Quote:
Originally Posted by Joebill
As for the small pox blankets. A Native American couple I knew about 1993, online, had done extensive research on that subject. While the story is widely believed, they couldn't find any evidence of such 'gifts'. Other versions say it was clothing.
They found that an upsurge in such stories happened after a movie Richard Widmark was in, as a US Army officer in the 1800s, finding that a group of Native Americans had been given 'clothes worn by whites who had died of small pox'.
Since many early explorers had small pox pustules on their bodies, it would have been easy for them to unknowningly transfer their diseases just visiting Native American villages.
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Smallpox did greatly reduce the Native American population, the only question is how much, if any, was the result of deliberate infection. I did a quick Google search and, although I didn't see where the practice was widespread, I did find this in
Wikipedia:
One of the most contentious issues relating to disease depopulation in the Americas concerns the degree to which Europeans deliberately infected indigenous peoples with diseases such as smallpox. [Noble David] Cook asserts that there is no evidence that the Spanish attempted to infect the American natives.
...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: ... Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the fort—an early example of biological warfare—which started an epidemic among them. Amherst himself had encouraged this tactic in a letter to Ecuyer.
...Historian David Stannard is of the opinion that the indigenous peoples of America (including Hawaii) were the victims of a "Euro-American genocidal war." While conceding that the majority of the indigenous peoples fell victim to the ravages of European disease, he estimates that almost 100 million died in what he calls the American Holocaust. Stannard's perspective has been joined by Kirkpatrick Sale, Ben Kiernan, Lenore A. Stiffarm, and Phil Lane, Jr., among others; the perspective has been further refined by Ward Churchill, who has said "it was precisely malice, not nature, that did the deed."
An article entitled "Early Biological War on Native Americans" at
http://academic.udayton.edu/health/s.../00intro02.htm states:
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...
See also
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...-with-smallpox