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Revising the conquest of Mexico: Smallpox, Sources and Populations…

- - - - 600o. A 96 percent drop in so large a population was, literally, unheard of and, if true, is unique in the history of the world. No merely human slaughter could account for such a catastrophe, even allowing that the killing was abetted by anomie and loss of the will to live on the part of the victims. Some visitation or affliction of God or of Nature must be invoked to account for such wholesale mortality. Smallpox-Macaulay's "most terrible of all the ministers of death"-seems precisely to fit the c
  - - - still retains considerable authority even though some of the estimates differ by 50%As Denevan comments: ". . . scholars who will not accept 25,000,000 find figures between 10,000,000ooo and 15,ooo000,000ooo not unreasonable." Notwithstanding the degree of "mas o menos," they continue to be taken by some historians as a firm analog for discussions of historical demography elsewhere
      - The mathematical methods by which the figure for 1548 was calcu- lated, it has been suggested, involved unjustified assumptions and problematical multipliers. In a detailed analysis of both the evi- dence and the mathematical methods used by Borah and Cook, Zambardino argues that their figure of 6.3 million should more realistically be somewhere between 2.6 million and 4.5 million, or in precise statistical terms, 3.6 million ?0.9 million. Sanders, from the perspective of a physical anthropologist, reaches a similar conclusion. "The weakest argument in the studies conducted by Borah and Cook on sixteenth-century demography lies in their statistical manipulations to arrive at a figure for the tax-exempt population in I
      - the 1532 population estimates
        
        The earlier estimates for 1532 and 1518 are even more prob- lematical. The 1532 figure was based on statements about goods and services assessed for tribute in 219 towns. These goods and services are given an equivalent monetary value which is then adjusted for inflation during the period 1532-I 568. This total monetary value is divided by the average quota per casado (married men who were liable to tribute) to give a total number of tribu- taries for these towns. Further multipliers are used to turn trib- utaries into population by a factor for each tributary household and a further factor to take account of nontributary population. Finally, the total population is calculated from the sample of 219 towns
        
        The possible margin of error for each of these multipliers discussed by Zambardino and in each case he adopted a conser- vative estimate. The conclusion of his analysis was that the lower bound of the population in I532 was 2.7 million and the upper, 3 5 million. Obviously, any average is meaningless. His conclusion was that "this method, with the data that are available, does not allow a meaningful quantitative estimate." The figure for the 15 I 8 population, derived from preconquest tribute assessments, yields a similar result: somewhere between 3 million and 50 million. This conclusion gives added point to Sanders' comment on Borah and Cook's procedures. "Their discussion of the use of this ma- terial to arrive at population estimates is particularly puzzling since the authors provide us with a detailed and excellent analysis of all the problems and objections to such use. Their own analysis leads the reader to the almost inescapable conclusion that it cannot be done!"
        
