Crossroads, p. 39
THE HISTORIC ERA
(A.D. 1541 to A.D. 1850)
The Spanish exploration and colonization of the Gulf Coast that began in 1513 with the expedition of Ponce de Leon to Florida caused the abrupt end of the 12,000 year long development of Indian cultures in the Southeast. Within a century after 1513 the Mississippians, with their large towns and temples, their great chiefs, their armies, their warfare, their art, and their religion, were all but gone.
It was not the soldiers and colonists of Europe that killed most of the Indians of North America, it was the "pathogens," the deadly microbes they unknowingly brought with them. Had the Spaniards put only peaceful colonists ashore in Florida instead of marauding conquistadores, the results would have been the same (as they were in New England). The Indians, who had been separated from the rest of the world for 12,000 years, had no immunity against the "diseases of civilization," the infectious diseases that had been developing an uneasy symbiotic relationship with human beings in Europe, Asia, and Africa since the beginning of urban life, around 7000 B.C. The diseases were smallpox, bubonic plague, typhus, influenza, yellow fever, measles, probably malaria, and possibly mumps. The fact that measles, a survivable childhood disease of Europe, was a potent killer in the New World is a measure of the extreme vulnerability of the Indians. Naturally these diseases took their greatest toll where the Indian populations were the highest and people lived close together. Thus the Mississippians living in their large towns suffered the most.
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