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1837 Great Plains Smallpox Epidemic

The 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic spanned 1836 through 1840 but reached its height after the spring of 1837, when an American Fur Company steamboat, the SS St. Peter, carried infected people and supplies up the Missouri River in the Midwestern United States. The disease spread rapidly to indigenous populations with no natural immunity, causing widespread illness and death across the Great Plains, especially in the Upper Missouri River watershed. More than 17,000 Indigenous people died along the Missouri River alone, with some bands becoming nearly extinct.

'''One Native tribe majorly affected by the smallpox epidemic was the Mandan tribe. The Mandans traditionally lived along the Missouri River. They had an extraordinarily rich culture, due to them hosting many European and American travelers. The Mandan villages consisted of 12 to 100 lodges and were well organized with a hierarchy of leaders. In 1750, there were about nine large Mandan villages, however, by the start of the 1800s, the smallpox epidemic decreased the tribe to only two villages. By 1837, there were about 100 to 150 Mandan survivors.'''

Having witnessed the effects of the epidemic on the Mandan tribe, fur trader Francis Chardon wrote: "the small-pox had never been known in the civilized world, as it had been among the poor Mandans and other Indians. Only twenty-seven Mandans were left to tell the tale." In 1839, the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs reported on the casualties: "No attempt has been made to count the victims, nor is it possible to reckon them in any of these tribes with accuracy; it is believed that if [the number 17,200 for the upper Missouri River Indians] was doubled, the aggregate would not be too large for those who have fallen east of the Rocky Mountains."

 History 

Smallpox, a highly contagious viral disease, '''which can be transmitted through direct contact with a person that is already affected with smallpox. Touching clothing, bedding, dust, or any other objects that were previously touched by an infected person can result in transmission of the disease.''' First afflicted Native Americans after it was carried to the Western Hemisphere by early European explorers, with credible accounts of epidemics dating back to at least 1515. Smallpox proved particularly deadly in the interior parts of North America such as on the Great Plains because these populations were among the last to experience steady contact with European settlers, such that few if any people in these communities had been previously exposed to European pathogens and developed natural immunity to them. Mortality rates were therefore typically extremely high.

By the 1730s, smallpox had made its way west across Canada and the northern United States to the edge of the American frontier. The Assiniboine First Nation had controlled much of this territory, but were forced to give it up as their population decreased dramatically as a result of the disease's high mortality rate. Along the Missouri River the Arikara population was reduced by half by the end of the 1730s. Other communities decimated by smallpox in the 1730s include the Lower Loup, Pawnee of Nebraska, Cherokee, and Kansa.

In 1796, English physician Edward Jenner discovered that infecting a person with the comparatively mild cowpox infection could provide immunity to smallpox, and thus invented the world's first vaccine. As its use became widespread in Europe, deployment of the smallpox vaccine in North America was praised by Thomas Jefferson as a means of preserving lives. Unfortunately, supply lines for the vaccine were faulty and it was not until the 1830s that a significant portion of the Indigenous population was vaccinated, and even here it was limited beyond the Southwest. Early vaccination efforts by the Hudson's Bay Company were sporadic and unorganized during its monopoly period. Although the HBC recognized the potential importance of vaccination, understanding that more people meant more fur for them, there was no systematic vaccination program in place until the epidemic[which?] was well underway.[when?] Some vaccines were sent to HBC trading posts early in the 19th century but were never distributed.

Smallpox infections spiked in the 1780s and persisted up to the 1837 epidemic. In what is now Canada, the fur trade strengthened communities such as the Mushego Cree, Anishinaabe, and Ottawa. In the United States, the Mandan tribe had previously experienced a major smallpox epidemic in 1780–1781, which severely reduced their numbers to less than a few thousand. Many other bands along the Missouri River suffered smallpox epidemics during 1801–1802 and 1831.

Sporadic efforts were made to promote vaccination among the Indigenous peoples after the turn of the nineteenth century. With the passage of the Indian Vaccination Act of 1832, the U.S. Congress took its first step toward generating public support for vaccination of the Native Americans. But the scope of this program was limited; shortly after its passage, Secretary of War Lewis Cass stated that no effort would be made "under any circumstances" to send surgeons to vaccinate Indians up the Missouri River beyond the Arikara tribe, denying vaccine requests from those tribes. It seems that Cass was more interested in establishing fur trading routes on the Missouri River without Native interference than he was in helping Native Americans overcome Smallpox on the plains. This decision may have also been influenced by the commissioner of Indian affairs, Elbert Herring, who in his 1832 annual report to the U.S. Congress and the Secretary of War, accused the Chippewa tribe of the Great Plains (a neighboring tribe of the Arikara) of spreading the first Smallpox epidemics through interaction with French and British traders. Thus many thousands of people remained unvaccinated, just as migration and settlement of the frontier by white Americans began to intensify.

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