<blockquote>Reports indicate that as early as 1780, Catholic missionaries used live smallpox virus to inoculate nearly seven thousand Native Americans near Valladolid, Guatemala, and that another sixty to seventy thousand were inoculated in southern Mexico. At this time, inoculation with live virus was the only effective preventive for smallpox. The method involved collecting matter from persons infected with a "mild" case of smallpox and infecting persons susceptible to the disease with this material. While developing immunities to the disease, the recipient developed a mild case of smallpox that was contagious to others.
Inoculation has long been thought to have caused significantly more deaths in Native Americans than it did in non-native populations. Death rates from the inoculations in Guatemala and Mexico, however, were reported within the 2.5 percent range of expected deaths near Valladolid, and only slightly higher death rates were reported in other areas.3 Inoculation with live materials usually reduced smallpox death rates from between 20 to 30 percent to between 0.5 to 2 percent of all cases,4 a situation that was very nearly replicated in the inoculated Native American populations.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. J. N. Shurkin, The Invisible Fire: The Story of Mankind's Victory over the Ancient Scourge of Smallpox (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1979), 117; F. Fenner et al., Smallpox and Its Eradication (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1988), 256-57.
4. Fenner et al., Smallpox and Its Eradication, 246.
(J. Diane Pearson, "Medical Diplomacy and the American Indian: Thomas Jefferson, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and the Subsequent Effects on American Indian Health and Public Policy," Wicazo Sa Review 19.1, <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wicazo_sa_review/v019/19.1pearson.html>, Spring 2004, p. 106)</blockquote>
If the two sources cited by Pearson are sound, even the older technique of live virus inoculation was effective. Is there any evidence to the contrary?
Later, Thomas Jefferson instructed Meriwether Lewis (of the Lewis and Clark expedition) to offer cowpox vaccine as a diplomatic gift to Indians to facilitate westward expansion, but the vaccine lost its virtue on the way. "There is no record of more vaccine material being sent to Lewis [to replace the failed vaccine], and there are no records of expedition members vaccinating American Indians" (Pearson, p. 112)
>While Brown claims the US government did not practice genocide
>against Native Americans, there is always the possibility that not
>only is Brown wrong, but that the case might even be worse than what
>Churchill (and others) reported about the 1837 example.
As far as the Mandans were concerned, they (as well as other tribes on the upper Missouri River) were emphatically excluded from the federal vaccination program initiated in 1832, as they were regarded as hostile:
<blockquote>In 1822 an American fur trading party led by a federal official circumvented Arikara trappers and brought their own trappers into Arikara trapping country. The next summer, when General Ashley and the American fur traders returned to pick up their furs and trappers, angry Arikaras attacked the party, killing fourteen men and wounding another nine men.81 The secretary of war was informed that the loss of trade would be an economic disaster that could return the "friendship and power of nearly 50,000 warriors" to the British.82 A federal force consisting of three hundred soldiers, forty trappers, heavy artillery, and an estimated six hundred auxiliary Sioux warriors was ordered north to chastise the Arikaras. The Sioux, who had gone overland to the Arikara villages, did the majority of the fighting, and by the time the federal troops and artillery arrived, most of the Arikaras had disappeared into the Mandan villages.83 In 1824, the United States suggested building afort at the Mandan villages in an effort to control the Arikaras, Mandans, Assiniboins, and other Indian nations on the upper Missouri River.84 A series of federal trade and peace treaties generated in 1825 by General Atkinson and Indian agent O'Fallon marked the Arikaras, Mandans, and Hidatsas as the aggressor nations of the Missouri River.85
When secretary of war Lewis Cass authorized federal smallpox vaccination of American Indians in 1832, the problems generated in the wake of the Lewis and Clark expedition influenced his decision to exclude all of the upper Missouri River tribes from the federal smallpox vaccination program. Cass authored an article in 1826 that clarified his prejudices. He wrote that the Indians of the upper Missouri River are "to this day far beyond the operation of any causes, primary or secondary, which can be traced to civilised man."86 Cass specifically mentioned the Mandans and the Arikaras and, by inference, included the other tribes located along the northern rise of the Missouri River. None of the upper Missouri River nations located north of the Arikara villages received federal smallpox vaccinations in 1832, an act that exacerbated the loss of life during the smallpox epidemic of 1837 and 1838. Records point out that the prevailing attitudes toward the people of the upper Missouri River remained unchanged for some time after Cass's resignation as secretary of war in 1836.87 Sioux agent Joshua Pilcher, a participant in the military excursion against the Arikara nation, mentioned that there was "no other way to stop them [Arikaras] than to kill them off."88 (endnotes omitted, Pearson, p. 117)</blockquote>
The US government used the vaccination program as a reward for Indian tribes who signed treaties favorable to it and denied it to those who didn't, in effect using medicine as the continuation of war by other means:
<blockquote>The Indian Vaccination Act limited the vaccination program to $12,000, set vaccinating physicians' pay at $6 per day, and gave the secretary of war full authority over development and implementation of the program. The act established no specific demographic parameters, merely providing that vaccination be extended to those tribes on the American "frontier." "Frontier" was not defined, and it was left to the secretary of war to determine which American Indian nations were vaccinated and when and where they would be vaccinated. American Indians had no input into any of the political or decision-making processes involved with the bill or into implementation of the act.
