European diseases had killed much of the native workforce.

i hope this helps ig

Explanation:

Contact between Europeans and Native Americans led to a demographic disaster of unprecedented proportions. Many of the epidemic diseases that were well established in the Old World were absent from the Americas before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. The catastrophic epidemics that accompanied the European conquest of the New World decimated the indigenous population of the Americas.

it foreshadows the theme of the paragraph and hints the topic that will be discussed in the paragraph!