[Michael.SF.]

I picked 70% off the top of my head and was just making an analogy, not trying to be historically accurate with the death rate of those killed from disease.

BTW, I have seen several figures on the estimated number of Natives in NA at the arrival of the Europeans, but have not seen one as high as 50 million. Do you have a link to a source for that?

[muawiyah]

The other day History Channel ran a thing on Cabeza de Vaca. The researchers for that piece credited Mexico alone with having 50 million.

It's hard to get a fix on this, of course, since the Indians died off faster than anyone could get around and count them, but there were several tens of million in South America, several tens of million in Meso-America, and probably as many as 5 million in North America proper (US and Canada).

I grew up about 2 blocks away from an abandoned Indian camp site. They all died off and left their grinding stones and other implements in place. They even left behind their meteorite. Over the years I've thought about how many people could have lived there, but there are not enough clues unless I dug up the entire site.