“Heavy Shadows and Black Night”: Disease and Depopulation in Colonial Spanish America

Abstract

A substantive body of scholarship now recognizes that Native American populations declined precipitously in size following European conquest and colonization. The precise magnitude of demographic collapse continues to spark heated debate, but consensus is emerging where dissent prevailed before. That consensus attributes Indian depopulation in large part to the introduction of Old World disease. Many factors besides imported sickness caused aboriginal demise, but disease proved the most destructive agent of a fatal complex. This paper examines the role disease played in depopulating the Spanish Indies, from first contact to the early seventeenth century. Analysis focuses on five distinct geographical settings: Hispaniola, central Mexico, northwestern Mexico, Guatemala south of the Petén rainforest, and the central Andes. For each of these settings, literature is reviewed that illuminates problems of data, chronology, impact, and identification that have charged discussion of the issues for some time. An attempt is made to situate regional findings in hemispheric context and to appraise the status of the disease factor in quincentennial consciousness.