Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas scope of the epidemics over the years was tremendous, killing millions of people—possibly in excess of 90% of the population in the hardest hit areas—and creating one of "the greatest human catastrophe in history, far exceeding even the disaster of the Black Death of medieval Europe", which had killed up to one-third of the people in Europe and Asia between 1347 and 1351. One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, yellow fever and pertussis, which were chronic in Eurasia. This transfer of disease between the
Indigenous peoples of the Americas was the general rule in the rest of North America, the history of the colony of New Spain was one of racial intermingling ("mestizaje"). "Mestizos", which in Mexico designate people who do not identify culturally with any indigenous grouping, quickly came to account for a majority of the colony's population; but 6% of the Mexican population identify as speakers of one of the indigenous languages. The CDI identifies 62 indigenous groups in Mexico, each with a unique language. In the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca and in the interior of the Yucatán Peninsula the majority of the population is indigenous.