[lbo-talk] Re: Zinn on smallpox

Leigh Meyers leighcmeyers at gmail.com
Sun Apr 3 20:04:58 PDT 2005


----- Original Message ----- From: Tim Francis-Wright To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005 7:21 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Re: Zinn on smallpox

Marta Russell wrote:

>>Chuck wrote:

>

>>

>>Whatever. This is not evidence of academic misconduct. Until the

>>recent attacks on Churchill, I had long been under the impression

>>that the U.S. had conducted germ warfare against the Mandans and

>>other plains nations. I don't recall getting this information from

>>Churchill, so it must have been found in a variety of histories.

>

>

>My copy of Howard Zinn's Peoples History is lent out but it could

>well be there.

Zinn mentions germ warfare against Native Americans only once, in the first half onf Chapter 5 (page 86 of my 1995 paperback edition):

"Under order from British general Jeffrey amherst, the commander of Fort Pitts gave the attacking Indian chiefs, with whom he was negotiating, blankets from the smallpox hospital. It was a pioneering effort at what is now called biological warfare, An epidemic soon spread among the Indians."

--tim francis-wright

If you search the net around you'll also find a journal by the person assigned to the task, which describes the precautions taken in handling the blankets.

L

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