Hoping to stop the
spread of small pox, Indian Agent Joshua Pilcher persuaded William
Clark to send him up the Missouri with Dr. Josephy Prefontaine and
a supply of vaccines. They sailed on the American Fur Company
steamboat, Antelope, picking their way along the crowded levee in
St. Louis below the 'badly drained, filthy and fly infested river
front,' and set off on their trip. They distributed food to
starving tribes and began the inoculations. Dr. Fontaine
estimated that he inoculated 3,000 Sioux, but at least 17,000 had
died of the disease the previous year.
The small pox outbreak of 1837, which is believed to have
been brought ashore on blankets owned by passengers on the
steamboat St. Ange, spared fewer than a hundred Mandan (and killed
many thousands of other plains tribes). This was one of
twenty-nine identified ''plagues' between 1519-1900 that decimated
Native American populations in the Americas.
(for more on the Mandans, click here)
This was a
perilous journey for Pilcher and the doctor. They
realized that the Indians were certain to blame them for bringing
this invisible killer into their midst, yet the two men were
willing to take the chance. The greatest setback was not
having enough vaccine to continue travelling up the Missouri to the
Mandan Villages.
"The question
that keeps cropping up is the assignment of blame," wrote
Pilcher.
(for more on small pox, click here)
On June 19, three Arikara women disembarked from the
American Fur Company's steamboat,St. Peter,sat Fort Clark, and then
disappeared among the throngs of Mandans waiting at the boat
landing. Two weeks later, the resident trader at Fort Clark,
a half-breed alcoholic cur named F.A. Chardon, wrote to William
Clark that "the small pox has broken out in this country and is
sweeping all before it. Unless it be checked in its mad
career I would not be surprised if it wiped the Mandan and Ricaree
tribes clean from the face of the earth."
(for more on small pox and Indian tribes, click
here)
The most
serious criminal charge that could be brought against the company
that owned the steamboat was negligence. The company sent the
St. Peter farther upstream, even after the deadly illness
had been discovered aboard. No one in the company wanted to
see anything happen to the Indians, for without Indians they had no
trade. Nevertheless, the captain of the ship bore a good deal
of the responsibility for devastating a fur industry that was
already struggling. The hostility that resulted from the
epidemic influenced trade with the Missouri River tribes for the
duration of the fur trade.