the first new world pandemic and the fall of the great indian empires

8/12/2019 The First New World Pandemic and the Fall of the Great Indian Empires

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Conquistador y Pestilencia: The First New World Pandemic and the Fall of the Great IndianEmpiresAuthor(s): Alfred W. CrosbyReviewed work(s):Source: The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Aug., 1967), pp. 321-337Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2511023.

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Conquistador Pestilencia: he FirstNewWorldPandemic nd theFall oftheGreat ndianEmpires

ALFRED W. CROSBY*

T HE MOST SENSATIONAL military onquests n all historyare probably hoseof theSpanish conquistadores verthe Aztec and Inean empires. Cortes and Pizarrotoppled the highestcivilizationsof the New World in a fewmonthseach. A few hundred Spaniards defeated populations containingthousands of dedicated warriors,armed with a wide assembly ofweapons fromthe stone and early metal ages. Societieswhichhadcreatedhuge empiresthroughgenerations f fiercefightingollapsedat the touchof the Castilian.After fourhundredyears the Spanish feat still seemsincredible.Many explanationssuggest themselves:the advantage of steel overstone,of cannon and firearms ver bows and arrowsand slings; theterrorizing ffect f horseson foot-soldiers ho had never seen suchbeasts before;the lack of unity n theAztec and Inean empires;theprophecies n Indian mythologybout the arrival ofwhitegods. Allof these factorscombined o deal to the Indian a shocksuch as onlyH. G. Wells' IVarofthe Worlds an suggestto us. Each factorwasundoubtedlyworthmanyhundredsof soldiersto Cortesand Pizarro.For all of that, one mighthave expected the highlyorganized,militaristic ocietiesof Mexico and the Andean highlandsto surviveat least the initial contactwith European societies. Thousands ofIndian warriors, ven if confused and frightened nd wieldingonlyobsidian-studdedwar clubs, should have been able to repel at leastthefirst ewhundredSpaniards to arrive.The Spaniard had a formidable lly to which neitherhe nor thehistorianhas givensufficientredit-disease. The arrival of Colum-bus in theNew World brought bout one of the greatestpopulationdisasters n history. After the Spanish conquestan Indian of Yuca-tan wroteof his people in the happier days beforethe advent of theSpaniard 1* The author is assistant professorof historyat Washington State University.'The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Washington, 1933), 83.

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322 HAHR I AUGUST I ALFRED W. CROSBYTherewas thenno sickness; heyhad no achingbones;theyhad thennohigh fever;theyhad thenno smallpox; heyhad thenno burning hest;theyhadthenno abdominal ain; theyhad thenno consumption;heyhadthenno headache.At thattime he course f humanity as orderly.Theforeigners ade t otherwisehen hey rrived ere.

It wouldbe easy to attribute his amentation o the nostalgiathattheconquered lwaysfeel forthe timebefore heconqueror ppeared,but the statement s probably in part true. During the millenniabefore the European broughttogetherthe compass and the three-mastedvesselto revolutionizeworldhistory,men at sea moved lowly,seldomoverlong distances, nd acrossthe greatoceans hardlyat all.Men lived at least in the same continentswhere their greatgrand-fathershad lived and rarelycaused violentand rapid changes n thedelicatebalance between hemselvesnd theirenvironments.Diseasestendedto be endemicratherthan epidemic. It is true thatman didnot achieve perfectaccommodationwith his microscopicparasites.Mutation,ecological changes, nd migration ould bringthe likes ofthe Black Death to Europe, and fewmen lived three-scorend tenwithoutknowing pidemicdisease. Yet ecological stabilitydid tendto createa crudekind of mutual tolerationbetweenhumanhost andparasite. Most Europeans, forinstance, urvivedmeaslesand tuber-culosis,and most West Africanssurvivedyellowfeverand malaria.Migration fman and hismaladies is thechiefcause of epidemics.And when migrationtakes place, those creatureswho have beenlongestin isolationsuffermost,for theirgeneticmaterial has beenleast temperedby the varietyof world diseases.2 Among the majorsubdivisionsof the species homosapiens the AmericanIndian prob-ably had the dangerousprivilegeof longestisolationfromthe restof mankind. The Indians appear to have lived,died, and bredwith-out extra-American ontactsforgeneration ftergeneration, evelop-ing unique culturesand workingout tolerancesfor a limited,nativeAmerican selection of pathological micro-life.3Medical historians

2 S. P. Bedson et al., Virus and Rickettsial Diseases (Baltimore, 1950), 50-51;Geddes Smith,Plague onSUs (New York, 1941), 115-118.' Solid scientificproof exists of this isolation. The physical anthropologistnotes an amazingly high degree of physical uniformity mong the Indians of theAmericas, especially in blood type. Only in the Americas, and in no other largearea, is there such a low percentage of aborigines with B-type blood or such ahigh percentage-very oftenone hundredpercent-of 0-type. The maps of bloodtype distribution mong Indians suggest that they are the product of New Worldendogamy. Blood type distributionmaps of the Old World are, in contrast,highly complex in almost all parts of the three continents. These maps confirmwhat we know to be true historically: that migration and constant mixing ofgenetic materials have characterized Old World history. There has also been aconstant exchange of diseases and of genetically derived immunities. In the



