In the 16th century, the arrival of Europeans to the New World drastically changed the indigenous population’s world due to the arrival of diseases, encomienda institution, and Christianity. First off, Europeans, albeit accidentally, brought germs that caused smallpox, yellow fever, malaria, and many other diseases over to America. Due to antibodies in the Europeans’ blood, these germs harmless, however, once these germs were exposed to Indians, who did not have the antibodies required to not catch the disease, they became deadly, wiping out large populations of Indians. For example, during a siege laid upon the Aztec Indians in the 1520s, a smallpox epidemic had burned through the Valley of Mexico. Combined with conquest, the disease wreaked
