Smallpox

Also: variola, viruela, hueyzahuatl

A viral disease of high fever and pustular rash. In 1520 it reached Tenochtitlán, a year after Cortés first entered the city, and killed large numbers of people who had never met it.

Questions this entry answers

  • How did smallpox reach the Aztec Empire?
  • How many people died of smallpox in Tenochtitlán in 1520?
  • Did smallpox help the Spanish conquer Mexico?

Definition

Smallpox is an infectious disease caused by the variola virus. It spread between people through close contact and the air, and through contaminated clothing and bedding. It caused high fever and then a rash that turned into deep, fluid-filled pustules across the face and body. Survivors were immune for life, often scarred, and sometimes blinded. In 1980 it became the only human disease declared eradicated.

Historical context

Smallpox had circulated in Europe, Asia and Africa for centuries. It had never been in the Americas. It reached the Caribbean around the end of 1518 and mainland Mexico in 1520. Spanish accounts tie its arrival to the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, sent to bring Cortés to heel, which landed in the spring of 1520. Some accounts name a single infected man aboard. That detail is disputed.

The epidemic reached Tenochtitlán in the autumn of 1520, after the Spanish and their allies had been driven out of the city. Among the dead was Cuitláhuac, who had succeeded Motecuhzoma as ruler. The siege that ended in the city's fall came the following year. Historians agree the epidemic weakened the city. How decisive it was, set against the Indigenous allies who made up most of the besieging forces, is still argued.

The Road to Tenochtitlán ends on 8 November 1519 and does not cover the epidemic. It came after the episode's endpoint.

How it worked

  1. Incubation. Around twelve days with no symptoms, sometimes more or less.
  2. Fever. High fever, headache, back pain and exhaustion.
  3. Rash. Spots appeared in the mouth and on the face, then spread. They became raised pustules, then crusted into scabs. A person was infectious from the start of the rash until the scabs fell away.

A population that has never met a disease has no survivors with immunity. Adults and children fell sick at the same time, so the people who would normally nurse the sick, fetch water and prepare food were sick too.

What it meant for the patient, the soldier, the civilian

The Nahua account in the Florentine Codex, compiled under Bernardino de Sahagún decades later, describes people covered in sores and unable to move, and others dying of hunger because no one was well enough to feed them.

How many died is not known. Estimates vary widely, and no single figure should be treated as settled. The epidemic struck a city at war, killed its ruler, and fell on families who had no name for what was happening to them.

Examples from history

  • After 1520. Further epidemics struck New Spain through the sixteenth century, including outbreaks in 1545 and 1576 known as cocoliztli, whose cause is still debated.

Sources

Sources listed
4
Checked against the source
0
Not yet checked
4

Primary source

  1. Sahagún, Bernardino de. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 12, The Conquest of Mexico. Translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson & Charles E. Dibble. School of American Research and University of Utah, 1955 (rev. ed. 1975).

    Not yet checked against the source

Scholarly secondary source

  1. Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Greenwood, 1972.

    Not yet checked against the source

  2. Cook, Noble David. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

    Not yet checked against the source

Historical interpretation

  1. Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford University Press, 2003.

    Not yet checked against the source

Know a better source or see an error? Send a correction.