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CONQUISTADOR Y PESTILENCIA 323guess that fewof the first ankkillersamong the diseases are nativeto theAmericas. (A possibleexception s syphilis. It may be true,as Gonzalo Fernandez Oviedo maintainedfour hundredyears ago,thatsyphilis hould notbe called mal francesor mal de Napoles, butmal de las Indias. 4When the isolation of the Americas was broken,and Columbusbrought he twohalves of this planet together, he American ndianmetfor the first 'imehis mosthideous enemy-not the whitemanor his black servant, ut the invisiblekillerswhichthese menbroughtin their blood and breath. The fatal diseases of the Old Worldkilledmoreeffectivelyn theNew, and comparatively enigndiseasesof the Old World turnedkillers n the New. Thereis littleexaggera-tion in the statementof a German missionary n 1699 that "theIndians die so easilythat the bare lookand smell ofa Spaniard causesthemto give up the ghost." The process is still going on in thetwentieth entury, s the last jungle tribes of South America losetheir shield of isolation.5The most spectacular period of mortality mong the AmericanIndians occurredduringthe first enturyof contactwiththe Euro-peans and Africans. Almost all contemporaryhistorians of theearly settlements rom Bartolomede las Casas to William Bradfordof PlymouthPlantationwere awed by the ravages of epidemicdis-ease among the native populationsof America. We know that themostdeadly of the early epidemics n the New World were thoseofthe eruptivefevers-smallpox,measles,plague, typhus, tc. The firstto arrive and the deadliest, said contemporaries, as smallpox.6At this point the reader should be forewarned gainst too easycredulity. Even today smallpox is occasionallymisdiagnosed s in-Americas, on the other hand, there must have been almost no prophylacticmis-cegenation of this sort. A. E. Mourant, Ada C. Kopec, and Kazimiera Doma-niewska-Sobezak, The ABO Blood Groups. Comprehensive Tables and Maps ofWorld Distribution (Springfield, ll., 1958), 268-270.'P. M. Ashburn,The Ranks of Death. A Medical History of the Conquest ofAmerica (New York, 1947), passim; Gonzalo Fernandez Oviedo, Historia generaly natural de las Indias (Madrid, 1959), I, 53; Henry H. Scott, A History ofTropical Medicine (London, 1939), I, 128, 283; Sherburne F. Cook, "The Inci-dence and Significanceof Disease Amongthe Aztecs and Related Tribes," IHAHR,XXVI (August 1946), 321, 335.

6 Jehan Vellard, "Causas biol6gicas de la desaparici6n de los indios amern-canos," Boletin del Instituto Riva-Agiiero,No. 2, 1956, 78-79; E. Wagner Stearnand Allen E. Stearn, The Effect of Smallpox on the Destiny of the Amerindian(Boston, 1945), 17.'Ashburn, Ranks of Death, 80; Woodrow Borah, "America as Model: TheDemographic Impact of European Expansion upon the Non-European World,"Actas y Memorias del XXXV Congreso Internacional de Americanistas (Mexico,1964), III, 379-387.



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324 HAHR I AUGUST I ALFRED W. CROSBYfluenza,pneumonia,measles,scarlet fever,syphilis,or chickenpox,for example.7 Four hundredyearsago suchmistakeswereevenmorecommon, nd writersof the accountsupon whichwe mustbase ourexamination f theearlyhistory f smallpox n Americadid not haveany special interest n accurate diagnosis. The earlyhistoriansweremuch morelikely to cast theireyes skywardsand comment n thesinfulness hathad called downsuch obviousevidencesof God's wrathas epidemicsthan to describe in any detail the diseases involved.It should also be noted that conditionswhich facilitatethe spreadof one disease will usually encouragethe spread of others, nd that4"very rarelyis therea pure epidemicof a single malady." Pneu-monia and pleurisy,for nstance,oftenfollow aftersmallpox, moth-eringthosewhom t has weakened.8Furthermore, lthoughthe Spanish word viruelas,whichappearsagain and again in the chronicles f the sixteenth entury, s almostinvariably translated as "smallpox," it specificallymeans not thedisease but the pimpled, pustuled appearance which is the mostobvious symptom f the disease. Thus the generationof the con-quistadoresmay have used viruelas to refer to measles,chickenpox,or typhus. And one must remember hat people of the sixteenthcenturywere not statisticallyminded,so that their estimatesof thenumberskilledby epidemicdiseasemaybe a more accuratemeasure-mentof their emotions han of the numberswho reallydied.But let us not paralyzeourselveswithdoubts. Whenthesixteenth-centurySpaniard pointedand said, "Viruelas," what he meantandwhat he saw was usually smallpox. On occasion he was perfectlycapable of distinguishingmongdiseases: for instance,he called theepidemicof 1531 in Central America sarampion-measles-and notviruelas.9 We mayproceedon the assumption hat smallpoxwas themost mportantdisease of the first andemic n the recordedhistoryof the Americas.Smallpox has been so successfully ontrolledby vaccination andquarantine n the industrializednationsof the twentieth entury hatfewNorth Americansor Europeans have ever seen it. But it is anold companionof humanity, nd formostof the last millennium twas among the commonest iseases in Europe. With reason it waslong thoughtone of the most infectiousof maladies. Smallpox isusually communicated hrough he air by means of dropletsor dustX C. W. Dixon, Smallpox (London, 1962), 68.8 Franklin H. Top et al., Communicable and Infectious Diseases (St. Louis,1964), 515; Hans Zinsser,Bats, Lice and History (New York, 1960), 87-88.

