"Doug Kanter" wrote:
"DSK" wrote:

And yet, you made the claim that 80% of the North American Indians (even
the Eskimos??) were wiped out by disease brought by the Spanish by 1700.
That's ridiculous and the reason your cited web sites (interesting and
fact-filled though they be) do not support your claim.

I'm just sort of lurking in this part of the debate. Natives in places like
Minnesota were wiped out by the Spanish?

Yep. But it would have been better to say "by 1600".

Herenando de Soto, using wealth he obtained as a leader in the
conquest of the Inca Empire, personally outfitted a 4 year
voyage that began in 1539 probably at about where Tampa Bay
Florida is today. He inflicted a campaign of terror all along
the way. He was also well aware that his army was spreading
disease as it went.

What he was not aware of was the effect his invasion had. He
purposely avoided to every degree he could any retracing of his
path. He was afraid his return would be met with organized
resistance. As it turned out, his outgoing path necessarily
crossed his incoming path on a least two occasions, and what he
found was virtually nothing. And 20 years later when other
explorers traveled through many of the same areas, they found
little of the civilization that de Soto had described. The
people where he had been were inundated by 1) the massive
violence of de Soto's invasion, and 2) by the death from de
Soto's disease ridden army.

Survivors scattered, and spread the diseases far more widely
than de Soto's army.

De Soto's army traveled through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois,
with his scouts going as far a Chicago.

De Soto single handedly depopulated much of what today is the
United States.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)