Native Americans in the United States reached the West Coast in the 1770s, smallpox rapidly killed at least 30% of Northwest Coast Native Americans. For the next eighty to one hundred years, smallpox and other diseases devastated native populations in the region. Puget Sound area populations, once estimated as high as 37,000 people, were reduced to only 9,000 survivors by the time settlers arrived en masse in the mid-19th century. Smallpox epidemics in 1780–82 and 1837–38 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians. By 1832, the federal government established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans ("The Indian Vaccination Act of 1832"). It was
History of Chinese Americans Americans of American birth may know little or nothing about traditional Chinese culture, just as European Americans and African Americans may know little or nothing about the original cultures of their ancestors. , there are more than 3.3 million Chinese in the United States, about 1% of the total population. The influx continues, where each year ethnic Chinese people from the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and to a lesser extent Southeast Asia move to the United States, surpassing Hispanic and Latino immigration by 2012. The Chinese reached North America during the time of the Spanish colonial rule over the