These sources also claim that the blanket was "stolen" by Indians. But these people could be lying about it being stolen. At this point, it looks like to me that the U of Col committee's claim against Churchill on the Fort Clark issue relies very much on the word of the people who claimed the blanket was _stolen_. It is just very possible that an accusation by whites of Indians "stealing" in this time is a lie. If Churchill assumes that they were lying , then he is warranted in hypothesizing that the blanket was given on purpose.
Once the investigating committee accepts that there is reliable evidence that the small pox was spread to the Indians from a blanket that white people had, they are in big trouble in concluding that Churchill is definitely "fabricating" the idea that it was deliberately spread, because of the real possibility that the people were lying that the blanket was stolen.
To try to say it quickly, the investigative committee is unwarranted in reaching such a _definite_ conclusion that Churchill's conclusion is not supported by the evidence. The evidence had does not demonstrate that the small pox was definitely _not_ spread to the Indians on purpose by whites giving them infected blankets. Churchill's conclusions are not as unwarranted or as definitely unwarranted as the investigative committee would have to claim.
Charles Brown
I have tirelessly defended Churchill until just recently. If he had made the claim that there is evidence that the Mandan people were deliberately infected with smallpox I would have stayed with him because I believe there is reasonable evidence to support that claim but unfortunatey he didn't stop there. He claimed the Army deliberately gave them blankets infected with smallpox and the evidence does not support this specifically.
The St. Peter's had people on board who were obviously infected with smallpox. This is known. It is the also known that the St. Peter's stopped at the Mandan villages. Knowing that NA's were extremely susceptible to infectious diseases like smallpox why is it considered an accident that the disease spread among the Mandan? How many times can you keep labeling such contact an accident? Just because no one wrote in a log book that they hoped to deliberately infect the Mandan doesn't mean it didn't happen. The problem this creates is that for any single instance you can always claim transmission of a disease was accidental. To consider it accidental hundreds of times over is however to deliberately ignore what you don't want to see. Churchill wants the evidence to be stronger than it is so he made shit up. But only an apologist for the slaughter could see the consistent pattern of infections and label them all accidental thereby absolving the invaders of as much responsibility in the killing as they reasonably can.
Churchill wants us to see the pattern and come to the conclusion that it was not all just a terrible accident but much of it deliberate. He is correct in this but unfortunately for those who hold to this conclusion he made shit up to support it. His stupid actions will be used to undermine this basically sound idea.
I like his writings but in all honesty he was not up to the task of providing evidence for something like this. He just isn't that much of a scholar. Hell, I never considered his books as anything but written for a popular audience rather than serious scholarship. Not that there's anything wrong with this I just didn't know Churchill considered his book scholarly.
John Thornton
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