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>360  Blanchard estimate.[1]

 

Alchon: “Plenty of evidence exists…to support the assertion that after 1492, the native societies of North America were repeatedly ravaged by epidemic infections, and throughout this vast area, French, English, and Dutch colonists frequently noted the devastating consequences of disease on indigenous communities. One of the earliest accounts to describe the impact of epidemic disease on the native population of North America was written by Thomas Hariot, who accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition[2] to Roanoke Island in 1584[3]:

 

Within a few dayes after our departure from everie such towne, the people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some townes about twentie, in some fourtie, in some sixtie, and in one sixe score, which in trueth was very manie in respect of their numbers….The disease was also so strange, that they neither knew what it was, nor how to cure it; the like by report of the oldest men in the countrey never happened before, time out of minde. A thing specially observed by us, as also by the naturall inhabitants themselves.

 

Hariot:[4] “…within a few days after our departure from euerie[5] such towne, the people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some townes about twentie, in some fourtie, in some sixtie, & in one sixe score, which in trueth was very manie in respect of their numbers. This happened in no place that wee coulde learne but where wee had bene…The disease also so strange, that they neither knew what it was, nor how to cure it; the like by report of the oldest men in the countrey neuer happened before, time out of minde. A thing specially obserued by vs as also by the naturall inhabitants themselues.” (p. 41)

 

Sources

 

Hariot, Thomas. A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588). On line edition edited by Paul Royster and digitized by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, as part of their Electronic Texts in American Studies. Accessed 3-4-2017 at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=etas

 

Alchon, Suzanne Austin. A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global Perspective. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2003. Google digital preview accessed 3-4-2017 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=YiHHnV08ebkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

 

 

 

[1] Hariot is the only source. If in “some townes about twentie” died can be translated, for purposes of a tally, into at least two towns, then at least 40 people died. Similarly if we translate forty deaths in some towns into at least two towns, then at least 80 died in those towns, and if the sixty who died in some towns is viewed as at least two towns, then 120 died there, and finally since a score is twenty and six score died in one town, we translate that into 120. Thus, for the purpose of deriving a number, we add 40, 80, 120 and 120, to arrive at 360. If Hariot was being accurate, and we are unaware of an accusation of inaccuracy, then there were probably at least 360 deaths, and if “some townes” meant more than two, then the number goes up. If there were additional deaths Hariot was unaware of, then the number of deaths to disease introduced in quick order by the English goes up more.

[2] Funded by Sir Walter Raleigh, who did not actually accompany the expedition to Roanoke Island in 1584.

[3] See Harriot (or Hariot). He was in the colony from June 1585 to June 1586.

[4] The University of Nebraska-Lincoln digital edition notes: “This is on online electronic text edition of the first book published by an English colonist in America. Its author, Thomas Hariot or Harriot, was a cartographer, mathematician, astronomer, linguist, and philosopher, who was a participant in Sir Walter Ralegh’s first attempt to establish a colony in ‘Virginia,’ on Roanoke Island in modern-day North Carolina, from June 1585 until June 1586…”

[5] U’s and v’s were used interchangeably — the word is “every.”

— 2,500-11,000  Various chronicles, reports, testimony emanating from the expedition. (Duncan)

—             6,082  Berney. Hand-Book of Alabama (2^nd Revised Edition). 1892, p. 77.[1]

—   2,500-6,000  Blanchard range.[2]

—             3,020  Nunnally, Michael L. American Indian Wars. 2007, pp. 6-7.[3]

–High hundreds-2,500.  Duncan. Hernando de Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas, 1995, 388.

—             18-25  Spaniards killed according to the expedition chroniclers.  Duncan 1995, 389.

—             13-35  Spaniards died of wounds afterwards.  Duncan 1995, 390.

 

Narrative Information

 

Berney: “1540 – October 18.  DeSoto fought the great battle of Maubila, or Maurila, with the tribe of Indians subsequently known as the Mobilians.”[4]  (Berney. Hand-Book of Alabama (2^nd Revised Edition). 1892, p. 77.)

