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 religious beliefs of the Tagalog people describe all these spirits together, Spanish missionaries eventually decided to call them "anito," since they were the subject of the Tagalog's act of "pag-aanito" (worship). According to Scott, a careful search of sources from the 1500s reveals that:""there was no single word in Tagalog for the other deities to whom Bathala was superior: when necessary, Spanish lexicographers referred to them all as anito."" According to Scott, accounts and early dictionaries describe them as intermediaries ("Bathala's agents"), and the dictionaries used the word "abogado" (advocate) when defining their realms. These sources also show, however, that in practice, they were addressed directly: