1837-38 smallpox epidemic

The smallpox epidemic that ravaged the people of the Great Plains in 1837 and 1838 was believed to have began in spring of 1837 when a deckhand became ill aboard an American Fur Company steamboat named S.S. St. Peter^[1]. The steamboat traveling up the Missouri River to Fort Union from St. Louis docked at Fort Clark near several Mandan villages on June 18th, 1837, here the disease spread to the Mandan people ^[2]. In July 1837, the Mandan numbered no more than 2,000, by October that number had dwindled to 138. On August 11th, Francis Chadron, a trader at Fort Clark, wrote,“I Keep no a/c of the dead, as they die so fast it is impossible”^[3].

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By the time the S.S. St. Peter made it to Fort Union several deck hands had died, but only Jacob Halsey, an American Fur Company clerk, showed visible signs of the disease. In an attempt to stop the spread of the disease fort personnel performed primitive inoculations. Puss from Halsey's skin eruptions were used to inoculate approximately thirty Native American women and several white men living in or around the fort. Within two weeks, the women who received the inoculations began dying from the disease^[4]. As the disease reached a peak at Fort Union bands of Native Americans continued to arrive at the fort for trade.

Halsey wrote:

“I sent our interpreter to meet them on every occasion, who represented our situation to them and requested them to return immediately from whence they came however all our endeavors proved fruitless, I could not prevent them from camping round the Fort-they have caught the disease, notwithstanding I have never allowed an Indian to enter the Fort, or any communication between them & the Sick; but I presume the air was infected with it for a half mile...”

Later, a longboat was sent to Fort McKenzie via the Marias River. At Fort McKenzie the disease spread among the Blackfoot people housed there^[5]. The epidemic continued to spread into the Great Plains killing thousands during the fall of 1837, but by and large died out that winter. In the end, it is estimated that two-thirds of the Blackfoot population died along with half of the Assiniboines and Arikaras, a third of the Crows, and a quarter of the Pawnees^[6].

Notes

References

• Calloway, Colin G. "Defending the West 1830-90." First Peoples. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. 259-334.
• Garneau, D. "Indian History 1825-1849." Canadian History Directory. 19 Mar. 2007. 6 Nov. 2007 .
• "S.S. St. Peter's & the 1837 Small Pox Epidemic." Malachite’s Big Hole. 28 Jan. 2007. 12 Nov. 2007 .