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 the Chinese Americans in Chicago History of the Chinese Americans in Chicago The Chicago metropolitan area has an ethnic Chinese population. As of 2010, there are 43,228 Chinese Americans who live in Chicago, 1.6% of the city's population. This population includes native-born Chinese as well as immigrants from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, and also racially mixed Chinese. In 1869 the first transcontinental railway was completed. By that time the first Chinese arrived in Chicago. Early immigrants from China to Chicago came from the lower classes and lower middle classes. The earliest immigrants were Cantonese. In 1874 the Chinese managed one tea