"inoculating" against smallpox in the old days

[David Gene Lewis]

On plagues, I tend to take the view that not any one plague was
responsible for the genocide, but combinations of successive waves of
plagues brought from all over the world caused 97-100% mortallity rates. I
am not aware of any malaria in the PNW, I don't think we have the right
climate. Malaria tends to remain in the tropics and closely surrounded
regions. As for which plague was worse, in terms of cultural genocide, the
plagues in the Americas were far worse than those in Europe. We had NO
resistance to any of the plagues while Europeans had at least some
resistance from their history of living with the pathogens.

On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, Mike Cleven wrote:

> 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?
>


"laska-lulu yaka kanamaqst" (we carry it together)

 "I am alive." Scott Momaday

"We must continue to struggle until we defeat those who have crowned
themselves, those who have helped to take the land from others, those who
make much money with the labor of people like us, those who mock us in
their estates."
>From the:Fourth Declaration of the Lancandon Jungle, 1/1/96.

"haias-masi" (many thanks)

David Lewis
coyotez at oregon.uoregon.edu