Sick Day, Smallpox Among Native Americans
I had big plans for today. I was going to buy a Christmas gift for my son, take the car into the garage to get much needed body work done and look at a new place to live in Culver City that I saw yesterday when I was at the Krisna Temple getting my Vegan and Vegetarian Thanksgiving feast for my Dad and I.
Instead I spend the day vomiting, shitting and sleeping. I was suffering from either a bad case of food poisoning or I had picked up a virus from one of the servers at the Krisna temple. All I could do was sleep and read and make trips to the toilet. I even took a bath to see if I could relive the stress on my kidneys. It was pretty rough. I even considered going to the hospital but since I had recently changed insurance companies I had no idea where to go and the idea of dealing with an unfamiliar series of health bureaucrats was enough to keep me at home using my own remedies.
I drank some lime water that got me to vomit and later ate half a banana that caused me no end of bowel pain and finaly later in the day drank some vegetable broth mixed with some weak left over miso. Now I don’t feel so bad, but man, it is tough being sick and to think that it was my vegan dinner that did me in left me wondering if there is any safe food in this country. I have determined that every time I eat food that I do not prepare at home I suffer consequences for in the form of diarrhea or in this case intestinal flu. The only place that does not happen is when I go to have lunch at Subway. Even when I had a shrimp rice bowl at a Japanese place last week the next night I was suffering from constipation. I don’t know if I have become hyper sensitive to food that has been handled by others or if there is an increase in unsanitary practices that is making the food supply more dangerous but man it is taking a toll on my health.
So this is the deal. I avoid canned foods as much as possible. Perhaps the canned Cranberries did me in but my dad ate them and suffered no side effects. He also ate food from the Krisna temple but he had the vegetarian menu and I had the vegan one. So I suspect it was one of the vegan handlers or preparers that passed some bug on to me.
I avoid non organic fresh veggies and fruits if I can. But it is not always possible. Perhaps it was the bottled apple cider that got to me. I had three glasses. Or maybe it was the organic grape juice that I drank this morning after leaving it out for a few hours on the counter. I normally water it down but I drank it straight. Shortly after that I felt queasy. I thought it was because I ate too much food yesterday but I have always overindulged in the Vegetarian Turkey on Thanksgiving. Who knows in any case in this day and age we have to be especially vigilant about our food supply as it has been adulterated so much by the lax standards in recent times. We are now suffering the consequences, another side effect of unbridled and unregulated capitalism in action.
On a brighter note I got to finish an excellent book on nomad relations with the Chinese empires through history. ‘The Perilous Frontier” by Thomas Barfield. It primarily covered the period from the 3rd century BC until the demise of the last free nomad state in the 18th century, massacred by the Manchu Dynasty. It could be seen as a prototype for the subsequent exterminations in south Africa and in South and North America by the Spanish and Anglos. But I don’t know how generally known the massacre of the Zunghars in 1757 was in the west. Interestingly enough there was a smallpox epidemic that broke out at the same time among the nomads that killed their leader Amursana and half of the Zunghar people. Was this deliberate policy as was giving smallpox infected blankets to Native Americans by the British at approximately the same time?
This is an interesting article about Smallpox among the Native Americans.
Plains Indian Smallpox
by
O. Ned Eddins
Native populations of the Americas lacked immunity to the infectious diseases that had ravaged Europe and Asia for centuries. Sparse populations on the Plains, and in the pristine valleys of the Rocky Mountains, prevented a buildup of communicable diseases. 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 Cultures.
Smallpox in the New World:
African slaves were used on the sugar plantation of the West Indies, and with them came smallpox that they were probably exposed to on the ships. The first of these slaves were brought by Columbus. 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 was few Indians left to greet them. Many observers believe this infectious disease was smallpox.
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 inter tribal warfare and conflicts with the United States.
