----- 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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