Death to the Indigenous

After I read the reading on pages 407-409, I felt that it would be interesting to look into the deaths of the indigenous people of the Americas and how exactly they were killed by disease. When I was researching I came upon many places where they claimed that the Spanish, Europeans and other travelers may have purposely given the indigenous people disease in an attempt to clear the lands. On the other hand, others believe that the settlers would not have known about the diseases because medical information at the time was so thin and useless. What we do know is that the Native Americans were only immunized against the diseases of their lands, but were not with measles, influenza, yellow fever, smallpox, typhus and malaria. And because there was so much of this disease and so little time for their bodies to adapt to these harsh changes the Native Americans might as well have been declared dead the day the settlers arrived. Even in Mexico, the live population decreased from 10 to 20 million to 1 million by 1650. I am truly unsure if this was intended when the settlers arrived, but I'm sure that it was apparent to them that the indigenous people were dying off fast. The fact that the settlers did not take action is just as appalling as the fact that this plan could have been intentional.

I found my information here and here.