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|1493 |Columbus lands for the second time on the island of Hispaniola bringing livestock in |

| |order to start a colony there. Influenza, probably from germs carried by the livestock, |

| |sweeps through the native people, killing many of them. |

|1507–1519 |Two waves of smallpox kill from a third to a half of the American Indians in what are |

| |now Cuba, Haiti (Hispaniola), and Puerto Rico. Canoe traders carry the disease to the |

| |Yucatan Peninsula of what is now Mexico, where it kills many Maya. |

|1519–1520 |Smallpox reaches what is now Guatemala. An American Indian who survived, recorded: |

| |"Great was the stench of the dead. After our fathers and grand fathers succumbed, half |

| |of the people fled the fields. The dogs and the vultures devoured the bodies." |

|1520 |By now about three million Arawak people in the Caribbean have died from European |

| |diseases. |

|1520 |Smallpox enters what is now Mexico at the port of Veracruz on the ship of Panfilo de |

| |Narvaez on April 23. It quickly spreads to Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital. A citizen of|

| |Tenochtitlan later wrote: "A great many died from the plague, and many others died of |

| |hunger. They could not get up to search for food, and everyone else was too sick to care|

| |for them, so they starved to death in their beds." |

|1521 |Smallpox spreads south through Mesoamerica and South America. |

|1527–1530 |Smallpox arrives in the Inca Empire. The ruler Huayna Capac dies from it. As many as |

| |200,000 Inca people are killed by the disease. |

|1531–1533 |A measles epidemic sweeps through Sonora, Mexico, and spread north into the Arizona |

| |region. |

|1539 |The Spanish explorer DeSoto travels through the Southeast. It is believed diseases |

| |spread by his party and the animals that they brought with them for food eventually |

| |killed about 75 percent of the American Indians in the Southeast. |

|1540 |Coronado explores the Southwest. Diseased livestock that his company brings with them |

| |carry germs that transmit disease to American Indians. |

|1545–1548 |An epidemic that is believed to have been pneumonic plague and bubonic plague (black |

| |death) or typhus covers Mesoamerica killing thousands of Indians. |

|1555 |The Portuguese bring the first smallpox germs to Brazil. Large numbers of Native people |

| |die. |

|1559 |An influenza epidemic kills many Indian people in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. |

|1560 |Another wave or smallpox kills so many Native people in Brazil that the Portuguese can |

| |no longer rely on Indian slaves to cut sugar cane. They import slaves from Africa. |

|1566–1567 |Two million South American Indians die from typhoid fever. |

|1576 |Thyphoid fever kills thousands of American Indians in Mexico. |

|1585 |English settlers on what is now Roanoke Island in Virginia spread diseases and many |

| |Indian people living nearby die. |

|1592–1596 |The Seneca Indians in what is now central New York state suffer from an epidemic of |

| |measles. |

|1607 |Half of the Timucuan people of Florida have died from European diseases spread from the |

| |Caribbean. |

|1613 |Missionaries report Bubonic plague kills half of the Christian Indian people in Florida.|

|1617-1619 |A disease that is thought to be smallpox sweeps through what is now the Massachusettes |

| |Bay. Nine out of ten die. The disease is thought to have been brought by a fishing crew |

| |or the crew of Thomas Hunt’s slaving expedition in 1615. Because they are so few in |

| |number, the Indian people cannot stop the Mayflower from landing in 1620. |

|1619 |By now 90 percent to 95 percent of the Mesoamerican Indians alive in 1519 have been |

| |killed by European diseases. The bubonic plague that began in Florida has spread to New |

| |England |

|1630–1635 |English settlers carry germs that set off another wave of smallpox and possibly that |

| |kill many of the remaining Indian people of what is by now called New England. Smallpox |

| |spreads westward to the tribes living near what are now the Great Lakes. Over 10,000 |

| |Huron die. |

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