9 Raul Porras Barrenechea (ed.), Cartas del Per4, 1524-1543 (Lima, 1959), 22,24, 33, 46.



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CONQUISTADOR Y PESTILENCIA 325particles, and its virus entersthe new host throughthe respiratorytract. There are manycases of hospitalvisitorswho have contractedthe disease simply by breathingfor a moment he air of a room inwhich someone ies ill with thepox.10Because it is extremely ommunicable, efore the eighteenth en-tury t was usually thought f as a necessaryevil of childhood, uchas measles today. Somnetimeshe only large group untouched by itwas also that whichhad been relativelyunexposed to it-the younig.Yet even among Spanish childrenof the sixteenth entury mallpoxwas so common hat Ruy Diaz de Isla, a medical writer,felt calledupon to record thathe had once seen a man oftwentyyearssick withthe disease,"and he had never had it before.""11Where smallpoxhas been endemic, t has been a steady,depend-able killer, aking every year fromthree to ten percentof those whodie. Where it has struck isolated groups,the death rate has beenawesome. Analysis of figures or sometwentyoutbreaks hows thatthe case mortality mongan unvaccinatedpopulation is about thirtypercent. Presumably, n people who have had no contactwhateverwithsmallpox,the disease will infectnearly every single individualit touches. When in 1707 smallpox first ppeared in Iceland, it issaid that in two years 18,000 out of the island's 50,000 inhabitantsdied of it.12The firstpeople of the New World to meet the white and blackraces and theirdiseases were Indians of the Taino culturewho spoketheArawak language and lived on theislands of theGreaterAntillesand theBahamas. On the veryfirstday of landfall in 1492 Colum-bus notedthat the Tainos "are veryunskilledwitharms . . ." and"could all be subjectedand made to do all thatonewished.'13 TheseTainos lived long enoughto providethe Spaniard withhis firstgen-eration of slaves in America, and Old World disease with its firstbeachhead n theNew World.Oviedo, one of the earliesthistoriansof the Americas,estimatedthat a million ndians lived on Santo Domingowhen the Europeanarrived to plant his first ermanent olony n theNew World. "Ofall those," Oviedo wrote,"and of all those born afterwards, hereare notnow believedto be at thepresent ime n thisyearof 1548 five

1 Dixon, Smallpox, 171, 299-301." Ashburn,Banks of Death, 86."Dixon, Smallpox, 325; John Duffy, Epidemics in Colonial America (BatonRouge, 1953), 20, 22; Stearn and Stearn, Effect of Smallpox, 14.13 Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea. A Life of ChristopherColumbus (Boston, 1942), I, 304-305.



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326 HEAHR I AUGUST j ALFRED W. CROSBYhundred persons,childrenand adults, who are natives and are theprogeny r lineage of thosefirst.14The destruction f the Tainos has been largely blamed on theSpanish cruelty,not only by the later Protestanthistoriansof the"Black Legend" school but also by such contemporarySpanishwriters s Oviedo and Bartolomede las Casas. Withoutdoubt theearly Spaniard brutallyexploitedthe Indians. But it was obviouslynot in orderto kill themoff, or the early colonisthad to deal witha chronic abor shortage and needed the Indians. Disease wouldseem to be a more logical explanationfor the disappearance of theTainos, because they, ike other ndians, had little immunity o OldWorld diseases. At the same time,one may concede that the effectsof Spanish exploitationundoubtedlyweakened their resistance todisease.Yet it is interesting o note that there s no recordof any massivesmallpox epidemicamong the Indians of the Antilles for a quarterof a century fter thefirst oyageof Columbus. Indians apparentlysuffered steady decline in numbers,which was probably due toextremeoverwork, therdiseases, and a general lack of will to liveafter heirwholeculturehad been shattered y alien invasion.15Howcan the evidentabsence of smallpox be explained, if the AmericanIndian was so susceptible,and if ships carrying Europeans andAfricansfrom the pestilentialOld World were constantly rrivingin Santo Domingo The answer ies in thenatureof the disease. Itis a deadly malady, but it lasts only a brief time in each patient.Afteran incubation period of twelvedays or so, the patient suffersfromhighfeverand vomitingfollowed threeor four days later bythe characteristic kin eruptions. For thosewho do not die, thesepustules dry up in a week or ten days and formscabs which soonfall off,eaving the disfiguring ocks that give the disease its name.The whole process takes a monthor less, and after that time thepatient s eitherdead or immune, t least for a periodofyears. Alsothere s no non-human arrier of smallpox, uch as theflea of typhusor the mosquitoofmalaria; it mustpass fromman to man. Nor arethere nylong-term uman carriers f smallpox, s, for nstance,withtyphoid nd syphilis. It is not an over-simplificationo say that oneeither has smallpoxand can transmit t, or one has not and cannottransmit t.Consider that, except for children,most Europeans and their

14 Oviedo, Historia general, I, 66-67.15 Ibid.; Coleccion de documentos ineditos relativos al descu&brimiento,on-quista y colonizacion de las posesiones espainolasen Araemrica Oceania. . . . (Ma-drid, 1864-1884), I, 428.



