 Besides miscegenation, the negative impact on the numbers of Amerindian people, especially in Puerto Rico, was almost entirely the result of Old World diseases that the Amerindians had no natural/bodily defenses against, including measles, chicken pox, mumps, influenza, and even the common cold.In fact, it was estimated that the majority of all the Amerindian inhabitants of the New World died out due to contact and contamination with those Old World diseases, while those that survived were further reduced through deaths by warfare with each other and with Europeans.Both run-away and freed African slaves (the Spanish, upon establishing a foothold, quickly began to import African slaves to work in expanding their colonies in the Caribbean) were in Puerto Rico.