Isabella's Pigs

[Steven K. Robison]

For his second voyage, begun in June 1493, [Christopher Columbus] was
provided with many more ships, as well as some fifteen hundred settlers,
including a full complement of priests, royal accountants, and an
unspecified number of women. Queen Isabella also made a very significant
suggestion. . . . Isabella is credited as the one who encouraged Columbus
to take some pigs aboard ship, along with dogs and horses.

Once introduced to the New World, Isabella's pigs became one of the staples
of Spanish armies and colonists. Able to forage for themselves and
remarkably fertile, the pigs provided a valuable source of easily
transported and self-perpetuating protein.

. . .

Perhaps the greatest unintended consequence of this mobile mess hall may
have been the waves of disease that are credited with wiping out so much of
the native American populace the Spanish encountered. In [his book] 1491,
Charles C. Mann fingers the pigs, the "ambulatory meat locker," as the
possible culprit behind the deadly epidemics that swept the New World's
original inhabitants. "Swine, mainstays of European agriculture, transmit
anthrax, brucellosis, leptospirosis, trichinosis, and tuberculosis. Pigs
breed exuberantly and can pass disease to deer and turkeys, which then can
infect people. . . . Only a few . . . pigs would have to wander off to
contaminate the forest."

Kenneth C. Davis, America's Hidden History (2008), pp. 18 - 19
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[Ida O'Furphy]

Steven K. Robison wrote:
> Only a few . . . pigs would have to wander off to
> contaminate the forest."

_________________________

From oak to oak they run with eager haste..
The trudging sow leads forth her numerous young,
Playful, white, clean the briars among.
~ Robert Bloomfield 1766-1833, The Farmer's Boy (1800)

--
//Ida O'Furphy