Anybody know about smallpox and the Mandan?

[struggle4progress]

Versions of this story seem popular among wingnuts today:

Professor faces fraud charges
Experts say he made up facts for his book

<snip> Several professors have alleged that in his writings, Churchill distorted the events surrounding a smallpox outbreak among Indians in North Dakota.
"I came across this story of genocide, and I thought: 'Why didn't I hear about this before?' As soon as you read his sources, you realize he is making it up," said Thomas Brown, an assistant professor of sociology at Lamar University who has researched Churchill's work.
Brown was referring to an essay in Churchill's book A Little Matter of Genocide, where he says the U.S. Army distributed blankets infected with smallpox to the Mandan Indians on the upper Missouri River in 1837. <snip>
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050213/REPOSITORY/502130375/1013/NEWS03


My general reaction, of course, is that a professional historian should feel free to criticism another professional historian's work, professionally, in appropriate professional venue. A web essay by an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminal Justice doesn't really rise to the standard of professional criticism and doesn't carry much weight.

But perhaps there are interesting historical questions here. I know about Jeffrey Amherst's 1763 plan to spread smallpox, and I know that smallpox subsequently spread across the continent, so by the time of Lewis and Clark the disease had affected original peoples to the Pacific Coast. I also know that the "official" version of the 1837 Mandan extirpation was accidental infection spread from a steamboat docking near a Mandan encampment.

Anybody here know more about the epidemic among the Mandan?

[RoyGBiv]

1. General comments ...

Up front let me say I highly respect Ward Churchill and think he is brilliant. I support fully what he now doing and saying, even when I disagree with certain aspects of what he says. I've also read a great deal of his work, and I appreciate the fresh, in-your-face perspective he provides.

However, without getting into the larger thesis at work, I find this book in particular to be among his weakest. The reason is rather simple to say but harder to explain in all its detail because a lot of this turns purely on interpretation of sources. That is, certain sources can plainly be interpreted in two distinct ways, and to date, we do not have enough evidence outside these sources to say one manner of interpretation is more right than the other. This is the case with many if not most of the evidenciary sources concerning the spread of smallpox in the Americas.

Put simply, it all depends on how you want ("want" being a key word in some cases) to interpret the sources. That certain individuals advocated the use of smallpox or similar methods of "pacificifaction" of native peoples is beyond doubt. Whether this was actually tried on any scale of importance is another question; a difference exists between saying you want to do something and actually doing it. Still another question is whether such a thing even would have worked. On the latter point, an argument exists regarding whether the technology or knowledge existed at the time to transport enough live smallpox so that it created such an epidemic as such anecdotal stories say may have happened.

The key to the mystery (and it is a mystery, despite what Churchill believes and what others with the polar opposite opinion believe) lies somewhere in the state of medical science at the time. Ironically, part of what caused the spread of smallpox during this period was the fact that both well-intentioned and not so well-intentioned people were trying out methods of preventing its spread. The nature of vaccines wasn't understood at the time, but scientists were starting to figure it out. Sometimes this worked. Sometimes it actually created an epidemic. Churchill would probably argue that the frequency with which native peoples were used as test subjects shows an attempt at genocide or something similar. Others will note that some of the scientists used native peoples because they seemed more prone to dying from smallpox and actually wanted to save them.

I could go on.

IOW, it's a hard question. I don't know many details of the specific case in question ... mostly what Churchill wrote. I only know that the nature of the sources used can lead down different paths.

[struggle4progress]

2. By the time of the Lewis and Clarke expedition, the old innoculation ...

... which used weak smallpox infections (once avidly sought by those "in the know") was giving way to vaccinia (aka cowpox) since Jenner's suggestion (that cowpox protected against smallpox) had by then been established to the satisfaction of much of the scientific community.

While smallpox innoculation could potentially cause an epidemic, I know of no claim that "vaccination" (that is, deliberate infection with cowpox) ever caused an epidemic or that cowpox has been fatal in any population: if you know otherwise, I'd certainly like to know about it. Certainly after 1800, I would expect that only someone far out of the mainstream would ever try a smallpox innoculation; while I suppose it's possible (as you seem to suggest) that someone in the 1830's might have been innoculating native people with smallpox for humanitarian purposes, it seems unlikely to me. Lewis and Clark documents indicate that the expedition had originally planned to carry vaccinia with them but that the original sample was somehow spoiled and not replaced.

Since, in a population with no prior exposure and hence no immunity, smallpox would spread unchecked, it is certainly difficult to imagine all sources of smallpox in the native population. As far as I can tell, there appears to be no question that Amherst's suggestion (to circulate blankets infected by the pox victims) was actually carried out.

I doun't have any problem with the idea that there are real interpretative issues and that interpretation may pose genuine problems. I'm just wondering what anybody actually knows about the Mandan.

[RoyGBiv]

3. I don't know about the Mandan ....

The problem is, no one does. That's the broader point I was making. Whether one believes any of this happened depends on how one interprets the available evidence, and usually the interpretations take leaps of faith rather than logic. As for Churchill's evidence, it was non-existent as the article you linked said. If he has evidence he's never revealed, it would be the first verified case of this being done aside from Amherst. One should openly wonder why someone like Churchill would withold evidence if in fact he actually has it.

And, FWIW, there is actually some doubt about Amherst. Clearly he wanted to eradicate native people from the planet, at least the ones he faced. Clearly he wondered whether natives could be infected with smallpox by the distribution of infected materials. Clearly, as reported by William Trent, "two Blankets and an Handkerchief" found their way to the natives "from <the?> Small Pox Hospital" during Pontiac's siege of Ft. Pitt, and Trent said he hoped these had the "desired effect." We also know that smallpox spread among the both camps of people, but that it "ravaged" the natives.

Put together like that, we have a chain of evidence about which a generous number of questions could be asked, not the least of which is why every mention of smallpox in relation to killing natives among Amherst's papers are in a post-script, not the text of the letter itself. But I digress.

As to the question about smallpox, vaccinations, etc., there were localized incidents of native populations in the South being essentially wiped out due to attempts to vaccinate, not with cowpox, but live smallpox. (I'll try to remember to dig out my books on this sort of thing and find a direct reference if you want.) Of course you are correct that the cowpox remedy was coming into favor, but recall that the progress of medical science at this time was excrutiatingly slow. What was accepted in one quarter of New England was being treated as heresy in South Carolina. (This is not a comment about the South specifically. I'm just using an example.)

OnEdit: I apologize. I probably shouldn't have responded originally since I can't answer your question directly. This is just one of those subjects that intrigues me. In addition, I should not use phrases like "no one knows" because it's been a good two years since I really emersed myself in this subject. I don't know what precisely may have cropped up in the way of evidence since then. I do know that Churchill's book sent a lot of people looking.

[riverwalker]

4. it is in the documentary

series "500 Nations". They have the actual letter from the commander who proposed the idea as a weapon of war against the natives. I would have to watch again and get his name. It DID happen.