This is something I have been curious about for a while, and haven’t been able to find anything as an answer, but how do we know the population statistics for the native populations? How do we know that so many people died, and how do we know that they were killed by disease? did explorers find cities filled with festering corpses, or skeletons? are there native accounts of a “great sickness” over taking their people? Where does the information come from?
I know it makes sense as an explanation, but I’m asking where the evidence that it happened came from.
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Because not all of them did die, and the ones that didn’t sure as hell didn’t forget the time 90% of their community died of a plague. (By comparison: are you going to forget covid, the disease that killed <1% of *your* population?)
The plagues moved ahead of European settlement, so:
* In places where Europeans already were, they observed (and recorded) the plagues directly. This was the case in, say, the conquered Aztec Empire under Cortez.
* In places where Europeans were just exploring, they could see the effects and hear accounts from natives.
* And in distant places, native accounts survived until later.
“When European settlers arrived in the Americas, historians estimate there were over 10 million Native Americans living there. By 1900, their estimated population was under 300,000. Native Americans were subjected to many different forms of violence, all with the intention of destroying the community. In the late 1800s, blankets from smallpox patients were distributed to Native Americans in order to spread disease. ”
https://hmh.org/library/research/genocide-of-indigenous-peoples-guide/
> are there native accounts of a “great sickness” over taking their people?
That’s a big one. Not everyone died and those who survived could certainly tell that the people they knew had gotten sick before they died.
The usual term used in scholarly accounts is [The Columbian exchange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange), It has been well researched.
The book [The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 30th Anniversary Edition](https://b-ok.cc/book/3497770/2f65f4) has lots of detail.
The problem with this as an ELI5 is that “proof requires details”, and the details can be complicated.
Another good book is [The Ongoing Columbian Exchange: Stories of Biological and Economic Transfer in World History](https://b-ok.cc/book/3704901/ad1dc4)
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