Today’s Contrived Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Although variolation could protect against infection, it could also be misused to trigger deliberate outbreaks of smallpox. The fact that isolated populations, such as American Indians, were highly susceptible to the disease made it a potential weapon in the hands of less susceptible groups, such as Europeans. Indeed, in a dark chapter of military history, the British employed smallpox as an instrument of warfare on several occasions during the eighteenth century.
The best-documented incident occurred in the aftermath of the French and Indian War of 1754-63, when Great Britain defeated France and its allied Indian tribes and seized control of Canada. After the war ended, Pontiac, an Ottawa chief who had sided with the French, was angered by the British confiscation of Indian land. Seeking to drive the British out of Canada and the Mississippi watershed and return the territory to French control, Pontiac united six tribes along the western frontier into a military alliance.
Because most of the British army had returned home, the remaining units were badly overextended. As a result, the rebellious Indians, led by Pontiac, overran eight British forts in eastern Pennsylvania, killing or capturing the defending soldiers and settlers. On May 29, 1763, the Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo tribes began a siege of the major outpost of Fort Pitt (site of present-day Pittsburgh), which soon was seriously threatened. Indian scalping parties attacked British settlements around the fort, destroying harvests, butchering men, women, and children, and forcing the survivors to flee in terror.
Colonel Henry Bouquet, the ranking officer for the Pennsylvania eastern frontier, headquartered in Philadelphia, wrote a letter on June 23, 1763, describing the increasingly dire military situation at Fort Pitt. The letter was addressed to Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the British commander-in-chief in North America, based in New York. In addition to describing the Indian attacks, Bouquet reported that smallpox had broken out in the defending garrison.
On July 7, 1763, Amherst responded, adding a postscript to his letter in which he suggested that the defenders of Fort Pitt should use smallpox as a weapon against the tribes involved in Pontiac’s Rebellion. “Could it not be Contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians?” he wrote, “We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to Reduce them.” In response to Amherst’s recommendation, Bouquet replied elliptically on July 13, “I will try to inoculate _____ by means of Some Blankets that may fall in their Hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself.” Amherst responded approvingly on July 16, noting, “You will Do well to try to Inoculate the Indians by means of Blankets, as well as to try Every other Method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race.”
Although the available documents do not reveal whether Bouquet carried out Amherst’s suggestion, officers at Fort Pitt had already taken the initiative and executed a similar plan a few months earlier. William Trent, the commander of the local militia, wrote in his journal on May 24, 1763, that when a small delegation of Delaware Indians had visited the fort to advise the British to surrender, he had given them “two Blankets and a Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.” Captain Simeon Ecuyer, the commanding officer at Fort Pitt, was aware of this operation, since he subsequently approved Trent’s invoice to replace the blankets and the handkerchief. A severe epidemic of smallpox subsequently broke out among the Indians besieging Fort Pitt in the summer of 1763, but whether it resulted from Trent’s operation or from natural causes remains unknown.
Culled from: Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox
Morbid Art Du Jour!
“And Forgive Us Our Sins” by Emil Holarek, 1900
Garretdom!
Killed by the Falling Walls.
QUINCY, Ills., Sept. 22.—The walls of the Centre Mills, which was burned some time ago, fell to-day, killing Rodney Lambert and a colored man named Douglas. Ono Bassett, also colored, was fatally injured and two others badly bruised.
Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook
