"Juan, you are wrong. We need less than those leaches that all they want is free welfare. They come to our cities to infest us with their diseases..."
"Just imagine how the natives felt when they saw a bunch of stupid gringos full of mocos, dirty and eating cockroaches full of all types of viruses. HYPOCRITES PINCHE GRINGOS CULEROS..."
By Jared Diamond
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel,"
Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize
Chapter 11
"The importance of lethal microbes in human history is well illustrated by Europeans' conquest and depopulation of the New World. Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasians germs than on the battlefield from European guns and swords. Those germs undermined Indian resistance by killing most Indians and their leaders and by sapping the survivors' morale.
For instance, in 1519 Cortes landed on the coast of Mexico with 600 Spaniards, to conquer the fiercely militaristic Aztec Empire with a population of many millions. That Cortes reached the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, escaped with the loss of "only" two-thirds of his force, and managed to fight his way back to the coast demonstrates both Spanish military advantages and the initial naivete of the Aztecs.
But when Cortes's next onslaught came, the Aztcs were no longer naive and fought street by street with the utmost tenacity. What gave the Spaniards a decisive advantage was smallpox, which reached Mexico in 1520 with one infected slave arriving from Spanish Cuba. The resulting epidemic proceeded to kill nearly half of the Aztecs, including Emperor Cuitlahuac.
Aztec survivors were demoralized by the mysterious illness that killed Indians and spared Spaniards, as if advertising the Spaniards' invincibility. By 1618, Mexico's initial population of about 20 million had plummeted to about 1.6 million.
Pizarro had similarly grim luck when he landed on the coast of Peru in 1531 with 168 men to conquer the Inca empire of millions. Fortunately for Pizarro and unfortunately for the Incas, smallpox had arrived overland around 1526, killing much of the Inca population, including both the emperor Huayna Capac and his designated successor....The result of the throne being vacant was that two other sons of Huayna Capac, Atahuallpa and Huascar, became embroiled in a civil war that Pizarro exploited to conquer the divided Incas.
When we in the United States think of the most populous New Wold societies existing in 1492, only those of the Aztecs and the Incas tend to come to our minds. We forget that North America also supported populous Indian societies in the most logical place, the Mississippi Valley which contains some of the best farmland today. In that case, however, conquistadores contributed nothing directly to the societies' destruction; Eurasian germs, spreading in advance, did everything.
When Hernando de Soto became the first European conquistador to march throuogh the southeastern United States, in 1540, he came across Indian town sites abandoned two years earlier because its inhabitants had died in epidemics. These epidemics had been transmitted from coastal Indians infected by Spaniards visiting the coast. The Spaniards' microbes spread to the interior in advance of the Spaniards themselves.
De Soto was still able to see some of the densely populated Indian towns lining the lower Mississippi. After the end of his expedition, it was a long time before Europeans again reached the Mississippii Valley, but Eurasian microbes were now established in North America and kept spreading. By the time of the next appearance of Europeans on the lower Mississippi, that of the French settlers in the late 1660s, almost all of the big Indian towns has vanished.
The relics are the great mound sites of the Mississippi Valley. Only recently have we come to realize that many of the mound building societies were still largely intact when Columbus reached the New World, and that they collapsed (probably as a result of disease) between 1492 and the systematic exploration of the Mississippi.
...Archaeological excavations, and scrutiny of descriptions left by the very first European explorers on our costas, now suggest an initial number of around 20 million Indians. For the New World as a whole, the Indian population decline in the century or two following Columbus's arrival is estimated to have been as large as 95 percent.
the main killers were the Old World germs to which Indians had never been exposed, and against which they they therefore had neither immune nor genetic resistance. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus competed for top rank among he killers.
As if these had not been enough, diphtheria, malaria, mumps, pertussis, plague, tuberculosis, and yellow fever came up close behind. In countless cases, whites were actually there to witness the destruction occurring when the germs arrived.
For example, in 1837 the Mandan Indian tribe, with one of the most elaborate cultures in our Great Plains, contracted smallpox from a steamboat traveling u the Missouri River from St. Louis. The population of the Mandan village plummeted from 2,000 to fewer than 40 within a few weeks."
