5. Epidemics Devastated Indigenous Populations
Contact with Europeans introduced diseases like smallpox and tuberculosis to Greenland, leading to significant mortality among the Inuit in the 18th and 19th centuries. These epidemics dramatically reduced population numbers for generations. The whalers arrived in the Far North in the nineteenth century and had a big impact on the Inuit. This was particularly the case with the American whalers, who stayed for two or three years at a time until their ships were full of oil and baleen. The Inuit crewed on their boats and learned a lot that was useful to them, but the whales and other animals on which the Inuit depended were overkilled and became very scarce. Moreover, the whalers brought tuberculosis and other diseases, against which the Inuit had developed no immunity, so the effect of their presence was devastating (jstor.org).
