Age of discovery

I did say settlement or other prolonged contact

It's the prolonged/repeated contact that's what I was pointing out, and in cases like Pardo (created a settlement, went on a two-years inland journey) and De Soto (five-years inland journey) are certainly textook case of "prolonged contact".

They cannot in an intellectually honest argument be compared to Columbus landing, being around a particular region for a brief visit, then moving on with his ships to another region, which was the nature of early coastal exploration.

I'm not aware of any similar prolonged efforts prior to settlement in South America (and Settlement was a mere twenty years after Columbus), so thats why I used those dates.
 
Spanish presence was not necessary to spread diseases in a given area. Natives from a given area could be infected by natives from another area, who had been previously infected by yet another group of natives, etc. Only the first original infection had to be contracted from European explorers.

Of course it all depends on many factors, like population density, mobility of native societies, intensity of contacts between them.

In North America European westward inland expansion from the eastern coast triggered major migrations of a domino effect nature. Tribes displaced from their homelands by European attacks, migrated west and displaced other tribes from their homelands, who then also migrated west, etc.

E.g. ancestors of the famous Sioux had likely lived in northern Florida by the time when Columbus discovered America. 150 years later, in 1640 - when they were first recorded - they resided in what is now Illinois - Wisconsin. Around 1750 they were forced to emigrate further west to the Great Plains.

Other migrations were caused by the spread of wild horses and domestication of those horses by various tribes, who adopted new lifestyle.
 
Amazingly enough, I know that.

I am not arguing that the Spanish needed to go door to door infecting every freaking tribes one by one. I have at no point argued that. And I'm frankly a little insulsted that people think I'm arguing that.

I'm arguing that, due to the distances and obstacles involved, it's fairly unlikely that european plagues spread on the continent before there was a significant european presence on the continent (eg, prolonged/repeated contact with tribes on the continent). Historical evidence seem to support this: the major plagues on record all swept in *after* European became significantly involved in a region, not the moment an European looked at a region. They spread to other, neighboring regions afterward, yes, but it began with significant contact in a given region.

Neither significant European presence in the Carribeans (much more limited contacts between them and the mainland), nor very brief contact with the continent (Columbus and others making landing) was particularly likely to trigger major continental epidemics. Contagion need time tow ork its "magic", it,s not some kind of Plague Tag where if you see one European or someone who's seen an European you are automatically infected.

But the more time they would have spent together, the more likely contagion to occur.
 
Neither significant European presence in the Carribeans (much more limited contacts between them and the mainland)

What about the Aravaks, who lived both in the mainland and in islands? Insular Aravaks surely had some contact with those in the mainland.

Coastal tribes of the eastern coast of South America and those residing in the Greater Antilles were were decimated or disappeared very early on.

===================================

"Among the major Caribbean islands, the native Taino Indians were almost extinct by 1550."

===================================

Smallpox first reached the New World no later than in December of 1518 (maybe earlier, but there is little evidence for this).

1518 seems quite late, but this can be easily explained:

(...) Crosby has argued that smallpox reached Hispaniola so late (in 1518) because the course of the illness - from initial infection to its elimination from the body, leaving a surviving patient immune—takes a month or less, while “the voyage was one of several weeks so that even if an immigrant or sailor contracted smallpox on the day of embarkation, he would most likely be dead or rid of the virus before he arrived in Santo Domingo" (Crosby 1972: 46). Crosby’s observation is fundamental and can be carried further. In the case of smallpox, the latent period of infection is 12 to 14 days (during this incubation period the individual is not contagious), after which the individual is infectious (the virus can be transmitted to another person) for about ten days, following which a surviving person is immune for life (Anderson and May 1979, I: 365). So, a total of 22 to 24 days elapses between the day in which the virus penetrates the body and the day in which infectiousness gives way to life-long immunity. For measles, another lethal pathogen for the Indios, the latent period is 9–12 days and infectiousness lasts 5–7 days; 14–19 days after contracting the virus, the individual is also immune for life. Sea traffic between Spain and Hispaniola was officially registered starting in 1506; 204 ships departed from Seville and other ports of the region directed to Hispaniola in the period 1506–18 (16 per year on average), with a minimum of six in 1518 and a maximum of 31 in 1508 (Chaunu and Chaunu 1956, VI, 2: 496). Given their modest tonnage, we can assume that the average ship could carry about 45 persons, between crew (30) and passengers (15) (Mörner 1975). Assuming that all of them went ashore, more than 9,000 persons set foot on the island between 1506 and 1518 of the above-mentioned smallpox” (...)

