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Vigilant Amalek Snow Leopard's avatar

"On July 13, Bouquet, who at that point was traveling across Pennsylvania with British reinforcements for Fort Pitt, responded to Amherst, promising that he would try to spread the disease to the Native Americans via contaminated blankets, “taking care however not to get the disease myself.” That tactic seemed to please Amherst, who wrote back in approval on July 16, urging him to spread smallpox “as well as try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execreble [sic] Race.”

What Amherst and Bouquet didn’t know was that somebody at Fort Pitt had already thought of trying to infect the Native Americans with smallpox—and had attempted to do it.

William Trent, a trader, land speculator and militia captain, wrote in his diary that on June 23, two Delaware emissaries had visited the fort, and asked to hold talks the next day. At that meeting, after the Native American diplomats had tried unsuccessfully to persuade the British to abandon Fort Pitt, they asked for provisions and liquor for their return. The British complied and also gave them gifts—two blankets and a handkerchief which had come from the smallpox ward. “I hope it will have the desired effect,” Trent wrote.

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Then they all had some turkey or something.

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Brien's avatar

Sasha,

While reading this I couldn’t help but think of the scary giant Chinese bio(weapon)research lab “discovered” in California a few months ago. The lad seemed to have every scary thing that people would recognize, including Ebola and anthrax &c. It has gotten quite a bit of press and seemed tailor made to scare everyone shirtless while blaming the Chinese along with whoever it is in this country that’s supposed to know about and prevent such things. There’s a pattern here isn’t there. Great stack today!

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