It was inevitable that when Europeans came to America that European diseases were going to run rampant through the indigenous populations of the Americas. The native populations of North and South America had no immunities, or genetic tolerance, to any of the European diseases, and not all white Americans had immunities to them either. It is commonly believed that syphilis spread from Native Americans to Europeans. There is developing DNA evidence that suggests syphilis (Yaws) was in Europe prior to Columbus’s time. Like every other disease there is growing evidence that Europeans brought syphilis to America.
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. Before the arrival of the white man, the Plains Indians as primarily hunter-gatherers were free of 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.
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 smallpox 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 (see, Compulsory Vaccination in England by William Tebb).
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 (see, 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.”
How effective was vaccination?:
…Not only had poor sanitation and nutrition lain the foundation for disease, it was also compulsory smallpox vaccination campaigns in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that played a major role in decimating the populations of: Japan (48,000 deaths), England and Wales (44,840 deaths, after 97 percent of the population had been vaccinated), Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland, Italy, India (3 million — all vaccinated), Australia, Germany (124,000 deaths), Prussia (69,000 deaths — all re-vaccinated), and the Philippines. The epidemics ended in cities where smallpox vaccinations were either discontinued, or never begun, and after sanitary reforms were instituted (Smallpox Vaccination).
Historians and many others 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. Based on this, there are those that believe the Government deliberately withheld smallpox vaccine from Native Americans, and thus committed Indian Genocide. If this is what you believe, consider this….why is there a controversy raging today over the safety of vaccinating large numbers of Americans with the smallpox virus (see, Smallpox Vaccination). With a perceived danger from vaccination based on today’s medical technology (healthfreedomusa.org), what would have been the danger in the early eighteen hundreds to vaccinating American Indians that had no immunity to European diseases?
Smallpox vaccination of the Native Americans could have had disastrous results. What would have been the results of smallpox vaccination on the Native American Indians that had no immunity to European diseases, or to the domesticated animals of the Europeans? The cowpox virus could have been as deadly to Native Americans as the smallpox virus.
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. Completely unknown at that time were such health safeguards as sterile procedures, sterile instruments, sterile vaccine, refrigeration, attenuated viruses, overnight transportation, etc, etc. During the eighteen hundreds, a great many Americans feared vaccination more than they did the risk of catching smallpox.
Lack of funding a smallpox vaccination program and the Amherst letters have been taken by some writers and organizations to justify a cry of Indian Genocide - iwchildren.org. To this charge, I have one question…how many Native American Indians, with a well-founded distrust for the white man, were going to have their arms scratched with something out of a bottle that had previously wiped out entire Indian villages? If the Indian Nations had been vaccinated with the cowpox virus, the ensuing death loss among Native Americans would have raised a hue and cry across the land…then the cry, and rightly so, would have been the Government is committing genocide by vaccinating Indians with the cowpox virus.
A reader referred me to this site on an interesting and unique vaccination program by the King of Spain, Carlos IV, to vaccinate Spanish subjects around the world.
Francisco Xavier Balmis, (1753–1819), was a pioneer of international vaccination. Born in Alicante, Spain, a physician and army surgeon Francisco Xavier Balmis, was the author of the first translation into Spanish of Moreau de La Sarthe’s book on vaccine. In his edition, Balmis added a foreword to make the book more complete and understandable to the Spanish readers of both hemispheres.
Recognition of his work in this translation and his previous travels in America to collect plants and medical data, made him the best candidate to conduct his own project of spreading the vaccine in all Spanish territories from Spain and through America to the Philippines.
By order of King Carlos IV, an expedition sailed from La Coruña with the aim of sailing round the world and spread Jenner’s vaccine overseas. On board the corvette “María Pita” were Balmis as commander of what was already called “Real Expedición Filantrópica de la Vacuna”, Antonio Salvany as second in command, three surgeons, two first aid practitioners, four male nurses, and 22 orphan children.
Besides the usual medical items the expedition carried two thousand copies of Balmis’ translation of Moreau de La Sarthe’s book, which were to be handed to the medical and political authorities everywhere they were to stop along their journey.
