"THE WONDERFUL PLAGUE AMONG THE SAVAGES"

The Black Plague does provide a useful introduction, however. Black (or bubonic) Plague "was undoubtedly the worst disaster that has ever befallen mankind." In three years it killed 30 percent of the population of Europe. Catastrophic as it was, the disease itself comprised only part of the horror. Thinking the day of judgment was imminent, farmers failed to plant crops. Many people gave themselves over to alcohol. Civil and economic disruption may have caused as much death as the disease itself [Image of Black Plague].

For a variety of reasons --- their probable migration through cleansing Alaskan ice fields, better hygiene, no livestock or livestock-borne microbes --- Americans were in Howard Simpson's assessment "a remarkable healthy race" before Columbus. Ironically, their very health now proved their undoing, for they had built up no resistance, genetically or through childhood diseases, to the microbes Europeans and Africans now brought them. In 1617, just before the Pilgrims landed, the process started in southern New England. A plague struck that made the Black Death pale by comparison.

Today we think it was the bubonic plague, although pox and influenza are also candidates. British fishermen had been fishing off Massachusetts for decades before the Pilgrims landed. After filling their hulls with cod, they would set forth on land to get firewood and fresh water and perhaps capture a few Indians to sell into slavery in Europe. On one of these expeditions they probably transmitted the illness to the people they met. Whatever it was, within three years this plague wiped out between 90 percent and 96 percent of the inhabitants of southern New England. The Indian societies lay devastated. Only "the twentieth person is scarce left alive," wrote British eyewitness Robert Cushman, describing a death rate unknown in all previous human experience. Unable to cope with so many corpses, survivors fled to the next tribe, carrying the infestation with them, so that Indians died who had never seen a white person. Simpson tells what the Pilgrims saw:

The summer after the Pilgrims landed, they sent two envoys on a diplomatic mission to treat with Massasoit, [image] a famous chief encamped some 40 miles away at what is now Warren, Rhode Island. The envoys discovered and described a scene of absolute havoc. Villages lay in ruins because there was no one to tend them. The ground was strewn with the skulls and the bones of thousands of Indians who had died and none was left to bury them.

During the next fifteen years, additional epidemics, most of which we know to have been smallpox, struck repeatedly. Europeans caught smallpox and the other maladies, to be sure, but most recovered, including, in a later century, the "heavily pockmarked George Washington." Indians usually died. Therefore, almost as profound as their effect on Indian demographics was the impact of the epidemics on the two cultures, European and Indian. The English Separatists, already seeing their lives as part of a divinely inspired morality play, inferred that they had God on their side. John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony [map], called the plague "miraculous." To a friend in England in 1634, he wrote:

But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the small pox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not fifty, have put themselves under our protect....

Many Indians likewise inferred that their God had abandoned them. Cushman, our British eyewitness, reported that "those that are left, have their courage much abated, and their countenance is dejected, and they seem as a people affrighted." After all, neither they nor the Pilgrims had access to the germ theory of disease. Indian healers offered no cure, their religion no explanation. That of the whites did. Like the Europeans three centuries before them, many Indians surrendered to alcohol or began to listen to Christianity.

Vocabulary:

Befallen- happened to

Catastrophic- extreme disaster

Imminent- about to happen

Hulls- the frame or body of a ship

Transmitted- passed or spread to another

Devastated- destroyed or overwhelmed

Scarce- rare

Infestation- overrun

Envoy- a messenger or representative

Encamped- camped out

Havoc- destruction

Epidemics- outbreaks of disease

Maladies- any disease of the body

Profound- penetrating

Demographics- the average information about a population

Divinely- godlike

Morality- moral conduct

Inferred- concluded by reasoning

Abated- reduced in amount

Countenance- appearance

Dejected- low-spirited

Affrighted- terrified

microbes

Questions:

-What information in the article would you use to support the fact that hundreds of Native Americans were wiped out by disease? (Level 6-Evaluation.) (not bad, but the fact that many native Americans died of disease is not really up for debate)

-What is the relationship between Columbus and the death of hundreds of Native Americans in southern New England? (Level 4-Analysis.) (Great question)

-What did the Pilgrims see when they first landed and what was their reaction (both emotional and physical)? (Level 1-Knowledge.)

 -How would you compare the way the Black Plague spread to the way diseases spread today? (great question!, what level?)

-What were some ways that the Eurepeans stopped the spread of the Black Plague?  (Is this answerable?)

How might things have turned out in the Mass Bay Colony if disease had not killed so many native Americans? (Level III - Application)

Vocabulary

Effectiveness

• Are the definitions understandable? 4 4
• Do the definitions make sense in the context the term is being used? 4 4
• Are the terms and definitions placed in the correct area of the page and are they easy to access?4 4

Choice

• Are all the difficult terms defined?4 4

A = All of the requirements are met and the work is extremely well done.

B = All of the requirements are met and the work is well done.

C = All of the requirements are done and are acceptable or the work is well done but some of the requirements are missing,

D = Some of the requirements are missing and the work  generally needs some improvement.

F = There is not enough work or the work is too poorly done.

Kelsey and Connor

Glossary

Effectiveness 

• Are the glossary pages informative? 3 2
• Are the glossary pages brief and to the point (succinct)? 3 Less than 250 words? 3
• Do the glossary pages help you to understand the main reading?  Do they relate directly to the main text? 3 3
• Are the glossary pages engaging (clear organization, use of media, etc) 3 3

Choice

• Are all the neccessary glossary terms linked to a glossary page?  3 2 (Where's John Winthrop)

If not, please change the text color of those terms that need an explanation to red.

Citations

• Is all information borrowed from other resources properly cited? 4

glossary was clear and organized. good work.

B

B-

A = All of the requirements are met and the work is extremely well done.

B = All of the requirements are met and the work is well done.

C = All of the requirements are done and are acceptable or the work is well done but some of the requirements are missing,

D = Some of the requirements are missing and the work  generally needs some improvement.

Questions

Effectiveness

• Is each question from a different level of Bloom's taxonomy? 3 3 (not Briannas)
• Is each question clearly labeled with the level type?3 2
• Are the questions clear and easy to understand?3 3

Choice

• Do the questions require the reader to understand the most important information in the text?3 3
  

A = All of the requirements are met and the work is extremely well done.

B = All of the requirements are met and the work is well done.

C = All of the requirements are done and are acceptable or the work is well done but some of the requirements are missing,

D = Some of the requirements are missing and the work  generally needs some improvement.

Images

Relevance & Choice

• Do your images relate, in a direct way, to the most important material in the text? 2
• Are their an appropriate number of images?  If too many, then which can we lose?  If too few, then what do we need images of? [bold these in brackets] 2

Effectiveness

• Do your images enhance the text and help the reader come to a deeper understanding of the text? 3
• Are the images placed wisely and sized appropriately?  Do they go with the flow of the text or do they interrupt the flow? 4

Citations

• Is all your information properly cited? Are all images hyperlinked to the URL address of the image? 4

could have added some pictures.

logan

F  C

A = All of the requirements are met and the work is extremely well done.

B = All of the requirements are met and the work is well done.

C = All of the requirements are done and are acceptable or the work is well done but some of the requirements are missing,

D = Some of the requirements are missing and the work  generally needs some improvement.

Overall

A = All of the requirements are met and the work is extremely well done.

A-

B+

B = All of the requirements are met and the work is well done.

B-

C+

C = All of the requirements are done and are acceptable or the work is well done but some of the requirements are missing,

C-

D+

D = Some of the requirements are missing and the work  generally needs some improvement.