谨以此为献给喜欢找人污点的二大屁股和James.
谨以此为献给喜欢找人污点的二大屁股和James.
对美国人的鼻祖用天花病毒屠杀印第安人资料的翻译
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作者: HEAVENLORD(
资料引文在译文之上，其中资料的来源在引文中包含但没有翻译
Conclusion
All in all, the letters provided here remove all doubt about the validity of the stories about Lord Jeff and germ warfare. The General's own letters sustain the stories.
As to whether the plans actually were carried out, Parkman has this to say:
An additional source of Trent's entry for May 24, 1763, includes the following statement:
总之，这里提供的这封信抹去人们关于lord Jeff 和生物战争故事的有效性的所有怀疑。 这位将军的私人信件同样支持这样的故事：
在下一个春季，Gershom Hicks， 他已经混于印第安人中间，在Fort Pitt报道到天花已经在印第安人中间肆虐一段时间了。
另一个资料来源是 Journal of William Trent, 在这个期刊中有着对当时被围攻期间的那些焦急的日日夜夜的最详细的记述。 Trent 在1763年5月24日的进入有着如下的记录：
我们给了他们两张毛毯和一个手帕，它们都来自于天花医院。 我希望他会取得我们渴望的效果。
Notes
2. The depiction of Indians as wild beasts was quite common among early American leaders, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. David E. Stannard writes: 'As is so often the case, it was New England's religious elite who made the point more graphically than anyone. Referring to some Indians who had given offense to the colonists, the Reverend Cotton Mather wrote: "Once you have but got the Track of those Ravenous howling Wolves, then pursue them vigourously; Turn not back till they are consumed… Beat them small as the Dust before the Wind." Lest this be regarded as mere rhetoric, empty of literal intent, consider that another of New England's most esteemed religious leaders, the Reverend Solomon Stoddard, as late as 1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts Governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs "to hunt Indians as they do bears."' [American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press (1992)), p. 241]
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将印第安人描述成为野兽这在早期的美国人领袖里很普遍， 这些人有乔治华盛顿，托马斯杰弗逊这些美国先驱者。 David E. Stannard 写道: 这样的情况非常常见，正是新英格兰的宗教精英们在这一点上比任何人都刻画得栩栩如生。比如对于那些冒犯殖民主义者的印第安人，尊敬的Cotton Mather牧师写道:一旦你找到了那些贪婪的嚎叫的狼的踪迹，就要穷追不舍地追踪他们，直到他们被消亡你才能转身返回。 打击它们，它们弱小得就像风中之尘。 未免你认为这些仅仅只是空洞文字猜测和花言巧语，那就再看看另一个最尊敬的新英格兰宗教领袖， Solomon Stoddard， 在迟至1703年向马塞诸塞总督正式建议道：应该给殖民主义者财政资助，以便让他们能够购买和训练大量的狗像猎熊一样去猎取印第安人。
Additional Sources of Information
1. Medical information
A mild form of smallpox virus, Variola minor (also called alastrim), is transmitted by inhalation and is communicable for 3-7 days. The more serious smallpox virus, Variola major, is transmitted both by inhalation and by contamination; it is communicable by inhalation for 9-14 days and by contamination for several years in a dried state. For further medical information, see Donald A. Henderson, et al., "Smallpox as a Biological Weapon: Medical and Public Health Management," Journal of the American Medical Association Vol. 281 No. 22 (June 9, 1999).
Ann F. Ramenofsky, Vectors of Death: The Archaeology of European Contact (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), also discusses the question of communicability:
Among Class I agents, Variola major holds a unique position. Although the virus is most frequently transmitted through droplet infection, it can survive for a number of years outside human hosts in a dried state (Downie 1967; Upham 1986). As a consequence, Variola major can be transmitted through contaminated articles such as clothing or blankets (Dixon 1962). In the nineteenth century, the U.S. Army sent contaminated blankets to Native Americans, especially Plains groups, to control the Indian problem (Stearn and Stearn 1945). [p. 148]
在一类传染病中，天花有着独特的位置。虽然这一病毒通常都是通过体液传染，但是这一病毒可以在离开人体后的干燥环境中生存许多年，结果，天花病毒可以有被病毒污染的介质比如衣服和毛毯传染 (Dixon 1962)， 在19世纪，美国军队送这些被污染的毛毯给土著美国人，特别是平原部落，以控制印第安人问题（ Stearn and Stearn 1945). [p. 148]
Abraham B. Bergman, et al., "A Political History of the Indian Health Service" (undated draft manu???? at
http://www.sihb.org/ihs27.html (visited 4 DEC 02)), comments on the birth of the Indian Health Service:
Federal health services for Indians began under War Department auspices in the early 1800's. At that time the Federal Indian policy was primarily one of military containment. As early as 1802 Army physicians took emergency measures to curb contagious diseases among Indian tribes in the vicinity of military posts. The first large scale smallpox vaccination of Indians was authorized by Congress in 1832, probably launched more to protect US soldiers than to benefit Indians. [unpaginated; quoted with permission from the author and the Seattle Indian Health Board]
针对印第安人的联邦健康服务在18世纪由战争部门资助展开。当时的对印第安人政策主要是军事遏制的一种策略。早在 1802， 军医就采取了紧急措施控制邻近军事站点附近的印第安人部落里传染病的扩散。第一次大规模地对印第安人接种天花疫苗在 1832年由国会通过，很大可能是出于保护美国士兵而不是让印第安受利的目的
2. Social and Political Effects of Disease
E. Wagner Stearn & Allen E. Stearn, The Effect of Smallpox on the Destiny of the Amerindian (Boston: Bruce Humphries (1945)), point out the social-political effects of smallpox:
Smallpox, which was introduced into the mainland of the Americas in the early part of the sixteenth century, not only decimated the native population for four centuries, but so demoralized the tribes through the terror it spread among them that it has been considered by many authorities to have been an important factor in their comparatively easy subjugation by the whites. Before the advent of the white man tribal warfare and, at times, famine made the chief inroads on the native population, but during the period of exploration and settlement the diseases of the white man, new to the native, caused terrific havoc. It is claimed that Haiti (Espanola) alone lost two-thirds of its population in the three years of Columbus's conquest, during the years 1492-1495. The two to three hundred inhabitants had quickly fallen prey not only to ruthless conquest but to a variety of infectious diseases. [p. 13]
天花，在16世纪早期传播至美洲大陆，不仅大量杀害了土著人长达 4个世纪，而且由天花传播产生的恐怖打击了部落的信仰和信心，这一点被当时很多的地方政府认为是很重要的，它帮助了白人相对容易建立了统治。在白 人部落战争出现之前，对土著人口来说主要危险来至于时不时的饥荒，而随着白人疾病的开拓和定居（于美国大陆），这些对土著人全新的疾病造成了巨大的破坏。据认为仅仅在海地 (Espanola)2/3的人口就在哥伦布征服的3年中死去，即 1492-1495。这些居民不仅被强迫接受无情的征服还有多种多样的传染病。
Harold Napoleon, Yuuyaraq: the Way of the Human Being, with commentary, edited by Eric Madsen (Fairbanks, Alaska: University of Alaska, College of Rural Alaska, Center for Cross-Cultural Studies (1991)), states that epidemics caused a form of post-traumatic stress disorder and social collapse:
Compared to the span of life of a culture, the Great Death was instantaneous. The Yup'ik world was turned upside down, literally overnight. Out of the suffering, confusion, desperation, heartbreak, and trauma was born a new generation of Yup'ik people. They were born into shock. They woke to a world in shambles, many of their people and their beliefs strewn around them, dead. In their minds they had been overcome by evil. Their medicines and their medicine men and women had proven useless. Everything they had believed in had failed. Their ancient world had collapsed.