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CONQUISTADOR Y PESTILENCIA 327slaveshad had smallpoxand were at least partially mmune, nd thatfew but adults sailed fromEurope to America in the firstdecadesafter discovery. Consider that the voyagewas one of several weeks,so that, even if an immigrant r sailor contracted mallpox on theday of embarkation, e would most ikelybe dead or rid of its virusbeforehe arrivedin Santo Domingo. Considerthat moistheat andstrongsunlight, haracteristic f a tropical sea voyage,are particu-larly deadly to the smallpox virus. The lack of any rapid means ofcrossingthe Atlantic in the sixteenthcenturydelayed the deliveryof the Old World's worstgiftto the New.It was delayed; that was all. An especially fast passage fromSpain to the New World; the presence on a vessel of several non-immunepersonswhocould transmit hedisease fromone to the otheruntil arrival in the Indies; the presence of smallpoxscabs, in whichthe virus can live forweeks,accidentally packed into a bale of tex-tiles-by any of these means smallpox could have been broughttoSpanish America.16In December1518 or January 1519 a disease identified s small-pox appeared among the Indians of Santo Domingo,brought, aidLas Casas, fromCastile. It touched few Spaniards, and none ofthemdied, but it devastated the Indians. The Spaniards reportedthat it killed one-third o one-halfof the Indians. Las Casas, neverone to understatethe appalling, said that it left no more than onethousandalive "of that immensity f people thatwas on this islandand which we have seen withour own eyes."'17Undoubtedlyone must discountthese statistics, ut theyare nottoo far out of line withmortality ates in othersmallpox epidemics,and with C. W. Dixon's judgment that populations untouchedbysmallpoxfor generations end to resist the disease less successfullythanthosepopulations n at least occasionalcontactwith t. Further-more, anto Domingo's epidemicwas not an atypicallypure epidemic.Smallpox seems to have been accompaniedby respiratory ilments(romadizo), possiblymeasles, and other Indian killers. Starvationprobablyalso took a toll, because of the lack of hands to work thefields. Althoughno twentieth-centurypidemiologist r demographerwould find these sixteenth-centurytatisticscompletely atisfactory,they probablyare crudelyaccurate.'8

6 Bedson, Virus, 151-152, 157; Dixon, Smallpox, 174, 189, 296-297, 304, 359;Jacques M. May (ed.), Studies in Disease Ecology (New York, 1961), 1, 8.7 Coleccion de documentos neditos, I, 367, 369-370, 429; Colecci6n de variosdocumentospara la historia de la Florida y tierras adyacentes (London, 1857), I,44; Bartolome de las Casas, Historia de las Indias (Madrid, 1957), II, 484.18 Colecci6n de documentos n6ditos, I, 368, 397-398,428-429; Dixon, Smallpox,317-318, 325.



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328 HAHR I AUGUST I ALFRED W. CROSBYThus began thefirst ecordedpandemic n theNew World,whichwas "in all likelihood hemost severesingle loss of aboriginalpopu-lation that ever occurred.19 In a matterof days after smallpoxappeared in SaintoDomingo, it leaped the channel to Puerto Rico.Before ong, Tainos were dyinga hideousand unfamiliardeath in allthe islands of the GreaterAntilles.20 Crushedby a quarter-centuryof exploitation, heynow performed heir ast functionon earth: toact as a reserveof pestilence n theNew World fromwhichthe con-quistadordrewinvisiblebiologicalallies for his assault on themain-land.Smallpox seems to have traveled quickly fromthe Antilles to

Yucat'an. Bishop Diego de Landa, our chiefsixteenth-centurypan-ish source of information n the people of Yucatan, recordedthatsometimeate in theseconddecade ofthatcentury a pestilence eizedthem, haracterized y greatpustules,which rottedtheir bodieswitha greatstench, o that the limbsfell to pieces in fouror fivedays."The Book of Chtlamtatam of Chumayel,written n the Mayan lan-guage withEuropean scriptafterthe Spanish settlement fYucat'an,also records that some time in the second decade "was when theeruptionofpustulesoccurred. It was smallpox." It has beenspecu-lated that the malady came with Spaniards shipwreckedon theYucatan coast in 1511 or the soldiers and sailors of Hern'andezdeCordoba's expeditionwhich coasted along Yucatan in 1517. Boththeseexplanations eem unlikely,because smallpoxhad not appearedin theGreaterAntilles,the likeliest ourceof any smallpoxepidemicon the continent, ntil the end of 1518 or the beginningof 1519.Be that as it may, there is evidencethat the SanitoDomiinganepi-demic could have spread to the continent eforeCortes' invasion ofMexico. Therefore, he epidemicragingthereat that timemayhavecome n twoways-north and westfromYucatan, and directlyfromCuba to centralMexico,broughtby Cortes' troops.21The melodramaof Cortesand the conquestof Mexico need no re-telling. AfteroccupyingTenochtitl'annd defeating he armyof hisrival, Narvaez, he and his troopshad to fight heirway out of thecityto sanctuary n Tlaxcala. Even as the Spanish withdrew,n allymoreformidable han Tlaxcala appeared. Years later Francisco deAguilar,oncea follower fCortesand nowa Dominicanfriar, ecalled

19 Henry F. Dobyns, "An Outline of Andean Epidemic History to 1720,"Bulletin of the History of Medicine, XXXVII (November-December1963), 514.20 Pablo Alvarez Rubiano, Pedrarias Ddvila (Madrid, 1944), 608; Colecci6n devarios documentospara la historia de la Florida, I, 45.2 Diego de Landa, Relaci6n de las cosas de Yucatan (Cambridge, 1941), 42;The Book of Chilam Balam, 138.



