Population Decline
The virgin soil epidemic caused by the arrival of smallpox and other diseases from Europe, combined with Spain's harsh policies of enslavement, resettlement, and the separation of families, the encomienda system, resulted in Taino society's drastic decline within a few decades after contact. Attacks by Carib tribes and unrelenting harsh treatment by the Europeans accelerated the process. Although Taino society was destroyed by European expansion, some of their bloodlines persist among the new settlers, primarily Western and African peoples.
Frederick Albion Ober, after his trip in July 1898 of the West Indies, notes:
- "... a barbarous fact. When the ancient Caribs came here from the south, they came as conquerors, and killed every adult male Arawak who fell into their hands. But they preserved the women and children,..."
Read more about this topic: Arawak Peoples
Famous quotes containing the words population and/or decline:
“The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)