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel,"
Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize
Chapter 11
"The importance of lethal microbes in human history is well illustrated by Europeans' conquest and depopulation of the New World. Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasians germs than on the battlefield from European guns and swords. Those germs undermined Indian resistance by killing most Indians and their leaders and by sapping the survivors' morale.
For instance, in 1519 Cortes landed on the coast of Mexico with 600 Spaniards, to conquer the fiercely militaristic Aztec Empire with a population of many millions. That Cortes reached the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, escaped with the loss of "only" two-thirds of his force, and managed to fight his way back to the coast demonstrates both Spanish military advantages and the initial naivete of the Aztecs.
But when Cortes's next onslaught came, the Aztcs were no longer naive and fought street by street with the utmost tenacity. What gave the Spaniards a decisive advantage was smallpox, which reached Mexico in 1520 with one infected slave arriving from Spanish Cuba. The resulting epidemic proceeded to kill nearly half of the Aztecs, including Emperor Cuitlahuac.
Aztec survivors were demoralized by the mysterious illness that killed Indians and spared Spaniards, as if advertising the Spaniards' invincibility. By 1618, Mexico's initial population of about 20 million had plummeted to about 1.6 million.
Pizarro had similarly grim luck when he landed on the coast of Peru in 1531 with 168 men to conquer the Inca empire of millions. Fortunately for Pizarro and unfortunately for the Incas, smallpox had arrived overland around 1526, killing much of the Inca population, including both the emperor Huayna Capac and his designated successor....The result of the throne being vacant was that two other sons of Huayna Capac, Atahuallpa and Huascar, became embroiled in a civil war that Pizarro exploited to conquer the divided Incas.
When we in the United States think of the most populous New Wold societies existing in 1492, only those of the Aztecs and the Incas tend to come to our minds. We forget that North America also supported populous Indian societies in the most logical place, the Mississippi Valley which contains some of the best farmland today. In that case, however, conquistadores contributed nothing directly to the societies' destruction; Eurasian germs, spreading in advance, did everything.
When Hernando de Soto became the first European conquistador to march throuogh the southeastern United States, in 1540, he came across Indian town sites abandoned two years earlier because its inhabitants had died in epidemics. These epidemics had been transmitted from coastal Indians infected by Spaniards visiting the coast. The Spaniards' microbes spread to the interior in advance of the Spaniards themselves.
De Soto was still able to see some of the densely populated Indian towns lining the lower Mississippi. After the end of his expedition, it was a long time before Europeans again reached the Mississippii Valley, but Eurasian microbes were now established in North America and kept spreading. By the time of the next appearance of Europeans on the lower Mississippi, that of the French settlers in the late 1660s, almost all of the big Indian towns has vanished.
The relics are the great mound sites of the Mississippi Valley. Only recently have we come to realize that many of the mound building societies were still largely intact when Columbus reached the New World, and that they collapsed (probably as a result of disease) between 1492 and the systematic exploration of the Mississippi.
...Archaeological excavations, and scrutiny of descriptions left by the very first European explorers on our costas, now suggest an initial number of around 20 million Indians. For the New World as a whole, the Indian population decline in the century or two following Columbus's arrival is estimated to have been as large as 95 percent.
the main killers were the Old World germs to which Indians had never been exposed, and against which they they therefore had neither immune nor genetic resistance. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus competed for top rank among he killers.
As if these had not been enough, diphtheria, malaria, mumps, pertussis, plague, tuberculosis, and yellow fever came up close behind. In countless cases, whites were actually there to witness the destruction occurring when the germs arrived.
For example, in 1837 the Mandan Indian tribe, with one of the most elaborate cultures in our Great Plains, contracted smallpox from a steamboat traveling u the Missouri River from St. Louis. The population of the Mandan village plummeted from 2,000 to fewer than 40 within a few weeks."
2 comments:
Simple solution, have a germ registration and confiscation program.
Yea, starting with johnny apple seed and all the gringos that came before him great idea.
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