[Jim from C-Town]

I should have said as many as 100 million. Estimates vary between 10, 20 and as many as 100 million Natives in America died. Most certainly it is tens of millions as it is estimated as many as 95% of the indigenous population died from diseases.

‘
The population figure for Indigenous peoples in the Americas before the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus has proven difficult to establish. Scholars rely on archaeological data and written records from settlers from the Old World. Most scholars writing at the end of the 19th century estimated the pre-Columbian population as low as 10 million; by the end of the 20th century most scholars gravitate to a middle estimate of around 50 million, with some historians arguing for 100 million or more.[1] Contact with the New World led to the European colonization of the Americas, in which millions of immigrants from the Old World eventually settled in the New World.’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas

‘...Within just a few generations, the continents of the Americas were virtually emptied of their native inhabitants – some academics estimate that approximately 20 million people may have died in the years following the European invasion – up to 95% of the population of the Americas....’

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/smallpox.html

[Glad2bnuts]

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.......

[driftless2]

I guess we're talking different things. I meant the basic native populations north of the Rio Grande. And I'd be real careful about quoting Jared Diamond. I read his book "Guns, Germs, and Steel." The guy is a leftist wacko.