1491 (70 page)

 

Inka armies and horses: Hemming 2004 (“Even when,” 111–12; “dreaded,” 158).

 

Inka roads and horses: Letter, Pizarro, H., to Oidores of Santo Domingo, 23 Nov. 1533, quoted in Hemming 2004:31 (“so bad”); Prescott 2000:954. On one steep road “all made of steps of very small stones,” Pedro Sancho wrote, Pizarro’s “horses toiled so much that, when they had finished going up, the greater part of them had lost their shoes and worn down the hoofs of all four feet” (Sancho 1917:63).

 

Inka military techniques: Sancho 1917:67; Hemming 2004:195 (bolas); Prescott 2000:922, 984.

 

Historians ignore disease: Interviews, Crosby, Denevan, Dobyns. According to Dobyns, “the published works focused on New World historic epidemiology could be counted on the fingers of one hand” at that time (Dobyns 1995). Actually, Dobyns’s own count is eighteen articles prior to 1964. Still, most researchers in the field did not “seem to be paying much attention” (ibid.), e.g., the claim that “not until 1720 did any great losses through pestilence occur in Peru” (Kubler 1946:336). Peruvian researchers noted the epidemics (Patrón 1894 [proposing that Wayna Qhapaq died of bartonellosis, not smallpox]), but others were like U.S. researchers in failing to grasp the impact of disease (Vellard 1956). I am grateful to Robert Crease for helping me obtain a copy of this last article.

 

Cieza de León: Cook and Cook 1998 (bio); Cieza de León 1959:52 (“great plague”).

 

Elite losses to smallpox: Sarmiento de Gamboa 2000:144–45; Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua 1879:307 (“scabs,” “millions”); Murúa 1962–64 (vol. 1):136 (“infinite”), quoted in Crosby 2003b:53; Pizarro 1969:196–97; Cobo 1979:160; Poma de Ayala 2001:114, 141, 288; Hopkins 1983:208–11. For a dissenting view, see McCaa, Nimlos, and Hampe-Martínez 2004.

 

Evolution of smallpox: Baxby 1981; Gubser and Smith 2002.

 

“virgin soil”: Crosby 1976.

 

India smallpox study: Rao 1972:37, cited in Fenn 2001:21.

 

“may well have been halved”: Dobyns 1963:497.

 

Thucydides’ account of epidemic: Thucydides 1934:109–14.

 

Not in a European language: Crosby 2003b:xxii.

 

Royal mummies: Pizarro 1969:202–04, 251–54 (“the greater part,” 203); Estete, M.d., untitled narrative of journey to Pachacamac, quoted in Hemming 2004:127 (“seated”); Sancho 1917:159, 170, 195, 200; Rowe 1946:308; D’Altroy 2002:96–99, 141–42. Sarmiento de Gamboa matter-of-factly describes Inka methods of storing bodies after death, though he only uses the word “mummy” once (Sarmiento de Gamboa 2000:120–23, 135–36, 145–46).

 

Burning of Thupa Inka: Sarmiento de Gamboa 2000:121, 159; Betanzos 1996:74–79; D’Altroy 2002:108.

 

Atawallpa execution: Rowe 1997. I thank Patricia Lyon for sending me this article.

 

“win the land”: Pizarro 1969:199. See also, Sancho 1917:171–72; Wright 1992:72–75.

 

European failures without epidemics, factions: Restall 2003:70–72 (Mexico, Florida); Hemming 1978:69–84 (Brazil); White 1991: esp. Chap. 4 (France).

 

Additional smallpox epidemics: Hopkins 1983:212–13 (“They died by scores,” quoted on 213).

 

Typhus, flu, etc., 90 percent death toll: Dobyns 1963. Dobyns’s argument was supported almost two decades later in Noble David Cook’s book-length survey, which argued that six main epidemics hit Tawantinsuyu between 1524 and 1614, reducing the population by an estimated 93 percent (N. D. Cook 1981).

