Posted on 01/08/2025 11:52:55 AM PST by SunkenCiv
The new study, led by Kirsten Bos and Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, analyzed ancient DNA from skeletal remains in Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Chile. Using state-of-the-art paleopathology techniques, the researchers reconstructed five genomes of Treponema pallidum, the bacterium responsible for syphilis and its related diseases, yaws and bejel. These genomes date back as far as 9,000 years, predating Columbus's voyages.
"We've known for some time that syphilis-like infections occurred in the Americas for millennia, but from the lesions alone, it's impossible to fully characterize the disease," explained Casey Kirkpatrick, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute. The genomic analysis revealed that T. pallidum originated in the Americas during the middle Holocene epoch and subsequently diversified into the subspecies responsible for treponemal diseases today.
Dr. Kirsten Bos stated: "The data clearly support a root in the Americas for syphilis and its known relatives. Their introduction to Europe, which started in the late 15th century, is most consistent with the evidence." The study further suggests that the global spread of syphilis was facilitated by transatlantic human trafficking and European colonial expansions.
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeologymag.com ...
So, you believe that absolutely no one in those times would have resorted to such a tactic, just because 100% of us are a moral and just people?
I heard about that many years before recent revisionist history. I would be more surprised to learn that it didn't happen.
Huh? no proof of the left’s claims but you want to push it as history anyway, keep spreading it, teach it.
Right now, it is your indignation verses historical accounts.
This is old territory that gets tiresome but the left persists, which is why you are posting it on this thread debunking the left’s claims about Syphilis.
No, I am pointing out that the Native Americans didn't know much about infections in general, and syphilis in particular because they were immune to that disease. So, they couldn't have spread the disease to us intentionally. We, on the other hand, were having trouble with smallpox at the time and knew it was spread by contact and clothing. We deliberately spread it to the Indians.
I think an honest and complete telling of history is important in order to learn some humility and to avoid immoral practices in the future.
You are free to believe that we have a squeaky-clean history at your own peril.
Your "leftist" label caries the exact merit as other people's "racist" labels. These are used to cover up the total inability to handle opposing views while being unable to support your own through rational discourse.
Oh, by the way, are you a photography nut? I regret giving my darkroom away from time to time; but, Photoshop sure is easier.
They weren’t immune and we weren’t deliberately spreading diseases, and besides, the diseases that were new to the indians were the diseases of the world, not created by Europeans.
You can’t find the proof, but you do continue with leftist propaganda.
This kind of stuff.
“Ward Churchill tells a shocking tale of war crimes committed by the U.S. Army at Fort Clark against the Mandan Indians in 1837. Fort Clark stood perched on a windswept bluff overlooking the Missouri River, in what is today North Dakota. Churchill reports that in early 1837, the commander of Fort Clark ordered a boatload of blankets shipped from a military smallpox infirmary in St. Louis. When the shipment arrived at Fort Clark on June 20, U.S. Army officers requested a parlay with Mandan Indians who lived next to the fort. At the parlay, army officers distributed the smallpox-infested blankets as gifts. When the Indians began to show signs of the illness, U.S. Army doctors did not impose quarantine, but instead told the Indians to scatter, so that the disease would become more widespread and kill more Indians. Meanwhile, the fort authorities hoarded smallpox vaccine in their storeroom, instead of using it to inoculate the Indians.”
The second part of post 68.
What Really Happened?
The High Plains smallpox epidemic of 1837 has been analyzed by numerous historians. None of the previous histories have indicated any U.S. Army presence in the vicinity, much less any military involvement in genocide. None have mentioned a word about a boatload of blankets shipped from a military smallpox infirmary in St. Louis. None have mentioned any medical personnel as even being present in the vicinity, much less deliberately violating quarantine by sending infected Indians out among the healthy population.
