Review The new book 'The Other Slavery' will make you rethink American history

[Igel]

4. "No hurt, no foul"?

Not quite. More like "ignorance confers lack of intent."

One problem is that first contact usually was brief, and disease would have spread faster inland than the first contactors.

Take n. America. Spanish explorers went along the southern coast decades before Brits settled hundreds of miles to the north. They didn't stay in a given place for months. Odds are some diseases moved far inland a century before Europeans did. Horses certainly spread ahead of Europeans.