Are we certain the Vikings didn’t make it here first, or the Asians by the land bridge between Russia and Alaska way way back when.
I’ve also heard rumblings that the Indians had their own plague, but instead of wiping out a third, it wiped out 90%.
It’s argued this is why they were such a formidable foe to the Vikings, but nothing of significance after that. Heck, maybe the Vikings brought it with them...just thinking out loud.
If you really get into this you get the feeling there was quite a civilization going in North America before Plymouth Rock.
Lookup the Solutrean Hypotheis. In a nutshell, it proposes that Solutrean seal hunters had access to North America via the pack ice connecting southern France and New York. It flies in the face of PC conventional wisdom and has thus been met with great scorn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_hypothesis