historical and scientific perspectives on the health of canada's first ...

the Baron de Lahontan reported that: “The savages are a robust <strong>and</strong> vigorous sort of people, of a
sanguine temperament, <strong>and</strong> an admirable complexion ...unacquainted with a great many
diseases that afflict the Europeans, such as the gout, gravel, <strong>and</strong> dropsy, etc. Their health is firm,
notwithst<strong>and</strong>ing that they use no precaution to preserve it.” 6
Historian George B. Grinnell concluded that the “struggle for existence weeded out the weak <strong>and</strong>
the sickly… <strong>and</strong> created a race physically perfect <strong>and</strong> mentally fitted to cope with the conditions
which they were forced to meet, so long as they were left to themselves.” 7 In his examination of
pre-Columbian life in southwestern North America Hewett affirms that: “In bodily proportions,
colour, gesture, dignity of bearing, the race is incomparable. It was free from our infectious
scourges, tuberculosis, <strong>and</strong> syphilis, <strong>and</strong> the resulting physical deformities <strong>and</strong> mental
degeneracies. It was probably free from leprosy, scrofula, <strong>and</strong> cancer, <strong>and</strong> it is safe to say that
nervous prostration was unknown to the Indian.” 8
William Wood in describing early contact with the original inhabitants of the northeastern
woodl<strong>and</strong>s of North America spoke of them possessing "lusty <strong>and</strong> healthful" bodies which did
not experience “those health wasting diseases which are incident to other countries [such] as
fevers, pleurisies, calentures, agues, obstructions, consumptions…convulsions, apoplexies,
gouts, stones, tooth-aches, measles or the like.” He reported that most of them reached fifty
before a “wrinkled brow or grey hair” betrayed their age <strong>and</strong> that they spun out the thread of
their days to fair length, numbering threescore, fourscore, some a hundred years. 9
John Ross’s 1830 encounter with the Inuit in the far
north was typical of the many early contact reports on
North American Indians. He speaks of this people as
“occupying so apparently hopeless a country, so
barren, so wild, <strong>and</strong> so repulsive; <strong>and</strong> yet enjoying
the most perfect vigour [<strong>and</strong>] the most well-fed
health.” 10
Paleopathologist Ales Hrdlicka comments that:
Inuit Man - Canadian Arctic
The skeletal remains of unquestionably pre-Columbian date are, barring few
exceptions, remarkably free from disease. Whole important scourges were wholly
unknown. There was no pathologic microcephaly, no hydrocephaly. There was no
plague, cholera, typhus, smallpox or measles. Cancer was rare, <strong>and</strong> even
fractures were infrequent. There was no lepra [leprosy]… there is as yet no a
single instance of… pre-Columbian syphilis. There were, apparently no nevi [skin
tumors]… no troubles with the feet, such as fallen arches. And judging by later
acquired knowledge, there was a much greater scarcity than in the white
population of many diseases of the skin, of most mental disorders, <strong>and</strong> of other
serious conditions. 11
Writing in the late 1800s Daniel Brinton refers to the advanced physical condition of the Iroquois
people in which he says “They were unsurpassed by any on the continent, <strong>and</strong> I may say be any
in the world.” 12 This is corroborated by Grinnell who notes that out of the several hundred
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