 

Smallpox in Hispaniola: The first evidence of smallpox’s arrival is in a letter of 10 January 1519 by the Hieronymite Fathers, then entrusted with ruling Hispaniola. At the time, the disease had killed a third of the island’s inhabitants and spread to Puerto Rico (Henige 1986:17–19). Smallpox may not have been the first Caribbean epidemic. Francisco Guerra, a medical historian at the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, in Spain, makes a strong case for a swine influenza epidemic in 1493 that “was responsible for the disappearance of the American Indians in the Antilles” (Guerra 1988:305). Noble David Cook suggests the epidemic was smallpox (N. D. Cook 2003).

 

Smallpox hits Mexico: The evidence is examined carefully in McCaa 1995. See also, Hopkins 1983:204–08 and the sources in Chap. 4.

 

“Debated since”: Denevan ed. 1976:xvii. Denevan was far from alone in his interest. At about the same time, for instance, Wilbur Jacobs, a historian at the University of California in Santa Barbara, described the puzzle of native numbers as “truly one of the most fascinating number games in history” (Jacobs 1974:123).

 

Mooney: Mooney 1928; Ubelaker 1976, 1988. Mooney’s article was posthumous.

 

Kroeber’s estimates: Kroeber 1934 (“sharply localized,” 25); 1939:31, 134, 166. Greenland is included in Kroeber’s population density figure, lowering it somewhat.

 

Sauer, Cook, and Borah: Among their many works are Sauer 1935; Cook and Simpson 1948; Borah and Cook 1964; Cook and Borah 1963, 1979. See also, Denevan 1996c.

 

“Historians and anthropologists”: Dobyns 1995.

 

World population in 1500: United Nations Population Division 1999:5.

 

“greatest destruction”: Lovell 1992:426. See also, Crosby 1986:208–09; Porter 1998:163; Jacobs 1974:128.

 

Dobyns’s 1966 article, Denevan’s book: Dobyns 1966; Denevan 1976.

 

Dobyns’s ideas attacked: Author’s interviews, Dobyns, Russell Thornton, Shepard Krech. See also Thornton 1987:34–36; Krech 1999:83–84; Henige 1998, 1990, 1978b.

 

Dobyns revises figures: Dobyns 1983:42. The new figure was for North America only.

 

Henige bio, critiques: Interview, Henige; Henige 1998 (bio, 4–5; “Suspect,” 314); 1978b (Hispaniola); Osborne 1998.

 

“You always hear”: Interview and email, Stiffarm. The unconscious persistence of the view that before Columbus the Americas were uninhabited, or almost so, is amazing. As late as 1986 Bernard Bailyn, past president of the American Historical Society, published a book called
The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction
(Bailyn 1986). The book is about British immigration. But the title also suggests that before Europeans the land was not peopled. Indeed, Indians are almost not to be found in the text.

 

“crater”: Interview, Wilson; Wilson 1999.

 

4 /
Frequently Asked Questions

De Soto: Duncan 1995; Mena 1930:264–66 (Challcochima). De Soto, Hemming observed, was “as brutal as any other conquistador. He [led] the force that raped the mamaconas [nuns, more or less] of Cajas during the march toward Cajamarca. His reputation among some modern writers of being more humane than his companions is undeserved” (Hemming 2004:555).

 

De Soto expedition: The numbers of men and animals differ somewhat in different accounts. I use Ramenofsky 1987:59. The basic sources are “Gentleman of Elvas” 1922 and its apparent predecessor, Fernández de Biedma 1922. These and other documents are collected in Clayton, Knight, and Moore eds. 1993. The state of scholarly knowledge is assayed in Galloway ed. 1997. Popular accounts include Wilson 1999:134–37; Morgan 1993:72–75; Parkman 1983 (vol. 1):28–31.

 

Hudson’s reconstruction of route: Interview, Hudson; Hudson 1993. For a fierce debate on the reliability of these reconstructions, see Henige 1993; Hudson, DePratter, and Smith 1993; Hudson et al. 1994.

 

De Soto’s passage over Mississippi: “Gentleman of Elvas” 1922 (vol. 1):112–17 (all quotes, 113); Fernández de Biedma 1922 (vol. 2):25–28. See also Rollings 1995:39–40.

 

La Salle expedition: Parkman 1983 (vol. 1):920–30.

