When Hernando de Soto wandered through what would become the southeastern United States between 1539 and 1542, the region was heavily populated by the Muskogean peoples who still lived very much in a way representative of the Mississippi culture that had once dominated nearly the entirety of the Eastern Woodlands. Autonomous city-states, homes to thousands of people each, traded with each other over long distances and vied with each other for political dominance via constantly shifting alliances and declarations of war. Compared to areas further north, the fertile lands and mild winters had helped stave off the decline that had largely ended the Mississippi culture amongst the Siouan peoples living in the Midwest. As de Soto and his men wandered the southeast they left behind a trail of violence and abandoned livestock, mostly pigs. However, they also left behind virulent Old World plagues from which the Muskogean people had little to no protection.
It’s hard to say why the spread of disease was so much more common amongst with the de Soto expedition compared to the Coronado expedition in the southwest. It was likely a number of factors. The southeast was much more densely populated and had more extended trade networks, de Soto’s men were largely recruited directly from Spain meaning they likely had variants not seen in the New World before, and just dumb random chance. Whatever the reason, over the next several decades after the de Soto expedition passed through, some 90 percent of the Muskogean people died, many perishing with never having ever met or even seen a European.
It is frightening to think about how quickly Old World diseases such as small pox likely spread amongst the Muskogean. With no immunity whatsoever, it would have devastated countless once prosperous communities. As people sickened and died, it would have become difficult for communities to grow and hunt enough food to feed themselves, leading to famine and starvation. In his quest to find mythical cities of gold, de Soto and his men crisscrossed the entire region, unintentionally setting spot fires of sickness everywhere they went. These spot fires grew into conflagrations, spread first along trade networks and then by refugees attempting to flee from their dying communities. People at the time did not understand disease as we do today, and as a result few if any precautions were taken to slow the spread. However, it was not just a societal collapse, it was as well a cultural collapse. Traditions were passed orally from elders to the younger generation, and as the elders died in huge numbers and people fled, those traditions were lost forever. The plague was so quick and so devastating, that despite the rich resources of the region, many of the other tribes in the surrounding areas dared not try to claim them. Within the region, the survivors intermixed and coalesced into new tribes with new cultures and traditions, becoming the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and several others. Left largely alone by other tribes, they were allowed to re-establish themselves, though scattered in small villages over a wide area once home to millions.
The plague of Old World diseases introduced by de Soto did not stop with the Muskogean. To the west, in the southern Plains, the Chaddo as well maintained the last vestiges of the declining Mississippi culture. It was to their detriment. Though more scattered than the Muskogean due to the more limited resources of the region, limiting the spread of disease to some degree, larger settlements closer to the Mississippi were hard hit. The plague also spread north into the Midwest, home of the Siouan peoples, spread by old trade networks with their southern Muskogean neighbors. By the sixteenth century, the Siouan peoples had largely lost all vestiges of the old Mississippi culture, having devolved into a wide diversity of tribes living in small towns and villages. This provided some relief from the spread of disease, but still more than half of the Siouan of the Midwest were dead by the end of the century. As a result, the spread of the Algonquian peoples westward was accelerated.
Even prior to the outbreak, various Algonquian tribes had been pushing their way westward across the Appalachian Mountains into Siouan territory. This was partly to lay claim to valuable hunting grounds, but also due to many Algonquian tribes themselves being pushed westward by the Iroquois, who were expanding from their traditional homeland around the St. Lawrence River into the regions around the eastern Great Lakes. Neither of these groups had much contact with each other or the Siouan peoples outside of confrontation, so the spread of the plague to them was at first limited, making it easier for them to push the weakened Siouan peoples westward. By the start of the sixteenth century, various Algonquian tribes had taken control over large parts of the Midwest. Though a few Siouan groups, such as the Catawba, remained in eastern areas such as North Carolina, the rest found themselves forced out onto the northern and central plains, where they in turn came into conflict with the Numic and Caddo peoples who already lived in those regions. Unable to easily hunt buffalo, most of the Siouan tried to stay to the more fertile edges of the Plains, founding new farming and hunting communities along the regions various rivers.
Though now firmly in control of the fertile lands of the Midwest, the Algonquian peoples were not without their own challenges. By the end of the century, the Iroquois had managed to firmly establish control over the shores of Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, and eastern Lake Huron, as well as significant areas in what is today New York and Pennsylvania. A group had even managed to make its way south along the western side of the Appalachians, becoming the Cherokee. This effectively split the Algonquian into two distinct groups. One spread along the Atlantic Seaboard from New Brunswick through Virginia, and a second spread across the Midwest to north around the western half of the Great Lakes and up into the colder northern parts of eastern Canada.
It’s difficult to say exactly how many people in the eastern woodlands died during this period, but it was certainly in the millions and a significant enough amount to act as the catalyst for significant widespread changes in the dynamics and interrelations of the tribes living in the region. Things looked very different at the end of the sixteenth century than they had at the beginning. It was only the beginning of many drastic changes that would occur throughout what would become the United States in the coming centuries.