Historians agree that smallpox was brought to the High Plains in 1837 aboard the steamboat St. Peter’s—which was owned by a fur trading company—as it made its annual voyage up the Missouri River from St. Louis, delivering goods to the company’s trading posts along the way. The disease followed in the steamboat’s wake, making its appearance among the southern-most tribes along the river before it spread to the Mandans at Fort Clark and tribes north (Connell, 1984; Ferch, 1983; Dollar, 1977; Hudson, 2006; Jones, 2005; Meyer, 1977; Pearson, 2003; Stearn & Stearn, 1945; Sunder, 1968; Thornton, 1987; Trimble, 1985; Trimble, 1992; Robertson, 2001).
Many eyewitness accounts of the 1837 epidemic have survived. None mention any U.S. Army presence in the vicinity of Fort Clark. Only two government employees were on board the St. Peter’s as it approached the Upper Missouri. Joshua Pilcher was the Indian Bureau’s sub-agent to the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Ponca (Sunder, 1968). Pilcher left the boat at Fort Kiowa, where he was posted, before the boat arrived at Fort Clark. Pilcher’s letters to his superior, Superintendent William Clark, indicate that the disease was carried by a number of sick passengers on board the St. Peter’s. As Pilcher began to realize the magnitude of the disease, he took steps to quarantine as many of his Indian charges as possible. Pilcher wrote Clark in June 1837 and again in July, warning of the smallpox outbreak. [4] Pilcher advocated to Clark that an extended vaccination program should be initiated to stem the epidemic. Pilcher noted of his vaccination plan that: “it is a verry delicate experiment among those wild Indians, because death from any other cause, while under the influence of Vaccination would be attributed to that + no other cause[.]” [5] Still, he told Clark, “[I]f furnishd with the means, I will cheerfully risk an experiment which may preserve the lives of fifteen or twenty thousand Indians[.]”
William Fulkerson was the other Indian Bureau sub-agent on board. Under Fulkerson’s purview were the Upper Missouri tribes, from the Mandans at Fort Clark to points north. Fulkerson was the only federal employee who rode the steamboat all the way up and back down the river, and the only one to meet the Mandans at Fort Clark. There is no evidence at all that Fulkerson distributed any blankets to Indians. Fulkerson’s letters to Superintendent William Clark both before and after the trip complain that the government had not allocated funds for the annual annuity gifts to Fulkerson’s tribes. Clark’s accounting records bear this out. [6]
Fulkerson corroborates Pilcher’s report of sick passengers on board the St. Peter’s. Fulkerson requested of the steamboat captain that he put the first man to come down with smallpox off the boat. [7] Captain Pratte, who was a principal in the fur company that owned the boat, refused to stop or turn back because of the disease, for turning back would have interfered with his delivery of trade goods. That would have caused havoc with his business, and put his traders in danger from angry Indians who were counting on the trade goods. Thus the brunt of responsibility for the epidemic lies with Pratte, for refusing to cancel his trip upriver once the smallpox was discovered aboard. Upon William Fulkerson’s return from the steamboat trip, he warned William Clark that: “the small pox has broke out in this country and is sweeping all before it—unless it be checked in its mad career I would not be surprised if it wiped the Mandan and Rickaree [Arikara]Tribes of Indians clean from the face of the earth.” [8]
Francis Chardon was the trader who commanded Fort Clark. His journal provides an eyewitness account of the events there as the disease took its course (Chardon, 1970). Jacob Halsey was the trader who commanded Fort Union, several hundred miles upriver from Fort Clark. Halsey was a passenger on the St. Peter’s, and contracted smallpox himself. The letter that Halsey wrote to his superiors in the fall of 1837 gives us another eyewitness account (Chardon, 1970, pp. 394-396). Charles Larpenteur was another trader at Fort Union. Larpenteur’s journal is another invaluable eyewitness record. Larpenteur’s journal was later edited and published in book form (1989).
Two of the eyewitnesses at Fort Clark offer the same hypothesis of how the disease was transmitted to the Mandan Indians. William Fulkerson, the Indian agent, and Francis Chardon, the trader, both tell a story about an Indian sneaking aboard the steamboat and stealing an infested blanket from a sick passenger. Chardon relates that he attempted to retrieve the infested blanket by offering to exchange it for a new one. This stolen blanket was the theory of infection believed by Fulkerson and Chardon who were both at Fort Clark and observed the incidents there first-hand (Audubon, 1960, pp. 42-48; Fulkerson to Clark, September 20, 1837).