The vaccine was maintained during the journey by sequentially vaccinating arm to arm every 9 or 10 days the 22 children who thus constituted a living transmission chain.
The expedition and the men who took part in it were an example of the spirit of that century of enlightenment, philanthropy, and a faith in science and ability of men to know and change the world. It took almost four years to complete the voyage round the world, and that task can now be considered the first global campaign in what we now call public health, and a success in spreading world wide Jenner’s vaccine that cannot be praised enough. http://jech.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/56/11/802
It would be interesting to know the efficacy and mortality rate from Balmis’ vaccination program. The procedure used by Balmis was far superior to the use of the non-sterile cowpox virus, but this technique was basically what Larpentuer did with the Indian women at Fort Union.
Smallpox and the Plains Indians:
A smallpox outbreak in 1780-82 followed the distribution and trade route of the Indian horse (Haines). The outbreak in 1800-02 spreads 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.
In June of 1837, the St. Peter arrived at Fort Clark, sixty 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…these figures vary, but needless to say it was devastating to the Mandans.
The 1837 smallpox outbreaks were 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 outbreaks were said to have a ninety-eight percent death rate among those infected (Bray).
Despite warnings from the traders, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Sioux warriors raided the empty Mandan villages and carried smallpox back to their people. Hundreds of lodges like the one above stood as mute testimony to the devastation of smallpox. As one writer wrote, “No language can picture the scene of desolation which the country presents. In whatever direction we go we see nothing but melancholy wrecks of human life. The tents are still standing on every hill, but no rising smoke announces the presence of human beings, and no sounds, but the croaking of the raven and the howling of the wolf interrupts the fearful silence (Chittenden).”
The St. Peters continued on to Fort Union arriving there on June 24, 1837. The only Indians at the post were the Indian wives of thirty employees. Hoping to control the infection before the Assiniboine arrived for the September trade, Larpentuer noted that, “prompt measures were adopted to prevent an epidemic.” The measures taken were to vaccinate the Indian women. According to Larpentuer, “their systems were prepared according to Dr. Thomas’ Medical Book and they were vaccinated from Halsey himself…the operation proved fatal to most of our patients.” Larpentuer goes on to say, “About fifteen days afterwards there was such a stench in the fort that it could be smelt at a distance of 300 yards. It was awful–the scene in the fort where some went crazy, and others were half eatin by maggots before they died.” This was during the hottest part of the summer (Chittenden). Jacob Halsey was in charge of Fort Union, and had been infected coming upriver on the boat. Five months later, he claimed only four died from the attempted vaccination. Halsey statement is in contrast to Larpentuer comments, and his account seems highly unlikely based on the virulence of the smallpox virus.
The Assiniboine started arriving at the post while the “controlled infection” was in full force. Infected Assiniboine carried smallpox back into Canada. From Fort Union smallpox spread by boat to Fort McKenzie near the junction of the Marias and the Missouri rivers. Basically, the same story was repeated with the Blackfeet. There is no way to know how many Indians of the upper Missouri and the Plains of Canada were infected with smallpox. Estimates on the number killed range from sixty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand. The most conservative estimate puts the number at more than 15,000 deaths (Chittenden).
The American Fur Company traders can certainly be criticized for the handling of the 1837 smallpox outbreak, especially the vaccination of the Indian women. However at the time and under the prevailing circumstances, the traders did the best they could. Even though the Indians were repeatedly warned to stay away from the posts, they insisted on trading their goods. It is hard to believe there was any malicious intent on the part of the fur traders when the fur company’s economic survival depended on the Indian buffalo robe trade.
The Indian Culture played a part in the high death rate. The use of the sweat lodge-cold water plunge may well have doubled the fatalities among the Plains tribes (Haines). This is not meant as criticism of the Sweat Lodge which was, and is, extremely important in the Indian Culture, but to point out that the Plains Indians had little or no concept of the dangers involved with the white-man diseases.