By May 10, 1832, Secretary of War Lewis Cass had issued two sets of orders implementing the vaccination program. In addition to the general vaccination order, Cass specifically ordered Indian agent John Dougherty to limit vaccinations to tribes located in the Lower Missouri River Valley. 13 Cass's general vaccination order was sent to Indian agents and superintendents of reservation or removal tribes. It specified vaccination processes, determined who was hired to perform the vaccinations, and authorized expenditures. During the course of the next three months, vaccinations were authorized for the tribes and groups listed in table 1. 14
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . On May 10, 1832, Cass issued a general circular (i.e., order) that extended vaccination benefits to thousands of American Indians. Though no official caveat was included in Cass's order, examination of all vaccination records and federal Indian treaties indicates that vaccinations were to be provided to American Indians who were involved with the United States through treaties of peace, friendship, development or protection of trade, removal, or reservation. No American Indians were vaccinated who had been branded as aggressor nations by the United States or who were regarded as beyond the concerns of the United States by Mr. Cass. Specifically excluded from vaccination were the Mandans, who were defined as having committed hostilities on "some of the citizens of the United States" in the preamble to their treaty of July 30, 1825. 40 Cass's decision also excluded two other tribes branded as aggressor nations by treaties, the Hidatsas and Arikaras, both of whom were accused of "unprovoked acts of hostility" against the United States in the Atkinson-O'Fallon treaties of 1825. 41 American Indians located north of the Mandans, including the Assinboins, the Blackfeet, and the Crees, were excluded from vaccination because Secretary of War Cass, as noted in his article published in the North American Review in 1826, considered them beyond the pale of civilization. In the pro-removal article, Cass noted that he had not been an admirer of the Upper Missouri River tribes for some time. "The Indians, in that extensive region, are to this day far beyond the operation of any causes, primary or secondary, which can be traced to civilised [sic] man." Cass discussed in particular the Mandans and the Arikaras and, by inference, all other tribes located along the northern rise of the Missouri River. 42 Examination of federal records indicates that no Indian nations were vaccinated under the act that were not pledged to the United States in treaties favorable to the United States. 43 Removal tribes receiving federal smallpox vaccinations included Choctaws, Shawnees, Kickapoos, Cherokees, Creeks, Seminoles, the Indians of Ohio, and the Lewistown Senecas (table 1). Other vaccinated treaty tribes were involved with land cessions, reservations, or territorial consolidation. By "consolidation" is meant that extant reservations were being reduced in size and that many of these reservation populations were often subjected to removal, after 1832, in the wake of settler in-migrations. These groups included Potawatomies, Miamis, Indians of Illinois and those located immediately west of the Mississippi River, Osages, Chippewas, Ottawas, Menominees, Chippewas of Lake Superior, and various other groups of Wyandots, Munsees, Shawnees, Winnebagos, and Christian Indians (table 1). (endnotes omitted, J. Diane Pearson, "Lewis Cass and the Politics of Disease: The Indian Vaccination Act of 1832," Wicazo Sa Review 18.2, <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wicazo_sa_review/v018/18.2pearson01.html>, Fall 2003, pp. 12-13, 20-21)</blockquote> -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>