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Early Explorers and the Spread of Disease

            In the beginning stage of American history, explorers' motives for coming to the new world was typically to find land and provide a better life for their families and themselves. The only problem with this thought is that people were already living on this land. The only option of owing the new land was to take it from the people who were already settling there. Many wars were fought and many people died or even were captured and turned into slaves. At the time this was the only way they knew how to acquire the land. As strong and organized as these explores were war was not the only way of gaining control. A secret weapon that Europeans held was diseases. Smallpox, yellow fever and measles were diseases that assisted in killing off the Indians. Their bodies were not immune to the diseases it was easily contracted and killed many of them off. .
             The Europeans planned to attack with guns, swords and horses. Explorers at the time did not use this biological attack as a tactic to kill off the Indians. Europeans had no knowledge of the diseases they were carrying. Their body was immune to the diseases so they did not have any negative impact on their health. They did not know they could spread the diseases. One can say they did this innocently. The Europeans only knew to attack with guns, swords and horses. .
             Many Indians were not happy with this. This set off a lot of the Indians wars. The diseases were so bad it killed off many villages, forcing the Indians to move away from the Europeans to save themselves. When the Indians moved all they did was bring along the diseases to the next village and kill of even more of their people. Some many people died and so fast that it was expressed "the living was not able to bury the dead". During the first epidemic the Indian population went from one million to about 200 in just a matter of fifty years of the Spanish coming to the new world. .
             Indians on many accounts tired to retaliate by war and sometimes by poking the master with their blood hoping to infect them and later kill them.


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