[1] The Indigenous peoples of the Americas had little immunity to the predominantly Old World diseases, resulting in significant loss of life and contributing to their enslavement and exploitation perpetrated by the European colonists.
[2][3] Before the first wave of European colonization, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Caribbean are thought to have lived with infrequent epidemic diseases, brought about by limited contact between tribes.
[4] This left them socially and biologically unprepared when the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and his crew introduced several infectious diseases, including typhus, smallpox, influenza, whooping cough, and measles following his 1492 voyage to the Americas.
[8][9] The virus was introduced to the Isle of Santo Domingo by the Cristóbal Cólon, which docked at La Isabela on 10 December 1493, carrying about 2,000 Spanish passengers.
[10] Despite the general poor health of the colony, Columbus returned in 1494 and found that the Native American population had been affected by disease even more catastrophically than Isabela's first settlers were.
[6] The high number of people incapacitated by the disease disrupted the normal cycles of agriculture and hunting that sustained the Native American populations.