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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 1904217" data-attributes="member: 6533">Thank-you for this awesome post.One thing to keep in mind, however, is that the diseases that actually hurt the population in a big way didn't hit meso-America until a generation after the Spanish conquest.Just attended a seminar on this amazing hybrid culture that was developing in the area.  Beautiful buildings, amazing culture, an advanced style of art and organization that combined the best of both worlds, the missionaries and law that were at the forefront of the movement, and then the plagues that wiped it all out.  The plagues may have been 'fortunate', however, in that they hit while people were still really happy about the fall of the Aztecs and not yet terribly unhappy about the Spanish.Certainly, the Spanish took out the Incas without the aid of disease.Now, everyone else's colonization depended on disease wiping people out first.  The Pilgrim's justification for coming here included an entire legal/theological argument on the recently emptied land.   To be fair to them, when they began dying of similar diseases they were honest enough to turn a similar eye on their behavior and right to be there.</blockquote>