与一种文化生命的跨度相比，大规模的死亡是一瞬间的。阿斯基摩人的世界几乎在一夜之间被颠倒。除了痛苦，新一代爱斯基摩人生来就面对混乱，绝望，难忍的悲伤和伤害。他们一生下来就进入了震撼。他们在屠宰厂里醒来面对世界，在这里许多人和他们的信仰都已经死去。在他们的意识里，他们过去被邪恶所征服。他们的医药和负责医药的男人女人全无用处，他们相信的每个东西都已经失败，他们的古老世界已经彤塌。
From their innocence and from their inability to understand and dispel the disease, guilt was born into them. They had witnessed mass death―evil―in unimaginable and unacceptable terms. These were the men and women orphaned by the sudden and traumatic death of the culture that had given them birth. They would become the first generation of modern-day Yup'ik. [p. 11]
…
由于他们（传染病历史上的）清白以及无法理解和治疗疾病，罪恶就这样被带给他们。他们目睹了大规模的死亡，这一罪恶，无法想象和不可接受。这些男人和女人由于带给他们生命的文化的突然致命性的死亡，他们忽然之间就变成了孤儿，成为第一代现代 Yupik
The survivors taught almost nothing about the old culture to their children. It was as if they were ashamed of it, and this shame they passed on to their children by their silence and by allowing cultural atrocities to be committed against their children. The survivors also gave up all governing power of the villages to the missionaries and school teachers, whoever was most aggressive. There was no one to contest them. In some villages the priest had displaced the angalkuq. In some villages there was theocracy under the benevolent dictatorship of a missionary. The old guardians of Yuuyaraq on the other hand, the angalkuq, if they were still alive, had fallen into disgrace. They had become a source of shame to the village, not only because their medicine and Yuuyaraq had failed, but also because the missionaries no***ly accused them of being agents of the devil himself and of having led their people into disaster. [pp. 13-14]
幸存者不能教给他们的孩子关于古老文化的任何东西，就好像他们耻于如此，通过他们的沉默和对他们孩子的文化伤害的默认，他们将这种羞愧也传递给下一代。幸存者放弃了村庄里的所有统治权力，将其交给传教士和学校教师，无论这些人是如此具有侵略性。没有人和他们争论。在有些村庄，牧师代替了 angalkuq， 另一些村庄是军事专政下的慈善的神权。 Angalkuq， Yuuyara的古老卫兵，如果还存活就掉入了耻辱的境地。他们已经成为村庄羞辱的来源之一，不仅因为他们的医药的失败，而且传教士现在公开谴责他们是邪恶的代言人并将他们的人民带入灾难。
3. Other writers on Amherst and smallpox，
A. Elizabeth A. Fenn, "Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffrey Amherst," Journal of American History vol. 86, no. 4 (March, 2000), pp. 1552-1580:
Our preoccupation with Amherst has kept us from recognizing that accusations of what we now call biological warfare―the military use of smallpox in particular―arose frequently in eighteenth-century America. Native Americans, moreover, were not the only accusers. By the second half of the century, many of the combatants in America's wars of empire had the knowledge and technology to attempt biological warfare with the smallpox virus. Many also adhered to a code of ethics that did not constrain them from doing so. Seen in this light, the Amherst affair becomes not so much an aberration as part of a larger continuum in which accusations and discussions of biological warfare were common, and actual incidents may have occurred more frequently than scholars have previously acknowledged. [p. 1553]
我们关于Amherst故事的先天偏见，阻碍了我们对18 世纪美国经常发生的我们现称之为的生物战争的承认---将天花病毒特别用于军事目的。然而土著美国人不是唯一的控告者。在那个世纪的第二个半叶前，在美洲许多战争中的战士都有用天花病毒进行生物战的知识和技术。许多人所信仰的道德规范并不能使他们自制而不去做这样的罪恶。从这一点来说， Amherst的问题在一个更大的背景下并不反常，这个背景就是当时对生物战争的讨论和谴责如此普遍。而实际发生的还要超过学者们从前认识到的。
E. Mark Wheelis, "Biological warfare before 1914," in E. Geissler and J. Moon, Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 8-34:
[Historical events and records] suggest that the use of smallpox as a weapon may have been widely entertained by British military commanders, and may have been employed without scruple when opportunity offered, possibly on a number of occasions. [p. 29]
历史事件和记载都显示用天花作武器曾经被英军指挥官广泛接受过，而且一旦机会合适他们没有丝毫犹豫地去使用，可能发生过很多次。
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原文在此，关于用天花病毒屠杀印第安人的讨论
Jeffrey1 Amherst and Smallpox Blankets
Lord Jeffrey1 Amherst's letters discussing germ warfare against American Indians
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"... every Tree is become an Indian...." Colonel Henry Bouquet to General Amherst, dated 29 June 1763. [63k]
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Lord Jeff
Lord Jeffrey1 Amherst was commanding general of British forces in North America during the final battles of the so-called French & Indian war (1754-1763). He won victories against the French to acquire Canada for England and helped make England the world's chief colonizer at the conclusion of the Seven Years War among the colonial powers (1756-1763).
