Did it Happen: Jeffrey Amherst and Smallpox

There's no getting around it.  The short answer here is yes.  Biological warfare is not a twentieth century invention.  People have been using it for centuries.  Whether it's throwing dead bodies into a town that's besieged, or introducing articles that have been infected by smallpox, plague or whatever, it happened.  And, it happened in North America during Pontiac's War (1764). 

Lord Jeffrey Amherst (1717-1797) was the Wellington of the French and Indian War.  After the death of General Wolfe at Quebec, he took over the successful siege of that City.  The victor of Quebec, Louisbourg and Montreal, he was credited with taking several French forts and winning other battles as well.  Just the right person to be the first Governor of the Province of Quebec.  In those days, Quebec encompassed all of France's losses in North America, running from what is now Quebec proper through the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys to New Orleans.  This was quite a chunk of territory and British forces were spread thin.  Amherst intended to take a firm hand with the Native population.  He forbade whiskey sales to Natives and severely limited trade goods, weapons and ammunition.  He believed that such things were bribery and he had no intention of stooping to bribery to enforce obedience.

The Natives objected, and with good reason.  They needed the guns and ammunition to hunt for food for themselves and for the beaver pelts and other skins which fueled their trade with Settlers.  Trade good such as mirrors, pots and other items were not only household necessities for Native families but items of trade.  To limit these items was to throw their bartering economy into a serious setback.  It wasn't long before several leaders, Pontiac of the Ottawa and Guyasuta of the Seneca among them, began raiding isolated British forts and settlements to make their views known.  Fed up as the Natives besieged his forts and created more of a threat than he had bargained for, Amherst embarked on a diabolical idea.  He had heard that smallpox had broken out at some of the newly occupied British forts and wrote to one of his subordinates, Col. Henry Bouquet:

Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.


Bouquet dropped a post-script to his next letter:

P.S. I will try to inocculate [sic] the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard's Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine.

Amherst replied:

P.S. You will Do well to try to Innoculate [sic] the Indians by means of Blankets, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present.

Nor were these two the only ones who'd thought of this means of decimating the Native population.  A trader wrote that, at the fort he was based at, they had given a Native delegation two blankets and a handkerchief from the smallpox ward of the infirmary.  Just how far these men got in their scheme isn't known, but smallpox epidemics among Natives in the Pittsburgh area continued to break out for several years after Pontiac's Rebellion was put down.