JULY 14:

July 14, 1837:  At Fort Clark, on the upper Missouri, Francis Chardon records the first death of a Mandan attributed to smallpox. The outbreak of this disease spreads rapidly and be extremely deadly to the people in this area.
 

BACKGROUND:
 

Excerpts from http://www.thefurtrapper.com/indian_disease.htm
 

Native populations of the Americas lacked immunity to the infectious diseases that  had ravaged Europe and Asia for centuries. The "white man" diseases.measles, chicken pox, typhus, typhoid fever, dysentery, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and after 1832, cholera.were devastating to the American Indian. Lumped together, these diseases did not equal the havoc of smallpox in terms of  number of deaths, realignment of tribal alliances, and subsequent changes in Canadian and American Indian Culture ...

... Smallpox passes through the air in droplets discharged from the nose and mouth. It spreads from the lungs of an infected person into the lungs of a susceptible person. Smallpox can survive years on the clothing and bedding used by smallpox victims. In the early seventeen hundreds, a smallpox outbreak in Quebec resulted in many deaths.  In 1854, a pipeline laid through where the victims had been buried resulted in another smallpox outbreak.

Smallpox reached what was to become the United States either from Canada or the West Indies. The first major outbreak of an infectious disease recorded on the northeastern Atlantic coast was 1616-19. The Massachusetts and other Algonquin tribes in the area were reduced from an estimated thirty thousand to three hundred (Bray). When the Pilgrims landed a year later in 1620, there were few Indians left to greet them. Many observers believe this infectious disease was smallpox.

By the end of the sixteen hundreds, smallpox had spread up and down the eastern seaboard and as far west as the Great Lakes. Stearn and Stearn estimated there were approximately one million one hundred and fifty thousand Indians living north of the Rio Grande in the early sixteenth-century, but by 1907, there were less than four hundred thousand (Bray). This decline was not due to smallpox alone. Other diseases played a role, as did warfare between various Indian tribes and with the United States

Smallpox and the Plains Indians

The smallpox outbreak of 1780-82 followed the distribution and trade route of the Indian horse (Haines). The outbreak in 1800-02 spread from the Plains Indians to the Indians along the Pacific coast. Despite heavy losses during these periods, the most devastating outbreak of smallpox was yet to come.

In 1832, the first steamboat, a small side-wheeler named, Yellow Stone, reached Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. The use of steamboats on the Missouri allowed large quantities of trade goods to move up and down the river. The buffalo hide trade now become more important than the trade in furs. Remote Indian villages brought their buffalo hides to the American Fur Company posts. This set the stage for ensuing disaster.

The 1837 smallpox outbreak was initially confined to the Indian tribes that lived by or had come to trade at the upper Missouri River trading posts. The Mandan, Blackfeet, and the Assiniboine nations suffered the highest number of deaths. The 1837-40 smallpox outbreak was said to have a ninety-eight percent death rate among those infected (Bray).

In June of 1837, the St. Peter arrived at Fort Clark, 60 miles north of present day Bismarck, North Dakota. Knowing there were men aboard the boat with smallpox, F. A. Chardon and others of the American Fur Company tried to keep the Mandans away from the boat, but to no avail. The two Mandan villages that had provided aid to Lewis and Clark during the winter of 1804-05 were devastated.  Thirty-one Mandans out of a population of sixteen hundred survived the epidemic.
 

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>From http://www.indiana.edu/~h333/notes/chardon.html#anchor36600
 

Charles Larpenteur, Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri, 1833-1872. Edited by M.M. Quaife. Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1933.