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CONQUISTADOR Y PESTILENCIA 329the terrible etreatof theNoche Triste. "When the Christianswereexhaustedfromwar," he wrote, "God saw fit to send the Indianssmallpox, nd therewas a great pestilence n the city.. . 2222

With themenof Narvaez had come a Negro sickwith the small-pox,"and he infected hehousehold n Cempoala wherehe was quar-tered; and it spread from one Indian to another,and they, beingso numerous nd eating and sleeping together, uickly infectedthewhole country." The Mexicans had never seen smallpoxbeforeanddid not have even the European's meagerknowledgeof how to dealwith it. The old soldier-chronicler,ernal Diaz del Castillo, calledthe Negro "a very black dose" for Mexico, "for it was because ofhimthatthe wholecountrywas stricken,witha greatmanydeaths. 23Probably, everal diseaseswere at work. Shortly fter the retreatfromTenochtitlanBernal Diaz, immune o smallpox ike most of theSpaniards,"was verysick withfever nd was vomiting lood." TheAztec sourcesmention heracking coughof those whohad smallpox,which suggestsa respiratory omplication uch as pneumonia or astreptococcalnfection, oth common mong smallpoxvictims. Greatnumbersof the Cakehiquel people of Guatemala were felled by adevastating pidemic n 1520 anid1521, havingas its most prominentsymptomfearsome nosebleeds. Whatever this disease was, it mayhave beenpresent n centralMexico alongwith the poX.24The triumphantAztecshad not expected the Spaniards to returnafter their expulsion from Tenochtitlan. The sixty days duringwhich the epidemic asted in the city,however,gave Cortes and histroops a desperatelyneededrespiteto reorganize nd prepare a coun-terattack. When the epidemic ubsided, he siege ofthe Aztec capitalbegan. Had there been no epidemic,the Aztecs, their war-makingpotentialunimpaired nd theirwarriors iredwithvictory, ouldhave

22Patricia de Fuentes (ed. and trans.), The Conquistadors. First-Person Ac-counts of the Conquest of Mexico (New York, 1963), 159. For the argumentthatthis was measles, not smallpox, see Horaeio Figueroa Marroquin, Enfermedadesde los conquistadores (San Salvador, 1955), 49-67.23Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Bernal Diaz Chronicles: The True Story ofthe Conquest ofMexico (Garden City,N.Y., 1956), 250; Diego Duran, The Aztecs.The History of the Indies of New Spain (New York, 1964), 323; FranciscoL6pez de G6mara, Cortes, the Life of the Conquerorby his Secretary (Berkeley,1964), 204-205; Toribio Motolinia, History of the Indians of New Spain (Berke-ley, 1950), 38; Bernardino de Sahaguin, General History of the Things of NewSpain (Santa Fe, 1950-59), Part 9, 4.24Anales de Tlatelolco, Unos anales historicosde la nacion mexicana y c6dicede Tlatelolco (M6xico, 1948), 64; The Annals of the Cakchiquels and Title ofthe Lords of Totonicapan (Norman, Okla., 1953), 115-116; Bedson, Virus, 155;Diaz del Castillo, Chronicles,289; Miguel Le6n-Portilla (ed.), The Broken Spears.The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (Boston, 1962), 132; Top, Com-municable and Infectious Diseases, 515.



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330 HAHR I AUGUST I ALFRED W. CROSBYpursuedthe Spaniards, and Cortesmighthave endedhis life spread-eagled beneath the obsidian blade of a priest of Huitzilopochtli.Clearlythe epidemic apped the enduranceofTenochtitlan o survivethe Spanish assault. As it was, the siege went on for seventy-fivedays, until the deathswithinthe cityfromcombat, tarvation, nddisease-probably not smallpox now-numbered many thousands.When thecityfell"the streets, quares,houses, nd courtswerefilledwith bodies,so that it was almost impossibleto pass. Even Corteswas sickfrom he stench n hisnostrils.25Peru and the Andean highlandswere also hit by an early epi-demic,and if it was smallpoxit mostprobablyhad to pass throughtheisthmus f Panama, as did Francisco Pizarro himself. The docu-mentation f the history f Panama in the firstyears afterthe con-quest is not as extensive s thatof Mexico or the Inean areas, becausethe isthmushad fewerrichesand no civilized ndigenouspopulationto learn European scriptfromthe friarsand writeits own history.We do know that in the firstdecades of the sixteenthcenturythesame appalling mortality ook place among the Indians in CentralAmericaas in theAntilles and Mexico. The recordedmedicalhistoryof the sthmus eganin 1514 withthedeaths of seven hundredDariensettlers n a month,victimsof hunger and an unidentified isease.Oviedo,whowas in Panama at thetime of greatestmortality,udgedthat upwards of two million Indians died there between 1514 and1530, and Antoniode Herrera tells us that fortythousanddied ofdisease in Panama Cityand Nombrede Dios alone in a twenty-eight-year period during the century. Others wroteof the depopulationof four hundredleagues of land that had "swarmed" with peoplewhenthe Spanish first rrived.26

What killed the Indians? Contemporaries nd many historiansblame the carnage on Pedrarias D'avila, who executed Balboa andruled Spain's firstCentral American settlementswith such an ironhandthathe was hatedby all thechiefchroniclers f theage. It canbe effectivelyrgued,however, hathe was no morea berserkbutcherof Indians than Pizarro, for the mortality mong Indians of theisthmusduringhis yearsof poweris parallel to the highdeath rates25Hernando Cortes, Five Letters (New York, 1962), 226; Diaz del Castillo,Chronicles,405-406; G6mara, Cortes,285, 293; Le6n-Portilla, Broken Spears, 92;Sahagiun,General History,XIII, 81.26 Coleccion de documentos neditos, XXXVII, 200; Oviedo, Historia general,III, 353. For corroboration ee M. M. Alba C., Etnologia y poblacion historica(Panama, 1928), passim; Porras Barreneehea, Cartas del Peru, 24; Juan L6pezde Velasco, Geograffay descripcionuniversal de las Indias (Madrid, 1894), 341;Belaciones historicas y geogrdflcasde Am6ericaCentral (Madrid, 1908), 216-218.



