SSC MTS EXAM

Detailed explanation-1: -They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent, killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans. Smallpox is believed to have arrived in the Americas in 1520 on a Spanish ship sailing from Cuba, carried by an infected African slave.

Detailed explanation-2: -While epidemic disease was by far the leading cause of the population decline of the American indigenous peoples after 1492, there were other contributing factors, all of them related to European contact and colonization. One of these factors was warfare.

Detailed explanation-3: -It is estimated that between 80% and 95% of the Native American population died within the first 100-150 years of European contact with the Americas. Those settlers that survived, together with new arrivals, began to cultivate the land, growing crops such as tobacco.

Detailed explanation-4: -Throughout the Americas, Indigenous contact with Europeans was soon followed by drastic declines in Indigenous populations. With no natural immunity to diseases introduced by the Europeans, Indigenous Peoples were decimated by waves of epidemics of smallpox, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, influenza and measles.