Re: Native American extermination?

On Apr 8, 7:51 pm, Ian MacLure <i...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Bullseye <b...@xxxxxx> wrote innews:m2pi13dt0pi4170oqjp149lcht3vaf3178@xxxxxxx:

[snip]

That is precisely my point, Central & South American colonials took in
native women as girlfriends or wives unlike in North America, so how
did they not spread diseases even further and more rapidly?

Spain and Portugal did not colonise to the extent that the British
did. While both sets of Empires were originally in the mercantilist
mode the British soon found themselves with bunches of people actually
wanting to move to the New World to take up land and make a life
independent of the imperial trade efforts. In French North America
for instance colonists were seen as a necessary evil to support trade
facilities.

Spain and Portugal did establish colonies and did so long before
England or France establish permanent colonies in N/A. Remember Spain
wiped all the original inhabitants of the Caribbean islands via
disease or genocide. While much of the Caribbean has African ancestry
there's a lot of Spanish ancestry there too. By 1500, the Spanish
were establishing permanent settlements. It took England until 1603
(Jamestown) and France until (1608) Port Royal to establish permanent
colonies.

It's worth noting that the climate was considerably colder in North
America at that time than it is today (mini- Ice Age from ca
1400-1850) and European settlers found the climate brutal in modern
day Canada and New England.

The Portugese established colonies throughout much of the world and
lost most of them during the rule of Salazar. the Basques did
establish at least one settlement in Newfoundland ca 1520 most
probably just for whaling. It's quite likely the Basques transmitted
diseases to the Beothiuk Indians living there at the time. Cartier
probably did the same several years later as did Smith in Virginia 40
or so years after that.

Smallpox et al. had the same effect in Central and South America that
they had in the North but with larger numbers to start with there were
more survivors and hence more descendants.

Actually, I don't think that theory works very well. These diseases
seem to explode in high population densities. More likely what
happened is that the population was ravaged and then recovered.
However, in N/A scattered bands were devastated individually. When
they died white people moved into the abandoned land. The smaller
tribes in N/A were probably left without the critical mass necessary
to recover.


.

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