Early European settlers swapped manufactured goods for pelts with natives across North America.LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
When European explorers and fishermen began to frequent Canada’s shores in the 16th century, they brought with them a plethora of tools and trinkets, including knives, axes, kettles, and blankets. The region’s indigenous people traded the Europeans for these items, swapping the one thing they had in abundance—animal pelts. The furs quickly became popular in Europe, and by the early 17th century, the French had established permanent posts in North America to facilitate trade. Little did the natives know that in addition to receiving metal and material goods for their furs, they were also acquiring a strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB).
The first time Stanford University infectious disease specialist Caitlin Pepperell saw the DNA fingerprints of a sampling of tuberculosis ...
