Smallpox Effects On American Soldiers

Firstly, Thomas Hariot, an astronomical and cartographic educated man, traveled to Virginia to see the effects of the disease on the native people. He later noted that many native towns became ghost towns, and Hariot noted that only the natives caught the disease, not the Europeans (Document 13). The disease that the natives caught was not the Europeans fault, but it was later known that the Europeans exposed the natives of it. The devastating disease however did make the natives suffer because there was no doctors to treat it and many people were scared of it, so if somebody caught it, they pretty much just laid in misery until it killed them. Secondly, Toribio de Motolinía, one of the first Franciscan missionaries to Mexico, wrote in 1540 about the smallpox epidemic which seized the lives of many natives. He wrote, “They died in heaps, like bedbugs….Many others died of starvation, because since they were all taken sick at once, they could not care for eachother (Document 7).” This proves that the natives suffered with disease because they had no treatment, and the quick epidemic swept the floor on them. Finally, the last ruler of the Guatemalan Maya Cakchiquels, named Hernández Arana wrote in his book, during the 1600th century. He wrote about how terrible is was to see the number dying

The Spanish Conquest of Mexico and the Aztec people started when Hernán Cortés led the Spanish conquistadors to Tenochtitlán and conquered the Aztec Empire in 1519. The Spaniards had gunpowder, dogs, horses, and armor that would help fight against the Azteca. The Native Americans wanted to only wound their enemies with their woodened clubs tipped and sharp obsidian that was powerful enough to smash the Spaniard’s helmets. The use of the double-bladed swords helped the Spaniards fight close combat with the Indians. As soon as their chief died the Azteca would back down. Not only did the weapons cause a huge impact on the Aztec but also the spread of diseases such as smallpox that were carried by the Europeans affected the population. After conquering the Indians, the intensions of the Spanish in Mexico was to spread their beliefs about Christianity, find gold and use them as slaves. In drastic ways the Spaniards changed the native communities, for instance plagues spread throughout the whole country side after the defeat of Tenochtitlán. Smallpox, measles, and influenza were the outbreaks that hit urban cities the hardest. In 1520-1521 an outbreak of smallpox caused thousands to die because Azteca medicine was not affective against these diseases. The second outbreak occurred in 1531 and it was smallpox again but combined with measles and the third wave of the disease lasted from 1576 to 1581 killing 300,000 to 400,000 of the Aztec population. The Native Americans did not

Technological advancement greatly favored the Spanish. As mentioned before, the Spaniards where fighting to kill, so on all fronts they where better equipped. They came in on well-built ships, equipped with cannons. They carried iron swords and shields rather than spears and wooden shields of the Aztecs.

The Spanish were conquering the Americas in a really violent and brutal way. The Spanish were taking Native Americans’ lands and pushing them to the west.

These epidemics occurred in areas with extensive Spanish contact and slaving networks (pg. 14). Reséndez credits the conquest of the native tibes and the Indian slave trade with the depopulation of the Caribbean and the introduction of European diseases to the New World (Reséndez, conversation in HIST 900, 2017). The Spanish were the devastation that all but wiped out the native populations in the Caribbean and along the Caribbean costs of North America. They were the epidemic that depopulated the New World.

Much of this destruction was not caused by cruel Europeans but by diseases. The natives were struck with diseases such as smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, and influenza as shown in http://www.youmeworks.com /why_native_americans.html. They were susceptible to these diseases because they had never been exposed to such diseases, so in result had no immune system against them, as stated in http://www.youmeworks.com/why_native_americans.html. In Document 7, it describes in more detail the effects of smallpox on the population of Tenochtitlan. It was horrendous how much this disease impacted these people. It was hard for them to even turn over in their own bed, to which they were confined, being too weak to do anything

One of things that was brought to Mexico during the Colombian Exchange, although unintentonally, was disease. The Spanish brought diseases such as smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, and mumps. These were diseases that the natives had not been exposed to, so they had no immunity to them. Even though the Spanish did have much more advanced weaponry than the natives, it was the diseases that wiped out most of the native population. It is believed that within a century of the arrival of the Spanish, the population of the Aztecs decreased by 80-95%, going from 12.5M to roughly about 1.5M in population (History of Disease). The Spanish shared the same fate, but not as severe, many died from syphillis. A disease that was much more dangerous during that time than it is today. (Columbian Exchange)

The diseases the Europeans brought with them affected the indigenous negatively because it killed a large portion of the population in a painful way. The Natives had very little diseases before the Europeans invaded their land. Unlike people in the Old World, the Natives did not farm cattle or pigs and did not live near the animals they did have. They never had the opportunity to develop immunities to diseases that the cattle and Europeans carried when they came upon their shores. The diseases spread quickly and attacked the indigenous in gruesome ways. Smallpox caused sores to erupt on their skins that were so painful that an Aztec account states that “[the sick] could only lie on their beds like corpses” (Document 4). The pain would not

