Smallpox epidemic on the Pacific coast of North America in 1862

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The smallpox epidemic on the Pacific coast of North America from 1862 has been prepared by steamship Brother Jonathan from California to Victoria introduced. It had broken out in California, more precisely San Francisco , and reached Victoria on March 12, 1862. As a result of the decision of the authorities to expel the Indians encamped around the city , the disease spread to Alaska in the north and to Puget Sound in the south . While the non-indigenous population was protected by vaccinations, the disease likely killed around 14,000 indigenous people from April to December 1862 , perhaps half of the total population.

From California to Victoria

On March 12, 1862, Brother Jonathan docked in the afternoon with around 350 passengers , mostly gold prospectors . They had been drawn to news of gold discoveries in what is now Idaho , but the extremely cold winter of 1861/62 prevented them from moving on. Captain Samuel DeWolf led the first ship of the year north. Only 100 to 125 passengers had the destination Victoria, the others wanted to continue. The ship carried 60 tons of cargo for the city, including 75 sheep and 21 mules . The prospectors used the 24-hour break to visit grog houses and brothels , in which Indian prostitutes also worked. The next day around 4 p.m. Captain DeWolf cast off again with 400 passengers, this time towards the Columbia River .

The outbreak

As early as March 18, the Daily British Colonist , the local newspaper , wrote that one of the passengers had had smallpox, and on March 20, a second patient turned up. On the 24th, the Oregon also brought at least one person with smallpox from San Francisco. In the days that followed, reports of smallpox deaths appeared in California , where reportedly over 2,000 cases had already been reported.

But the incubation period is 12 days, during which the infected are highly contagious, but the disease is not noticeable to them. In addition, blankets or clothes are sufficient for the virus to transmit. It starts with a high fever, then headache and aching limbs, then the sick person vomits. After two or three more days, a rash develops on the face, hands and feet. Now the patient reaches the highest risk of infection and the rashes spread over the whole body. This is followed by the dreaded pus vesicles, which often grow together into large pus vesicles. Around a month after the infection, the blisters dry and fall off. Those who survive have numerous pockmarks; many are blind. Once the disease broke out, there was no help. Only quarantine could stop the spread. Those who were not yet sick could be vaccinated.

Accordingly, the Daily British Colonist headlined "Quarantine" and the following day it read "The disease, we fear, will wreak sad havoc among the Indians if strict health measures are not taken". But only those who volunteered should be cared for accordingly.

Since the smallpox vaccination was discovered in England in 1798 and has been used on Puget Sound since 1837, the said daily newspaper urged citizens to get vaccinated. On April 1, it was estimated that every second person was vaccinated. Around 5,000 people lived in Victoria, half of them white. The surrounding Indian population is likely to have shown similar numbers, at least 1,600 lived in the area, over 2,000 camped to trade in the vicinity of the city.

John Sebastian Helmcken (1824–1920) vaccinated around 30 songhees . On April 1st, the news of a first sick Indian surfaced. But only Helmcken responded by vaccinating another 30 Indians on April 16. He tirelessly continued this work and vaccinated over 500 of them. There was probably a short-term shortage of vaccine. But enough was available again by early May at the latest.

When the disease broke out in the camps outside the city, the Songhees fled to an island in Haro Strait. They quarantined themselves with it. Only this tribe survived the incipient disaster with only a few victims.

Father Leon Fouquet, a Catholic missionary, vaccinated 3,400 Indians along the Fraser River . At the same time, other mission stations in the Strait of Georgia and Puget Sound received vaccine. These tribes were also rarely hit by the deadly disease.

However, it was not the missionaries and doctors who were actually responsible for averting the danger, but the House of Representatives of the Vancouver Island colony. The city of Victoria, which was only founded in 1843, did not yet have a city council or mayor. Both the doctor William Tolmie (1812-1886) and John Helmcken were members of the congregation, Helmcken was even its spokesman, and he was considered one of the most influential men in the colony. The two had been official doctors of the Hudson's Bay Company , which ruled on behalf of Great Britain , since 1833 and 1850 respectively .

