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Are there any historical accounts that those living in the Americas encountered a plague or plagues that proved to be as devastating on the population as that of the Bubonic (black) plague in Europe? Specifically I am interested in sickness prior to contact with Europeans.
NOTE: I am not looking for the Black plague to have existed in the Americas but rather any type of sickness that may have had devastating affects on the population(s) throughout the Americas.
The one pandemic disease we know of that has a good chance for having an origin in the Americas is syphilis.
When it first hit Europe in 1494 it spread rapidly and the mortality rate was very high (as is typical with new diseases that hit an immunologically naieve population).
As Jared Diamond describes it, "[W]hen syphilis was first definitely recorded in Europe in 1495, its pustules often covered the body from the head to the knees, caused flesh to fall from people's faces, and led to death within a few months." The disease then was much more lethal than it is today. Diamond concludes,"[B]y 1546, the disease had evolved into the disease with the symptoms so well known to us today."
Given the history of other pandemic diseases, it isn't too much of a stretch to speculate that it would have been even more devestating when it first broke out in the Americas, at least among the more densely settled communities, before both disease and host evolved to live with each other better.
I'm unaware of any archeological proof of this though (skeleton bone studies, etc). Most of the evidence behind the Americas theory of syphilis is currently circumstantial.
You can find the answer to that question in Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel. He states that people get infected by their pets and that all great epidemics (variola, tuberculosis, malaria, plague, influenza ...) evolved from animals. Microbes needs a mass of people to spread around so big societies, living in cities and connected with good trading roads, were is the best place for them. They can't survive in small societies because they kill anyone who isn't resistant and therefore fails to spread. Those who survive develop antibodies. Microbes can't survive in small communities of farmers and hunters.
Because american Indians didn't have antibodies to European diseases so many died - sometimes the whole villages. In this diseases it is also success in Pizarro's and Cortes' success. Some scientist believe that there were 95 % decrease in population in 200 years after Columbus.
The only infectious disease coming from America to Europe was syphilis.
In America there were great civilizations living in big cities: Aztecs, Incas and Indians who lived in Mississippi. But this cities were never connected with trading paths so microbes couldn't spread as they did in Europe and Asia. The main reason for lack of infectious diseases is that there were no animals, living in herds. There were only five domestic animals: a turkey, a lama, a cavy, some bird and a dog - and they were no source of microbes as cows, sheep.
It doesn't mean that there are no infectious diseases, but there are not so many. But epidemics, diseases of masses, can appear only in dense crowd. This started with agriculture 10.000 years ago and increased with building cities. People live close to each other, they also have pets ...
If I sum it up: according to Jared Diamond there were no epidemics in Americas before 1492.
When I was out west a number of years ago, a friend asserted that the disappearance of the "Anasazi" civilization of native Americans could have occurred for any number of reasons, including disease. Unfortunately, I don't think modern scholarship on the subject agrees with his assertion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anasazi
Widespread disease generally requires a lot of people to reside in close proximity (cities). While there is evidence of cities of 20,000 to 30,000 among native Americans, the major population centers of Europe during the Black Plague were likely far larger (over 100,000). I would assume that since there were cities, there was also trade, so disease could have been spread from city to city. I'm not at all familiar with the cities or the culture, so have no idea whether sanitation, animal-keeping, large numbers of rodents or other contributing factors were similar to the European experience.