So it is not really the case that many people have to come for a disease to spread.

It depends not on the number of immigrants but on the time of travel.

Once a virus was already established in the New World, without having to survive a long transatlantic travel, it could spread freely.

In other words - the spreading of diseases from Spain to Hispaniola was much harder than from Hispaniola to mainland Americas.
 
First, I'm not sure they actually had much if any significant mainland-insular contacts. The Caribs were in the way and they weren't on Good Terms

Second, the Arawak identity you are talking about is mostly a language family. They spoke related languages ; that doesn't mean they viewed each other as friends or even had much contact with each other. The Shoshone of the US north-west spoke a language related to that of the Aztecs (Uto-Aztecan), that doesn,t mean they had contacts with one another, at least not on a frequent basis. The fact that the Lucayans and other Taino of the Carribeans spoke a language related to that of the Arawak and Lokono of the mainland is not indicative of frequent contact.

Third, there's a question of how much contact there really was. Irregular trading in small canoe does allow plague to spread, true, but it doesn't guarantee plagues will spread. What are the specific odds of a specific trade canoe carrying the plague to the next island? What are the odds, if hispaniola has the plague, that it will spread to Puerto Rico, from there to the Virgins, and so forth? I don't have those numbers, but even assuming, say, 90% odds, the odds of the plague making it through each of the island in the lesser Antilles all the way to the mianland start looking pretty low. That doesn't mean a plague wouldn't spread across the entire island chain, but it does mean it would have a harder tiem doing so, and it would take more time to do so.

Like I said, the contacts between the mainland and the carribeans were limited. Not inexistant, just limited, and limited is enough to slow down and stall the spread of a plague.
 
It took smallpox 25 years to get from Europe to Hispaniola, but just 1 - 2 years to get from there to Mexico.

First epidemics of smallpox hit Hispaniola in December 1518 and Mexico in 1520.

Then it took smallpox around 4 to 8 more years to get to the Incan Empire (in 1525 to 1527).

and limited is enough to slow down and stall the spread of a plague.

I'm not sure - the first plague in the Aztec Empire in 1520 probably started from one person.

Number of Spaniards in Mexico in 1520 was several hundred and it is said that only one carried the virus.
 
Yeah, but the Spaniards *were already in Mexico* when it happened. Again, that's not transmission from natives to natives going from Hispaniola to Mexico: it's transmission from Spaniards in Mexico to natives in Mexicco.

Once in a crowded urban region like Mexico, of course it spread quickly - densely populated regions do that.

But it doesn't follow from that that it spread form Hispaniola to South America. Nor does it follow that the plague that hit the Incans was the same one that hit the Aztec, having been transmitted up and down Central America, considering that there was (by 1510) a permanent Spanish presence in Panama with their own group of conquistador, much more likely to create a second foyer of infection.

And really, you'r ekind of making my point aout limited contacts there: for transmission of the disease to occur, the sick (or their belongings, if I recall) have to travel. There's no two way around it. You can have as many people go from island A (which has the disease) to island B; if none of them is sick and they don'T carry the belongings of the sick, no one is getting sick on island B. Yes, if one of them does, then it's likely the disease spread...but then again, how likely were the natives to just put sick people on the boat? It's not like the Spaniards who had immunity and would carry the disease without knowing they had it (or while only thinking of it as a small thing). When you're going out on a boat trading mission that might take days or weeks, you don't tend to take people who are on their deathbed with you.

Yes, it only takes one, but there's a selection effect/bias against that "only one" being on the boat in the first place.

In short: it was possible for it to happen. Just not very likely. And, again, if it did happen, where are the records of it? We know when the plague hit the Aztec - 15 years after th efounding of Panama, 5 years after the conquest of Mexico. We know when the plague hit the Aztec - during the conquest of Mexico. We know when the plague hit New England - after Quebec City, Jamestown and Port Royal had been founded.

The great dying time, by and large, were after large group of explorers came to stay. That's what history tells us.
 
Amazingly enough, I know that.

I am not arguing that the Spanish needed to go door to door infecting every freaking tribes one by one. I have at no point argued that. And I'm frankly a little insulsted that people think I'm arguing that.

I'm arguing that, due to the distances and obstacles involved, it's fairly unlikely that european plagues spread on the continent before there was a significant european presence on the continent (eg, prolonged/repeated contact with tribes on the continent). Historical evidence seem to support this: the major plagues on record all swept in *after* European became significantly involved in a region, not the moment an European looked at a region. They spread to other, neighboring regions afterward, yes, but it began with significant contact in a given region.