 

Duncan: “Depending on which account you believe, Tascalusa had hidden three thousand, five thousand, or eleven thousand warriors in the huts, which he now threw against Hernando de Soto…”  (Duncan 1995, 380.)

 

“As the fighting spread, Garcilaso claims that the wives and daughters of the Atahachi warriors joined in the battle, some of them grabbing weapons dropped by both Indians and Spaniards.  These they turned on their enemy ‘with no less skill and ferocity than their husbands’”…. (Duncan 1995, 383.)

 

“This battle, one of the bloodiest fought in five centuries of warfare between Europeans and Indians on what would become United States soil, ended at sunset with Mabila in flames, and heaps of Indians lying dead or dying as men moaned and coughed, and blood soaked the ground…”  (Duncan 1995, 384.)

 

‘Only Garcilaso, the great romantic, writes about the aftermath of Mabila with the proper blend of repulsion, pathos, and respect for the thousands killed – not because he was there, bu because he understood the horror of war’s aftermath both as a writer and a soldier, having served as a high-ranking officer in King Philip II’s army.  Claiming that one could not walk down the streets of Mabila ‘for the dead bodies,’ Garcilaso writes that ‘the fire consumed more than 3,500 souls in the houses…the fire cutting them off from the door and suffocating and burning them inside without their being able to get out…it was pitiful to see.’  Most of the dead, he says, ‘were women’ who had come as wives ‘in obedience to their husbands, who had commanded them to do so.  Others, who were single, said they had come at the importunity of their relatives and brothers who had promised to bring them so they might see…great celebrations…after the death and destruction of the Castilians.’  Still other women had arrived as lovers, fiancées, and girlfriends to watch ‘their gallants and sweethearts…who begged and persuaded them to come and see the valiant deeds and exploits they expected to perform against the Spaniards.’

 

“Outside the smoldering walls the horrors continued, says the Inca, with the fields and streams around the city filled with the dead and dying. ‘For four leagues round about in the woods, ravines and streams,’ he writes about the day after the battle ‘the Spaniards on going through the country found nothing but dead and wounded Indians, to the number of two thousand persons who had been unable to reach their houses.  It was pitiful to hear them groaning in the woods, entirely helpless.’

 

“We will never know how many Indians died at the Battle of Mabila.  Presumably, all the chroniclers exaggerate their tolls – which range from twenty-five hundred to eleven thousand – in order to make their own losses and stupidity look less awkward.  Given what is known archaeologically about southern Alabama, the Indian army probably numbered no more than one to three thousand, even if allies from far away participated.  This means that Elva’s body count of twenty-five hundred is not inconceivable, though my guess is the number of Indians killed was more likely in the upper hundreds, with a thousand being the upper limit.

 

“Whatever the number, this was a devastating loss for the Mississippians of Alabama, and beyond.  In a single bloody conflagration, the Spaniards had killed or wounded virtually every fighting man in the region, including Tascalusa’s son and heir, ‘found lanced,’ and the king’s aides, generals, and priests.  As for Tascalusa himself, ‘nothing was ever learned of the cacique, [ruler] either dead or alive,’ though he almost certainly perished, his body burned beyond recognition.  Even more disastrous was what died with these Mississippian leaders – the centuries of collective knowledge about how to grow crops, build cities, worship gods, and administer the Atahachi government.

 

“By the time the next Europeans visited southern Alabama nineteen years later, during the 1559-61 Tristan de Luna expedition, the only trace of Tascalusa’s kingdom was a few survivors living among the ruins of an Atahachi city.  Reduced to a society of primitive agriculturists quickly devolving into hunter-gatherers, they told the Spaniards that their country had once been great and powerful, until strangers looking like them had come and destroyed their crops and cities, and killed their people.  The former kingdom of Atahachi proved so barren of food and essentials that Luna’s small group of soldiers and colonist nearly died of starvation after their provisions were destroyed in a hurricane….”  (Duncan 1995 387-388.)

 

“According to the chroniclers, the total number of Spaniards killed at Mabila was between eighteen and twenty-five….”  (Duncan 1995, pp. 387-389.)