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CONQUISTADOR Y PESTILENCIA 331among the Indians whereverthe Spaniards went.27 When chargesagainstPedrariaswere nvestigatedn 1527,his defendersmaintainedthat the greatest ndian killer had been an epidemic of smallpox.This testimonys hard to reject, for anotherdocument f 1527 men-tions the necessity f importing boriginalslaves into Panama City,Nata, and "the port of Honduras," because smallpox had carriedoff ll the Indians in those areas.28The Spaniards couldnever do muchto improve he stateof publichealth in the audiencia of Panama. In 1660 those who governedPanama City listed as residentkillers and discomfortersmallpox,measles,pneumonia, uppuratingabscesses,typhus,fevers,diarrhea,catarrh,boils, and hives-and blamedthemall on the importation fPeruvianwine 29 Of all the killersoperating n earlyPanama, how-ever,smallpoxwas undoubtedly he most deadly to the Indians.If we attempt o describe hefirst omingof Old World disease tothe areas south of Panama, we shall have to deal with ambiguity,equivocation, nd simpleguesswork, or eruptivefever,now operatingfrom continentalbases, apparently outstrippedthe Spaniards andsped southfrom he isthmus nto the Inean Empire beforePizarro'sinvasion. Long before the invasion, the Inca Huayna Capac wasaware thatthe Spaniards- "monstrousmarine animals,beardedmenwho movedupon the sea in large houses"-were pushing down thecoast from Panama. Such is the communicabilityf smallpox andthe othereruptivefeversthat any Indian who received news of theSpaniards could also have easily receivedthe infection f the Euro-pean diseases. The biologicallydefenselessndians made vastlymoreefficientarriersof such pestilence hanthe Spaniards.80

27 Antonio de Herrera, Bistoria general de los hechos de los castellanos enlas islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano (Madrid, 1936), V, 350; Relacioneshist6ricasy geogrdflcasde Am6rica Central,200.28 Alvarez,Pedrarias Davila, 608, 619, 621, 623; Coleccidn de docuinentosparala historia de Costa Rica (Paris, 1886), IV, 8.

29 Pascual de Andagoya, Narrative of the Proceedings of Pedrarias Davila(London, 1865), 6; Colecci6n de documentos ineditos, XVII, 219-222; Herrera,Historia general, IV, 217; Scott, History, I, 129, 288.20 Gareilaso de la Vega, First Part of the Royal Commentariesof the Yncas(London, 1871), II, 456-457; Fernando Montesinos,Memorias antiguas historialesdel Perut London, 1920), 126; Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, History of the Incas(Cambridge, 1907), 187. It has been suggested that the source of the great epi-demic n questionwas twomen,Alonso de Molina and Gin6s, eft behindby Pizarroat Tumbez on the reconnaisance.voyageof 1527. Victor W. von Hagen (ed.), TheIncas of Pedro de Cieza de Leon (Norman, 1959), n. 51. If the epidemic wassmallpox or measles this explanation is unlikely because these diseases are ofshort duration and have no carrier state. The expedition of which these menwere membershad had no contactwith pestilential Panama for some time beforeit returnedthere from Tumbez. If these two men caught smallpox or measles,it must have been already present among the Indians.



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CONQUISTADOR Y PESTILENCIA 333iiave so long been hypnotized y the derring-do f the conquistadorthatwe have overlooked he importance f his biological allies. Be-cause of the achievements f medical science in our day we find thardto acceptstatements rom he conquestperiodthat thepandemickilled one-third o one-halfof the populationsstruckby it. ToribioMotoliniaclaimedthat in most provincesof Mexico "more than onehalfof thepopulationdied; in others heproportionwas little ess.""They died in heaps," he said, "like bedbugs."The proportionmay be exaggerated,but perhaps not as much aswe might hink. The Mexicans had no natural resistance o the dis-ease at all. Other diseases were probably operating quietly andefficientlyehindthe screen of smallpox. Add toothe factorsoffoodshortage nd the lack of even minimalcare for the sick. Motoliniawrote: "Many othersdied of starvation,because as they were alltakensick at once,theycould not care for each other,nor was thereanyone to give thembread or anythingelse." We shall never becertainwhat the deathratewas, but,from ll evidence, t musthavebeen immense. Woodrow Borah and Sherburne F. Cook estimatethat, for one cause and another,the population of central Mexicodroppedfromabout 25,000,000on the eve of conquestto 16,800,000a decade later,and thisestimate trengthensonfidencen Motolinia'sgeneralveraeity.32South of Panama, in the empireof the Inca, our only tool forestimating hemortality f the epidemicof the 1520s is the educatedguess. The populationtherewas thick, nd it provided richmediumfor the transmission nd cultivation of communicablediseases. Ifthe malady whichstruck n the 1520s was smallpox,as it seems tohave been,then it must have takenmanyvictims,for these Indiansprobablyhad no more knowledgeof or immunity o smallpox thanthe Mexicans. Mostofour sourcestellus onlythatmanydied. Ciezade Leo'n gives a figureof 200,000,and Martin de Muruia,throwingup his hands,says "infinitethousands.33We are reducedto guesswork. Jehan Vellard,studentofthe effectof disease on theAmerican ndian, statesthat the epidemics n Peruand Bolivia after the Spanish conquestkilled fewerthan those inMexico and suggests he climatic conditions f theAndean highlandsas thereason. But smallpoxgenerally hrivesunder dry,cool condi-tions. Possibly historianshave omitted n account of the first nd,32 Woodrow Borah and Sherburne F. Cook, The Aboriginal Population ofCentralMexico on theEve of Spanish Conquest (Berkeley, 1963), 4, 89; Motolinia,History, 38; Sahaguin,General History, XIII, 81." Ashburn,Banks of Death, 20; Cieza de Leon, Incas, 52; Murua, Historiageneral, 104; Pizarro, Relation, I, 196.



