Mass grave found near cathedral

Belfast Telegraph ^ | November 29, 2013 | unattributed

[TheThirdRuffian]

We’ve had 84 in New Mexico recently. I believe all but a few died.

I wasn’t joking when I said the CDC burned down the houses.

[Smokin' Joe]

It is nasty stuff. Here, they said it was from breathing the crystallized urine of mice carrying the disease (likely in forced-air heating ducts). Burning the house makes sense, if the infection was vectored by mice—there is no way to remove the urine from the building with any certainty.

[Steve Van Doorn]

I thought they determined the Indians died from small pox. Small pox was also killing most of the people in Europe at that time.

[TheThirdRuffian]

Smallpox didn’t help things but the initial body blows were hantavirus, probably local. See link at post 15.

[ThanhPhero]

Squanto’s people had already had contact with Europeans. Squanto had already been to Europe. That’s how it is that he knew English.

[Flag_This]

"Smallpox didn’t help things but the initial body blows were hantavirus, probably local."

The Indians didn't have any defense against a host of diseases that arrived with the Europeans.

[ThanhPhero]

Early first contact but NOT first arrivals. As explorers pushed westward out of the original settlements they found the dead villages. The European diseases had already been there. Disease moved much faster than explorers. There had been visitors long before there were any settlers. Read 1491.

[TheThirdRuffian]

“Squanto had already been to Europe. That’s how it is that he knew English.”

Yes, he was captured because his entire tribe mysteriously died prior to contact with Europeans. His first contact was to be enslaved.

As did, in fact, the tribe native to the area where the pilgrims settled.

[TheThirdRuffian]

“The Indians didn’t have any defense against a host of diseases that arrived with the Europeans.”

Sure. But they were already dying in large numbers of SOMETHING.

[TheThirdRuffian]

I don’t have to read 1491.

I’m married to a doctor who happens to be Mescalero Apache and specializes in communicable disease and who wrote her PhD thesis on what killed the Indians before the Apache, utilizing DNA samples of dead folk.

They were (at least in this area) full of hantavirus inside the skulls.

[Flag_This]

"Sure. But they were already dying in large numbers of SOMETHING."

People tend to just say "smallpox", but more mundane things like the flu killed off large numbers of the native populations also.