Exogenous diseases represent one of the principal agents of culture change associated with the historic period, yet the timing of their initial influence remains undocumented in many regions of North America. Settlement variables, cooking pot volume, and mortality profiles from Oneota tradition occupations are used to investigate the possible occurrence of epidemics in the Upper Mississippi River valley. Synchronous fluctuations in settlement and ceramic variables indicate that following at least two centuries of population growth a significant population decline occurred in the early seventeenth century. Several factors provide support for the role of disease in this decline, including its timing, magnitude, and the documented presence of epidemics in adjacent regions combined with substantial evidence for extensive contact with those areas. This event, prior to direct, sustained contact, is associated with the increased intensity of intergroup exchange occurring with the fur trade. The ability to identify the occurrence of such epidemics is essential for understanding protohistoric cultural dynamics as well as the transmission of disease on a continental level.
A fine-grained spatial and temporal analysis of relevant seventeenth-century French documents reveals that from circa 1650 to 1685 the two terms principally associated with the Ioway, Aiaouez and Paouté, were consistently applied to geographically distinct branches of that tribe. The conflation of these two terms after circa 1700 is the product of both changes in the contact-period cultural landscape and the manner in which it was defined. This conclusion has importance for the use of these accounts as analogues for reconstructing Oneota tradition social organization and highlights the value in applying contemporary theoretical perspectives and analytical techniques to ethnohistoric data.
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