Originally Posted by Anteater

Well, In my original post I disagreed that smallpox was initially or intentionally weaponized against the Native Americans. That may not have been the case later on, but I disagreed that smallpox was spread intentionally in the earliest years of colonization. I talked about it over multiple posts that supported this point since I had people disagreeing with me about it.

This led into my other point - that regardless of how someone "feels" about how things transpired, that I didn't see a version of history where smallpox or the Aztecs didn't kill off most of the Native American tribes, and that every timeline was probably ****ed in that regard. That's not me taking a side or making any kind of moral case - it's just an observation on what we know in general about that era of time. A single sniffling Spanish merchant had the potential to wipe out an entire tribe just for showing up and wanting to trade goods. And he would have had no idea he was even doing it, which is the worst part.

That led to a comment where I said that even if smallpox had not wiped out the various tribes due to early interactions with the Portuguese, Spanish, etc., the Aztecs would have likely conquered those tribes and erased them in their bid to take over the North American continent. They were already gradually moving north at the time Cortes arrived, so enslavement and/or being masscred was the likeliest outcome over a several century period. Assuming no Europeans showed up at all of course.

Eventually, the Aztecs would have grown into a Rome-esque sized empire and likely developed technology to cross the sea to Europe, probably by the early 1600's at the latest if Cortez had never showed up. This would have led to a very different world history than what we know now, but it's still likely smallpox would have been an issue if they tried to occupy and build a foothold in any part of western Europe or the Mediterranean. Or maybe they would have brought some other viruses that would have wiped out Europe at the time.

So my point was that for many of those Native American tribes to have not been wiped out from the 14th through 17th centuries, history would have had to play out very differently than it did and that it sucks that it didn't.

Originally Posted by Trollheart

You sound like Buffy after they dragged her back from Heaven.

Originally Posted by WWWP

I want to open a school for MB's lost boys and teach them basic coping skills and build up their self esteem and strengthen their emotional intelligence and teach them about vegetables and institutionalized racism and sexism and then they'll all build a bronze statue of me in my honor and my bronzed titties will forever be groped by the grubby paws of you ****ing whiny pathetic white boys.