        support by Sanders
        
        supports the revisionism of Zambardino
        
        the extraordinary steeples between 1519 and 1540 is extraordinary. it is all the more surprising since the first major epidemic occurred in the 1540s and an equally severe one occurred int he 1570s. One would expect a slow decline between 1519 and 1540 and then a rapid increase thereafter. However, it was the catastrophic collapse which caught the imagination of the historians in the 1960s. It is catastrophe which was at the core of the anti-columbus polemic.
    - - In the thirteen years since Zambardino's article appeared, there has been no serious attempt to reconsider the demographic and epidemiological history of the conquest period in Mexico in light of these extraordinary criticisms. Typically, all that is al- lowed is that there is some controversy over the Borah and Cook figures but that, nevertheless, everyone agrees that there was a sharp drop in the population. If, however, we were to follow Zambardino's suggestion and extrapolate from the i568 and later figures (which are much more complete and reliable) back to 1518 we reach a figure within the 5 to Io million range (See Figure 2). This number matches the results suggested by more traditional historical demographers such as Rosenblat and it is compatible with the reconstructions by physical anthropologists based on the known agricultural technology and carrying capacity of the land. All of these suggest a figure within the 5 to 10 million range, with the lower figure more probable than the high
- - - - historians. Both Dixon and the authors of the WHO report cited the accounts of the first epidemic in Mexico as evidence that an inexperienced population did suffer significantly higher mortality than does one where the disease has previously occurred. The judgment of such expert epidemiologists is not lightly to be ignored. Yet the sources they cited-Stearn and Steam, Crosby, and Hemming-ultimately rely not on modern epidemiology but on sources such as Motolinia and Diaz whose reliability it is precisely the purpose of this paper to call into question
  - - - only affects people in the same house or in the same building
      - people with smallpox cannot even move often
      - WHO eradication team sites that it often takes generations to spread through a small population (p.13)
      - of course it is hard to take some 20th century findings and apply them to the 16th century and assume that it behaved the same way back then. In modern Ethiopia. In the 20th century campaign there was always a number of people who were already immune so we have to assume that it spread faster in the 16th century Mexico than it did later. Therefore, what we are concerned with is the big picture.
- - - - In Tlaxcala and the new town he founded, Segura de la Frontera, Cortes composed a letter to the King, the second of his Cartas de Relacion signed October 30, 1520. He makes no mention of smallpox. By December 1520, he was ready. He first secured the allegiance or neutrality of all the towns and cities in the vicinity of the lake and, in May 152I, initiated the siege of Tenochtitlan which ended with virtually the total destruction of the city in August I521. In May I522, Cortes wrote his third letter to the King giving his version of the events of the conquest. In that letter he mentions that his friend, Maxixca, one of the rulers of Tlaxcala, had died of smallpox and that he, Cortes, had ratified the succession of his son in the name of Charles V. Several chiefs in Cholula had also died of smallpox and he had appointed suc- cessors to those as well. Both episodes serve the function, central to Cortes' overall purpose in writing to the King, of demonstrat- ing that he was acting in the name of Charles V. His purpose was to build up his claim to postfactum ratification by Charles in order to validate his position which, at the time, was technically one of rebellion against his lawful superior, the governor of Cuba
    - - The first plague was an epidemic of smallpox. It broke out in this
        manner. Hernando Cortes was Captain and Governor at the time
        when Captain Painfilo de Narvaez landed here. On one of his ships came a Negro stricken with smallpox, a disease that was unknown in this land. New Spain was very thickly populated at this time. When the smallpox began to infect the Indians, there was so much sickness and pestilence among them in all the land that in most provinces more than half of the people died, whereas in others the number was somewhat smaller. The Indians did not know the remedy against smallpox. Besides, they were accustomed, the healthy and the sick, to bathe frequently; and, because they did not cease doing this, they died like flies. Many succumbed also to hunger because, all taking sick at the same time, they were unable to assist one another. There was no one to give them bread or anything else. In many places it happened that all of the same household died. Since it was impossible to bury all the dead in order to remove the offensive odor that came from the corpses, their houses were thrown over them and thus their house became their sepulcher. The Indians called this sickness the great leprosy because the pocks, being so large, covered the Indians in such a way that they resembled lepers. Today, on some of the persons who survived the sickness this is quite apparent from the marks
        they bear; they are full of pockmar
      - later writer and chroniclers
        
        Gomora
        
        simply copied Motolinia but just like Diaz fitted Motolinia into his narrative
        
        mendieta
        
        mendieta his younger brother just copied him
        
        Motolinia
        
        essentially the only account we really have. He is also unsure about the date whether it is 1520 or 1521
        
        all later accounts date it in the first half of 1520. but since they all copied we dont really know.
        
        no one thought back then that it was a communicable disease
        
        the authors explanation why we can dismiss Motolinias black slave story
        
        How the fact that a particular black who had smallpox would
        have been recorded in the Narvaez expedition or anywhere else
        is hard to imagine. Even if he did exist and he were infectious,
        he could not have infected more than the very few who came in
        contact with him while he was immobile, if not actually recumbent.
        Those so infected would themselves not show symptoms
        until ten or twelve days later. Whether anyone would or could
        connect these symptoms to the Narvaez black seems unlikely.
        The whole process is so improbable that we could well dismiss
        the account out of hand. Hence, that the story surfaces without
        explanation of its provenance some twenty or so years after the
        events it purports to describe is sound basis for saying that it is
        an invention.
        
        All the Spaniards condemned the Indian for not knowing how to cure smallpox. But the spanish did not know either nor do we nowadays. Furthermore, Motilinia does not seem to know what smallpox looks like.
        
        in neither Cortez nor Diaz nor Gomara is there any mention of how many people died. The catastrophe was war and smallpox was incidental.
        
        Bernadino de Sahagun
        
        also talk about that some people recovered which makes the account a bit more realistic. His informants had also experienced the disease themselves
        
        it becomes apparent that many of the survivors and the surviving Indians smallpox in 1520 and the conquest in 1521 became conflated. In that version half of the population succumbed to the disease before the final attack.
        
        the tale of the black man is very believable and appealing to the franciscans as it also fits in well with the biblical version of the apocalyptic strain