"inoculating" against smallpox in the old days

[Mike Cleven]

At 07:44 PM 2/2/99 -0800, David Robertson wrote:
>LaXiyEm, kanawi-Laksta,
>
>I don't know a thing that'd be useful in answering Mike's question about
>this, but a tiny anecdote:  My Salish teacher, if I recall right, at least
>once mentioned to us about some indigenous people who somehow got the idea
>to use thorns to inoculate against this dreaded plague -- and it worked in
>many cases.
>
>How many of realize that smallpox was as bad or far worse for American
>natives than the black plague ever was for Europeans?

Well, that's a fairly subjective statement.  In some parts of Europe, the
mortality WAS over 90%, sometimes over 95%, and the plague hit in
successive waves, with complete social chaos and cultural breakdown in its
wake.  50% is usually cited by demographers about the Black Death, but no
one really knows, there being no accurate record-keeping in those days.

The deadliest of the plagues to hit the Northwest wasn't smallpox.  It was
"the mortality", the unknown disease that was introduced by an irate Boston
trader against the peoples of the Lower Columbia and the Lower Fraser in
the early 1820s.  The fatality rate there is also unknown, but appears to
have been over 95%.  Apparently it was a hemorrhagic fever of some kind
(like Ebola or the deadliest super-influenzas), and was somehow brought in
from the tropics.......

Has me wondering what the infection rate among natives in the frontier era
for malaria was; or whether that mostly afflicted the colonists?