<P> According to Noble David Cook, a community of scholars have recently, albeit slowly, "been quietly accumulating piece by piece data on early epidemics in the Americas and their relation to subjugation of native peoples ." They now believe that widespread epidemic disease, to which the natives had no prior exposure or resistance, was the primary cause of the massive population decline of the Native Americans . Earlier explanations for the population decline of the American natives include the European immigrants' accounts of the brutal practices of the Spanish conquistadores, as recorded by the Spaniards themselves . This was applied through the encomienda, which was a system ostensibly set up to protect people from warring tribes as well as to teach them the Spanish language and the Catholic religion, but in practice was tantamount to serfdom and slavery . The most notable account was that of the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, whose writings vividly depict Spanish atrocities committed in particular against the Taínos . It took five years for the Taíno rebellion to be quelled by both the Real Audiencia--through diplomatic sabotage, and through the Indian auxiliaries fighting with the Spanish . After Emperor Charles V personally eradicated the notion of the encomienda system as a use for slave labour, there were not enough Spanish to have caused such a large population decline . The second European explanation was a perceived divine approval, in which God removed the natives as part of His "divine plan" to make way for a new Christian civilization . Many Native Americans viewed their troubles in terms of religious or supernatural causes within their own belief systems . </P> <P> Soon after Europeans and enslaved Africans arrived in the New World, bringing with them the infectious diseases of Europe and Africa, observers noted immense numbers of indigenous Americans began to die from these diseases . One reason this death toll was overlooked is that once introduced, the diseases raced ahead of European immigration in many areas . Disease killed a sizable portion of the populations before European written records were made . After the epidemics had already killed massive numbers of natives, many newer European immigrants assumed that there had always been relatively few indigenous peoples . The scope of the epidemics over the years was tremendous, killing millions of people--possibly in excess of 90% of the population in the hardest hit areas--and creating one of "the greatest human catastrophe in history, far exceeding even the disaster of the Black Death of medieval Europe", which had killed up to one - third of the people in Europe and Asia between 1347 and 1351 . </P> <P> One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, yellow fever and pertussis, which were chronic in Eurasia . </P> <P> This transfer of disease between the Old and New Worlds was later studied as part of what has been labeled the "Columbian Exchange". </P>

Who lived in america before the european settlers arrived