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ABSTRACT This chapter examines the quality of life of African–Americans in the historic West between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The primary data come from two sites: Cedar Grove Cemetery in rural southwest Arkansas, and Freedman's Cemetery, an urban graveyard located in downtown Dallas, Texas. We compare these skeletal series to archival and other demographic data sets and to a smaller composite skeletal series derived from sites in Illinois and the Great Plains. Issues examined include demography, childhood health and nutrition, growth and development, diet, infection, degenerative joint disease, and trauma. Since Freedman's Cemetery has a relatively precise chronology, the changing health of the African–American community in Dallas is emphasized. Key measures of health declined in urban Dallas during much of the late nineteenth century before improving at the turn of the century, a pattern that likely resulted from improvements in public health infrastructure. INTRODUCTION Certainly for many inhabitants of Europe, emigration to the United States seemed a dream given form the American western frontier was a vast land of opportunity containing a wealth of exploitable resources. The essential story was the same from the founding of the American colonies, to the Virginians moving into the Appalachians, and finally on to the land rushes of the western prairies the frontier was where fortunes were to be made and, on a simpler level, where farmland could be obtained with little or no capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it. – ABSTRACT During the nineteenth century, soldiers lucky or clever enough to avoid a bullet endured physical hardships that took a serious toll on their skeletons. The remains of 83 soldiers, spanning the Revolutionary War to the Battle of Little Bighorn, display the effects of these hardships. Conditions such as porotic hyperostosis, vertebral lesions, and dental caries and abscesses appeared at an early age among these soldiers. Low frequencies of chronic infection and moderate-to-severe skeletal deformities indicate that men with these conditions were not allowed to serve. The health index used in this study places the soldiers among the least healthy groups, supporting the conclusion that nineteenth-century military service turned relatively healthy young men into physical wrecks, unless they perished in combat first. INTRODUCTION As human endeavors go, war is particularly unsavory. Health and disease have impacted on the outcome of important battles and military campaigns at least until this century. Sick soldiers do not fight well. Modern interpretations of the life of nineteenth-century soldiers are colored by firsthand accounts and broadly written historical works, usually focused on tactics and battles. Soldiers' diaries and generals' recollections rarely present the effects of military service on the bodies of young men. Certainly, military life was hard during the nineteenth century, but just how did it affect the musculoskeletal system of the soldiers? The skeletons of nineteenth-century soldiers provide unique evidence regarding the physical effects of military life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This chapter describes the data used for the Western Hemisphere project, discusses the format in which the information was coded, and explains the health index, which is a method for measuring and comparing health status using skeletal remains. Skeletal lesions measure primarily chronic health conditions, but they can reflect acute infections to the extent that they affect physical growth, the formation of linear enamel hypoplasias, and other conditions that register on bones. The database contains measurements of seven basic health indicators from12,520 skeletons of people who lived in North, Central, or South America over the past 7 millennia. For purposes of analysis, many of the 218 sites where people lived were combined into 65 sites based on ecological and chronological similarity. The health index adjusts for the age distribution of the population and incorporates the severity of lesions indicating biological stress. The current (Mark I) version of the index gives equal weight to the health indicators, but this assumption and others explained in the chapter could be modified based on additional research. The Mark I health index could also be readily adapted to incorporate length of life. The index rankings reveal considerable diversity in health status, with Native Americans being among the most but also among the least healthy groups who lived in the Western Hemisphere prior to the end of the nineteenth century. Social scientists have devised many approaches to measuring the standard of living. Economists use national income accounts and related measures, such as gross national product per capita, to depict material aspects of the quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human biologists, historians, and other social scientists have expressed enduring interest in the evolution of human health over the past several millennia. The search for knowledge is propelled in part by intellectual curiosity. For the same reasons that explorers of the early twentieth century strove to reach the poles and the highest peaks, and their modern counterparts journey to outer space or deep into the oceans, most humans are inquisitive about their past. They want to understand how they evolved and how they shaped and adapted to their environments. They want to visualize or imagine the contours of the human experience the peaks of adaptive success that led to human growth, expansion, and flowering of civilization, and the valleys of despair in which human presence ebbed and retreated. But more practical considerations also lead the quest for knowledge. Not only a basic ingredient in the quality of life, health is intertwined with demographic, social, economic, and political change and with the outcomes of wars and other conflicts. Length of life and other aspects of health affect work capacity and the incentives to invest in skills that contribute to economic growth. Basic indicators of the standard of living, such as the human development index proposed by the United Nations, have a substantial health component(UNDP, 1990).Historians and political scientists have identified inequality, not only in income or wealth, but also in the form of disparities in health and nutrition, as a driving force in social, political, and economic change. Thus, health has played a central role in human history, both as an agent of change and as an outcome measure indicating the quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]