Were Native Americans doomed by disease even if Europeans weren't the ones to make first contact?
Let's say Europeans never came over to the America's. Eventually other groups of people would've made their way over to the America's. Would the outcome be the same when it comes to the outbreak of disease and the rates of death?
Practiced in Europe and the Americas, too. It was deliberately withheld from the Native populations.
I think OP meant what if small pox inoculated settlers arrived, would the native americans have stood a better chance?
The settlers who arrived were generally inoculated by the 1700s, I believe. We know Lady Addams arranged for her family to be inoculated, so the practice was definitely present in the colonies.
It may have been a somewhat present in the colonies, but it was nowhere widespread or universal. Smallpox was a devastating disease in the American colonies, some of the most severe outbreaks were in Boston in 1721, 1752, 1764, and 1775. Smallpox impacted the Continental Army so severely during the Revolutionary War, that George Washington mandated inoculation for all Continental soldiers in 1777. If smallpox was still a huge problem when the Revolutionary War happened, then it would be far too late for the Native Americans. Every settler would have to be inoculated before they even cross the Atlantic to give the Native Americans a chance.
