As Long as the Grass Grows · Episode 11 of 15 · 18 min
Smallpox Blankets: What Actually Happened
The claim that the United States handed out smallpox blankets to exterminate Native Americans is narrower in fact and more damning in substance. The one documented deliberate case was British, at Fort Pitt in 1763, and the 1837 claim does not survive the evidence. The government's well-documented weapons were massacres, engineered starvation and the destruction of the buffalo.
Who's who
- Jeffery AmherstBritish commander who proposed spreading smallpox to tribes in 1763
- Henry BouquetBritish officer who exchanged the smallpox proposal with Amherst
- William TrentFort Pitt trader whose journal records the blanket gift
- Mato-Tope+1 more episodeMandan second chief who died in the 1837 epidemic
- Francis A. ChardonFur trader whose journal records the 1837 outbreak at Fort Clark
- Ward ChurchillWriter whose deliberate-1837 account was found to rest on fabricated sourcing
- John Chivington+1 more episodeMilitia colonel who led the Sand Creek attack
- Philip SheridanGeneral who argued for destroying the buffalo herds
Where it happens
- Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania+1 more episodeSite of the documented 1763 attempt
- Fort Clark, North DakotaMissouri River post at the center of the 1837 outbreak
- Sand Creek, Colorado+1 more episodeSite of the 1864 massacre
- Wounded Knee, South Dakota+1 more episodeSite of the 1890 massacre
Timeline
- June 24, 1763Fort Pitt's garrison gives Delaware emissaries blankets from the smallpox hospital
- 1837-1840A smallpox epidemic carried up the Missouri kills over 17,000 and nearly annihilates the Mandan
- November 29, 1864The Sand Creek Massacre
- 1870s-early 1880sBuffalo are destroyed as military strategy, falling to a few thousand
- December 29, 1890The Wounded Knee Massacre
Still debated
Intent at Fort Pitt is documented, but whether the blankets transmitted smallpox is contested. Current scholarship does not support deliberate spreading in 1837, massacre tolls are given as ranges, and historians debate how far the buffalo slaughter was formal policy versus encouraged commercial hunting.