Marian wrote: "Now that I think about it, I think it was the Spanish in Central America who did the thing with the blankets. In some areas, 100% of the population was wiped out.................. In North America, I think more than 60% of the Native Americans died from smallpox."
OK, so let me see if I have this right. The Spaniards in Central America intentionally sold blankets laced with smallpox (did they wear rubber gloves so they would not catch it themselves ?) to the Native Indians in Central America, who contracted it in large numbers. Then, just before their extinction, they managed to spread this communicable (but not so communicable) disease to the Aztecs through direct contact such as warfare, and before you know it, it had spread through intermarriage and whatever to all of the other 200+ tribes in North America until over 60% of the Indians were dead, but leaving the white man mostly unscathed (because of their secret vaccines). And that is how the Spanish intentionally killed off 60% of the Native Indians. Personally, I think there is some chance that diseases spread among Native Americans in many areas, in many ways, from many sources (no doubt most of them European), in the vast majority of cases unintentionally. I will give my "cousin" who is chair of the History department at Providence a call to see what most historians think happened there, in terms of intentional versus unintentional. Bob S.
