Good post and thanks for some serious knowledge. Wasn’t there a 2 wave mass die off in South America before the Spanish arrived? I vaguely remember reading about it an the fact that the SA natives were in serious decline before Europeans arrived. One of the real knowledge GGG posters would know if you don’t. The numbers of North American natives range from 1.8 to 4.0 million but I always thought that was low. East coast could easily support those numbers.
For some reason I thought you might have some information on pre European mass deaths in South America. It led to a major decline in the power base there.
Both in Mexico and Peru? I will have to try find something about that. Mexico had suffered a long drought killing many just before Cortes came. This is weakened Indian resistence more first to a huge small pox epidemic then the waves of Cocolitzi. A severe famine in western Europe just before the Bubonic plague had a similar effect. Small pox had arrived before the Pizarro brothers in what is now Ecuador and northern Peru wreaking havoc. It came overland from contact that Indians had with Spanish in Panama and then the infection being passed along trade routes to Inca region.