The geographic area now known as the West Indies, Caribbean Islands, Mexico and Central America were very different places just a few short years prior to 1492. Central to the vast cultural and ecological changes in this area were the ways in which the European explorers impacted the native civilizations, decimating many through disease, and the manner in which the native cultures molded, mediated, and refracted into a new world order, creating a hybrid culture that is neither European nor Amerindian.

For historians, anthropologists, and ecologists alike, the widespread exchange of plants, animals, food, human populations, communicable diseases, and ideas that occurred between Europe and the so-called "New World" after 1492 is known as the Colombian Exchange. Historically, it is one of the most significant events in human history; inexorably changing the ecology, agriculture, and culture for an entire two continents. In fact, this exchange affected almost the entire globe -- disease (some from Asia) depopulated many cultures; changed the agriculture base worldwide; circulated crops and livestock as never before; and changed even changed the population dynamics of Africa and Asia with the introduction of sustainable plants. Sadly though, this "exchange" brought with it tragedy; many experts estimate that nearly 80% of the native populations in the New World died as a result of European and Asian disease, clearly the major reason a relative few could overpower hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples. As one native wrote nostalgically about the pre-Spanish days:

There was then no sickness; they had no aching bones…. No high fever… no smallpox… no burning chest… no consumption… the course...

The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here (Crosby, 1972, 36)
Indeed, a contemporary reader, expectant of a global environment of international produce available constantly, immediate air travel to almost any destination on earth, and technological advances that allow instantaneous communication, would never recognize the world of the mid-1400s. The killing blow came from human migration, through no premeditated malice, and certainly without an understanding of disease vectors and transmission. Instead, "the fatal diseases of the Old World killed more effectively in the New, and the comparatively benign diseases of the Old World turned killer in the New" (Ibid). In fact, it was smallpox, to which most Europeans had a limited immunity due to centuries of exposure, which resulted in the largest death tolls for the Mesoamerican and Amerindian populations.

For the Nahua, the native populations, even such simple disease vectors as the common cold and flu were deadly, and the contemporaneous accounts mention the "effects of the disease that decimated the population and devastated their leadership" (Schwartz, 2007, 182). The efficacy of these diseases was so great that weeks prior to the Spanish and allies marching into a city, plague acted for them, killing 60-90% of the population without even firing a shot. For instance, a native recalls that while the Spanish were still in Tlaxcala, plague hit the capital, Tenochititlan…. "lasting seventy days, striking everywhere in the city and killing a vast number of our people. Sores erupted on our faces, our breasts, our bellies; we were covered with agonizing sores from head to foot" (Leon-Portilla, 2007, 92).

Disease was not the only