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Contact: Disease

Kalispel Village on Pend Oreille River.  Teakle Collection, Northwest Room, Spokane Public Library.

   Although the Kalispel remained largely isolated from white settlements until the 1860s, they felt the impact of white incursion -- by way of disease -- as early as 1760.  While it is impossible to know with certainty the impact of disease on Indians of the interior Northwest, ethnographer James Teit estimated that between one-third and one-half of all Plateau people died as a result of disease in the early 1780s.

   The effects of early epidemics would subside but disease would continue to torment the Kalispel into the mid-twentieth century.   A shrinking land base and resulting poverty directly affected the health of the Kalispel who disproportionately suffered from tuberculosis, influenza, and diabetes.