Author: Pranay Lal
Publication: Down to Earth
Date: March 3, 2004
Is the West a victim of its own
past?
A curious search for blankets is
currently taking place in the plains around the Great Lakes in North America.
These are not ordinary blankets. They are actually bison skins that were
smeared with body fluid tainted with smallpox and used, two hundred years
ago, to obliterate American Indians. Post 9/11, us authorities fear that
some such blankets might still exist, and a viable source of smallpox might
fall into wrong hands. Many areas in the us and Canada have been cordoned
off. But the operations remain shrouded in secrecy: so far there is no
official statement from any Canadian or us agency about the discovery of
any smallpox tainted blanket. The search may not yield anything, but it
has again brought to the fore some sordid pages from American history.
Pontiac's rebellion Many historians
trace the notorious blankets to a gruesome episode in American history
during the spring of 1763. That year, a party of Delaware Indians, led
by their Ottawa chief Pontiac, laid siege on the British-owned Fort Pitt
(now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). Captain Simeon Ecuyer, a Swiss mercenary
and the fort's senior officer, saved the day for the British. The Indians
agreed to temporarily abandon their siege in return of a gift of two blankets
and a handkerchief. They had no inkling that the wily Ecuyer had deliberately
infected the presents with smallpox contagion.
This episode is confirmed by William
Trent - the leader of the militia of European settlers at Fort Pitt - in
his journal. Most historians regard this source as the "most detailed contemporary
account of the anxious days and nights in the beleagured fort." Trent notes
in an entry dated May 24, 1763, "I hope the means have the desired effects."
They indeed had. By July 17, smallpox had become endemic among the Delaware
Indians.
Another villain in this piece is
Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the commander of British forces in North America
during the final battles of the French and Indian wars (1756-1763). The
general's correspondence shows that he entered into tacit collaboration
with his bitter colonial rival, the French, to further the dubious methods
initiated by Ecuyer. In his book, The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian
War after the Conquest of Canada (Boston: Little Brown, 1886), historian
Francis Parkman notes that Amherst and a French general Henry Bouquet exchanged
regular letters about spreading "smallpox mong the disaffected tribes of
Indians."
Bouquet was aware of Ecuyer's method.
In a letter dated June 23, 1763, he notes that smallpox had broken out
among Indians at Fort Pitt. And on July 13, 1763, he suggests "the distribution
of smallpox smeared blankets to innoculate the Indians." Amherst approves
of the method in a letter dated July 16, 1763 and also queries his French
interlocutor about other methods, "To extirpate this execrable race."
Bouquet and Amherst also discuss
the use of dogs to hunt down Indians, called the "Spanish method". But
this method could not be put into practice, because there were not enough
dogs.
Amherst had been at war with the
French as much as with the Indians, but he was not driven by any obsessive
desire to extirpate them from the face of the earth. The French were apparently
a "worthy" enemy. But the general had no scruples about methods when
it came to Indians. His letters abound with phrases such as, "That vermine
(sic) have forfeited all claims to the rights of humanity." The historian
J C Long, records the general as saying, "I would be happy for the provinces
[Pittsburg] if there was not an Indian settlement within a thousand miles
of them."
Other historians have noted that
Amherst derived almost sadist pleasure in listening to accounts of spies
and others who reported smallpox in Indian settlements.
Who knows and who does not European
colonialists like Amherst and Bouquet could go on with exterminating Indians
using the notorious blankets because they themselves were armed with the
knowledge of inoculation. The process was discovered by a Dutch physiologist
Jan Ingenhaus and was brought to England in 1721 by one Lady Mary Wortly
Montague. It involved inoculating healthy people with pus from the pustules
of those who had a mild case of the disease, but this often had fatal results.
But colonialists like Amherst did
not have to wait for long. By the closing decades of the eighteenth century,
they could carry on with their methods with even greater impunity. By that
time, British physician Edward Jenner's reserarch on the relation between
cowpox and smallpox had begun to yield decisive results.
And in 1796, Jenner reported that
humans could be vaccinated against smallpox if a small dose of cowpox could
be administered to them.
Such knowledge was of course kept
away from indigenous people in the colonies. And colonialists like Amherst
continued to exploit the divide of who knew and who didn't.
This divide persists. Today, the
West remains in mortal fear of strange new diseases that originate in Asia
(Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or sars; avian influenza) and Africa
(Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or aids, Ebola and monkeypox). But
almost all vaccination measueres are designed to protect citizens of the
developed world. There is very little effort to protect those who face
the greatest risk from violent diseases. For example, discontinuation of
smallpox vaccination in Africa has exposed many in the continent to other
related infections, like the monkeypox.
The threats of bioterrorism are
real and relevant. But the real challenge is to protect those who who actually
live with mysterious diseases. However, developed societies continue to
live with the Amherst syndrome.