After my return from the Canoe camp nothing worthy of remark took place until the arrival of the steamer, late in June [1837]. The mirth usual on such occasions was not of long duration, for immediately on the landing of the boat we learned that smallpox was on board. Mr. J. Halsey, the gentleman who was to take charge this summer, had the disease, of which several of the hands had died; but it had subsided, and this was the only case on board. Our only apprehensions were that the disease might spread among the Indians, for Mr. Halsey had been vaccinated and soon recovered. Prompt measures were adopted to prevent an epidemic. As we had no vaccine matter we decided to inoculate with the smallpox itself; and after the systems of those who were to be inoculated had been prepared according to Dr. Thomas' medical book, the operation was performed upon about 30 Indians and a few white men. This was all done with the view to have it all over and everything cleaned up before any Indians should come in, on their fall trade, which commenced early in September. The smallpox matter should have been taken from a very healthy person; but unfortunately, Mr. Halsey was not sound, and the operation proved fatal to most of our patients. About 15 days afterward there was such a stench in the fort that it could be smelt at a distance of 300 yards. It was awful - the scene in the fort, where some went crazy, and others were half eaten up by maggots before they died; yet, singular to say, not a single bad expression was ever uttered by a sick Indian. Many died, that those who recoverd were so much disfigured that one could scarcely recognize them. While the epidemic was at his height a party of about 40 Indians came in, not exactly on a trade, but more on a begging visit, under the celebrated old chief Co-han; and the word was "Hurry up! Open the door!" which was locked for many days to keep the crazy folks in. Nothing else would do - we much open the door; but on showing him a little boy who had not recovered, and whose face was still one solid scab, by holding him above the pickets, the Indians finally concluded to leave. Not long afterward we learned that more than one-half of the party had died - some said all of them. In the course of time the fort became clear of smallpox, but the danger of infection continued. Fort William was still standing, and the remaining houses, which were no longer inhabited, were used as hospitals for Indians, with no other attendants than some old squaws. It became the duty of John Brazo to take out the dead and dump them into the bushes, and some mornings, on asking him "How many?" he would say "only three, sir; but, according to appearances in the hospital, I think I shall have a full load to-morrow or next day." This seemed to be fun for Brazo, but was not for others, particularly myself, as I happened to be the trader, who was liable to be shot at any time; but, singular to say, not even a threat was made, though the tribe was reduced more than one-half by next spring.

and ....

Henry A. Boller, Among the Indians: Eight Years in the Far West (1858-1866). Ed. M. M. Quaife. The Lakeside Classics. Chicago: Dennelley & Sons, 1959.

Boller was 22 in 1858, trading furs on the upper Missouri because his father(an importer in Philadelphia) vetoed Boller's idea of going to China or India. Boller wrote this account in 1867, then became an insurance agent in Denver. Went into real estate sales by the 1880s. Here, among the Gros Ventres, pages 245 and following.

On one occasion some of the old men were talking about the changes that had taken place in their nation. Many snows ago they were a part of the Crows and left them because they were too numerous. Their language is essentially the same, with such modifications as a long residence with the Mandans and Riccarees would be likely to make. They once occupied five villages and the Bobtail Wolf was chief of one. Incursions of their enemies and the fearful ravages of smallpox and cholera so reduced their number that they formed at last but one village and dwelt upon the banks of the Knife River, above the old Mandan (Ricaree) village. At last they determined to seek the Crows and unite with them again. They deserted their village, abandoned their cornfields, left the bones of those once loved and lost, and severing all old ties crossed to the east shore of the Missouri and started on their pilgrimage.

It was in the fall when they arrived at the site of the present village. The Four Bears thought it would be a good place to winter in and they accordingly prepared to remain until spring. When spring came the Fur Company's steamboat arrived at the urgent solicitation of the Indians a trader was left with a few goods. He took up his quarters in the Four Bears' lodge. [ here Boller describes how the Indians felt safe, wedged between two forts ]

But the smallpox was an enemy that neither stockades nor bravery could keep away. That frightful disease is peculiarly fatal to Indians, and was unknown to them previous to the advent of the white man. The Mandans, from a large nation, have become reduced to a mere handful. All the tribes have suffered, but the Sioux have escaped with the least loss as they, immediately upon the appearance of the disease, scattered in small camps throughout their country and thus confined it to a single locality.

The last time the smallpox made its appearance on the upper Missouri was in 1856 and the accounts I received from eye-witnesses were truly heart-rending. The Gros Ventres and Mandans suffered, of course, although not so severely as in former times, as they scattered immediately upon its breaking out. Around Fort William the Assiniboines lay encamped, threatening the whites with justly-merited vengeance. The houses in the fort were crowded with Indians in every stage of the disease. The moment they were attacked they sought the whites, feeling, doubtless, that as the latter had brought the pestilence it was but just they should suffer some of the inconvenience.

Few, if any, of the employees of the Fur Company were attacked by the disease. The houses were kept as warm as possible and many of the Indians who avoided the exposure to the cold and snow ultimately recovered. One case was peculiarly distressing. A whole family had been carried off. The mother had just died, leaving an infant a few months old. The well Indians had as much as they could attend to and there was no one able or willing to take charge of the little orphan. It was placed in the arms of its dead mother, enveloped in blankets and a buffalo robe, and set up on a scaffold in the usual manner of burying the dead. Its cries were heard for some time. At last they grew fainter and finally were stilled altogether in the cold embrace of death, with the north wind sounding its requiem and the wolves howling in the surrounding gloom a fitting dirge for so sad a fate. Nevermore in the happy Spirit Land would that mother and her child be parted.