Posted on 10/19/2014 9:49:24 AM PDT by Impala64ssa
It so happened that an 11-year-old boy came home from school one day and told his parents that the first European white people who came to America were so mean that they tried to kill the Indians by giving them blankets with smallpox germs. The boy’s father tried to use this as a teachable moment. He asked his son to think if that made sense, even if the first white settlers were that evil. How would they avoid getting smallpox themselves? The boy then let it be known that the American Constitution was written by the Iroquois Indians. The father informed his son that the Iroquois did not have an alphabetic written language, so they could not have written our Constitution. The boy thought about the smallpox contagion problem but would not be dissuaded from his conviction that Iroquois Indians wrote the Constitution.
It also happens that this boy is a direct descendant of those same earliest colonials he had been taught in the public schools to despise. The miseducated schoolboy (now older and wiser) is a 14th-generation American. He descends from an Englishman who, with his wife and eight children, in 1638 sailed on the Susan and Ellen to the land that came to be called New England. The boy’s forbears established the oldest privately deeded homestead in the United States in Windsor, Connecticut. Let us hearken back to that fateful moment on the rough dock in Braintree, England and picture Joseph turning to his wife Mary, as harried husbands do when embarking with a large brood on a lengthy journey: “Honey, didst thou remember to pack the smallpox blankets?”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
By the late 1700s Europeans and Americans were thoroughly aware that clothes and blankets of smallpox victims would spread the disease.
Didn’t understand the mechanism yet, but they knew to burn these items to prevent contagion.
There was a woman on CSPAN Book-TV a couple of years ago. Wrote a book about small pox in the colonies and US.
She said the best decision made by General Washington was to innoculate the troops. Catherine the Great had made innoculation popular in Europe.
Small pox spread from the north east to the plains. The plains Indians then traded with the Spanish in Santa Fe and took it south.
IIRC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt
Sadly, I think there is historical evidence that this did happen. Please note the primary source references in the article.
This is likely part of the nifty, new Common Core curriculum.
Home school your kids or enroll them in a quality, conservative private school.
the evidence is in the cdc hard drives which have all crashed...lack of evidence does not mean no causation it means lack of evidence.
as everyone with common sense knows lack of evidence with this administration is protocol and to be expected
the entry of these thousands of illegals was orchestrated and known in advance by the administration.
why were they spread throughout the us and wont tell where they are? why wont they examine them for health problems and enterovirous? so they can say there is no evidence...if they wanted to prove no relationship they would test all the entrants, but they wont test any...lack of investigation doesn’t mean causation but it does indicate investigation is needed
Maybe it wasn’t George Washington, but I do remember reading about it being illegal to get “vaccinated” due to some smallpox deaths.
And again, Johnathan Edwards (Sinners in the hands of an Angry God) did die after being “vaccinated” for smallpox.
Did Jefferson have vaccines to give to Lewis and Clark? Their expedition was just a few years after Jenner invented vaccination. Inoculation had been known much longer so my guess is that they were trying to inoculate the Indians. That was also effective but riskier than vaccination.
Jonathan Edwards died in 1758 after being inoculated for smallpox—that was almost 40 years before vaccination was invented.
Certainly there is no evidence of any kind that the United States of America ever did such a thing.
“Certain aspects of the Constitution were inspired by the Iroquois confederacy,”
Which aspects, specifically?
The Founders were familiar with, and studied intensively, past and (then) contemporary European constitutional arrangements. From classical antiquity republics, democracies, monarchies and mixed constitutions were all familiar and their experience was most intimately informed of course by English history and the struggle there in the preceding century to establish the supremacy of Parliament against first the monarch and then against military despotism. Forgive me for being exceedingly skeptical but I can’t recall any instance of the adoption of Iroquois precedent, it sounds like so much PC nonsense to me.
Jefferson also espoused the value of inoculation in his June 1803 instructions to Meriwether Lewis, who was preparing for what would become the Lewis and Clark Expedition: “Carry with you some matter of the kine-pox; inform those of them with whom you may be, of it’s efficacy as a preservative from the smallpox; & encourage them in the use of it.”
Kine-pox of course refers to the vaccine made from cowpox virus. So I’m assuming it’s the Jenner vaccine or a knockoff.
http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/inoculation
That was 1803 and Jenner had published his paper in 1798.
The Howard Zinn School of anti-American history seems to be taking over. The key is to rationalize a sinister interpretation for every event.
True, but the first points in the article are sound.
Who would therefore be handling the blankets to give to the Indians. That would be pretty stupid, as you'd be risking yourself getting the disease.
And yeah, we GET it. White people are evil. But REALLY? INTENTIONALLY trying to infect Indians with a disease that wasn't really understood at the time. For what reason? A contagion wouldn't stay among just the Indians very long. It would be like some racists giving ebola-soaked bedsheets to inner city dwellers. Boy, wouldn't that be smart!
It’s also notable that the discussion of Amherst’s probable attempt to infect the Indians is always handled in a vacuum.
No mention of the brutal war in progress with the Indians and their French allies, and the horrific brutality of the Indian methods of warfare, whereby they routinely tortured captives to death, is just ignored.
It’s as if Amherst was just sitting around one day and suddenly decided it would be a good idea to commit genocide on the Indians.
Yes, but the French and Indian War is a part of *American* Colonial history even though everyone’s nationality was British at that time.
There is also this very terrible incident from the Indian wars in North Dakota:
http://www.bakkentoday.com/event/article/id/37278/
I agree it is wrong to teach children these events were common place. However, to paint the Indians as all vicious and settlers all good - as was often done prior to the 60’s - is also not historical either.
Unfortunately, the study of history has been long dead in public schools. What passes as Social Studies is merely political indoctrination.
The topic is Smallpox as a bio-weapon, so let's stick with that.
No United States citizen ever used smallpox as a bio-weapon. It's a simple statement. And it's true.
If you want to criticize the British, I suggest you send an email to the Queen.
I remember it was "protested" at the time because it did NOT show First Peoples as exactly angels.
There is a horrifying scene where one of the tribesman carefully selects a clam shell sharp enough to cut off a man's fingers.
I’ve always thought the outcry against US atrocities against Indians to be interesting.
The two most commonly brought up are Sand Creek and Wounded Knee. Here US troops killed some women and children, probably to some extent intentionally.
But nobody ever talks any more about how killing ALL the captives, including women and children, often after days of torture, was the normal and routine practice for most tribes.
IOW, in two cases, American troops followed the routine practice of those they were fighting, except that of course nobody was taken captive and leisurely tortured to death. This is horrible and an utter indictment of American society and history.
But the fact that Indian tribes, as a normal practice, did much worse somehow isn’t similarly an indictment of them or their society.
I agree. I just find it a little appalling that so many conservatives are cheerfully willing to assume the worst without any evidence.
As you know, there is evidence in the IRS cases, though no doubt much has been destroyed.
But the fact that there is no evidence simply does not constitute any kind of evidence, much less proof.
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