Having lived in Florida the past 20 yrs, I'm accustomed to mosquitos being a part of life. My question is how did native Americans that lived here deal with mosquitos being that they didn't have a concept of "indoors", aside from open air living spaces? Did they not care about getting bit or is it known if they had their own way of combating the bugs?
This is an interesting topic. No expert, but my source is Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's autobiographical book Cross Creek, which talks about using a smoky fire to keep mosquitoes away. I know we did the same at beach parties and cookouts in New England.
Perhaps a better historian can address this: in preparing my lecture on the history of sexual norms and coming across information about colonial indentured servants, I read that due to factors such as mosquitoes and malaria (not to mention snakes, bears, panthers, and, I imagine, other criminals), the average life expectancy of an indentured servant in the Gulf region of the southeastern US was roughly two years.
I'll be interested to see what more expert sources have to say.
While I can not answer this question, I believe this thread has information pertaining to what you are asking.
I just happened upon an old post that mentioned it:
Just jumping in to recommend J.R. McNeill's "Mosquito Empires" which explores the disease ecology of the 19th century Caribbean. Really good book.
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