Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-6876762-20130303211712/@comment-3398633-20130402135418

I've read my history books, and some sources put the death toll as far as 90-99%. However, the diseases don't need one person to cause the devestation, as there were small bands of soldiers regularly interacting with the natives, who only suffered when the conquerers finally invaded. It was an immediate process, as it would have happened to any of the native population, which didn't happen as countless native tribes survived in sizable numbers even after contact with the Europeans.

Most times, the outbreaks were the result of artifical means (those funky blankets for one), so as to purposely destroy their populations by the European colonists. And some populations did gain a slight immunity, proven by the fact that they were still around Europeans after several decades, often the desendents of those survivors of the last outbreak. The population losses were typically the result of forced slavery, which the Europeans themselves admitted the natives were particularly any good at, resulting in the requests for African slaves.

As for the soldiers, they were capable of intermarrying, and did so quite often ( being a quite notable example). And for Christ's sake, where do you think the mestizos came from? And the Aztecs wouldn't have "dealth" with them. If you've read anything about their culture, they didn't go around indiscriminately killing people, especially foreigners. And there was a reason I said maybe some of the horses could survive. I didn't say all of them.