Actually you're incorrect. The smallpox infected blanket trick was most certainly understood and the use thereof against the plains tribes is recorded historical fact. Note this only occured 150 years ago, when people already had a basic understanding of infectious diseases (Didn't now how they worked, but did know that they did and a basic idea of how to prevent it).
This is very different from the virgin field epidemics that occured after the initial settlements in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, when there was essentially no medical science known in europe beyond bleeding and leeches. -Adam P. J. Alling wrote: > This is well, just wrong. The methods of how diseases were transmitted > just wasn't well enough understood to run a campaign using such a > weapon. You didn't need to do it on purpose, it seems that moderns have > forgotten just virulent smallpox is and what it does to un-protected > populations. Now killing the buffalo, that was well understood. > > > > Shel Belinkoff wrote: >> Not true ... they were purposely infected with smallpox and possibly other >> diseases, and the plains Indians had there main food source, the buffalo, >> almost completed wiped out. It was genocide, pure and simple. >> >> Shel >> >> >> >> >>> [Original Message] >>> From: Adam Maas >>> >> >>> The primary reason for the massive population drop wasn't wholesale >>> slaughter. It was the unthinking introduction of several virulent and >>> deadly diseases to a population with essentially no resistances to them. >>> And frankly there was no way the Europeans would have had any inkling of >>> how dangerous that was. >>> >>> This isn't to say that the survivors weren't treated extremely badly. >>> But the population crash wasn't caused by wholesale slaughter. >>> >> >> >> > > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
