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
Dutch Americans the Netherlands who became an influential Anabaptist religious leader. Simons was a contemporary of the Protestant Reformers and it is from his name that his followers became known as Mennonites. Dutch Americans Dutch Americans are Americans of Dutch descent whose ancestors came from the Netherlands in the recent or distant past. Whether it is intentional, they usually maintain connections with their Dutch heritage, by having, for example, a Dutch surname or belonging to a Dutch community group. Dutch settlement in the Americas started in 1613 with New Amsterdam, which was exchanged with the British for the current Suriname at the