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334 HAHR I AUGUST I ALFRED W. CROSBYtherefore, robably the worst post-Columbian pidemic n the Incanareas because it precededthe Spanish conquest.4 A half century rso after the Conquest, Indians in the vicinityof Lima maintainedthat the Spanish could not have conquered them if, a few yearsbefore Pizarro's invasion,respiratorydisease (romadizo y dolor decostado) had not "consumed the greaterpart of them.35 Was thisthe greatkiller of the 1520s in the Incan Empire? Perhaps futurearchaeologicaldiscoverieswill give us more definite nformation.The pandemicnot onlykilled greatnumbersn the ndian empires,but also affectedheirpowerstructures,triking ownthe leadersanddisruptingthe processes by which they were normally replaced.When Moctezuma died, his nephew,Cuitl'ahuac,was elected lord ofMexico. It was he who directed he attackson the Spaniards duringthe disastrousretreatfromTenochtitlan, ttackswhichnearlyendedthe storyof Cortes and his soldiers. And then Cuitl'ahuac died ofsmallpox. Probablymany otherswieldingdecisivepower n the ranksofthe Aztecs and their llies died in thesameperiod,breakingdozensof linksin the chain of command. Not long afterwardsBernal Dlaztells us of an occasion when the Indians did not attack "becausebetweenthe Mexicans and the Texcocans there were differencesndfactions"36 nd,of equal importance, ecause theyhad beenweakenedby smallpox.OutsideTenochtitlan he deaths due to smallpoxamongtheIndianruling classespermittedCortesto cultivate he loyaltyof severalmenin importantpositionsand to promotehis own supporters. Cort6swrote o CharlesV about the cityof Cholula: "The natives had askedme to go there, incemanyof theirchief men had died of the small-pox, whichrages in these lands as it does in the islands, and theywished mewiththeirapproval and consent o appointotherrulers ntheir place." Similar requests, quickly compliedwith, came fromTlaxcala, Chalco, and other cities. "Cortes had gained so muchauthority,"the old soldier Bernal Dlaz remembered,that Indianscame beforehimfromdistant lands, especiallyovermattersof whowould be chief or lord, as at the time smallpox had come to NewSpain and manychiefsdied. 37Similarly n Peru the epidemicof the 1520swas a stunningblowto the verynerve centerof Incan society, hrowing hat society nto

34 Jehan Vellard, Bolet1n del Instituto Riva-Agiiero,No. 2, 1956, 85; Bedson,Virus, 157, 167; Dixon, Smallpox, 313." Reginaldo de Lizarraga, Descripci6n colonial por Fr. Reginaldo de Lizaf-rraga (Buenos Aires, 1928), I, 136.Diaz del Castillo, Chronicles,282, 301; G6mara, Cortes, 238-239.3 Cortes, Five Letters, 136; Diaz del Castillo, Chronicles, 289, 311.



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CONQUISTADOR Y PESTILENCIA 335a self-destructiveonvulsion. The government f the Incan Empirewas an absoluteautocracywith a demigod, he Child of the Sun, asits emperor. The loss of the emperor ould do enormousdamage tothe whole society,as Pizarro proved by his capture of Atahualpa.Presumably hedamagewas greater f the Inca weremuch esteemed,as was Huayna Capac. Whenhe died,said Cieza de Leo6n,hemourn-ing "was such that the lamentationand shrieksrose to the skies,causing the birds to fall to the ground. The news traveledfar andwide, and nowheredid it not evoke great sorrow." Pedro Pizarro,one ofthefirst o recordwhatthe Indians told of the last days beforethe conquest, udged that had "this Huayna Capac been alive whenwe Spaniards entered his land, it would have been impossiblefor ustowin it,forhe was muchbelovedby all hisvassals. 38Not only the Inca but many others n key positions n Incan so-cietydied in the epidemic. The generalMihenaca Mayta and manyothermilitary eaders,thegovernorsApu Hilaquito and Auqui Tupac(uncle and brother o the Inca), the Inca's sister,Mama Coca, andmany othersof the royal familyall perished of the disease. Thedeaths of these importantpersonsmust have robbed the empire ofmuch resiliency. Most ominousloss of all was the Inca's son andheirNinan Cuyoche.39In an autocracyno problem s more dangerousor more chronicthan that of succession. One crude but workablesolution s to havethe autocrat,himself, hoose his successor. The Inca named one ofhis sons,Ninan Cuyoche,as next wearer of "the fringe" or crown,on the condition hat the calpa, a ceremony f divination, howthisto be an auspicious choice. The first alpa indicated that the godsdid notfavorNinan Cuyoche, he second thatHuascar was no bettercandidate. The highnoblesreturned o the Inca for anotherchoice,and foundhim dead. Suddenly a terriblegap had opened in Ineansociety:the autocrathad died,and therewas no one to takehis place.One of the noblesmoved to close thegap. "Take care of thebody,"he said, " for I go to Tumipampa to give the fringe to NinanCuyoche." But it was too late. When he arrived at Tumipampa,he found that Ninan Cuyoche had also succumbed to smallpoxpestilence.40Amongthe several varyingaccountsof the Inca's death the onejust related best fits the thesis of this paper. And while these

3 Cieza de Le6n, Incas, 53; Pizarro, Relation, I, 198-199.3 Ayala, ATueva oronica, 86; Cobo, Obras, 93; Sarmiento de Gamboa, History,167-168; Valboa, Miscelanea, 393.40 Sarmiento de Gamboa, History, 167-168, 197-199. For corroboration seeCieza de Le6n, Incas, 253; Valboa, Misceldnea, 394.