 

Contrast between De Soto and La Salle’s experiences: Author’s interviews, Galloway, Hudson, Ramenofsky; Ramenofsky 1987:55–63; Burnett and Murray 1993:228.

 

Pigs as source for epidemic: Ramenofsky and Galloway 1997:271–73; Crosby 1986:172–76, 212–13 (suggesting epidemic disease may also have come before De Soto), 273; Crosby 2003b:77 (importance of pigs to Spanish).

 

Indian lack of domesticated animals, lactose intolerance: Crosby 1986:19, 27; Ridley 2000:192–94. Francisco Guerra notes that the Philippines did not experience epidemics from colonization, though its inhabitants were as isolated as Indians. The critical difference, he suggests, was the existence of domesticated animals, especially pigs, in the Philippines (Guerra 1988:323).

 

Caddo and Coosa: Perttula 1993, 1991:512–14; M. T. Smith 1994:264–65; M. T. Smith 1987.

 

Mass graves in the Southeast: M. T. Smith 1987:60–68.

 

1918 flu epidemic: Crosby 2003a.

 

Plague origin, losses: Epidemiologists increasingly question whether the Black Death was bubonic plague. Rats and fleas carry bubonic plague, but the Black Death spread faster—and over colder land—than these animals usually travel. And
Y. pestis
has never been shown to be as contagious as the Black Death. The epidemic may instead have been of a hemorrhagic fever like Ebola (Scott and Duncan 2001). I am grateful to David Henige for drawing this discussion to my attention. For losses, see, e.g., Wrigley 1969:63.

 

Population nadir: Ubelaker 1992:169–76, table 3. The 1890 U.S. census listed the Native American population as 237,000 (United States Bureau of the Census 1937:3, table 2). But it is widely believed that the Census Bureau undercounted, both because it did not accurately survey many native areas and because its definition of “Indian” was too restrictive. Most demographers double the reported number.

 

Zambardino critique: Zambardino 1980 (“the errors multiply,” 8; “meaningful,” 18).

 

“no better than”: Crosby 1992:175.

 

Skepticism: Interviews, Ubelaker, Snow; Snow 1995 (“no support,” 1604); 1992; Snow and Lanphear 1988. I believe David Henige coined “Low Counter” and “High Counter.”

 

Historians’ reluctance: Calloway 2003:415–16 (“boggle,” 415); McNeill 1998:19–23.

 

1967 measles epidemic: Interviews, Napoleon Chagnon, Thomas Headland, Francis Black, Patrick Tierney; Neel et al. 1970; Neel 1977:155–68. The epidemic became the subject of controversy when U.S. journalist Patrick Tierney accused Neel and his anthropologist coauthor, Chagnon, of exacerbating and perhaps even causing it in the course of an unethical experiment on the effects of vaccination (Tierney 2000). After a furor, researchers generally agreed that the likelihood that Neel and Chagnon had spread measles was negligible (Mann 2000a, 2001; Neel et al. 2001); as the main text indicates, the epidemic apparently originated with the Tootobi missionaries (Headland 2000). The Yanomamo are also known as Yanomami, Yanoama, and Yanomamö, the different terms coming from different dialects.

 

Distribution of blood types: Crosby 2003b:22–30. For a more complete explanation, see Crawford 1998:95–101.

 

Relative lack of genetic disease: Author’s interviews, Black, Crosby, Dobyns (cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s chorea); Black 2004:155 (asthma and autoimmune diseases); Hurtado, Hurtado, and Hill 2004:185 (diabetes). Dobyns stressed that the evidence is weak. Because Europeans recorded “things like the lack of beggars and madmen in city streets,” he told me, “you can assemble a sketchy picture” of societies with little genetic disease. “But as Henige would say,” Dobyns remarked of his fiercest critic, “it’s an argument from silence.”

 

Black and HLA types: Author’s interviews, Black, Stephen S. Hall; Black 1992, 1994, 2004; Crawford 1998:131–34. HLA classes are succinctly explained in Hall 1997:368–69. My thanks to Steve Hall for walking me through this material.

 

“Europeans’ capacity”: Jennings 1975:22.

 

Russian fur trade: Standard histories include Fisher 1943; Lincoln 1994.