The town of Amherst, Massachusetts, was named for Lord Jeff even before he became a Lord. Amherst Collegewas later named after the town. It is said the local inhabitants who formed the town preferred another name, Norwottuck, after the Indians whose land it had been; the colonial governor substituted his choice for theirs. Frank Prentice Rand, in his book, The Village of Amherst: A Landmark of Light [Amherst, MA: Amherst Historical Society, 1958], says that at the time of the naming, Amherst was "the most glamorous military hero in the New World.
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Amherst College china plates depicting mounted Englishman with sword chasing Indians on foot were in use until the 1970's.
Click on the pictures to see full-size images.
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The history of the naming of the town of Amherst, New York, shows a similar idolizing of the general:
On April 10, 1818, the Town of Amherst was officially created by an Act of the Senate of the State of New York. This new town was named for Sir Jeffrey Amherst, an English lord who was Commander-in-Chief of the British troops in America in 1758-1763, before the American Revolution. King George III rewarded Lord Amherst by giving him 20,000 acres in New York, but Lord Amherst never visited his new lands. [From: A Brief History of the Town of Amherst, (Amherst Museum, 1997)
Smallpox blankets
Despite his fame, Jeffrey Amherst's name became tarnished by stories of smallpox-infected blankets used as germ warfare against American Indians. These stories are reported, for example, in Carl Waldman's Atlas of the North American Indian [NY: Facts on File, 1985]. Waldman writes, in reference to a siege of Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) by Chief Pontiac's forces during the summer of 1763:
Some people have doubted these stories; other people, believing the stories, nevertheless assert that the infected blankets were not intentionally distributed to the Indians, or that Lord Jeff himself is not to blame for the germ warfare tactic.
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Drawing by Terry R. Peters, Medical Illustrator, Topeka Veterans Administration Medical Center. Used with permission. Click on image to view full size.
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Lord Jeff's letters during Pontiac's Rebellion
The documents provided here are made available to set the record straight. These are images of microfilmed original letters written between General Amherst and his officers and others in his command during the summer of 1763, when the British were fighting what became known as Pontiac's Rebellion.
Pontiac, an Ottawa chief who had sided with the French, led an uprising against the British after the French surrender in Canada. Indians were angered by Amherst's refusal to continue the French practice of providing supplies in exchange for Indian friendship and assistance, and by a generally imperious British attitude toward Indians and Indian land. As Waldman puts it:
The British Manu???? Project
The documents provided here are among Amherst's letters and other papers microfilmed as part of the British Manu???? Project, 1941-1945, undertaken by the United States Library of Congress during World War II. The project was designed to preserve British historical documents from possible war damage. There are almost three hundred reels of microfilm on Amherst alone.
The microfilm is difficult to read, and paper copies even harder. Nonetheless, the images obtained by scanning the copies are sufficiently clear for online viewing. The images are of key excerpts from the letters. An index is provided to show by document number the location of these images in the microfilm set. Ascii text of the excerpts is also provided.
