Abstract

The pre-vaccine era of the 19^th and 20^th centuries was a time of repeated infectious disease outbreaks throughout North America. Native populations were especially affected by these outbreaks due to their increasing contact with Europeans. One important source of ethnographic data on the types and amount of contact that occurred between Europeans and Native peoples of North America during the period under study is the daily journals of activities at Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) fur-trade posts maintained by company employees.

Mathematical models have been developed to study the spread of whooping cough, a threatening disease before the advent of vaccines, in two regions of Canada. The models incorporate essential aspects of whooping cough's epidemiology, such as variability of disease transmission throughout the infectious period. Information from the HBC post journals were used to estimate the patterns and rates of travel of the study population in each region. Simulated epidemics of whooping cough are compared for the two regions. Whooping cough is then compared to the 1918–1919 influenza epidemic for one of the regions. Comparisons of whooping cough in two regions with different settlement structures and trade-related travel patterns provide insights into how these factors affected the outcome of epidemics in Native populations at the time of European contact.