Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814

The Microbes of War: The British Army and Epidemic Disease among the Ohio Indians, 1758-1765

— 63 — TheMicrobesofWar:TheBritishArmyand EpidemicDiseaseamongtheOhioIndians,1758–1765 M a t t h e w C . W a r d Between 1755 and 1815 Britain and the United States took possession of the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region from its Native American inhabitants. That they were able to do so bears witness not only to American and European military superiority, but also to the population decline of the Indian peoples. During the “Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes” Indian populations declined precipitously.1 This population decline was caused not primarily by warfare but by disease. Indeed, for North America as a whole, historian Russell Thornton has argued that “warfare . . . [was] not very significant overall in the American Indian population decline.”2 The relationship between disease and Indian population decline is well documented. However, most work has focused on explaining the prevalence of “virgin soil epidemics,” which swept through Indian populations in the century after first contact. By the mid–eighteenth century, the Great Lakes region and Ohio Valley were anything but “virgin soil.”3 Between 1758, when forces under the command of Major General John Forbes occupied the forks of the Ohio River, and the final conclusion to “Pontiac’s Rebellion” in 1765, the British army and the Native American population of this region came into close contact. During this period the British army itself served as a vector for a number of diseases, which it transmitted directly to the Native M at t h e w C . Wa r d — 64 — American population. In addition, British military and Indian policy served to heighten the susceptibility of the Indian peoples to disease. The British army and its commanders were aware of the role it played in spreading disease. In July 1763, following the outbreak of “Pontiac’s Rebellion,” a frustrated Jeffery Amherst, the Commander in Chief of British forces in North America, wrote to Colonel Henry Bouquet commander of the Forty-second Regiment stationed in the Ohio Valley. He asked Bouquet, “could it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our Power to Reduce them.”4 A week later Amherst offered further encouragement to Bouquet, informing him “You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians, by means of Blankets, as well as to Try every other Method, that can Serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race.”5 There is little direct evidence that the British army ever consciously used “germ warfare.” In the eighteenth century, the process of disease transmission remained a mystery and while the Fort Pitt garrison may have redistributed a few blankets from the smallpox hospital in response to Amherst’s memorandum, following the start of the siege most of the Indian headmen who would have accepted such gifts would have been pro-British, the group whom Amherst and other commanders would not have wanted to undermine. In addition, the attempted use of such tactics would certainly have been a two-edged sword, for disease could easily have spread back amongst the crowded ranks of the army—not to mention the colonial population. Whether, had attempts been made, they could have been successful is also open to question. The smallpox virus Variola Major can, under certain conditions, exist in a dried state. However, it prefers cool and dry conditions, hardly those of mid-summer in the Ohio Valley. Although the chances of its long-term survival are slight, its transmission via infected blankets is thus at least potentially feasible.6 Such a debate over attempts to spread smallpox, however, obscures the real importance of disease. Amherst’s comments reflect a direct consciousness of the important role of British army in spreading disease and the role that disease was playing in undermining Indian ability to resist the British. In the years immediately following the British capture of Fort Duquesne in 1758, the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region witnessed a series of epidemics, which resulted in substantial population loss and social dislocation. While records are not sufficiently detailed to reconstruct an accurate epidemic and disease profile, and attempts to identify specific epidemics must also be rather tentative, it is possible The British Army a n d Ep i d e m i c D i se a se a mong the Ohio Indians — 65 — to uncover a generalized chronology. During the late spring of 1761, the Ohio towns were...