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336 HAHR I AUGUST I ALFRED W. CROSBYaccounts may differ onmany points,they all agree that confusionover the successionfollowedthe unexpecteddeath of Hluayna Capac.War broke out betweeni uascar and Atahualpa, a war which devas-tated the empireand preparedtheway for a quick Spanish conquest."Had the land not been divided betweenHuascar and Atahualpa,"Pedro Pizarro wrote, we would not have been able to enter or winthe land unless we could gathera thousand Spaniards for the task,and at that time t was impossible o get together ven fivehundredSpaniards... "41The psychological ffectf epidemicdisease is enormous, speciallyof an unknowndisfiguring isease which strikes swiftly. Within afew days smallpox can transform healthyman into a pustuled,oozing horror,whomhis closest relatives can barely recognize. Theimpactcan be sensed n thefollowing erse, toicaccount,drawnfromIndian testimony,f Tenochtitlanduringthe epidemic.42It was [themonth f] Tepeilhuitl hen t began, nd it spreadover thepeople as greatdestruction. omeit quitecovered withpustules]on allparts-their aces, heir eads, heir reasts,tc. Therewas a greathavoc.Verymany iedof it. They ouldnotwalk; they nly ay in their estingplaces and beds. They ouldnotmove;they ouldnot stir; they ouldnotchange osition,or ieononeside;norface down, oron their acks. Andif they tirred, uchdidthey ryout. Greatwas its [smallpox']destruc-tion. Covered,mantledwithpustules, erymanypeople diedof them.

In some places in Mexico themortalitywas so great that,as Moto-linia recorded,the Indians found it impossible to bury the greatnumberof dead. "They pulled downthe houses over them n orderto check he stench hatrose from hedead bodies," he wrote, so thattheir homes became their tombs." In Tenochtitlanthe dead werecast into the water, "and there was a great, foul odor; the smellissued forth rom he dead."43For thosewho survived, he horrorwas only diminished, or small-pox is a disease whichmarksits victimsfor the rest of their lives.The Spanish recalledthat the Indians who survived,havingscratchedthemselves, were left in such a conditionthat they frightened heotherswith the many deep pits on their faces, hand, and bodies.""And on some, an Indian said, "the pustuleswere widelyseparated;theysuffered otgreatly,neitherdid many [of them] die. Yet manypeople were marredby them on theirfaces; one s face or nose waspitted." Some lost their sight-a fairlycommon ftereffectf small-pox.44

41Pizarro, Relation, I, 199.42Sahaguin, General History, XIII, 81.43Motolinia, History, 38; Sahagiun,General History, IX, 4.44Sahaguin,General History, XIII, 81; G6mara, Cortes, 204-205; Dixon, 94;



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CONQUISTADOR Y PESTILENCIA 337The contrastbetweenthe Indians' extremesusceptibility o thenew disease and the Spaniards' almostuniversal mmunity, cquired

in Spain and reinforcedn pestilentialCuba, must have deeply im-pressedthe native Americans. The Indian, of course,soon realizedthat therewas little relationshipbetween Cortes and Quetzalc6atl,and that the Spaniards had all the vices and weaknessesof ordinarymen,but he must have kept a lingering uspicionthat the Spaniardswere some kind of supermen. Their steel swords and arquebuses,their marvelouslyagile galleys, and, above all, their horses couldonlybe the toolsand servants fsupermen. And their nvulnerabilitytothe pox-surely thiswas a shieldof thegods themselvesOne can only imagine the psychological mpact of smallpox onthe Inean peoples. It musthave been less than in Mexico, becausethe disease and the Spaniards did not arrive simultaneously, utepidemicdisease is terrifyingnderany circumstancesnd musthaveshaken the confidence f the Inean people that they still enjoyedthe esteemof their gods. Then came the long, ferociouscivil war,confusing people accustomed o the autocracyof the true Child ofthe Sun. And thenthe final disaster,the comingof the Spaniards.The Mayan peoples, probablythe mostsensitiveand brilliantofall Americanaborigines, xpressedmore poignantlythan any otherIndians the overwhelming ffect f epidemic. Some disease struckinto Guatemala in 1520 and 1521, clearingthe way for the invasionshortly hereafter y Pedro de Alvarado, one of Cortes' captains. Itwas apparentlynotsmallpox, ortheaccounts do not mention ustulesbut emphasizenosebleeds,cough, and illness of the bladder as theprominentymptoms. It may have been influenza45 whatever t was,the CakehiquelMayas who kept a chronicle f the tragedyfor their

posterity, erehelplessto deal with t. Theirwordsspeak forall theIndians touchedby Old World disease in the sixteenth entury:Greatwas the stench f thedead. After ur fathersndgrandfathersuc-cumbed,alfofthepeoplefled o thefields. Thedogs nd vulturesevouredthe bodies. Themortality as terrible.Yourgrandfathersied, nd withthem iedthe on oftheking ndhisbrothersnd kinsmen.So itwasthatwe became rphans,h,my ons So we becamewhenwewereyoung. Allofus were hus. Wewereborn o die 46C. E. van Rooyen and A. J. Rhodes, Virus Diseases of Man (New York, 1948Jy289."F . Webster MeBryde, "Influenza in America During the Sixteenth Century(Guatemala: 1523, 1559-1562, 1576)," Butletin of the History of Medicine, VIII(February 1940), 296-297." Annals of the Cakchiquels, 116.

the first new world pandemic and the fall of the great indian empires

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