Neither significant European presence in the Carribeans (much more limited contacts between them and the mainland), nor very brief contact with the continent (Columbus and others making landing) was particularly likely to trigger major continental epidemics. Contagion need time tow ork its "magic", it,s not some kind of Plague Tag where if you see one European or someone who's seen an European you are automatically infected.

But the more time they would have spent together, the more likely contagion to occur.

Only North America was severely depopulated prior to major European settlement, signaling that the diseases spread fairly quickly and brutally without a heavy European presence to go from. East of the Mississippi was a wasteland long before colonists started showing up. We're talking 80%+ of populations eradicated without so much as seeing a white man. Most of this happened 30-50 years before major colonial attempts were made in the north.
 
For crying out loud, did you even read my posts?

I already said, in so many words, that by significant contact I meant a prolonged (months, years) or repeated (several visits in a short time span) present, not necessarily settlement.

I specifically pointed to de Soto as an example of significant presence. Which would be BEFORE the plagues that devastated North America.

You're arguing against something I'm not even saying.
 
Pigs, man. Pigs.

No, but seriously. You're underestimating the ecological impact that a very minimal European presence had. Animals carried diseases into the interior of the continent; plants overgrew native fields and forests. Most of all, smallpox spread like wildfire, and pretty much every, say, English journal, noted how the place was empty. Before a significant English presence in New England, there had been smallpox. Plymouth was built on an Indian village site, and fed with Indian grave corn. The first Spanish journal of travel down the Amazon noted massive villages of people, which kept the Spaniards at a distance with arrows and such -- no prolonged contact. The second one noted empty villages. De Soto was not a sustained interaction, but he brought pigs, who just multiplied. A lot.

Pigs, for the record, are a major disease reservoir.

There's substantial evidence that the collapse of the post-Cahokian Mississippian civilization was due to European diseases, long before any Europeans went into the Ohio or Upper Mississippi area. The enormous expansion of the buffalo herds, which coincided with massive Native population decline, happened well before Europeans set foot on the Great Plains. The massive smallpox epidemic of 1780 far outstripped European settlement. Where Europeans were honestly huddled in their homes against an overwhelming imperial Comanche presence, the smallpox ripped through not only the Smallpox, but the Pawnee and Utes beyond them, the Lakota and Blackfeet beyond them, and the Nez Perce beyond them. Smallpox rode with Native traders on horseback.

There's a reason the first European explorer to the Puget Sound region wrote the sobering words: "Our eyes were appalled with horror."

It's because the villages were empty before they set foot on the shore.
 
Nice strawman you're arguing with.

I don't know if I'm being unclear here, or if you guys are just so dead-set in arguing with me that you ignore 3/4 of what I say to focus on the occcasional comment you can bend into a strawman to attack, but here goes again, in case somebody might finally figure it out:

Things I have never actually said (but that people keep arguing against)
-That the plague only spread to regions of European contacts.

I KNOW it spread beyond regions of European contact. Can you kindly stop assuming I'm a moron, please? I KNOW it spread beyond the point of contact, that's basic freaking history. The questions are WHERE they spread from, HOW FAR they spread from there and HOW FAST they spread to those other locations.

-That the plague only spread from cities.
Significant presence is not a city or colony. I was very explicit a few times already on that. Any kind of lasting (months and years) or repeated (routine visits) presence is significant.

Things I have actually said
-That I find it far more likely that the epidemics started spreading from one (or more) point of significant contact, as opposed to beginning from brief encounters. Not impossible, just far more likely.

As in, I think it's more likely that large group of people - de Soto, Cortez, Balboa, the founding of Panama) and groups of people coming frequently to the continent (fishermen in the North-East who traded for furs) coming to the continent were the ones who started the major epidemics; rather than small group having only brief contacts.

Repeating again, for clarity: Significant presence = what I described in the above paragraph. It does not require a colony. Not a city, not heavy colonization. Just a bit more than "Columbus dropping by, taking possession of the land and sailing to the next stop a few days up the coast."

-That I find it far more likely that there were more than one point of significant contact from which the epidemics started, as opposed to just the one ground zero.

As in, while diseases certainly spread, it strikes me as more likely that there were multiple point and times of introduction, which better fit the time and spread of the disease (eg, the spread of the disease in South America which seems to me more easily explainable with the 1519 founding of Panama city by a large group of spaniards, than by the present several thousand miles further north of Cortes.

