This illustration was drawn by a Nahua Aztec elder to accompany the research compiled in Father Bernardino de Sahagún’s sixteenthcentury work General History of the Things of New Spain. It shows people suffering from smallpox, which devastated the Aztec Empire and allowed for Spain to conquer Aztec land and people. When European explorers first encountered Native populations in North America and South America, an exchange of goods and ideas began that became known as the Columbian Exchange. In addition to the exchange of food and crops, there was an exchange of disease. The introduction of European diseases proved fatal to communities in the Americas, where people had not developed immunity or resistance to them.