by Helena Handbasket

Created on: February 09, 2009   Last Updated: February 13, 2009

The Taino natives of the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola were rudely awakened in 1492. Granted, the strange-speaking tradesmen of unknown land and tongue were not in themselves the problem. Even these foreigners uncommonly strong lust for natural resources (sugar, gold), and their power to force others by using personal "fire arms", were manageable issues. But the newcomers unknowingly brought an even more deadly force: the mosquito. When faced with the malarial Anopheles mosquito, the yellow-fever Aedes mosquito, and an array of other infectious diseases, the West Indians were without escape.

The European settlers were familiar with the mortality rates of malaria, smallpox, and yellow fever. The Taino and other local tribes were completely exposed, having neither historical lore nor natural immunities. While European cities could generally recover from epidemic outbreaks, Caribbean dwellings were repeatedly decimated by plagues from which no release could be found.

The outbreaks of smallpox in Hispaniola are well-documented and awe-striking. In 1507, the first smallpox epidemic in the New World took place on that island, spreading from the Spaniard explorers to the natives. Entire tribes became literally extinct. The "Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence" (G.C. Kohn, 1995) estimates that the pre-Columbian native population of Hispaniola, over 300,000, had been reduced to mere hundreds over a fifty-year period. The moisture and heat levels of the Caribbean were even better suited for European viruses and bacteria than Europe itself, particularly in Cuba, Hispaniola, and the humid Windward Islands. (The cooler Bahamas and Antigua were largely spared.)

Meanwhile, more and more waves of settlers came from the northeast, and soon they were seen bringing slaves from the southeast, from Africa. Africans were also carriers of malaria, but in one form (falciparum malaria), it actually immunized them from death in many cases. While many natives were rapidly vanishing, and Europeans were barely holding on and regularly facing their own epidemic losses, the islands population of African slave immigrants remained steady, or increased with fresh African infusions, arriving on ships plying the famous Triangular Trade (sugar, rum, slaves).

Yellow fever followed the same mosquito-borne path, but its rampancy in Africa provided an even stronger immunity to the growing slave population.

The native and African slaves held that such outbreaks were preventative of full European invasion,

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