Native Population As Early
As 1763.
http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html
Smallpox blankets
Lord Jeffrey Amherst was commanding general of British forces in North America during the final battles of the so-called French & Indian war (1754-1763). He won victories against the French to acquire Canada for England and helped make England the world's chief colonizer at the conclusion of the Seven Years War among the colonial powers (1756-1763).
Despite his fame, Jeffrey Amherst's name became tarnished by stories of smallpox-infected blankets used as germ warfare against American Indians. These stories are reported, for example, in Carl Waldman's Atlas of the North American Indian [NY: Facts on File, 1985]. Waldman writes, in reference to a siege of Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) by Chief Pontiac's forces during the summer of 1763:
... Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the fort -- an early example of biological warfare -- which started an epidemic among them. Amherst himself had encouraged this tactic in a letter to Ecuyer. [p. 108]
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Some more info on Germ Warfare against the Native population
http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Spring04/warfare.cfm
Snippets from this site…
During Pontiac's uprising in 1763, the Indians besieged Fort Pitt. They burned nearby houses, forcing the inhabitants to take refuge in the well-protected fort. The British officer in charge, Captain Simeon Ecuyer, reported to Colonel Henry Bouquet in Philadelphia that he feared the crowded conditions would result in disease.
Smallpox had already broken out. On June 24, 1763, William Trent, a local trader, recorded in his journal that two Indian chiefs had visited the fort, urging the British to abandon the fight, but the British refused. Instead, when the Indians were ready to leave, Trent wrote: "Out of our regard for them, we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect."
It is not known who conceived the plan, but there's no doubt it met with the approval of the British military in America and may have been common practice. Sir Jeffery Amherst, commander of British forces in North America, wrote July 7, 1763, probably unaware of the events at Fort Pitt: "Could it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to Reduce them." He ordered the extirpation of the Indians and said no prisoners should be taken. About a week later, he wrote to Bouquet: "You will Do well to try to innoculate the Indians by means of Blankets as well as to try every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race."
The First Hague Peace Conference of 1899 issued a declaration prohibiting the use of poison and materials causing unnecessary suffering. The Geneva Protocol adopted in 1925 prohibited the use in war of "asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases and of all analogous liquids, materials, and devices," as well as biological methods of warfare. The Geneva Protocol has been accepted by most countries though not always followed. A German military maxim applies; roughly translated, it says: "To get out of a desperate situation, you have to bend the rules."
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Original Letter (Amherst) - "Exterminate them"
http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/34_41_114_fn.jpeg
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Have you seen this site - it gives some more info on Native Genocide in Canada (as well as the States and Mexico).
Apparently, in 1850' and 1860's, the infected blankets of small pox victims were traded to the native people on purpose in order to make them sick and it almost wiped them out. In some areas, 95% of the native population was wiped out this way. This was sanctioned by the British Crown. This is one of the first recorded instances of deliberate biological warfare in Canada. It is repeating what Jeffrey Amherst did a hundred years earlier.
People were often prohibited from giving aid to Indians when they grew ill. Here is the web site - more info to add to your "war chest". You could add this to your time line as well.
North American Native History Today
http://www.interlog.com/~gilgames/atnattod.htm
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Some more snippets from another web site.
http://www.tseshaht.com/culture/timeline.htm
1862 Small pox epidemic ravages Aboriginal People in BC. The Haida are almost wiped-out losing up to 80% of their kin. The Wet'suwet'en and Gitxsan lose 30% of their kin. Small pox epidemic spreads from Bella Coola to Nagwuntl'oo. One-third of the people died. In other Tsilhkot'en (Chilcotin) Villages, nine out of ten people died. The following
excerpt appears in the writings of Father Morice…
"...I myself saw the graves of perhaps 500 aboriginals...two white men...went and stealthily gathered the blankets of the dead which had been thrown away in the bush, and were therefore infested with small pox, which they sold out again to the aboriginal people without revealing their origin, thus causing a second visitation of the plague, which carried off the second third of the aboriginal population..." (pg 317).
1900 Genocide has reduced the aboriginal population north of the Rio Grande -- estimated at between 12-15 million in 1492--to 300,000 (ibid) --in Northern BC, Father Morice and Bishop Dentenwill burn Wet'suwet'n feast (Potlatch) regalia in Hagwilget (Tse-kya) in a Catholic effort to suppress traditional beliefs.
1922 The RCMP seizes over 600 objects in a "potlatch" raid at Alert Bay on Vancouver Island, and divide the spoils between the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the National Museum in Ottawa (Monet et al). Some of the participants are jailed.
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http://www.zkea.com/archives/archive01002.html
Sometimes the use of smallpox was a bit more implicit. For example, a smallpox epidemic began in Victoria British Columbia in 1862, afflicting both whites and natives. However, medical authorities allegedly only vaccinated whites against the spread of the disease and very few natives. As a result the epidemic took root amongst the native tribes, killing about half the population from Victoria to Alaska.
For more information on these
topics read Kevin Annett’s books “Hidden From History” & “Love And Death In
The Valley”, at: http://www.preferrednetwork.com/html/religion_exposed.htm,
or
call 1-800-294-5250 to order.