In 1837 had a smallpox epidemic in northern British Columbia News Company reached. Smallpox reached Puget Sound at that time, and Tolmie was supposed to vaccinate Indians at Fort Nisqually . In 1853 he again vaccinated numerous Indians there when smallpox was rampant on the Washington coast, which had belonged to the USA since 1846. Helmcken acted similarly. So the two doctors knew what to do in such cases.

The role of Governor James Douglas

James Douglas had already got to know the effects of smallpox in 1836/37 and 1847/48. He therefore proposed to the provincial assembly on March 27, 1862, that an isolated hospital be set up for all smallpox cases. The nine-member House of Assembly , to which the two doctors belonged, discussed the proposal four days later, with Helmcken speaking out against a forced transfer to a hospital that was also to be rejected. He accused the governor of being active. The nine members of the committee voted for the construction of a suitable building next to the existing hospital, but refused to restrict the freedom of each individual to decide on the vaccination issue for themselves. Only one Mr. Burnaby was in favor of Douglas' proposal, despite the restriction of liberty and despite the cost.

The history

In mid-April 1859, 2,235 Indians were counted in the camps around Victoria. These included Tsimshian (44%), Haida (26%), Tlingit (15%), Bella Bella ( Heiltsuk ) (8%) and Kwakiutl from Fort Rupert (7%). Of course, these numbers fluctuated with the seasons, as some canoes had to travel several thousand kilometers to get to Victoria, but one can expect around 2,000 Indians at this time.

The Anglican missionary Reverend Alexander Garrett first noticed the illness among the Tsimshians on April 13th or 20th, at least on a Sunday. On April 26, the Daily British Colonist reported 20 deaths in the past few days, four of them the day before. There were fears that the whole tribe might be wiped out. Two days later, the number of dead of the tribe was estimated at 300.

But there were also voices that were more concerned about the infection of whites by Indians, or that were simply annoying that the Indians were everywhere in the city, in the theater, the streets, in hotels and restaurants, as domestic staff. Newspaper people advocated an attitude in which solving this "problem" at all costs was the top priority.

On May 9th, Reverend Georg Hill wrote in his journal: “I went through the Hyda and Bella Bella camps and found thirteen cases and one dead body. I have never seen such terrible scenes of death, misery, filth and suffering. ”As early as May 14, the local newspaper predicted that the epidemic would spread to Sitka . On May 27, it was already rumored that if the mortality rate was projected, an Indian from the north would be a curiosity within two years. Apparently some of the residents were already panic.

expulsion

The Commissioner of Police Joseph Pemberton was on May 28, command that the Tsimshians within a day should leave the region and that the gunboat Grappler "help" it should. The Indians should also be removed from the city itself. Two days later, all of the Tsimshians had left. Tlingit and Haida also began their departure. On June 11, the police force forced around 300 people to leave the area and return to their home areas. The gunboat Forward pulled 26 canoes full of Indians northward to Fort Rupert for 15 days . This included 20 Haida canoes, five canoes from other Haida Gwaii tribes and one from the Tlingit. The first cases of smallpox broke out on the way north.

On June 21st, the Daily British Colonist wrote : “How have the mighty fallen! Four years ago ... they were the terrors of the coast; today, broken in spirit and effeminate ... they move northward, the germ of a nasty disease that will take root and bring about ruin and destruction in the friends who stayed at home. With the current death rate, it can only be a few months before the Northern Indians of this coast exist only in history. "

At the end of June almost all the Indians around Victoria had been driven out, but there were still a few survivors there in July. Hardly any new cases occurred within Victoria. As is so often the case in such cases, many a scribe regarded the wretched with contempt.

Spread to the north

On May 17th, the Tsimshians' canoes reached Fort Simpson . They were the first to be evicted from Victoria. Corresponding to the incubation period of around two weeks, only cases of illness occurred among the displaced until the end of May. With the Nuxalk there was no other way to help than to bring the sick into the woods, give them a blanket and two or three salmon and let them die. The unsuccessful medicine men put them under tremendous pressure, for their efforts were unsuccessful.