Inside any atrocious act committed by a group of people onto another for the sake of greed there’s a message they must spread to justify their actions, for the Spanish onto the Aztec it was ridding the world of heretics worshiping Gods of blood. The Aztec and Inca Empires fell with relative ease to the Spaniards due to a variety of contributing factors. Hesitate action from leadership may have played a role at least for the Aztecs as according to Hernan Cortez; Moctezuma believed that he possibly was a God. Superior weaponry such as steel based weapons/armor played a significant role, as both the Inca and Aztec empires still relied on weapons made from stone and wood. European diseases like small pox also played a heavy hand in the decimation of the native population, as the natives had no immunities to such ailments. The Spanish who arrived with very few men to fight also utilized subject people to fight on their side due primarily to the irritation of the Native Empires long dominance of them. This was mainly utilized in the Aztec Empire’s conquest as they had long sacrificed large portions of their subjects to their Gods in order to appease them. Along with sacrifices, the Aztec required large payments of goods & labor from their subjects further creating tensions.

They brought diseases around the world. Such as mumps, measles, whooping cough, yellow fever, cholera, and smallpox. Miguel León-Portilla’s writing clarifies the pain people were receiving from these diseases. (Doc #5) This document states, “A great many died from this plague and many other died of hunger.” Nobody was there for each other because everyone was sick. As a result, many starved in their beds and died. Furthermore, when smallpox hit the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo, in 1519, it killed half of the native

Ann Becker the author of the article “Smallpox in Washington's Army: Strategic Implications of the Disease During the American Revolutionary War,” discusses in her article of the disease Small Pox affected the how the militaries powers while they fought during the American Revolutionary War. Becker explains how during the war nearly took out a large population of the American military because so many soldiers were impacted by the disease. This then affected how the fought during war. Becker states that the virus was extremely deadly and contagious; she stated “It was the most deforming and lethal of the plague-like epidemics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” The soldiers who suffered through this disease, rarely got over it, and

As stated in Document 5, “It wasn’t the swords or guns that devastated (destroyed) the Native Americans, it was the germs… Brion Davis says this was the greatest genocide in the history of man.” (Document 5). . An estimated 50 to 90 percent of Native Americans died from European diseases. Europeans nearly killed an entire population by coming to America. These diseases included smallpox, influenza and malaria (Document 2).

Before Europeans arrived in "America" there were about one to two million Indians. Then, by the 1800 's there were about two hundred and fifty thousand Native Americans left. Ten percent of the population died from torture, violence, slavery, and relocation. The first recorded contact with the Europeans that the Choctaw Tribe encountered was Hernando De Soto 's Expedition in the 1540 's. Hernando was supposed to conquer Florida but failed terribly. As De Soto 's brutalities became known, the Choctaw Tribe greeted him and his army with a great celebration and later attacked them. The Choctaw Tribe gave De Soto and his troops about six hundred and forty-four arrow wounds wherever armor didn’t protect them. The Chickasaws later trapped De Soto and his army in a fire so hot that the Spaniards had to build up a forge and fix the steel in their swords. Europeans had more

During the Revolutionary War, one of the main fears were not the enemies bullets, but fear of disease. One of the major viruses that people had to fear was smallpox. The continental army had more to fear than the British in the fact that British had been immunized, and the continental army had not. This was only the beginning of the problems from the smallpox epidemic that broke out in America.

The first technological advantage held by the Spanish was the use of steel weapons which proved far more capable than the indigenous weaponry. The Spanish were equipped with steel swords, lances and other weapons. These weapons provided the Spanish with a tool that was both faster than the indigenous weapons and more capable of cutting through cloth armors. This gave the Spanish the ability to quickly and easily kill the indigenous warriors. On the other hand, the primary weaponry used by the indigenous peoples were arrows, two-handed swords with stone edges, lances and thrown stones. These weapons were both slower than the Spanish weapons and were much less effective at cutting into the Spaniards despite the fact that the Spanish wore similar armor to the indigenous warriors. This advantage was both known and fully utilized by Cortes, who attempted to further increase the defenses of his men by ordering his men to pay particular attention to wearing effective armor on the head, neck and legs which had proven to be weak points in the Spanish armor. This advantage in defenses was fully illustrated in the earlier battles with the warriors from Tlaxcala wherein the Spanish forces faced over three thousand warriors. In this conflict, according to Bernal Diaz, the Spanish faced a hail of arrows, stones and javelins before fighting at close range with the far more numerous Tlaxcalan warriors. The result of this battle was the death of a single Spaniard and the injuring of sixty, many of which were still able to continue fighting relatively unimpeded. This ability of the Spaniards to quickly cut through the enemy while simultaneously only taking minor