USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Following Christopher Columbus ’ arrival in North America in 1492, violence and disease killed 90% of the indigenous population-nearly 55 million people-according to a study published this year.

Detailed explanation-2: -European settlers killed 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America, causing large swaths of farmland to be abandoned and reforested, researchers at University College London, or UCL, estimate.

Detailed explanation-3: -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-4: -Between 1800 and 1900, the American Indians lost more than half of their population, and their proportion in the total U.S. population dropped from 10.15% to 0.31%.

Detailed explanation-5: -In 1837–38, smallpox killed up to 50 percent of the North American Plains Indians. Most historians now agree that over a period of about 300 years, about 90 percent of New World peoples died of Old World diseases or related causes such as lack of care and starvation.