Indian warriors played a significant role in the spread of the smallpox. Warriors saw this as an opportunity to take lodge items, horses, and even scalps from corpses in enemy villages, and thus carried the smallpox virus back to their own people.
Indian Genocide:
Added Note: I have had a lot of “hate” emails from ‘idiotic liberals” on Indian Genocide. Most of them were so ridiculous that I didn’t post them. Here is my position on Indian Genocide…There is absolutely no question that some settlers, some military leaders, some government officials, and some states i.e., Georgia and especially California would have exterminated all Indians…But…There is absolutely no evidence that the American Government had an official (or as some claim unofficial )policy of exterminating all Indians…Or that…the American Government gave smallpox blankets to any Indians (Ecuyer was British).
Indian genocide is a controversial subject on the internet and on this site. Genocide and Holocaust are words that are easy to throw around, often to grab a reader’s attention, but proving them is something else. What one group calls genocide, another group may call progress. This statement is used in the same context as the saying…one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
The argument for Indian genocide is based primarily on a postscript in a letter written by General Jeffery Amherst to Colonel Bouquet during the French and Indian War. Letters by General Amherst and Colonel Bouquet mentioning spreading smallpox to Indians does not mean that this was ever carried out. Assumptions derived from letters and oral traditions are not proof of anything. Oral traditions tend to change over time and with the times. The stories also tend to change in a manner convenient to the tellers…If you tell a story long enough, it acquires the semblance of fact. (http://www.hartwilliams.com/imdpart1.htm ).
The postscript in the letter from Amherst to Bouquet, written several months after Ecuyer had handed out two smallpox blankets at Fort Pitt, stated, “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…at least twenty-five percent or more of Bouquet’s soldiers would have been susceptible to the smallpox virus.
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. 1763 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…age, color of skin, social status meant nothing to the smallpox virus…an infected person died or, if lucky enough to survive, was often disfigured for life. No matter how bad Amherst may have wanted to be rid of the Indians, it seems doubtful that Bouquet would unleash a disease on his soldiers that had already killed millions of his own countrymen.
There is no evidence that Col. Bouquet took any action on Amherst’s letter, but while Fort Pitt was under Indian siege, Captain Ecuyer wrote to Bouquet…
“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 incident with Captain Ecuyer occurred during the Pontiac Rebellion. There is also evidence that Ecuyer tried to control the spread of smallpox, at least from his own men.
In a letter to Bouquet, Captain Ecuyer writes that Fort Pitt is in good state of defense against all attempts from Savages, who are daily firing upon the Fort; unluckily the Small Pox has broken out in the garrison, for which he has built an Hospital under the Draw Bridge to prevent the Spreading of that distemper (Peter d’Errico, nativeweb.org).
In 1763, Fort Pitt was under siege by Indian forces under the command of Chief Pontiac (Pontiac Rebellion by Tebbel). With smallpox in the garrison at Fort Pitt and Indians attacking the fort, two blankets would have had little to do with the spread of smallpox among the Indians. A by far greater source for spreading the smallpox virus would have been infected blood from mutilated soldier and settler bodies, scalps, clothing, and in some cases cannibalism, which occurred during the Pontiac Rebellion. Every warrior that returned from Fort Pitt to Indian villages up and down the East coast with smallpox infected war trophies carried the smallpox virus with them. Contaminated warriors spreading the smallpox virus is never mentioned by proponents of Indian Genocide; it does not fit their biased agenda. This statement on smallpox is going to make a lot of people furious…good, that is the purpose.”
The rest of this article then degenerates into an attack on Ward Churchill for sloppy science. I am not going to repeat that part as it is mostly full of emotional content. What I am interested in is the fact that around the world nomadic peoples were devastated by the diseases of the sedentary peoples that came with the so called age of exploration. It could be better called the age of exportation of diseases.