The extent, rapidity, and duration of the collapse of the indigenous population in what was to Europeans the New World after 1492 easily eclipsed the catastrophic epidemics that afflicted medieval and early modern Europe. Historians therefore quickly began to speak of a Demographic Catastrophe, sometimes even of an “American Holocaust” [9] (Colonialism). The mass death comprises one of the darkest chapters in the history of the European discovery and conquest of the Americas.…