 

1768–69 epidemic: Bril 1988:238 (“No one knows”); Samwell 1967:1252–59 (“Ruins,” 1252); Sauer 1802:306–08. Sauer’s death tally of 5,368 is identical to that of the writer William Coxe (Coxe 1780:5) and reasonably congruent with the estimate that “three fourths” of the populace died by French consul Jean Baptiste Barthelemy Lesseps, who was traveling in Kamchatka at the time (Lesseps 1790:128–29 [“three fourths,” 128]). I am grateful to Elizabeth Fenn for providing me with her notes on these references, from which I have taken the material from Lessep and Sauer.

 

“As soon as”: Füch 1988:169–70. Again I thank Prof. Fenn.

 

Helper-T cell hypothesis: Hurtado, Hurtado and Hill 2004.

 

Revolutionary War epidemic: Interviews, Fenn; Fenn 2001 (start of Boston epidemic, 46; ten to thirty a day, 47; one day before the Declaration, 53–54; “Ethiopian regiment,” 57–61; Quebec, 62–71; Adams, 79).

 

Mexico City epidemic: Calloway 2003:417–19 (“It seems likely,” 561); Fenn 2001:138–40 (Fenn suggests that a third epidemic, which moved west from New Orleans, may have “collided” with the Mexico City epidemic in the Southwest).

 

Hopi-Nermernuh-Shoshone-Blackfoot connection: Thompson 1916:318–25, 336–38 (“with our sharp,” 336–37); Calloway 2003:419–21 (Sioux, 421); Fenn 2001:211–22. See also, Ewers 1973. “Blackfoot” usually refers to groups in Canada; “Blackfeet,” to those in the United States.

 

“winter counts”: Sundstrom 1997; Calloway 2003:424. In Sundstrom’s survey of winter counts, all but one of the fifteen that cover 1780–82 characterized at least one of the years with the symbol for an epidemic, though some called it measles instead of smallpox (many groups initially did not distinguish them). Plains Indians defined a year as the period between the first snowfall of one winter and the first snowfall of the next, so it was not the same as a European year.

 

Pox in Northwest: Calloway 2003:421–23; Fenn 2001:224–32 (“great preponderance,” 227), 250–58; Harris 1994; Boyd 1999:esp. 21–39.

 

Vancouver expedition: Vancouver 1984 (vol. 2):516–40 and passim (“promiscuously scattered,” 516); Puget 1939:198 (“pitted”).

 

Quarantine: Braudel 1981–84 (vol. 1):86–87; Salisbury 1982:106 (“could only”); Cronon 1983:88.

 

Wider impact of epidemics: Crosby 1992; Calloway 2003:419–26; Stannard 1991:532–33; Thornton 1987; Hopkins 1994:48 (“my people”); Salisbury 1982: 105–06.

 

Death of Hawaiian king and queen: Kuykendall 1947:76–81.

 

Montreal peace negotiations: Havard 2001:49, 65 (Haudenosaunee losses), 130–02 (epidemic and Kondiaronk’s death).

 

Former captives: Haudenosaunee Brandão 1997:72–81.

 

Fates of Cree, Shoshone, Omaha: Calloway 2003:422–26 (“The country,” 422). See also, Campbell 2003.

 

1524 meeting: Sahagún 1980; Klor de Alva 1990. See also, Motolinía 1950:37–38, 174–86 (de Valencia’s life).

 

“bishops and pampered prelates”: Prescott 2000:637.

 

Franciscan-Mexica debate: Sahagún 1980:lines 109, 115, 117, 217–18, 223–29, 235–37, 759–63, 1054 (“gods were not powerful,” 54 [summary]). See also, León-Portilla 1963:62–70.

 

Teotihuacan and its influence: Often-cited works include Cowgill 1997; Carrasco, Jones, and Sessions eds. 2000; Berlo ed. 1993.

 

Mexica arrival date: Smith 1984.

 

Tezozómoc’s account: Quoted in Sullivan and Knab eds., trans. 1994:98–100.

