Assessing Ward Churchill’s Version of the 1837 Smallpox Epidemic
Thomas Brown
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Lamar University
Beaumont, TX 77710
browntf@hal.lamar.edu
Abstract:
This essay analyzes Ward Churchill’s accusations that the US Army perpetuated genocide. Churchill argues that the US Army created a smallpox epidemic among the Mandan people in 1837 by distributing infected blankets. While there was a smallpox epidemic on the Plains in 1837—historians agree, and all evidence points to the fact—that it was accidental, and the Army wasn’t involved.
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Did the U.S. military ever carry out a genocidal assault on American Indian peoples by means of biological warfare—i.e., distributing infected smallpox blankets? Few historians would dispute that during the Plains Indian wars, selected U.S. military forces did perpetuate massacres that can easily be construed as genocidal in intent. Furthermore, it is well-established that the British general Lord Amherst at least considered distributing smallpox-infected goods to Indians in 1763—with explicitly genocidal intent—and that his plan was carried out independently by his subordinate, Captain Ecuyer.
But did the U.S. military ever deploy smallpox blankets? Ward Churchill says they did. In a series of essays written during the 1990s, Churchill gradually elaborates his version of the origins of the smallpox epidemic that broke out on the northern plains in 1837, which probably killed twenty to thirty thousand people. Churchill charges the U.S. Army with infecting the Mandan tribe with gifts of smallpox-laden blankets, withholding treatment, and thus causing an epidemic that Churchill says killed more than 125,000 people.
Ward Churchill was previously accused of plagiarism and fabricating evidence in two published articles by University of New Mexico law Professor John Lavelle.[1] Churchill’s tale of the Mandan genocide would, unfortunately, appear to fit the pattern that LaVelle first laid out. The goal of this essay will be to situate Churchill’s version of events in an historiographical analysis of the 1837 smallpox epidemic.
Ward Churchill’s Version of the Smallpox Outbreak among the Mandans
Churchill first advanced his tale of the Mandan genocide in 1992, in the context of “a brief supporting a motion to dismiss charges” against Churchill and other activists, who were being tried for having disrupted a Columbus Day parade in Denver the year before. In Churchill’s trial brief, reprinted in his book Indians R Us (1994), he claimed immunity from the state laws under which he was being prosecuted. Churchill made the argument that protesting the parade was tantamount to combating genocide, and was thus his legal duty under international law. Towards that end, in his trial brief Churchill described several historical examples of genocide against Indians, including this one:[2]
At Fort Clark on the upper Missouri River…the U.S. Army distributed smallpox-laden blankets as gifts among the Mandan. The blankets had been gathered from a military infirmary in St. Louis where troops infected with the disease were quarantined. Although the medical practice of the day required the precise opposite procedure, army doctors ordered the Mandans to disperse once they exhibited symptoms of infection. The result was a pandemic among the Plains Indian nations which claimed at least 125,000 lives, and may have reached a toll several times that number.[3]
The only source that Churchill cites in support of this contention is Russell Thornton.[4] It is enlightening to compare Thornton’s rendition with Churchill’s. Thornton locates the origins of the epidemic in “a steamboat traveling the Missouri River” (94):
Steamboats had been traveling the upper Missouri River for years before 1837, dispatched by Saint Louis fur companies for trade with the Mandan and other Indians. At 3:00 P.M. on June 19, 1837, the American Fur Company steamboat St. Peter’s arrived at the Mandan villages after stopping at Fort Clark just downstream. Some aboard the steamer had smallpox when the boat docked. It soon was spread to the Mandan, perhaps by deckhands who unloaded merchandise, perhaps by chiefs who went aboard a few days later, or perhaps by women and children who went aboard at the same time.[5]
Note the discrepancies between Churchill and Thornton. Thornton locates the site of infection at the Mandan village, not at Fort Clark. Nowhere does Thornton mention the U.S. Army. Nowhere does Thornton mention “a military infirmary in St. Louis where troops infected with the disease were quarantined.” Nowhere does Thornton mention the distribution of “smallpox-laden blankets as gifts.” On the contrary—Thornton clearly hypothesizes the origins of the epidemic as being entirely accidental.
