“Yes. From what I read in old reports, at one time they were ten times more. Maybe thirty thousand. But reports of cholera and smallpox epidemics on the plains started to come in in the fifties. I guess it was when the gold rush wagons went through. Nobody heard about it until about ’fifty-one. ’Fifty or ’fifty-one.”
Terrible pandemic for the Native Americans who had no immunity for these diseases
