Place

Hispaniola

Caribbean island where Columbus landed in 1492; the first documented outbreak of an Old World disease in the Americas.

2 links, 0 backed by primary records

Connections 2

The Great Dying of the Americas first documented outbreak of an Old World disease, 1497, per Koch and colleagues Scholarship & press 1 2
The Great Dying of the Americas Columbus's second voyage, 1493 to 1496: crew ill, probably with influenza, per Ostler; violence and enslavement followed Scholarship & press 2

Proof 2 sources

Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492, Quaternary Science Reviews, 2019. Scholarship & press
Following the first disease outbreak in 1497 CE on the island of Hispaniola, the first census for the whole island was established in 1508 CE and arrived at 60,000 indigenous people
Most estimates are between 300,000 and 500,000 people in the Caribbean before European contact
Genocide and American Indian History, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, 2 Mar 2015. Scholarship & press Archived copy
On Hispaniola only twenty to thirty thousand adult Tainos remained alive, far fewer than the pre-Columbian population of at least several hundred thousand and by some estimates as high as 8 million.
Soon after landing, some of the crew became ill, probably from influenza, and infected the Native populations of Hispaniola, Cuba, and Jamaica.
The expedition’s goal was not to kill Indians, but as its leaders and men pursued their main objective—acquiring gold—they did exactly that.
Violence, then, was central to Spanish colonization in the Caribbean, although far more Indians died from disease, malnutrition, and starvation.
By 1542 , the Native population of Hispaniola was only two thousand.

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