Review by Choice Review
A reinterpretation of the collapse and depopulation of early historic native societies in northwestern Mexico and the American southwest. Reff takes to task researchers who have inferred that native settlement-abandonments during the 16th to 18th centuries were due to such events as climatic shifts, resource mismanagement, Spanish cruelties, or warfare. Granting that such calamities may have occurred, he charges that archival accounts of massive disease outbreaks among aboriginal groups have largely been ignored or dismissed. He argues that the destruction of at least 90% of the native population during those centuries was due primarily to the importation of Old World diseases, chiefly smallpox. His detailed documentation of the occurrence and demographic and cultural effects of introduced epidemics relies heavily on such primary (if hitherto largely overlooked) sources as the observations of early Spanish explorers and Jesuit missionaries. In analyzing archeological and archival data from an epidemiologic perspective to infer how, when, and where European diseases were introduced and spread, Reff has produced an original, closely reasoned, and well-written work. Advanced undergradates and up.-E. Wellin, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
