Variola, Variola, Variola.

It started with a boat.

Through the waving branches, beyond the icy blue of the great water. Floating on the horizon.

It started with a boat but did not end with a boat.

It ended with a loss and a small bump on my sister’s skin.

We ran to the boat, shouting and yelling, sprinting along the beach. The people on this boat stared down at us, pale faces unmoving. The shadows playing on their skin produced more false emotions than they were ever able to show.

These pale people left their ship and came upon our land. They stepped on the plants and threw their garbage into the rivers. They spoke a funny language, its harsh sounds hurt my ears. Hawk people they were, screeching and loud and insatiably greedy.

Our leader came before the hawk people, bringing them gifts of corn and pretty jewelry. They ate the corn but burned the jewelry in their fires, insisting they were made of nothing important. However, they didn’t know how the fingers of the women hurt after threading so many beads, or how much work was needed to find the colorful clay to make them.

Though we didn’t speak their language, we tried to understand their harshness. They seemed upset. We weren’t what they wanted. Even though we tried to be.

Our people were like the river otter, fluid and warm, heartfelt and friendly. Mice we were, in comparison to them. Their talons reached out, hoping for a good meal even after having stuffed themselves full.

Eventually, we separated from them and they took the space left behind as if it was their right. Even after all our charity, they insisted on having more. We didn’t understand how serious they were until later.

It started with a boat.

Our scouts only saw it after it had docked. We didn’t run alongside it this time because we were no longer allowed on the shore. The hawk people had claimed it as theirs, even though the land is no one’s to claim.

The ones on this ship were different from the others. They carried long sticks of fire, which made loud sounds of fire when they pointed it at something. Our animals fell to them.

The trees were cut for their houses. Or burned, simply to clear up more space for themselves. A dark cloud of smoke circled over their camp at all times, bearing down on us like an evil spirit. Even with all they took, they still wanted more.

The men with their tamed fire threatened us if we could not provide them beautiful things. They spoke about shiny metals, yellow like corn. I wondered what they would do when they found out there wasn’t any of that around here. We made clay beads for a reason.

The further we pulled inland, the more they began to believe they were in charge. They gave up all efforts to make connections with us, and even the shadows fled from their unyielding cold.

I had never known a time of hostility. Every day before they came was a drop of sunlight in my memories, and now most of the days were stained with ash. For the first time in my life, I was truly afraid.

It started with a boat.

This time, we were unaware that their number had increased for many months. These were more of the same, hawk people with thin lips and pale faces. More like the original invaders than the second party. Women, men, and children. Families.

Empty shells of people.

Their hearts were not melted by these additions. It simply made them hungrier, thirstier, cannibalistic.

I grew older through these days, and I felt my own appetite wane in their presence. I hadn’t run on the beach for many years now. Looking through the wavering branches of the trees was avoided because it was believed that more could be coming at any moment. Our fires were never high. We hid in the woods that were once our home.

No longer like the river otter, but running scared like the mouse.

The hawk people began to challenge us, pushing us more and more, turning up their pale noses on their pale faces.

They used their weapons against us, and we had never seen their effects on humans.

Death had never come so fast to our people. Like the smoke cloud hanging over their settlement, death towered over us.

Our people did not like war. Not even with other tribes. We did what we thought was best, and ran.

Even then, the hawk people pursued us across the land. The land that was once ours to live on was now theirs in name and power. They owned it, and would happily own us if we simply stopped running.

In the end, it was the small bump on my sister’s arm that worried me the most.

Disease had come. An onslaught of painful rash and high fever. However, we had gotten through such sickness before.

After all, how bad could this illness be?

-

On the tides of new discoveries, colonizers from Eastern countries came upon the ‘New World’. In their boundless efforts to procure new homes and resources for themselves, 90% of indigenous peoples in South and North America were killed by smallpox, measles, and other diseases. In Mexico alone, about twenty-five million were killed.

It started with a boat.