Māori people peaceful tribes from their productive turangawaewae, such as the Moriori in the Chatham Islands by invading forces from North Taranaki, had a catastrophic effect on these conquered tribes. At the same time, the Māori suffered high mortality rates for new Eurasian infectious diseases, such as influenza, smallpox and measles, which killed an unknown number of Māori: estimates vary between ten and fifty percent. The spread of epidemics resulted largely from the Māori lacking acquired immunity to the new diseases. A huge influx of European settlers in the 1870s increased contact among many of the indigenous people with the newcomers. Te
Indigenous peoples in Uruguay territory was inhabited by small tribes of nomadic Charrua, Chana, Arachan and Guarani peoples. They were a semi-nomadic people who survived by hunting, fishing and gathering and probably never reached more than 10,000 – 20,000 people. It is estimated that there were about 9,000 Charrúa and 6,000 Chaná and Guaraní at the time of contact with the Spanish in the 1500s. By the time of independence, some 300 years later, there were only about 500 native peoples remaining in Uruguay. The cause of the decline in native populations was disease, as well as intermarriage. With little immunity to these diseases,