You are not understanding. I am not arguing that the conquistadors did not bring their diseases to the New World. What I am saying is that the diseases spread quicker than did the new settlers.
Could you please provide evidence that the conquistadors slaughtered indiscriminately. You seem to be already backing down from your millions slaughtered in genocide position.
I think you are dreaming up the idea of infected blankets to suit your point of view but you have done no research to prove the point. At best you will find urban myth or one or two isolated instances which may or may not be true. That is a long way short of proving that it was an established strategy of colonisation by the spanish.
Seems like it is the Indians doing the slaughtering in this account. The church you reckon stole blankets and grain, and got slaughter for its trouble. Can you provide evidence that the church stole blankets and grain? This Wikipedia article paints a different story.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo_Revolt
It statest that the Indians were grumpy about the decline of their traditional religion, but more to the point they were being attacked by nomadic tribes and the Spanish were not able to defend the Indians in their charge. The article points out that previous to this revolt there had been relative peace between the Spanish and the Pueblos because the Spanish had been previously able to protect them from Navajo and Apache Indians and also had provided them with superior farming implements which had helped them in their agriculture.
Quite frankly, your claim that Spaniards stole grain and blankets (even though unsubstantiated) is a long way short of saying that they slaughtered millions in one of the worlds worst recorded genocides. Please retract your statement which slurs the reputation of the church and catholics in general.
I can’t imagine anyone seriously taking your point of view, so will keep my comments brief, quoting only the following, from the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
“Arriving on November 15, Pizarro immediately set up** his artillery **and sent his brother Hernando and another Spaniard to request an interview. After a day of tense waiting, Atahuallpa, borne on a litter, entered the great square of Cajamarca with an escort of between 3,000 and 4,000 men, who were eithe*r unarmed or carrying short clubs and slings *beneath their tunics. Pizarro sent out a priest, Vicente de Valverde, to exhort the Inca to accept Christianity and Charles V as his master. Atahuallpa disputed both the religion and the sovereignty of the Spaniards and, after examining a Bible offered by the priest, flung the book to the ground. Valverde reported these events to Pizarro, who immediately ordered an attack. The astonished Incas were cut down from all sides, Pizarro himself seizing Atahuallpa.” (emphasis mine.)
–this by Manuel Ballesteros-Gaibrois, an eminent SPANISH scholar of the New World, an editor of the EB.
Check out also the long article on the Dominican friar, Bartolome de Las Casas, who spent his long life defending the Indians of the Americas, especially the following excerpt:
"While awaiting an audience with Charles V, Las Casas conceived the idea of still another work, the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (“A Short Account of the** Destruction** of the Indies”), which he wrote in 1542 and in which the historical events described are in themselves of less importance than their theological interpretation: “The reason
why the Christians have killed and destroyed such an infinite number of souls is that they have been moved by their wish for gold and their desire to enrich themselves in a very short time.” (emphasis mine.)
–by Enrique Dussel a Latin American writer and philosopher profiled --in Wiki. You could look it up.
The invaders introduced the diseases from Europe into the New World. From then it was only a matter of time. Although they did, by slaughter, domination, slavery, starvation and disease,–reduce the populations of Indians to a small fraction of their former populations, they probably didn’t slaughter-
-millions--as there weren’t millions about in the first place. They simply (almost) wiped them out. After De Vargas returned to New Spain in 1694, he also slaughtered hundreds–that is, *almost all *of the pueblos of Cochiti and Jemez, among others. These pueblos were much smaller than, say, the Aztec, Inca, and Mayan empires, but there were almost wiped out, just the same. The pueblos were very much weakened by the Spanish invasion, having lost their populations, especially their fighting men, grain, blankets and other goods you’re so dismissive about–so when the plains Indians started to invade and attack, they eventually began to welcome back the Spanish–reluctantly, but better the devil you know than the one(s) you don’t.
I suggest that in future, you *learn
something about what you’re debating. There are *people out there, and even here, who know more than you do. And don’t rely on Wiki–it will carry you only so far.
