Smallpox Blankets

The mistreatment of Native American peoples by European settlers and traders is well documented. In the book, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” Dee Brown painstakingly details the mistreatment inflicted on Native Americans by settlers and the seemingly uninterrupted string of broken treaties made towards numerous tribes.

Another particularly harmful chapter in the treatment of Native peoples was the assimilation of tribes by forcible removal of thousands of Native American kids from their own families to 523 boarding schools throughout the United States (Levitt 2023). Native American boarding school children were stripped of their language, clothes, and forced to perform manual labor. Many Native American children were physically abused, and thousands died in these boarding schools. Broken treaties and forced assimilation are just two ways that the treatment of native people has left an indelible scar on the history of the United States.

Another common historical indictment against the United States government was that they distributed blankets tainted with smallpox to Native Americans. Specifically, it was alleged that the U.S. Army commander of Fort Clark in North Dakota ordered blankets to be sent from a smallpox infirmary in St. Louis in 1837. The U.S. Army commander then directed that these blankets be given as gifts to Native Americans in the Mandan tribe. Knowingly giving objects tainted with a pathogen to another group of people is biological warfare.

Biological warfare has a long and sordid history. One of the earliest documented uses of biological warfare was in 1346 CE when Mongol warriors infected with the Black Plague were catapulted over the walls of Caffa in modern-day Ukraine to spread the disease (Frischknecht 2003). In 1763, a Pennsylvania trader named William Trent had the idea of giving blankets from a smallpox ward to Native Americans (Kiger 2018; Dowd 2016). Trent wrote in his journal, “Out of our regard for them, we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.” Trent’s plot was only discovered widely in 1924 after historian A.T. Volwiller published Trent’s journal (Dowd 2016). So did the U.S. Army really purposely infect Native Americans with smallpox blankets in 1837?

The Fort Clark story about the U.S. Army originates with a man named Ward Churchill who originally made the claim in 1992 in a ghost-written chapter while working as a professor at the University of Colorado (Brown 2006). Six different versions of this narrative appear in print between 1992 and 2003. In 2003, Churchill also said that there was circumstantial evidence that Captain John Smith (yes, THAT John Smith, the one from the Pocahontas tale) introduced smallpox purposefully as a way to kill Wampanoags indians. However, Churchill’s claims gained little attention and were only challenged publicly by University of New Mexico professor, John LaVelle. The University of Colorado dismissed these claims in 1999 as a “bona fide dispute among scholars” (American Association of University Professors 2012).

In an essay published the day after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Churchill said that the victims of the World Trade Center terrorist attack were “little Eichmanns.” Churchill was referring to the Nazi, Adolf Eichmann, and his role in the holocaust which exterminated millions of people under the Nazi regime. Churchill’s 9-11 essay went largely unnoticed directly after its publication. However, the discovery of Churchill’s 9-11 essay by faculty at Hamilton College in 2005 was enough to stimulate investigation into Churchill’s other scholarly works.

A scientific paper published by Thomas Brown at Lamar University reported that Fort Clark was not a U.S. Army base but a privately-owned fur trading outpost (Brown 2006). The closest U.S. Army soldiers were stationed at Fort Leavenworth approximately 800 miles away. However, it was true that smallpox was likely introduced to the Northern Plains in 1837 via a sick passenger on the steam boat St Peter’s. The captain of the ship knew about the sick passenger but refused to turn back in fear that it would jeopardize profits. There was also no evidence that any blankets aboard the St. Peter’s were provided to the Mandans. The smallpox was likely spread by human to human transmission, as was primarily the case before smallpox eradication, not blankets. Therefore, smallpox wasn't introduced to the Native Americans as an intentional bioweapon but as collateral damage in the quest for profits.

In 2007, Churchill was formally investigated by the University of Colorado by a committee. The committee found Churchill guilty of plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification of evidence in his claims about the U.S. government. Churchill was dismissed by the University of Colorado shortly thereafter (American Association of University Professors 2012). Churchill filed a lawsuit in 2009 alleging wrongful termination by the University of Colorado. The jury found that his political views were a “substantial or motivating” cause for his firing (Johnson 2009). He was awarded a grand total of one dollar in damages. He was not reinstated by the University of Colorado.

References

American Association of University Professors. Report on the Termination of Ward Churchill. Published 2012. Available at: https://www.aaup.org/JAF3/report-termination-ward-churchill#:~:text=Ward%20Churchill%20was%20dismissed%20from,the%20genocide%20of%20Native%20Americans. Accessed February 10, 2025.

Brown, Dee. "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West" Holt Publishing. Published May 2007.

Brown, T. (2006). Did the U.S. Army Distribute Smallpox Blankets to Indians? Fabrication and Falsification in Ward Churchill’s Genocide Rhetoric. Plagiary: Cross‐Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification, 1 (9): 1–30.

Dowd, Gregory Evans. Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier (Early America: History, Context, Culture). Johns Hopkins University Press. Published January 2016.

Frischknecht F. The history of biological warfare. Human experimentation, modern nightmares and lone madmen in the twentieth century. EMBO Rep. 2003 Jun;4 Spec No(Suppl 1):S47-52. doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.embor849. PMID: 12789407; PMCID: PMC1326439.

Johnson, Kirk and Katharine Q. Seelye. Jury Says Professor Was Wrongly Fired. The New York Times. Published April 2, 2009. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/us/03churchill.html?hp. Accessed February 10, 2025.

Kiger, Patrick J. Did Colonists Give Infected Blankets to Native Americans as Biological Warfare? History.com. Published November 15, 2018. Available at: https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets. Accessed February 10, 2025.

Levitt, Zach, Yuliya Parshina-Kottas, Simon Romero and Tim Wallace. 'War Against Children.' The New York Times. Published August 30, 2023. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/30/us/native-american-boarding-schools.html. Accessed February 10, 2025.