No major native American kingdom succumbed to the Spaniards before disease took hold, but once it had, the effect was crippling, and maybe half the population of the Americas died in the first wave of epidemics. That in itself was a powerful argument to bewildered and terrified people that their gods were useless and that the God of the conquerors had won. It has been estimated that by 1550 around ten million people had been baptized as Christians in the Americas. Another informed and sobering estimate is that by 1800 indigenous populations in the western hemisphere were a tenth of what they
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