Likewise, it seems more likely that the great epidemics of the early XVIIth century in New England were the result of the significant (and recent) increase in activity in that region and its surroundings (Jamestown, Port Royal, Quebec City, increased fishermen and fur traders presence), as opposed to being a sudden reappearance of the specific instance introduced in Mexico in 1520.

-That, in the specific case of continental America, serious Spanish continental presence, to the best of my knowledge, began with the settlement efforts and exploration around Panama as far as I know, though my knowledge is imperfect here.

Again, that's a specific case. It does NOT follow from this that ALL significant presence began with settlement (see: North America). It's how the general theory applies to this one specific case.

(This was all in the context of Louis XXIV asking me why I considered the plagues in South America more likely to have begun around 1510-1520 than in 1492)
 
sigh

Dude, I just got here, so forgive me if I sound a little uninformed as to the thrust of your argument. But, "Historical evidence seem to support this: the major plagues on record all swept in *after* European became significantly involved in a region," is simply wrong. Maybe if you limited it to the continent, rather than the region, but by this point we're just moving the goal-posts to make the argument work. Europeans were not significantly involved in North America -- at least, not north of the Rio Grande, and not any definition of significantly that I'd use -- before roughly 1650 or so.

The fact is that disease can spread far beyond the reach of European traders, and it likely did -- perhaps hitting most of the interior of North America even before De Soto, but definitely after him, and waaaaaaaaaaaay beyond where he went.

EDIT: though you clarified after I posted this, so ho hum. Mostly fine, but I still take serious issue with the way you're phrasing it. Obviously there's more than one point of contact, but the plagues spread far faster and much further than you seem to give them credit for: the Beni and Amazonian peoples were probably wiped out by the same plagues that hit the Inca, for example, and neither society even comes up when you look at Inca records.
 
Nice strawman you're arguing with.

I think it is apparent at this point that you have no idea about the spread of disease among Native populations, or truly the scale of Native trade, density, mobility, etc. that factored into the spread of disease. The Americas are massive and Europeans didn't explore some of these locations for centuries after first arrival. To cling to the prolonged contact with Native groups measure is foolish when you consider some peoples were destroyed by disease several decades before a European so much as walked into their geographic vicinity. By the time Quebec City or Jamestown were founded the local peoples were long affected and ruined by disease and the aftermath in conflict and scarcity produced by it. To ignore population decline on such a massive scale pre-European settlement and exploration of regions is to ignore modern Native scholarship.

EDIT: People died in New England prior to major settlement. People were dying thousands of miles away from initial zones of contact.
 
North King ; I was using region in a very broad sense, yes, and you're likely right that continent would have been better. Apologies for that. Apologies also for snapping at you ; this has been a trying thread, thanks to (presmably) that misunderstanding.

I resent the implication that I've been moving the goalposts. Perhaps I wasn't clear at first, but this has been one long series of people jumping at me over what was initially a clarification of my position on a specific question by Louis XXIV (why I considered 1510 more likely than 1492 as a starting point for the spread of epidemics in south america). It's been far less than enjoyable, and frankly makes me miss the old history forum, which was a great deal more relaxed.

Luckymoose, please read my clarification (and take into account the above about continent/region). I'm well aware of the point you bring up, and accutely aware of how many natives died in teh XVth-XIXth century. I'm very well aware that there were extensive trade links across North America; I'm well aware of the extent and degree of advancement of the civilizations of pre-Columbian North America.

It's clear there was a massive amount of dying across the continent from introduced disease (not to mention enslavement and deliberate depredations), and clear that those disease raced ahead of the explorers. I have NEVER ONCE argued otherwise, except perhaps in my inadvertent use of the term region, for which I again apologize.
 
To elaborate a bit further on the last point I made (to people who might be confused; I'm not saying you don't know this, Oda :p): modern archaeology has unearthed some truly massive settlements in the Beni region of Bolivia, and the Amazon basin of Brazil. These were gutted around the time of the first smallpox epidemic, though no Spaniard writes of contact with either one -- there was a Spanish expedition down the Amazon, but it largely avoided contacting the Native peoples for a variety of reasons, though most of them were arrows to the face. With some of the biggest cities reaching somewhere in the range of 50,000 people in the Amazon, the destruction occurred without a single European actually talking to the people, which implies it happened either as a result of transmission to very minor peripheral tribes (which is unlikely, seeing as the European contact there was completely incidental), or it happened as a consequence of the large-scale epidemic on the western part of the continent. As for the Beni, Europeans were utterly unfamiliar with their existence until the late twentieth century, as were, in fact, the Inca. Only a long chain of transmission could have made that happen.

