ONEOFMANYFEATHERS'
Indian Smallpox
Native populations of the Americas lacked immunity to the infectious diseases that had ravaged Europe and Asia for centuries. The "white man" diseases…measles, chicken pox, typhus, typhoid fever, dysentery, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and after 1832, cholera…were devastating to the American Indian. Lumped together, these diseases did not equal the havoc of smallpox in terms of number of deaths, realignment of tribal alliances, and subsequent changes in Canadian and American Indian Culture.
Sparse populations on the Plains and in the pristine valleys of the Rocky Mountains prevented a buildup of communicable diseases. With the exception of man's oldest disease, Malaria, the scourges of mankind have resulted from dense populations living in small compact areas…overcrowded cities with little or no sanitation. Except venereal disease, Indians as hunter-gatherers were free of the communicable diseases.
Smallpox passes through the air in droplets discharged from the nose and mouth. It spreads from the lungs of an infected person into the lungs of a susceptible person. Smallpox can survive years on the clothing and bedding used by smallpox victims. In the early seventeen hundreds, a smallpox outbreak in Quebec resulted in many deaths. In 1854, a pipeline laid through where the victims had been buried resulted in another smallpox outbreak.
By the end of the sixteen hundreds, smallpox had spread up and down the eastern seaboard and as far west as the Great Lakes. Stearn and Stearn estimated there were approximately one million one hundred and fifty thousand Indians living north of the Rio Grande in the early sixteenth-century, but by 1907, there were less than four hundred thousand (Bray). This decline was not due to smallpox alone. Other diseases played a role, as did warfare between various Indian tribes and with the United States.
Smallpox in the New World
African slaves were used on the sugar plantation of the West Indies, and with them came smallpox. In 1495, fifty-seven to eighty percent of the native population of Santa Domingo and in 1515, two-thirds of the Indians of Puerto Rico were wiped out by smallpox. Ten years after Cortez arrived in Mexico, the native population had been reduced from twenty-five million to six million five hundred thousand a reduction of seventy-four percent. Even the most conservative estimates place the deaths from smallpox above sixty-five percent (Bray).
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, various sources estimate native population in North and South America at ninety to one hundred million. In the fifteen hundreds, the American Indian population in North America has been estimated at approximately twelve million, but by the early nineteen hundreds, the population had been reduced to roughly four hundred and seventy-four thousand. It is impossible to arrive at a number for the millions of American Indians killed during this period by European diseases with smallpox the deadliest by far.
Smallpox reached what was to become the United States either from Canada or the West Indies. The first major outbreak of an infectious disease recorded on the northeastern Atlantic coast was 1616-19. The Massachusetts and other Algonquin tribes in the area were reduced from an estimated thirty thousand to three hundred (Bray). When the Pilgrims landed a year later in 1620, there were few Indians left to greet them. Many observers believe this infectious disease was smallpox.
Smallpox and the Plains Indians
The smallpox outbreak of 1780-82 followed the distribution and trade route of the Indian horse (Haines). The outbreak in 1800-02 spread from the Plains Indians to the Indians along the Pacific coast. Despite heavy losses during these periods, the most devastating outbreak of smallpox was yet to come.
In 1832, the first steamboat, a small side-wheeler named, Yellow Stone, reached Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. The use of steamboats on the Missouri allowed large quantities of trade goods to move up and down the river. The buffalo hide trade now become more important than the trade in furs. Remote Indian villages brought their buffalo hides to the American Fur Company posts. This set the stage for ensuing disaster.
The 1837 smallpox outbreak was initially confined to the Indian tribes that lived by or had come to trade at the upper Missouri River trading posts. The Mandan, Blackfeet, and the Assiniboine nations suffered the highest number of deaths. The 1837-40 smallpox outbreak was said to have a ninety-eight percent death rate among those infected (Bray).
In June of 1837, the St. Peter arrived at Fort Clark, 60 miles north of present day Bismarck, North Dakota. Knowing there were men aboard the boat with smallpox, F. A. Chardon and others of the American Fur Company tried to keep the Mandans away from the boat, but to no avail. The two Mandan villages that had provided aid to Lewis and Clark during the winter of 1804-05 were devastated. Thirty-one Mandans out of a population of sixteen hundred survived the epidemic.
Historians have asked, “Why weren't the Indians vaccinated against smallpox?” In 1832 Congress appropriated twelve hundred dollars to begin the fight against smallpox in Indian country. One year later, actual expenditures were down to seven hundred and twenty-one dollars. Some writers and organizations have taken this to mean that the government committed genocide by withholding vaccine from the Indian populations (see, iwchildren.org).
Indian vaccination is based more on current-day thinking than the realities of the early eighteen hundreds. Completely unknown at that time were such health safeguards as sterile procedures, sterile instruments, sterile vaccine, refrigeration, attenuated viruses, overnight transportation, etc. To understand the problems associated with any vaccination program in the eighteen hundreds, the efficacy of the vaccine and the dangers of introducing other diseases must be considered.Smallpox Vaccination.
