Smallpox is a severe contagious viral disease spread by particles emitted from the mouth when an infected person speaks, coughs, or sneezes. The disease begins with a high fever; then the skin erupts in pus-filled pimples over the face, back, chest, and limbs. Smallpox probably originated among humans more than ten thousand years ago in Egypt and Mesopotamia; it was often fatal. It had been around for many years in Europe by the time the Spanish began their voyages to the Americas in the early sixteenth century. In fact, the disease was so common in Europe that many people there developed immunity (resistance) to it. That meant that Europeans were able to carry the disease without starting an epidemic among themselves. The natives of the Americas, however, had no immunity to the disease. Smallpox was extremely deadly to them, and it spread rapidly after the arrival of the Spanish.

The first American smallpox epidemic occurred in 1518 on Hispaniola (a Caribbean island that is now divided into two nations: Haiti and the Dominican Republic). This outbreak killed about half of the native population there. Two years later the virus reached Mexico and was responsible for millions of deaths there--perhaps about one-third of the population. The disease is believed to have hit the Inca empire around 1525, and thousands ofpeople died from it. By some estimates, smallpox may have killed 75 percent of the Inca empire population by the time the epidemics were over.

The smallpox epidemic changed history wherever it went, and the Incas are a prime example. The epidemic killed their ruler and the son he had chosen to be heir to the throne. Two of his other sons then attempted to claim the throne, and their conflict set off a deadly civil war that left the empire disorganized and divided. Grief over the widespread death broke the spirit of the people in the Inca empire. Many of them believed that the Europeans were using supernatural forces against them, and thus they lost their will to fight.

Some historians are currently questioning the influence of smallpox in the Inca defeat. A few recent investigators do not believe the disease arrived in the empire early enough to have been responsible for Huayna Capac's death. Sixteenth-century chroniclers observed that a plague had come to the northern part of the empire at the time of Huayna Capac's death, reaching down as far as Cuzco. For years historians have assumed that the plague must have been smallpox, which killed millions of natives throughout the two American continents. Hoping to finally confirm or disprove this assumption, archaeologists are currently searching for the mummy of Huayna Capac, which--if it exists--would be the best source of clues about the cause of his death.

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