News of this disaster reached Victoria on June 12th. Captain Shaff of the schooner Nonpareil reported that within a few days hundreds had been torn away around Fort Simpson and Fort Rupert. The Indians dragged northward died quickly. At the first signs, the sick were abandoned and given bread, fish and water and a cloth to replace a tent. Captain Osgood of the Northern Light reported similar things about the Bella Bella or Heiltsuk , and said they were almost exterminated. Twelve miles north of Nanaimo he saw twelve dead rotting in the sun, Captain Whitford saw there, as he reported on July 11, over 100 dead. Osgood reported that 40 of a group of 60 Haida had died by mid-May.

Father Brabant, a Catholic missionary, was with the Hesquiaht , a tribe of what later became known as the Nuu-chah-nulth on the northwest coast of Vancouver Island , in 1862 . His diary noted in October 1862 that 15 "Mouetsats" ( Mowachaht ) died of smallpox. They wanted to kill just as many Hesquiaht in revenge. On October 14th a canoe came from Nootka Sound , but the right to land was denied for fear. It was Tom, a missionary with his family. Brabant vaccinated them, reporting panic, screaming and howling at the same time, of medicine men who preached “superstitiously”.

The wife of the chief of the Hesquiaht was dead on October 16, Brabant tried to vaccinate the whole tribe, but three cases of smallpox occurred after the mass on October 17, and two were already dead on October 18. No one dared to give them to bury. A Makah and seven others eventually helped. But the dead were only packed in a canoe and covered with a board because it was storming so violently. The chief's sister fell ill and died on October 20th. Peter also seemed to have smallpox now.

It is reported by the Mowachaht that anyone who helped with the funeral contracted smallpox themselves. An Indian was evicted for visiting Victoria, which was rightly recognized as the source of the disease. All the Indians came to mass and sang, otherwise the silence was overwhelming. Brabant just managed to throw the dead into the forest. But on October 21st and 22nd, the situation seemed to improve as Peter recovered.

Spread to the south

It spread southward towards Puget Sound . On April 19, the Daily British Colonist reported that a citizen in Port Townsend had become a victim of smallpox. A group of Tsimshians drove south - we can only guess why - passed the place and camped at Port Ludlow . On May 19, the newspaper in Victoria reported that they were all sick or already dead. Whether these were just rumors is unclear, the newspapers in the Puget Sound region have reported nothing. After all, there were two newspapers called Olympia , then Port Townsend and Steilacoom . On April 10th, the Steilacoom's Puget Sound Herald wrote : "Between firewater and smallpox ... the red men of this region promise to disappear entirely soon". Otherwise the sheets only copied what was rumored in Victoria.

Eugène Casimir Chirouse (not to be confused with his nephew Eugène-Casimir Chirouse ), the Catholic missionary in the Indian Reservation of Tulalip (later Everett), wrote about the course of the epidemic between the beginning of May and the end of September. 400 Indians had been vaccinated and by August only three had fallen victim to smallpox. In the case of the Indians a little further away, however, numerous victims are to be lamented.

The Indian agent Henry Webster responsible for the Makah Reservation wrote in August 1863 that the Makah had been spared because of their isolated location on Cape Flattery , and because the doctor Joseph Davies had vaccinated most of the tribe.

According to Indian agent SD Howe, there were some casualties under the nooksack , right on the border. The S'Klallam also suffered great losses.

Of the Elliott Bay Indians , a boy experienced the epidemic and reported the outbreak of the disease near Seattle after over 60 years . There, he reported, the Indians had a 60-by-30-40-foot house that would later be on Pioneer Square . It served as a kind of hospital. He vividly described how the medicine men tried to save their patients. He reports of sweat lodges and jumps into the cold water, and above all that the panic in the tribe ensured that each healer was only allowed to treat three sick people. If they died, that was also his death sentence. From then on there was not a single medicine man in the region - whether they fled or were killed remains to be seen. If we can believe the description of the rituals, the medicine men themselves saw to it that they became infected.

On June 30, 1863, the doctor in the Puyallup Reservation, CH Spinning, wrote that he had treated 254 Indian patients during the last year, seven had died, but did not mention any case of smallpox. The Nisqually reported in September 1863 that there were 12 deaths, but again it is unclear whether this was due to smallpox.

In the Chehalis Reservation, between Olympia and Columbia Rivers, the Indian Agent AR Elder reported that the health of the Indians there was much better than on Puget Sound, as they lived further away from the "sins" of the whites. Apparently the epidemic did not spread further south.

