100,000,000 Dead Indians in just a few years, that is probably why the oil wells are refilling on this continent, all that carbon based life breaking down into carbon type fuel.......... Sarcasm off now.......
Columbus reached the New World in 1492. By the time he left for home on his return voyage his crews had already infected the natives with some illnesses. Within a couple generations it is believed that much of both continents where infected.
Due to the death of the indigenous population, the African slave trade really started in order to get labor for Caribbean and South American plantations.
The exploration and settlement of North America didn't really begin in earnest until after 1620 and really until after 1650.
Around a third of Europe died during the Black Death Plague in the fourteenth century. That is around 50-70 million people. This type of pandemic has happened in other parts of the World.
The Black Death started in Central Asia and traveled to India & China it moved via trade through Constantinople into Europe. They estimate that a minimum 75 million died of the Black Death and maybe as many as 200 million died by the end of the pandemic.
These types of pandemics are not unheard of. The fact hat the native populations of America where so isolated for so many millennia from the rest of the World explains the unprecedented death rate of diseases like Small Pox and Typhus.
With a death rate of around 90-95% a population of 100 million or more could be all but eliminated in a very short period of time.
Could you imagine the social disruption, displacement, fear and insanity? It would be akin to “The Stand” in proportion.