| Summary: | The European discoverers brought with them weapons and foreign inventions which Native Americans had never seen. Unknowingly, they also brought more fatal devices from Europe, diseases. All native populations suffered from a variety of these European diseases, mostly influenza, smallpox, and measles. Some researchers speculate that these diseases may have been transmitted to other adjacent tribes by way of long-standing trade routes. Since Native Americans and their ancestors’ immune systems were never equipped to handle European infections, the diseases annihilated millions before they ever saw the “pale faced” explorers. In what is now both present-day North and South America, men, women, and children suffered horrible sicknesses which oftentimes resulted in their deaths. With death tolls reaching such grievous numbers, many tribes were unable to sustain their traditional ways of life. These horrific series of events forever altered the course of global human history. The suffering and loss of cultural identity resulting from the introduction of European diseases caused irreversible changes in the lives and well being of the Abenaki, Powhatan, and Taino peoples.
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