Citing Thornton, Churchill holds that “the pandemic claimed at least 125,000 lives, and may have reached a toll several times that number.” But Thornton counts only 20,400 dead from a variety of tribes, plus “many Osage”, and “three fifths of the north-central California Indians (probably an exaggeration)”. In other words, Thornton counts no more than 30,000 dead at most.[6]
Thornton disagrees with the conclusions of genocide that Churchill attributes to him, telling the Los Angeles Times: “If Churchill has sources that say otherwise, I’d like to see them. But right now I’m his source for this, and it’s wrong.”[7] Speaking on the Churchill controversy to InsideHigherEd, Thornton remarked that: “The history is bad enough—there’s no need to embellish it.”[8]
In 1998, Churchill revised his accusations against the Army in a new collection of essays, A Little Matter of Genocide. Churchill addresses the Lord Amherst affair of 1763, in which British colonial forces may have indeed distributed smallpox-infected goods to Indians in New England. Churchill argues that Amherst:
…was by no means a singular incident, although it is the best documented. Only slightly more ambiguous was the U.S. Army’s dispensing of ‘trade blankets’ to Mandans and other Indians gathered at Fort Clark, on the Missouri River in present-day North Dakota, beginning on June 20, 1837. Far from being trade goods, the blankets had been taken from a military infirmary in St. Louis quarantined for smallpox, and brought upriver aboard the steamboat St. Peter’s. When the first Indians showed symptoms of the disease on July 14, the post surgeon advised those camped near the post to scatter and seek ‘sanctuary’ in the villages of healthy relatives…there is no conclusive figure as to how many Indians died…but estimates run as high as 100,000.[9]
In this new version, Churchill elaborates on his previous essay, adding new details. A new character appears: the post surgeon. Churchill implies that this character strategically encouraged the Indians to scatter and thus spread the disease. Churchill has also downgraded his outside estimate of the number of victims to only “as high as 100,000.”
What Happened in 1837?
Churchill’s tale of genocide by means of biological warfare is shocking, but other historians disagree that it ever happened. It is well-established that a smallpox outbreak did occur in 1837, and that it was probably carried into the region on board the steamboat St. Peter.[10]
None of the sources that Churchill cites make any mention of “a military infirmary…quarantined for smallpox.” None of the sources Churchill cites make any mention of U.S. Army soldiers even being in the area of the pandemic, much less being involved with it in any way. Churchill’s sources—in particular a journal kept by the fur trader Francis Chardon—make it clear that Fort Clark was not an Army garrison. It was a remote trading outpost that was privately owned and built by the American Fur Company, and manned by a handful of white traders.[11] It was not an Army fort, nor did it contain soldiers. Not being an Army fort, it did not contain a “post surgeon” who told Indians to “scatter” and spread the disease.
The only government employee who can be documented as present in the vicinity of the trading post was the local Indian Agent, who according to Chardon did not distribute blankets or anything else at the time of the pandemic, “as he has nothing to give his red children.”[12] The government agent functioned to serve the interests of the trading company, and had no independent incentive to infect the Indians.[13]
Journals and letters written by the fur traders who did man Fort Clark make it clear that they were appalled by the epidemic, in part because they had Indian wives and children and were thus a part of the Indian community.[14] The traders also had economic interests in keeping the Indians healthy. The trader Jacob Halsey—who himself contracted the smallpox—lamented that “the loss to the company by the introduction of this malady will be immense in fact incalculable as our most profitable Indians have died.”[15] The traders would not seem to have any incentive to wage biological warfare on their own families and their “most profitable Indians”, much less put their own lives at risk.
Churchill claims that vaccine was withheld by “the army”, citing Stearns & Stearns.[16] What the Stearns actually wrote was that “great care was exercised in the attempt to eliminate the transfer of the smallpox” by the traders, and that “a physician was dispatched for the sole purpose of vaccinating the affected tribes while the pestilence was at its height.” It is difficult to see how Churchill could have derived his reading of events from the Stearns.[17]
Churchill argues that the “post surgeon” ordered the Indians to scatter, thus strategically spreading the disease. But an eyewitness on the scene—the trader Jacob Halsey—complained in a letter that:
I could not prevent [the Indians] 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…my only hope is that the cold weather will put a stop to this disease…pray send some vaccine.[18]
This letter is printed as an appendix to Chardon’s journal, the only primary source that Churchill cites in support of his story.
What if the U.S. Army had been active in the region? Given the opportunity, would Army officers have had any motive to use biological warfare against the Mandans? Five years earlier, in 1832, Congress had passed an act and appropriated funds to establish a program for inoculating Indians on the Missouri River.[19] Given this Congressional mandate to protect Indians from smallpox, given the lack of hostilities between the U.S. military and the Mandans or any other Plains Indians at that time, and given the military’s lack of presence in the area of the Mandans at the time, Churchill’s version of events does not seem plausible, even in the context of counterfactual speculation.
Churchill argues that the disease’s vector was smallpox blankets given as gifts by the Army. None of the sources that Churchill cites mentions gift blankets. Available evidence indicates that the disease’s vector was either the trader Jacob Halsey himself, who arrived on the St. Peter already infected, or an Arikira Indian woman who also arrived on the steamboat in the same condition.[20] The primary source that Churchill cites makes it clear that the local traders considered the disease to be entirely accidental, and as unwelcome by the local whites as by the Indians.
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PS: The abstract notes that John LaVelle and Russell Thornton are among Churchill's academic critics. Interesting that both of them are something Churchill isn't - real Indians. |
