Hernando De Soto Columbian Exchange Disease

Columbia Exchange and Diseases

The Columbian Exchange was the extensive transfer of plants, cultures, animals, technology, human populations and the concepts between the Afro-Eurasian Hemispheres and America in the 15th and 16th centuries, related to the European colonization and trade after Christopher Columbus’s 1942 voyage. Majority of the records about the Spanish empire contain complaints about the radical decline in the number of Native American people. The decline is due to the spread of diseases associated with the Columbian Exchange. Early chronicles reported that the first epidemics, which is a widespread of disease in a community, following the arrival of the New World were the worst. There is a theory that the Indians had little,

De Soto was very wealthy, but the wealth was not enough for him. He would gamble his fortune on one more throw of the dice. De Soto impacted the Natives by being so strong willed. He came into the New World and had a plan. He took charge and basically told the Indians his strategy, and the Indians followed along. De Soto formed his own army and they were there to do a job: explore, conquer and settle. Everywhere he went he would always ask two questions. First question was: What is the greatest prints in the land, where can I find the wealthiest and greatest societies? The Spanish would show the jewelry on their hands and bodies to the Indians and the Spaniards would ask them where they could find it. For the most part, the Indians told De Soto what he need to know because his means of the extracting were so great. De Soto kept a chart from the king and read a lengthy statement to each group of natives that he encountered. He informed them that they all belong to him and the Spanish crowd. The Indians were to pledge their allegiance to Spain and accept the Catholic faith. If they refused it, it came with the warning that the Spaniards will start a war and go after all of their

De Soto passes through and stays for four to five months, and then keeps passing through. There is no further European contact until 1682, when one of the French come down the Mississippi River. De Soto recorded only five villages. All of the other seventy-five villages likely died of disease. As the expedition moves forward, the people and the animals that they took: horses, pigs and dogs transmitted new diseases into the susceptible native population and then in turn they transmitted them to other. Some people want to argue that warfare is what decreased the population in many places, but disease had a greater destruction across a larger area than warfare. When warfare happened, a number of people died, but it wasn’t a drastic count and it wasn’t spread throughout the world. Wherever De Soto spent large periods of time, people disappeared and there is no way that 16th century warfare could’ve done that. The depopulation of Indians was dramatic. Everyone was sick at the same there and no one was able to go out to gather herbs, bring back game or hunt. Therefore, the only people were left with was to die. On October 18th, 1540, the Unions have finally had enough and ambushed the Spanish once and for all. This was a turning point for De Soto’s hope in finding gold. De Soto began to feel like he had failed at his