 

Tlacaelel: Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin 1997 (vol. 1):41–53, 135–45; (vol. 2):33–37, 89, 109; León-Portilla 1992a:xxxvii–xli (“It is not fitting,” xxxviii); 1963:158–66. As Chimalpahin put it, Tlacaelel “was the instigator, the originator, through wars [of the system] by which he made the great city of México Tenochtitlan eminent and exalted” (35; trans. slightly altered for readability).

 

“In this Sun”: Anon. 1994:66. Experts dispute the verse structure in all these poems.

 

“tortillas”: Durán 1994:231.

 

“moral combat”: León-Portilla 1963:216.

 

Cortés on sacrifice: Cortés 1986:35–36 (both quotes). See also, Durán 1994:406 (excitedly, raising the toll to “2,000, 3,000, 5,000, or 8,000 men” a day on special occasions).

 

Denial of sacrifice: Hassler 1992; Moctezuma and Solis Olguín 2003 (indigenous images of sacrifice). The anthropologist Michael Harner argued (1977) that the human sacrifice and cannibalism of the Mexica were “natural and rational,” “the only possible solution” (both 132) to supply protein to a dense population with no domesticated animals. But the Mexica lived on a lake with abundant fish and aquatic life and also obliged conquered peoples to ship them food (Ortiz de Montellano 1978). See also, Graulich 2000.

 

European executions: Braudel 1981–84 (vol. 2):516–18 (Tyburn, “the corpses,” 518); Pepys 1970 (vol. 5):21 Jan 1664 (“at least”).

 

English executions, population: Gatrell 1994:6–15; Wrigley 1983:121.

 

Nahuatl corpus: Frances Karttunen, pers. comm.

 

Tlamatinime:
León-Portilla 1963:9–24, 62–81, 136 (quotes, 12–13).

 

Nezahualcóyotl poems on mortality: Peñafield 1904, quoted in Sullivan and Knab eds. 1994:163 (“Truly”—I slightly altered the first line to scan better); León-Portilla 1963:6 (“Do flowers”); 1992:81 (“Like a painting”); Nabokov 1989:19 (“brief crack”).

 

Nahuatl rhetoric: Author’s interviews, Karttunen; Garibay 1970:115.

 

Art and truth: León-Portilla 1963:71–79 (“nothing is ‘true,’” 73; “He goes,” 75; “From whence,” 77).

 

Northwest Coast art: Jonaitis 1991:chaps. 1, 8.

 

Spanish reactions to Tenochtitlán: Díaz de Castillo 1975:214–19; Cortés 1986:102–12 (“can there,” 108–09; “obliterate,” 88).

 

Conquest of alliance and disease’s role: Thomas 1995. Crosby (1986:200) calls Cortés’s victory “a triumph of the [smallpox] virus.” 143 Postconquest population decline: Borah 1976; Borah and Cook 1964; Cook and Borah 1963 (25.2 million, 88); Borah 1951; Cook and Simpson 1948. For postconquest epidemics in Mexico and New Spain, see the thorough discussions in Prem 1992; N. D. Cook and Lovell 1992; the other articles in N. D. Cook and Lovell eds. 1992; Malvido 1973. Cook and Borah’s estimate was a best guess; more confidently, they argued that the precontact population was between eighteen and thirty million.

 

“We, Christians”: Cieza de León 1959:62.

 

Holocaust and moral capital: Examples include Thornton 1987; Stannard 1992; Churchill 1997. To be clear: Many of the books and articles that employ the term “holocaust,” such as Russell Thornton’s
American Indian Holocaust and Survival
(1987), are careful works of scholarship. But their authors wish also to make a political point, one that in their view flows directly from their research. Sensitive to language, they have selected a charged term to convey that point. For discussions of the moral capital that is the reward of mass victimhood, see Stannard 2001; Alexander 1994:esp. 195.

 

“Very probably”: Katz 1994 (vol. 1):20 (emphasis in original).

 

“economic depression”: Borah 1951:27.

 

Holmes: Quoted in Stannard 1992:244.

 

Inadvertent subjugation: I made this argument myself in Chap. 2.

 

Siege of Kaffa: O’Connell 1989:171.

 

“And what was”: Churchill 2003:53.

 

“the Spaniards are”: Klor de Alva 1992:xx–xxi.