Around 2000 my late husband and I decided to sell 20 acres he inherited in southern Illinois and buy rural land on WV closer to home. The land we bought cost around $5,000 an acre. but we did a Starker exchange for $500 in legal expenses, but saved paying IRS capital gains tax on the land sold and applied the sale money directly into the WV land purchase. The land had a small lake at the bottom of a large wooded hill. Not much open flat land for growing crops. Starker exchange is an IRS method for exchanging land for land or building for building. The new “business property” must cost more than the old property, you must use a lawyer. and complete the exchange within six months.
Regarding the illness, it sounds like possibly Hanta or some other hemoraghic (sp?) fever type illness. If Salmonella, drought conditions would have made water safety issues more likely. I imagine smallpox and these other possibilities and others not mentioned probably all played an ugly part. By the mid 1500s Cortez’s conquest was well over, and many more Spaniards and Europeans would have arrived with their various illnesses. Also, by this time Syphilis had been carried back to Europe for all the people having fun there. I saw a news report the other day we now have an Ebola case in the US.
https://search.brave.com/search?q=hemorrhagic+symptoms+of+spanish+lady+influenza&summary=1
Hemorrhagic Symptoms of Spanish Flu
The Spanish flu, also known as the Spanish lady influenza, was characterized by severe hemorrhagic symptoms. These included spontaneous nose and mouth bleeds, as well as bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin.
Additionally, patients often experienced hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, swelling of the liver and kidneys, and splenitis (inflammation of the spleen).
The hemorrhagic symptoms were often a result of the virus causing extensive pneumonia in both lungs, leading to pulmonary consolidation and fluid buildup in the lungs.
In some cases, the hemorrhaging was so severe that it caused death within hours or days due to the lungs being filled with fluids.