The epidemic decimated the Cherokee and Catawba peoples, causing the deaths of about half of each tribe's population.
[1] The depopulation after the epidemic caused the Cherokee to abandon many villages, particularly in Georgia along the Chattooga, Tugaloo, and Chattahoochee rivers.
[3][4] The Irish-born historian James Adair claimed that smallpox was introduced by "Guinea-men", enslaved people from West Africa.
Adair claimed that Cherokee people shot themselves, cut their own throats, stabbed themselves with knives or sharp-pointed canes, or burned themselves alive.
[5] The epidemic was so damaging to the Waxhaw people that they abandoned their historic homelands in 1740 that were located in what is now Union County, North Carolina.