The Smallpox-infected Blankets

Oh man, how the American Indians love this story! I've heard it over and over and over.

Did you know that the US gave these evil blankets to Indians all over the country, even here in California? Or Hudson Bay traders gave them to Indians in Canada? That those blankets wiped out "generations" of Indians? That the US gave them out to reservation Indians in the 1800's? That Puritans gave out the blankets to Massachusetts Indians? Neither did I.

Ward Churchill said the US Army gave Indians them nasty blankets. He lied, and he should have known better.

It's always nice to track down a myth, or is it really a myth?

So let's track it down.

Turns out, Americans never gave smallpox blankets to any Indians anywhere at anytime. Not the government, not the Army, not anyone. So we are absolved on that one. The incident occurred in 1763, before there even was a USA, before there even were Americans. The British done it, and the guy who is accused of doing it never even did it.

Further, it was in the midst of a horrible and genocidal war (on both sides) called Pontaic's Rebellion, which occurred around the Great Lakes area during this time.

It was really an extension of the French and Indian War, with which it is often incorrectly associated. In the aftermath of that war, that area, which had been ruled by the French, was now ruled by the British. And the Indians, far from fighting the White Man, had adjusted well to French rule and were mad about now being ruled by the British.

They essentially wanted the French back, I believe. Towards the end, they may have even wanted freedom.

But freedom for Indians was never going to work out, at least in the short term, because they were so stupid. Stupid? Yes, which is why in the mid-1700's, when the civilized world was starting to get themselves a country, or something like a country (monarchical empires) no way could the American Indians have made one.

Why? Because they were so stupid that they had endless deadly blood feuds with most of the surrounding tribes such that they spent way more time fighting and killing each other than they did the White man. Any country they would have gotten would have fallen immediately into mad civil war, with no adults around to sort it out and send one to one room and another to the other.

Anyway, the Indians really hated the deal they were getting from the British, who were basically treating them like crap. There were a few settlers around back then, but hardly any really.

If you ever find any of those old adolescent novels about the settling of the pre-US Upper Midwest and Appalachia (forget the name), they are a great read. I spent my early adolescence at the library reading those books.

It's really interesting that in the mid-1700's, these Indians were well-supplied with firearms. They didn't invent any firearms, but they were smart enough to figure out its great value as a weapon real quick (Indians loved their weapons, oh yeah.) and they even got to the point where they were expert gunsmiths - experts at stocks, barrels even gunpowder and pellets.

In Pontiac's War, they added firearms to knives, hatchets (not a bad weapon), bow and arrow, flaming bow and arrow (Now, that is one cool weapon, and probably takes some real brains to use right.) and even rocks and clubs. They ingeniously sawed off their muskets into sawed-off shotgun-type muskets so they could hide them under their blankets.

The Indians were absolutely horrible, vicious and awful in the course of this war, and I guess the British were too. But it was the British who were really getting pounded in this war. Whole forts were being overwhelmed by 300 strong Indian armies, and the Indians would just kill everyone in the place, soldiers, women, kids, anyone.

The Indians were raiding towns, settlements and schools and killing every White they could find. These were some of the most hardass, badass Indians in the whole history of the Indian Wars. Further, the Indians actually made an alliance of many tribes living in the area during this war, which is incredible, since the Indians usually hated their neighbors so much they would not even ally with them to fight the Whites.

The Whites were selling and giving the Indians all sorts of muskets, pellets and gunpowder in this part of the colonial US at this time, but the stupid Indians were mostly using the firearms to kill their Indian enemies rather than to fight the Whites. This situation went on for decades in the US and seriously hampered the Indians anti-colonial wars of national liberation against the White invaders.

In the course of the Pontiac Rebellion, a famous British general named Lord Jeffrey Amherst wrote a letter to the besieged British troops in one of the forts suggesting that they give the Indians smallpox-infected blankets. Turns out that this had already been done by that very subordinate. Simeon Ecuyer, the Swiss-born British officer in command of Fort Pitt, was the guy that done it.

But no one knows how the plan worked out. The two Delaware chiefs who got the blankets were in good health later. The smallpox epidemic that was sweeping the attacking Indians during this war started before the incident. The Indians themselves said that they were getting smallpox by attacking settler village infected with smallpox and then bringing it back to their villages.

So, it's certain that one British commander, and not even the one usually accused, did give Indians smallpox-infected blankets in the course of a war that was genocidal on both sides.

Keep in mind that the guys who did this were in their forts, cut off from all supplies and reinforcements, facing an army of genocidal Indians who were more numerous and better armed than they were, Indians who were given to killing all defenders and capturing some only to torture them to death afterwards. So, these guys were facing, if not certain death, something pretty close to that.

And no one knows if any Indians even died from the smallpox blankets. I say the plan probably didn't even work, and didn't kill any Indians at all, much less 50% of them.

Another example of a big fat myth - legend - historical incident, that, once you cut it open, well, there's just not much there.

A perfectly horrible period telling of Pontiac's War, written from the White POV in the vernacular of the day, is here. The tactics in this war were downright terrifying. At one point Detroit itself was surrounded and besieged, for weeks on end.

Pontiac was a master tactician, and the history of the war is full of all sorts of evil acts of deception. Fake peace treaties, fake peace delegations, Indian mistresses tipping off Whites to Indian attacks, Indian undercover female agents, disguised as workers, in the forts letting the Indians in to massacre the Whites, and Indian mistresses deviously leading their White officer-lovers and the soldiers under them to their deaths.

It took forever for the British to resupply the forts, and many reinforcement missions were ambushed and totally creamed by Pontiac's men. It was not a good time to be White in the Great Lakes region, no sir.

At the end of the day, no one really won, neither the Indians nor the British.

The Indians had foolishly allowed themselves to become dependent on the fickle Whites for gunpowder and pellets, which the Indians quickly ran out of when the Whites wisely quit supplying them during the hostilities.

Lesson: don't buy your war supplies from the enemy. When war breaks out, he'll cut you off.

A little-known aspect of US colonial history.

Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.