The documents
These are the pivotal letters:
Colonel Henry Bouquet to General Amherst, dated 13 July 1763, [262k] suggests in a post???? the distribution of blankets to "inocculate the Indians";
Amherst to Bouquet, dated 16 July 1763, [128k] approves this plan in a post???? and suggests as well as "to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this ????rable Race." (This postcript spans two pages.)
These letters also discuss the use of dogs to hunt the Indians, the so-called "Spaniard's Method," which Amherst approves in principle, but says he cannot implement because there are not enough dogs. In a letter dated 26 July 1763, Bouquet acknowledges Amherst's approval [125k] and writes, "all your Directions will be observed."
Historian Francis Parkman, in his book The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada [Boston: Little, Brown, 1886] refers to a post???? in an earlier letter from Amherst to Bouquet wondering whether smallpox could not be spread among the Indians:
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. [Vol. II, p. 39 (6th edition)]
I have not found this letter, but there is a letter from Bouquet to Amherst, dated 23 June 1763, [189k] three weeks before the discussion of blankets to the Indians, stating that Captain Ecuyer at Fort Pitt (to which Bouquet would be heading with reinforcements) has reported smallpox in the Fort. This indicates at least that the writers knew the plan could be carried out.
It is curious that the specific plans to spread smallpox were relegated to post????s. I leave it to the reader to ponder the significance of this.
Several other letters from the summer of 1763 show the smallpox idea was not an anomaly. The letters are filled with comments that indicate a genocidal intent, with phrases such as:
"...that Vermine
"I would rather chuse the liberty to kill any Savage...." (Bouquet to Amherst, 25 June) [121k]
"...Measures to be taken as would Bring about the Total Extirpation of those Indian Nations" (Amherst to Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of the Northern Indian Department, 9 July) [229k]
"...their Total Extirpation is scarce sufficient Attonement...." (Amherst to George Croghan, Deputy Agent for Indian Affairs, 7 August) [145k]
"...put a most Effectual Stop to their very Being" (Amherst to Johnson, 27 August [292k]; emphasis in original).
Amherst's correspondence during this time includes many letters on routine matters, such as officers who are sick or want to be relieved of duty; accounts of provisions on hand, costs for supplies, number of people garrisoned; negotiations with provincial governors (the army is upset with the Pennsylvania assembly, for example, for refusing to draft men for service); and so on. None of these other letters show a deranged mind or an obsession with cruelty. Amherst's venom was strictly reserved for Indians.
The French and the Indians
The sharpest contrast with letters about Indians is provided by letters regarding the other enemy, the French. Amherst has been at war with the French as much as with the Indians; but he showed no obsessive desire to extirpate them from the earth. They were apparently his "worthy" enemy. It was the Indians who drove him mad. It was they against whom he was looking for "an occasion, to extirpate them root and branch." [J. C. Long, Lord Jeffrey Amherst: A Soldier of the King (NY: Macmillan, 1933), p. 187]
Long describes Amherst's "kindliness to the French" and refers to Amherst's "intensity of feeling on these issues":
Amherst's kindliness to the French civilians was more than a military gesture. He had a warm sympathy for the countryside, an interest in people and the way they lived. "The Inhabitants live comfortably," he observed in his journal, "most have stone houses....
This humane attitude was reflected in his rules for the governing of Canada. As its de facto military Governor-General he established a temporary code
***
Perhaps most statesmanlike of all was Amherst's recognition of the French law,
In contrast to these kindly feelings, Long says that Pontiac's attacks on British forts at Detroit and Presqu'Isle "aroused Amherst to a frenzy, a frenzy almost hysterical in its impotence." Long then quotes from Amherst's letter to Sir William Johnson:
Colonel Bouquet's poetic line, "... every Tree is become an Indian," [63k] quoted above, was his de????ion of a contagion of fear among "the terrified Inhabitants," for whom the Indians were a part of the wildness they perceived around themselves. These warriors would not stand in ordered ranks; they fell back into the forests only to emerge again in renewed attack; their leaders defied British logic and proved effective against a string of British forts; these were the enemy that nearly succeeded in driving the British out, and became the target for British genocide.2
Conclusion
All in all, the letters provided here remove all doubt about the validity of the stories about Lord Jeff and germ warfare. The General's own letters sustain the stories.
As to whether the plans actually were carried out, Parkman has this to say:
An additional source of information on the matter is the Journal of William Trent, commander of the local militia of the townspeople of Pittsburgh during Pontiac's seige of the fort. This Journal has been described as "... the most detailed contemporary account of the anxious days and nights in the beleaguered stronghold." [Pen Pictures of Early Western Pennsylvania, John W. Harpster, ed. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1938).]
Trent's entry for May 24, 1763, includes the following statement:
Trent's Journal confirms that smallpox had broken out in Fort Pitt prior to the correspondence between Bouquet and Amherst, thus making their plans feasible. It also indicates that intentional infection of the Indians with smallpox had been already approved by at least Captain Ecuyer at the fort, who some commentators have suggested was in direct correspondence with General Amherst on this tactic (though I have not yet found such letters).
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Notes
1. There is some dispute about the spelling of Amherst's first name. As Lion G. Miles points out, 'Amherst always signed as "Jeff:" so there has been a long-standing controversy as to the correct spelling of his first name. I am reasonably certain that it should be "Jeffery." Those officers closest to him, his aides etc., always spelled the name that way and transcribed his orders as from "Jeffery." Official letters addressed to him from England and the British Army List have it as "Sir Jeffery Amherst" (never mind that Bouquet solved the problem by addressing him as "Jeffry"). Even the biography by Long … has the title of "Lord Jeffery Amherst," not "Jeffrey."' [Lion G. Miles, member of the board, Native American Institute at Hudson, NY, in a personal email communication, 15 November 1998]
2. The depiction of Indians as wild beasts was quite common among early American leaders, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. David E. Stannard writes: 'As is so often the case, it was New England's religious elite who made the point more graphically than anyone. Referring to some Indians who had given offense to the colonists, the Reverend Cotton Mather wrote: "Once you have but got the Track of those Ravenous howling Wolves, then pursue them vigourously; Turn not back till they are consumed… Beat them small as the Dust before the Wind." Lest this be regarded as mere rhetoric, empty of literal intent, consider that another of New England's most esteemed religious leaders, the Reverend Solomon Stoddard, as late as 1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts Governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs "to hunt Indians as they do bears."' [American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press (1992)), p. 241]
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Go to microfilm index of documents and ascii text of excerpts
Go to discussion of smallpox and Indians archived from the discussion list on early American history, IEAHCNET
Go to Journal of William Trent, 1763
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Additional Sources of Information
1. Medical information
A mild form of smallpox virus, Variola minor (also called alastrim), is transmitted by inhalation and is communicable for 3-7 days. The more serious smallpox virus, Variola major, is transmitted both by inhalation and by contamination; it is communicable by inhalation for 9-14 days and by contamination for several years in a dried state. For further medical information, see Donald A. Henderson, et al., "Smallpox as a Biological Weapon: Medical and Public Health Management," Journal of the American Medical Association Vol. 281 No. 22 (June 9, 1999).
Ann F. Ramenofsky, Vectors of Death: The Archaeology of European Contact (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), also discusses the question of communicability:
Among Class I agents, Variola major holds a unique position. Although the virus is most frequently transmitted through droplet infection, it can survive for a number of years outside human hosts in a dried state (Downie 1967; Upham 1986). As a consequence, Variola major can be transmitted through contaminated articles such as clothing or blankets (Dixon 1962). In the nineteenth century, the U.S. Army sent contaminated blankets to Native Americans, especially Plains groups, to control the Indian problem (Stearn and Stearn 1945). [p. 148]
Abraham B. Bergman, et al., "A Political History of the Indian Health Service" (undated draft manu???? at
http://www.sihb.org/ihs27.html (visited 4 DEC 02)), comments on the birth of the Indian Health Service:
Federal health services for Indians began under War Department auspices in the early 1800's. At that time the Federal Indian policy was primarily one of military containment. As early as 1802 Army physicians took emergency measures to curb contagious diseases among Indian tribes in the vicinity of military posts. The first large scale smallpox vaccination of Indians was authorized by Congress in 1832, probably launched more to protect US soldiers than to benefit Indians. [unpaginated; quoted with permission from the author and the Seattle Indian Health Board]
2. Social and Political Effects of Disease
E. Wagner Stearn & Allen E. Stearn, The Effect of Smallpox on the Destiny of the Amerindian (Boston: Bruce Humphries (1945)), point out the social-political effects of smallpox:
Smallpox, which was introduced into the mainland of the Americas in the early part of the sixteenth century, not only decimated the native population for four centuries, but so demoralized the tribes through the terror it spread among them that it has been considered by many authorities to have been an important factor in their comparatively easy subjugation by the whites. Before the advent of the white man tribal warfare and, at times, famine made the chief inroads on the native population, but during the period of exploration and settlement the diseases of the white man, new to the native, caused terrific havoc. It is claimed that Haiti (Espanola) alone lost two-thirds of its population in the three years of Columbus's conquest, during the years 1492-1495. The two to three hundred inhabitants had quickly fallen prey not only to ruthless conquest but to a variety of infectious diseases. [p. 13]
Harold Napoleon, Yuuyaraq: the Way of the Human Being, with commentary, edited by Eric Madsen (Fairbanks, Alaska: University of Alaska, College of Rural Alaska, Center for Cross-Cultural Studies (1991)), states that epidemics caused a form of post-traumatic stress disorder and social collapse:
Compared to the span of life of a culture, the Great Death was instantaneous. The Yup'ik world was turned upside down, literally overnight. Out of the suffering, confusion, desperation, heartbreak, and trauma was born a new generation of Yup'ik people. They were born into shock. They woke to a world in shambles, many of their people and their beliefs strewn around them, dead. In their minds they had been overcome by evil. Their medicines and their medicine men and women had proven useless. Everything they had believed in had failed. Their ancient world had collapsed.
From their innocence and from their inability to understand and dispel the disease, guilt was born into them. They had witnessed mass death―evil―in unimaginable and unacceptable terms. These were the men and women orphaned by the sudden and traumatic death of the culture that had given them birth. They would become the first generation of modern-day Yup'ik. [p. 11]
…
The survivors taught almost nothing about the old culture to their children. It was as if they were ashamed of it, and this shame they passed on to their children by their silence and by allowing cultural atrocities to be committed against their children. The survivors also gave up all governing power of the villages to the missionaries and school teachers, whoever was most aggressive. There was no one to contest them. In some villages the priest had displaced the angalkuq. In some villages there was theocracy under the benevolent dictatorship of a missionary. The old guardians of Yuuyaraq on the other hand, the angalkuq, if they were still alive, had fallen into disgrace. They had become a source of shame to the village, not only because their medicine and Yuuyaraq had failed, but also because the missionaries now openly accused them of being agents of the devil himself and of having led their people into disaster. [pp. 13-14]
3. Other writers on Amherst and smallpox
A. Elizabeth A. Fenn, "Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffrey Amherst," Journal of American History vol. 86, no. 4 (March, 2000), pp. 1552-1580:
Our preoccupation with Amherst has kept us from recognizing that accusations of what we now call biological warfare―the military use of smallpox in particular―arose frequently in eighteenth-century America. Native Americans, moreover, were not the only accusers. By the second half of the century, many of the combatants in America's wars of empire had the knowledge and technology to attempt biological warfare with the smallpox virus. Many also adhered to a code of ethics that did not constrain them from doing so. Seen in this light, the Amherst affair becomes not so much an aberration as part of a larger continuum in which accusations and discussions of biological warfare were common, and actual incidents may have occurred more frequently than scholars have previously acknowledged. [p. 1553]
