Thanks. I just sent the link to the article to UW-Whitewater's chancellor, Jack Miller, (millerjw@uww.edu) with a polite note to please consider its contents when making his decision.
Thanks for posting this.
Professor Churchill is The Pig...
By fueling the need to Jerry Springer this guy we are probably increasing his profile and speaking fees.
No thanks - I'm out.
In those days people were scared to death of smallpox, almost like fear of AIDS today. I would think any commander telling his troops to handle "smallpox blankets" would have a mutiny on his hands.
Mandan had earlier exposure and was in decline by 1837 (only 350 men alive).
http://www.mhanation.com/main/history/history_mandan.html
“After the smallpox reduced the villages on the west to five, the five went up to where the others were, in the neighborhood of some Arikara, and settle in two villages. A great many Mandan had died and they were no longer strong and fearless. They made an alliance with the Arikara against the Sioux. All this happened before 1796 and is chronicled in Henry and Schoolcraft. Lewis and Clark found the two villages one on each side and about fifteen miles below the Knife River. Both villages consisted of forty to fifty lodges and united could raise about three hundred and fifty men. Lewis and Clark describe them as having united with the Hidatsa and engaging in continual warfare against the Arikara and the Sioux.
The description given by Lewis and Clark agrees with the conditions two years later when Henry visited them. In 1837, smallpox attacked them again, raged for many weeks and left only one hundred and twenty-five survivors.”
I'm maintaining a running log of the controversy here at my blogsite.
Regent,Please take a serious look at the research conducted by Thomas Brown in the attached document. If the attachment was blocked for some reason, please read the same paper here: http://hal.lamar.edu/~browntf/Churchill1.htm In it, you will find ample reason to terminate Ward Churchill from the employ of Colorado State University. His comments regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States notwithstanding, he simply shouldn't be a professor of anything.
Ward Churchill is a fraud. He is not deserving of association with the name of Colorado State University, nor certainly of tenure among honorable academic professionals. I urge you to remove Mr. Churchill from the faculty of CU immediately to begin repairing the stain he has placed upon the reputation of your institution. No legal action of which he is capable can compare to the damage being done by his continued employment there.
As, ken21, I especially liked this:
...prestige and legitimacy often accrues to those who most successfully express an oppositional identity."Oppositional identity"! I hadn't realized there was a name for the disease, which I've always attributed just to being a self-loathing ass.
This paper of Mr. Brown is very powerful. Churchill flaunts his acquittal in the disruption case, and Mr. Brown has just pulled the rug on it. Shall we assume that the Regents have a copy of this? Just in case, I sent one off, and another copy to my uncle in Denver, a UC graduate and son of a 1950s regent, who will make sure they see it.
Thanks, freespirited!
There is a degree of momentum here that I never would have imagined. I would not be surprised if Ward Churchill
is dismissed at CU. Ever since the Rosenberg debacle, Hamilton was on notice and yes they chose to do it again, oops.
Wait! Was Ward Churchill the source of this? This "infected blankets" stuff was referenced in a South Park episode!
Assessing Ward Churchill’s Version of the 1837 Smallpox Epidemic
-------
Assessing Ward Churchill’s Version of the 1837 Smallpox Epidemic
Thomas Brown
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Lamar University
Beaumont, TX 77710
Abstract:
This essay analyzes Ward Churchill’s accusations that the US Army perpetuated genocide. Churchill argues that the US Army created a smallpox epidemic among the Mandan people in 1837 by distributing infected blankets. While there was a smallpox epidemic on the Plains in 1837—historians agree, and all evidence points to the fact—that it was accidental, and the Army wasn’t involved.
Update, February 13, 2005:
This essay has been revised since I originally posted it. Some passages quoted by journalists are no longer in it. I wrote the first draft for myself, in a state of outrage over what I had discovered. I still stand by my original analysis. But I think my argument will be more effective without the editorializing. I have stripped most of the outrage, and added some more historiographical context. I want to let the facts speak for themselves
One blogger accused me of misrepresenting what Churchill said where. He has since retracted that accusation, after having read the piece more carefully. But his false accusations are still circulating on various blogs.
The first draft speculated that Churchill *may* have committed perjury. I am not a lawyer, and used the word “perjury” as any layman would, to describe dishonesty in a court proceeding. Given that the technicalities of perjury rules can vary from one venue and one situation to the next, I have removed that statement. I still contend that Churchill’s trial brief as published in Indians R Us contains all the same errors that I pointed out in my first draft. Contrary to some web critics’ accusations, I have never called for Churchill to be prosecuted for perjury or anything else. Please read more carefully, and be honest in your criticism.
Thanks to everyone who has emailed me. Some of the support I don’t want or don’t deserve. Some of the criticism has been right on the money, and incorporated into my revision.