Newspapers in Washington and California reported very little about the disaster. San Francisco hesitated to report at all. A Port Townsend newspaper , the Washington Standard , stated: "The San Francisco newspapers avoid any reference to the existence of smallpox in the city." A paper in Olympia said that the papers were afraid of provoking inappropriate excitement and action.

After all, on April 3, the Puget Sound Herald urged citizens to get vaccinated immediately should the disease reach the area. They should also exercise caution when visiting affected areas. Other papers demanded the removal of the Indians to be on the safe side - instead of vaccinating them - which was also morally and socially beneficial.

The North-West (Port Townsend) stated on May 24th, “The Indians are a hideous and work-shy race, of no earthly benefit to themselves or to anyone other than the doctors, and their presence attracts ... white thugs who ... lead an unsteady life selling bad whiskey. These rampant people are much worse than smallpox ... let's send the Indians to the reservations where they belong ... society would improve and strengthen and free-love and atheism would become fewer followers on the banks of the river Find Puget Sound. "

consequences

At the end of June, the terrible clean-up work began outside Victoria. The corpses were weighted down with stones in some places and thrown into two nearby bays. As recently as June 28, 1863, the Daily British Colonist estimated that there were 1,000 to 1,200 Northern Indians on a single acre alone . According to later estimates, the epidemic cost the lives of 15,000 Indians, which corresponds to about half of all residents.

But not all tribes were equally affected. The worst hit was southern Alaska. The Tlingit alone lost 1,450 tribe members, around 60% of the total. The Heiltsuk lost 1,150, only 500 survived. On Haida Gwaii and Prince of Whales Island , 4,700 Haida died, only 1,600 survived. Of the 13 villages, only seven still existed in 1882, around 1900 only two, entire clans disappeared, the social structure was destroyed. This ended the dreaded raids against the southern Indian tribes.

On June 17, 1862, the Victoria Daily Press put it in a nutshell: “... What will they say in England? When it becomes known that an Indian population around Victoria was supported and encouraged until smallpox was introduced by San Francisco were. They who, when the disease raged among them ... were left to doom, in the midst of a Christian community that had grown fat on them for four years ... that did not become the Good Samaritan and tried to medicate the effects of the disease Means to alleviate, instead, sent these people away to death and the disease scattered along the coast. Sending with them the destruction, perhaps, of the whole Indian race in the British possessions on the Pacific ... There is a dehumanizing simplicity about the treatment of the Indians that is really terrible ... How easy it would have been to send the tribes away when the disease was noticed in town, and if some of the Indians had been infected, a place could have been set up some distance from Victoria until they recovered ... which, with medical help, they would in all likelihood have done ... The Authorities have started the work of extermination - let them continue ... There has never been a more heinous Indian policy than ours. "

Remarks

  1. ↑ Colonist, July 11, 1875, quoted from: Leona Taylor and Dorothy Mindenhall, “Index of Historical Victoria Newspapers,” Victoria's Victoria, http://www.victoriasvictoria.ca/ , 2007.
  2. ↑ One gets an impression of Chirouse from a photo of Chirouse and five other missionaries in British Columbia (taken around 1859–1869) (Chirouse top left) ( Memento of the original from 23 September 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca

literature

  • Robert Boyd, The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence: Introduced Infectious Diseases and Population Decline among Northwest Coast Indians, 1774-1874. University of Washington Press, Seattle 1999.
  • Harry Greyson: A History of Victoria 1842-1970. The Victoria Observer Publishing, Victoria 1970.
  • Dorothy Blakey Smith (Ed.): John Sebastian Helmcken, The Reminiscences of Doctor John Sebastian Helmcken. University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver 1975.
  • Robert T. Boyd, George M. Guilmet, David L. Whited, Nile Thompson: The Legacy of Introduced Disease: The Southern Coast Salish. In: American Indian and Culture Research Journal. 15/4 (1991), pp. 1-32.
  • Kiran van Rijn: “Lo! the Poor Indian! " Colonial Responses to the 1862-63 Smallpox Epidemic in British Columbia and Vancouver Island. In: CBMH / BCHM. 23.2 (2006), pp. 541-560.

See also

Web links