This document discusses the post-apocalyptic Great Dying of Native Americans following European contact and colonization. It examines European attitudes towards Native Americans in the 16th-17th centuries through accounts describing them as uncivilized. It also analyzes factors blamed for causing the Great Dying such as epidemics from diseases introduced by Europeans to which Native Americans lacked immunity. The document cites several historical sources and raises questions about interpretations of the events.

1. Word Wall
• Post-apocalyptic
• epidemic
• dystopian
• voyage
• civilize
• encroached
• chronicler
• testimony

2. Great Dying?
Killer Virus?

5. Questions
• 1. What can you tell about European attitudes towards
Native Americans in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries from contemporaries’ comments? Explain
how you arrived at your conclusions using the
accounts.
• 2. What factors are blamed or identified as having
caused the Great Dying? Explain how you arrived at
your conclusions using the accounts.

6. Sources
• Source: Qtd. in Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York: Harper
and Row), 134.
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• Source: Qtd. in Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 99.
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• Source: Qtd. in David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World
(New York: Oxford UP, 1992), 88.
!
• Source: The Annals of the Cakchiquels, qtd. in Marvin Lunenfeld, ed., 1492: Discovery, Invasion, Encounter
(Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1991), 312-3.
!
• Source: The Annals of the Cakchiquels, qtd. in Marvin Lunenfeld, ed., 1492: Discovery, Invasion, Encounter
(Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1991), 312-3.
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