 

(Duncan, David Ewing. Hernando de Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas. 1995.)

 

Nunnally:  “October 18, 1540, Battle of Maubila (Mobile) – Alabama.  “A 950-man Spanish force under Hernando de Soto is attacked by Maubila Indians under Chief Tuscaloosa.  The Indians are out-weaponed, and 3,000 Indians are reported killed.  Twenty Spaniards are also killed.”  (Nunnally, Michael L. American Indian Wars. 2007, pp. 6-7.)

 

Sources

 

Berney, Saffold. Hand-Book of Alabama (2^nd Revised Edition). Birmingham, AL: Roberts & Sons Printers, 1892. Digitized by Google. Accessed 3-4-107 at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=WDV_rsw3i2YC&source=gbs_navlinks_s

 

Duncan, David Ewing. Hernando de Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas. NY: Crown Publishers, 1995. Partially Google digitized; accessed 9-11-2012 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=YNOS6v78d7UC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Nunnally, Michael L. American Indian Wars: A Chronology of Confrontations Between Native Peoples and Settlers and the United States Military, 1500s-1901. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2007.

 

 

[1] Six thousand Natives and 82 from the Spanish expedition.

[2] Given Duncan’s skepticism with the estimates of chroniclers above the lowest estimate of 2,500 it is not conservative to go beyond his educated guess.  However, since we have a source which has accepted one of the chronicler’s claims of 6,000 fatalities, we include it here though its plausibility is in question.  On the other hand, as Duncan notes, there were a great many Atahachi  gathered, not only because it was a capital city, but because many who lived elsewhere had been drawn to the site to witness a slaughter of invaders.  When the city was intentionally burned (one of the reasons we refer to this as a massacre), it is indeed plausible that many hundreds or even thousands of non-combatant men, women and children died in the burning buildings.

[3] Cites: Rajtar, Steve. Indian War Sites. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1999; and Reader’s Digest Publications. Through Indian Eyes. Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest, 1995. Gives 3,000 as Native losses and 20 Spanish.

[4] Berney adds the following note:  “Pickett, in his History of Alabama, vol. I, p. 27, locates the site of this battle, which is said by Bancroft to have been one of the bloodiest Indian battles ever fought on the soil of the United States, at what is now Choctaw Bluff, Clarke county, on the Alabama river, about twenty-live miles above its confluence with the Tombigbee. The result of the battle was very disastrous to DeSoto, and, although victorious, his army became badly demoralized, and never recovered from its effects. DeSoto lost in killed eighty-two of his cavaliers, and killed 6,000 Indians.”

1492-1800 – North American Native Population Decline, esp. due to disease       –~2,800,000

— ~2,800,000  Denevan. “The Pristine Myth: the Landscape of the Americas in 1492.” 2003, 6.

 

Narrative Information

Denevan: “What was the New World like at the time of Columbus?…

“Scholarship has shown that Indian populations in the Americas were substantial….

“I have recently suggested a New World total of 53.9 million.[1]  This divides into 3.8 million for North America…..

“…the native impact on the landscape of 1492, reflected not only the population then but the cumulative effects of a growing population over the previous 15,000 years or more.

“ European entry into the New World abruptly reversed this trend.  The decline of native American populations was rapid and severe, probably the greatest demographic disaster ever.[2]  Old World diseases were the primary killer…in North America from 3.8 million in 1492 to 1 million in 1800 (74 percent).”  (Denevan. “The Pristine Myth: the Landscape of the Americas in 1492.” 2003, 5-6.)

Source

Denevan, William M. “The Pristine Myth: the Landscape of the Americas in 1492.” Pp. 5-26 in: Warren, Louis S. (Ed.)  American Environmental History. 2003.

 

[1] William M. Denevan (Ed.).  The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, 2^nd Ed. Madison: Univ. Press, 1992.

[2] Cites:  George W. Lovell.  “Heavy shadows and black night”: disease and depopulation in Colonial Spanish America.  Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 82, No. 3, 1992, pp. 426-443.