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Happy T'giving!
Thought for the day: the Europeans introduced the Indians to alcohol and smallpox; the Indians introduced the Europeans to tobacco and syphilis.
The world's first great intercultural exchange, and a harbinger for all future ones....
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Don't forget that syphilis had three hundred or more years to travel to Europe with the Spanish, wander about, and travel back with the French and others.
North American tribes might have found it new to them, but Caribbean and Central American ones I don't believe did.
The "French Disease" referred to gonorrhea, which was in Europe previous to their discovery of the Americas.
You're right, forgot about that.
Given that all of them have ever been of only theoretical interest to me, I don't tend to keep the players sorted out, and not having the program...
Might have a problem, there. Read Merriwether Lewis's journal. They had, in their load-out and purchas3d in Philadelphia, mercury pills to combat "the French disease" among the men of the expedition, and THEY were the ones to spread it up and down the prarie. The poor indians didn't know what hit them - until later . . . . . . much, much later.