Although Indian populations in other areas of the viceroyalty of Peru continued to decline, demographic recovery was under way in the highlands of Ecuador by the beginning of the seventeenth century. This was made possible by a number of factors, including natural increase, immigration, and a decline in the number and severity of epidemics. Whereas the sixteenth century witnessed a series of violent confrontations between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Andes, the following years were characterized by biological and social stabilization. On the foundation of an expanding native labor force, Quito became the center of a thriving agricultural and textile-producing economy that continued to prosper until the 1690s. The resilience of native society was evident in its demographic recovery and also in its ability to respond to new social and economic circumstances created by Spanish imperialism.

Disease and natural disasters

The pandemics that swept through Ecuador between 1585 and 1591 were the last viceroyalty-wide outbreaks of such magnitude; although epidemics continued to attack native communities throughout the seventeenth century, never again did they occur with such ferocity. The changes that took place in disease patterns were influenced by both demographic and immunological factors. The loss of more than half of the native population during the sixteenth century meant fewer human hosts for disease organisms, leading to a significant reduction in the number and scale of subsequent outbreaks. Five pandemics struck the Quito area between 1524 and 1591, but available documentation suggests that only three major epidemics occurred between 1600 and 1690.