That's why I think dismissing the scale of pandemics is a really, really uncomfortable proposition for me.
 
That, I can agree with. There's no word for what happened at that time, for the scale or scope of it. There's certainly a fair case to be made that there was no greater tragedy at any time in human history, likely none even on teh same order of magnitude.

I'll argue the technicalities of how exactly the event unfolded, but never whether or not it did, or what effect it had (Well, I'll argue against people who say it didn't happen). It's unquestionable that in the decades and centuries following European arrivals, there were a series (a weak word) of epidemics, often racing ahead of the Europeans, that caused enormous loss of life to the population of the New World, drove several people to extinction or near-extinction, and caused or hastened the collapse of several civilizations, many of which we still know little or nothing about.

So yeah, if anyone thoguht I was questioning that, I'm again sorry for the misunderstanding. I know native history, it's kind of one of my main field of interests (though more focused north of the Rio Grande, and post-1600, but still, one has to understand the Columbian exchange and its impact to understand the situation of the Natives in 1600 onward), and I'm well aware of all that.

There's ONE thing about the epidemics emphasis that doesn't sit well with me, and it's the tendency to represent the post-contact natives as a handful of survivors in the ruins, so to speak. This notion that "Oh, the Americas in 1491 were full of grand civilizations, but they all collapsed during the plagues that killed nearly everyone leaving a lot of the land empty for settlers" can and does come off as dismissive of the post-contact Native groups and peoples. And they, too, were noteworthy civilizations, with their own organization, their own methods of governing, their own culture, their own art form...and many of them still exist, and still carry on those cultures. The "White men wiped out the natives" narrative tend to be extremely reductive toward these groups (and serves in a roundabout way as a way to "deal" with guilt about what was done to them without actually addressing their present conditions, which may well be the most important issue - not the past epidemics, not the past slaughter and theft of land, but the present status of the Native people).

I know that nobody here is doing that, but it's also something worht considering about overemphasizing the epidemics and collapse at the expanse of the people who came after.
 
how likely were the natives to just put sick people on the boat

It could be spreading from village to village and from city to city as well.

Hang on, Orellana is who we have circumstantial evidence of a (largely) densely-populated Amazonia from. If his accounts are accurate then pestilence wouldn't have hit before the 1540s. The next major expeditions were Portuguese ones undertaken almost a century later, and their accounts still spoke of substantial agricultural Indian populations. Between Orellana and the Portuguese expeditions there's enough time for epidemics to sweep through, breaking down the larger polities, if they existed.

Edit: x-post with tokala

95% mortality in a single, first plague was not the case. 60% is closer to reality. So the fact that when Orellana travelled there were still many people left doesn't mean that there had been no smallpox there before. What killed the natives was not one plague but multiple ones (for example epidemies of smallpox could occur every 15 - 25 years or so - of course each subsequent plague was much less devastating than previous ones due to increasing immunity). And later, after smallpox, came measles and other diseases. That said, 60% population decline in the first hit of the virus is enough to destroy a civilization.
 
Amazingly enough, I know that.

I am not arguing that the Spanish needed to go door to door infecting every freaking tribes one by one. I have at no point argued that. And I'm frankly a little insulsted that people think I'm arguing that.

I'm arguing that, due to the distances and obstacles involved, it's fairly unlikely that european plagues spread on the continent before there was a significant european presence on the continent (eg, prolonged/repeated contact with tribes on the continent). Historical evidence seem to support this: the major plagues on record all swept in *after* European became significantly involved in a region, not the moment an European looked at a region. They spread to other, neighboring regions afterward, yes, but it began with significant contact in a given region.

Neither significant European presence in the Carribeans (much more limited contacts between them and the mainland), nor very brief contact with the continent (Columbus and others making landing) was particularly likely to trigger major continental epidemics. Contagion need time tow ork its "magic", it,s not some kind of Plague Tag where if you see one European or someone who's seen an European you are automatically infected.

But the more time they would have spent together, the more likely contagion to occur.


I don't know that that is true. In the New England region of the US, where the Pilgrims set up camp, there hadn't previously been a European settlement, because the Indians wouldn't permit it. When the Pilgrims showed up, they found the native villages abandoned and most of the population dead.
 
Yes, but before the Pilgrims set up camp, Europeans have been significantly involved in the region for more than half a century at least. As Oda already pointed out (several times) earlier.
 
Top Bottom