Break Out Of Small Pox Essay

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When Europeans first started exploring the New World, they were after three things unparticular. Glory. God. Gold. They weren’t coming to the New World with the intent to almost wipeout a whole population of people, but they did. The Native Americans were isolated from any other people groups except themselves until the Europeans came, so they had weak immune systems. This made them extremely susceptible to the diseases that the Europeans brought with them, like small pox. The first recorded breakout of small pox in the New World was in 1518 when it spread through Mexico and South America. This breakout killed a third of the population in just a few short months. Because small pox killed so many, no one wanted to take the blame for spreading such a horrific disease to the Natives. For example, even though the Spaniards were in Mexico fighting when the epidemic broke out, they blamed it on their Cuban Indian and African slaves. In the 1630s, another small pox epidemic broke out in what is modern day Massachusetts. After this epidemic, small pox would spread rapidly all across the New World killing off almost 90% of the Native peoples. It is said that this disease killed so many so rapidly that no one had the strength to even bury the dead. The Natives had such weak immune systems that sometimes the small pox …show more content…

Those two Native groups were some of the most powerful of their time. No other Native group could defeat them, but with the Europeans technology and the secret weapon of disease, they were able to weaken and take down both tribes. The Aztecs and Incans were made extremely weak and vulnerable when the small pox epidemic hit them, that they could defend as well as they would have otherwise. The Europeans didn’t intentionally bring small pox to the New World with them, but it did make conquering the Natives easier for it basically killed all of

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