History of Smallpox Vaccination
An English physician, Edward Jenner observed that dairymaids with a relatively mild disease called cowpox were immune to smallpox. On May 14, 1796, Jenner infected James Phipps with serum taken from a dairymaid, Sarah Nelmes. After being infected with the cowpox, Phipps survived repeated attempts to infect him with smallpox.
Despite Jenner’s vaccination procedure, smallpox still took its toll over the next hundred years; 800,000 Russians died from smallpox during the eighteen hundreds (Bray). By 1840, smallpox vaccination in Britain was free for all infants. Vaccination was made compulsory by an Act of Parliament in the year 1853; again in 1867; and still more stringent in 1871.
Deaths from small-pox in the first 10 years after the enforcement of Vaccination was 33,515, and from 1864 to 1873 the figure more than double to 70,458 deaths.
Despite the law, the mortality rate in vaccinated infants was so high that many mothers did all they could to not vaccinate their babies. Eighty-eight years after Jenner's first use of serum (lymph) for vaccination, William Tebb wrote, “ The lymph used [for vaccination] was of unknown origin, kept in capillary glass tubes, from whence it was blown into a cup into which the lancet was dipped. No pretence of cleaning the lancet was made; it drew blood in very many instances.....no one can estimate the number of healthy, innocent children, as well as adults, who are inoculated with syphilis or other foul disease…An article in the Glasgow Herald for March 4th, 1878 stated: it is, indeed, a most serious matter to find that the deaths from the 15 diseases have increased in England and Wales from 124,799 in 1847, to 217,707 in 1875, whilst the population has only risen from 18 millions to less than 23 millions (Tebb Article).”
Vaccination in America
Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse introduced vaccination to the United States in 1800. Due to contamination and lack of preservation, the vaccines were often infected with bacteria, which sometimes resulted in sickness or death. An article in the New York Times for June 19th, 1880, stated, “A former surgeon of an immigrant steamer informs me that it is the usual custom of steamship surgeons to get a large supply of vaccine virus at one time, and use it until it is gone, however long. This will serve to account for the serious and fatal cases of septic poisoning following Vaccination, so common in the United States, according to the information communicated by correspondents, and also for the various efforts now being made in several States to get the Vaccination Laws abolished.”
On average, the death rate from smallpox among European descended populations approximated twenty-five percent. Exposure to smallpox and other diseases had provided Europeans with some immunity, as did their contact with cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep. Since the American Indian had no exposure to domesticated animals or to other diseases, the safety of the cowpox vaccination itself is questionable.
During the eighteen hundreds, a great many Europeans and white Americans feared vaccination with cowpox more than the risk of catching smallpox. If this was the case, how many Plains Indians, with a well-founded distrust for the white man, were going to have their arms scratched with something out of a bottle that would give them a mild form of a disease that had wiped out entire Indian villages fifty years ago?
Indian Genocide
In a letter (1763) to Colonel Bouquet, Lord Amherst wrote, "Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them". Bouquet replied that he would try and use infected blankets as a means of introducing the disease among the Indians, but was wary of the effects that it would have on his own men. There is no evidence that Col. Bouquet took any action on Amherst's letter, but there is evidence that a Captain Ecuyer did…"Out of our regard for them (two Indian chiefs) we gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out of the smallpox hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect ( William Trent )."
The Amherst letter has been used to support the proposition of germ warfare or genocide against native populations. Amherst may have discussed it in correspondence with Bouquet, but there is no evidence that Colonel Bouquet carried it out. As he mentioned in his reply, Bouquet was afraid of what it would do to his own men and with good reason...this was twenty-three years before Jenner’s work on vaccination, and one hundred years before Pasteur advanced his germ theory...the only thing known about smallpox in 1763 was…the age, color of skin, social status meant nothing to the smallpox virus; an infected person died or, if lucky enough to survive, was disfigured for life. No matter how bad Amherst may have wanted to be rid of the Indians, it seems doubtful that he would unleash a disease that had already killed millions of his own countrymen.
The incident with Captain Eucyer occurred during the Pontiac Indian War. Fort Pitt was under siege, and when Eucyer was informed that more Indians were coming, he may have rationalized that since smallpox was already in the fort, he could spread it to the Indians without danger to his own people, and thus possibly save Fort Pitt.
There is little doubt that unscrupulous land-grabbers and some settlers used any means available to get rid of the American Indians. Government treaties, bureaucratic bungling, the Washita, Sand Creek, and Bear River massacres as well as others created the darkest chapters in this country’s history. However, this does not mean that the United States Government used the smallpox virus to conduct a systematic and planned extermination of the American Indians.
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