Montana Medicine Show: 1837 Small Pox Epidemic

Welcome to the Montana Medicine Show. I'm Derrick strong. The SS St. Peters an American Fur Company steamboat carried trade goods to the native peoples on the Upper Missouri River. In 1837. It also carried an unintentional cargo smallpox and death for thousands of man Dan had dots and Sue company personnel tried to inoculate Indians living near Fort Union but it was in vain when the tribes fled the smallpox spread with them westward and into Canada for a company bookkeeper Edwin Denning and later wrote they scattered through the mountains in the hope of running away from the pestilence. All order was lost. No one pretended to lead or advise the sick and the dead were left for the wolves and each family tried to save itself. For traitor Charles Larpenteur described an awful scene where some went crazy others were half eaten up by maggots before they died at the headwaters of the Missouri trader Alexander Culbertson arrived at a major Blackfeet encampment and found only two survivors.

He reported hundreds of decaying forms of human beings horses and dogs lay scattered everywhere among the lodges. The epidemic continued until winter killing two thirds of the Blackfeet. One half of the Assiniboine Xina Ricker. A third of the crows and a quarter of the Pawnee summing up the smallpox epidemic of 1837 historian Hiram Chittenden described it as mortality almost without parallel in the history of plagues. From the studios I'm Derek strong. In Montana medicine shows supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. A private corporation funded by the American people.