMONG THE INDIANS OF NORTH-AMERICA; AND A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THEIR DISEASES AND REMEDIES WITH THOSE OF CIVILIZED NATIONS. Read before the American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia, on the 4th of February, 1774.
Reading edition
Even the influence of CHRISTIAN principles has not been able to put a stop to the mortality introduced among the Indians, by their intercourse with the Europeans. Dr. Cotton Mather, in a letter to sir William Ashurst, printed in Boston, in the year 1705, says, “that about five years before there were about thirty Indian congregations in the southern parts of the province of Massachusetts-Bay.” The same author, in his history of New-England, says, “That in the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, there were 3000 adult Indians, 1600 of whom professed the christian religion.” At present there is but one Indian congregation in the whole Massachusetts province.
It may serve to extend our knowledge of diseases, to remark, that epidemics were often observed to prevail among the Indians in Nantucket, without affecting the white people.