B. Adrienne Mayor, "The Nessus Shirt in the New World: Smallpox Blankets in History and Legend," Journal of American Folklore 108(427):54-77 (1995):
One name is repeatedly linked to the story of the smallpox blanket: Jeffrey Amherst. In 1851, Francis Parkman was the first historian to document Lord Amherst's "shameful plan" to exterminate Indians by giving them smallpox-infected blankets taken from the corpses of British soldiers at Fort Pitt in 1763 (Parkman 1991:646-651). The feasibility of the documented plan, whether or not it was successfully carried out, has given credibility and moral impact to the fears expressed in all poison-garment tales. The Amherst incident itself has taken on legendary overtones as believers and nonbelievers continue to argue over the facts and their interpretation. [p. 57]
C. Robert L. O'Connell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression (NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989):
Marking a milestone of sorts, certain colonists during the French and Indian Wars resorted to trading smallpox-contaminated blankets to local tribes with immediate and devastating results. While infected carcasses had long been catapulted into besieged cities, this seems to be the first time a known weakness in the immunity structure of an adversary population was deliberately exploited with a weapons response. [p. 171]
D. R. G. Robertson, Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Press, 2001):
With the surrender of New France to Great Britain, command of the English North American military forces fell to Lord Jeffrey Amherst. An arrogant aristocrat who despised all Indians, Amherst withheld gunpowder and lead from France's former native allies, stating that England's enemies ought to be punished, not rewarded. When informed that the tribes depended on their muskets for taking game and would starve without ammunition, he remained unswayed, callously informing his aides that they should seed the complaining bands with smallpox so as to lend starvation a speedy hand. [p. 119; with footnote to Herman J. Viola, After Columbus (Washington: Smithsonian Books, 1990), 98]
…
In the spring of 1763, during the Indian uprising led by Ottawa Chief Pontiac, a party of Delawares ringed British owned Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), calling for its surrender. Captain Simeon Ecuyer, a Swiss mercenary and the fort's senior officer, saved the garrison by giving the Delawares a gift―two blankets and a handkerchief. The Indians readily accepted the offering, but still demanded that Ecuyer vacate the stockade. They had no inkling that the blankets and kerchief were more deadly than a platoon of English sharpshooters. Ecuyer had ordered the presents deliberately infected with smallpox spores at the post hospital. By mid July, the Delawares were dying as though they had been raked by a grape cannonade. Fort Pitt remained firmly in English hands. [with footnote to Robert M. Utley and Wilcomb E. Washburn, Indian Wars (New York: American Heritage, 1977; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987)]
The same year, British General Sir Jeffrey Amherst urged Colonel Henry Bouquet to figure some way of infecting France's Indian allies with smallpox. On July 13, the colonel wrote that he would attempt seeding some blankets with Variola, then send them to the warring tribes. Recognizing the risk of such a tactic, Bouquet expressed the hope that he would not catch the sickness himself. Whether the plan was ever carried out is unknown. [p. 124; with footnote to John Duffy, "Smallpox and the Indians in the American Colonies," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 25 (1951): 324-341]
E. Mark Wheelis, "Biological warfare before 1914," in E. Geissler and J. Moon, Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 8-34:
[Historical events and records] suggest that the use of smallpox as a weapon may have been widely entertained by British military commanders, and may have been employed without scruple when opportunity offered, possibly on a number of occasions. [p. 29]
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Other Related Links
"Amherst, Anthrax And Remembering The Past", by Jordan Dill
Smallpox: the Fever Blankets, a teaching resource from Small Planet Communications
"If you knew the conditions…": Health Care to Native Americans, an exhibit at the National Library of Medicine
Smallpox information from MedHist, the UK's gateway to resources for the history of medicine
The Sunshine Project an international non-profit organization working against the hostile use of biotechnology
Smallpox: the Weapon, an article by Dan Eden
1st SPOT Bioterrorism, information about various diseases and bioterror
History of Biowarfare NOVA Online (Public Broadcasting System)
Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, an independent, non-profit organization of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Medicine
Smallpox books and other materials from Geometry Online Learning Center
