Small Pox and the Indians Throughout our history books we read time and time again about different groups of people who had to endure death and devastation from different occurrences, such as war, genocide or disease. I would like to talk about one of those occurrences, which is only briefly mentioned to us, which is the effect that smallpox had on the Indian communities that occupied the land that would eventually become the United States. To begin, I will briefly explain smallpox, which is an acute contagious disease caused by the variola virus. Its major symptoms are: fever, vomiting, head and back aches, rash and lesions on the skin (known as pox) and a horrible smell, which could last up to a month. The fatality rate of this disease ranges between thirty and fifty percent, sometimes more among the Indian demographic. The virus is spread through human contact and occasionally through inanimate objects such as cloth. The good thing about smallpox is that once infected its survivors are then immune to the disease for life, so the virus constantly need a new human host to survive. The Indians would not come into contact with the small pox virus until the arrival of the European colonists. Since the Indians had not experienced small pox and had no immunity to the disease, so once exposed to it they were very susceptible to it and it often created an epidemic within their communities, which would nearly wipe out whole tribes at times. At this time, the Indians did not believe in contagious diseases, they often believed it was a punishment from spirits or gods, for something an individual or a whole tribe had done wrong. They did not know how to treat the disease so they often resorted to sweating it out in sweat lodges, which they used for other illnesses, but that only made the symptoms worse and often caused dehydration. In the beginning Indians did not believe in quarantining, they felt they were abandoning their families and that was against their way of life. So, they would often gather around the infected trying to nurse them back to health, which would only help the smallpox virus to spread even more throughout their villages. Eventually, they did resort to quarantining though, which slowed the spread of the disease but caused more deaths. The increase in death rates would occur because the ill were left to fend for themselves and the lack of proper nursing would lead to dehydration and starvation. While the Indians were undergoing natural occurrences of the spread of smallpox throughout their communities at different times and places, it is also believed that the Americans used it as a form of biological warfare. There are reports that the Americans would intentionally sent small pox infected people or items into their villages in an effort to weaken them or kill them off for their own gain. For instance, there was a General named Jeffrey Amhers who used smallpox as a weapon against different tribes in the Ohio area, during the time of the French-Indian War. The Indians were being hostile and uncooperative, so the General ordered his men to give out blankets that were soiled to the different tribes. This caused an epidemic among the different Indian groups and many deaths. Most of those tribes were either completely or close to wiped out by that act of war by General Amhers. It left the Indians with much smaller numbers and without the strength to resist.