Indian sub-agent Joshua Pilcher, on the other hand, offered a different theory of infection. Pilcher informed his superior that three Arikara women aboard the steamboat also came down with the disease, and then left the boat at Fort Clark to rejoin their tribe. [9] All modern researchers agree with Pilcher that the disease was more likely spread by human contact than by blankets. Dr. Michael Trimble’s detailed epidemiological analysis draws on the relevant primary sources to give the fullest account of the epidemic’s introduction and spread among the High Plains Indians around Fort Clark (Trimble, 1985). There was a party at the Mandan village the night the St. Peter’s arrived, attended by many of the white passengers. Thus there were plenty of opportunities for person-to-person transmission of the infection.
In short, there is no evidence at all to support the key elements of Ward Churchill’s tale. There is no evidence that U.S. Army officers or doctors were anywhere in the vicinity in June 1837. There is no evidence that any blankets were shipped from a military smallpox infirmary in St. Louis. There is no evidence that anyone passed out infested blankets to Indians with genocidal intent. Ward Churchill has invented all of this.
“The Spaniards took all the gold, and the indigenous peoples passed on their syphilis, which was likely prevalent due to the promiscuous sexual activities of stone aged peoples.”
How did the “stone aged peoples” pass it to the Spaniards?
I read the same thing. If I remember correctly, they deduced it from the scaring in skeletons.
I meant the total in the entire New World.
The New World gave the Old World a lot of fantastic new foods! And vice versa.
No question that nature gave us new products which was always a major reason for exploration, to discover and import new foods and spices.
It is strange to think of the Irish before potatoes, the Italians without their tomatoes, the Thai without their peppers, the Mexicans without their Cumin.
My basis was this account, which I heard while attending elementary school in Colorado in 1957...
Colonial weaponizing of smallpox against Native Americans was first reported by 19th-century historian Francis Parkman. Parkman came across correspondence in which Sir Jeffery Amherst, commander in chief of the British forces in North America in the early 1760s, discussed its use with Col. Henry Bouquet, a subordinate on the western frontier during the French and Indian War.In the late spring of 1763, Delaware, Shawnee and Mingo warriors, inspired by Ottawa war leader Pontiac, laid siege to Fort Pitt, an outpost at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in present-day downtown Pittsburgh. The fort’s commander, Capt. Simeon Ecuyer, reported in a June 16 message to his superior, Philadelphia-based Col. Henry Bouquet, that the situation was dire, with local traders and colonists taking refuge inside the fort’s walls. Ecuyer wasn’t just afraid of his Native American adversaries. The fort’s hospital had patients with smallpox, and Ecuyer feared the disease might overwhelm the population inside the fort’s cramped confines.
Bouquet, in turn, passed along the news about smallpox inside Fort Pitt to his own superior, Amherst, in a June 23 letter. In Amherst’s July 7 response, he cold-bloodedly saw an opportunity in the disease outbreak. “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.”
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.
You should do more research, even your one account doesn’t hold up, and it doesn’t support your initial claim, did you get that from history.com?
Medved examines the evidence and concludes “The endlessly recycled charges of biological warfare rest solely on controversial interpretations of two unconnected and inconclusive incidents 74 years apart.”
The first was in response to Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763), a ferocious small war undertaken by the Great Lakes Indians (who had been allied with the defeated French in the French and Indian War) against British settlements. The Ottawa leader Pontiac told his followers to “exterminate” the whites. They did their best. Hundreds of settlers were tortured, scalped, cannibalized, dismembered, or burned at the stake. As the Indians were besieging Fort Pitt, Field Marshal Lord Jeffery Amherst wrote to a subordinate, “Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians?” But nothing seems to have come from this correspondence.
fl8r
Back in 1957 there were people alive who had direct memory of the plains wars. Indians were in general hated, and the teacher was definitely not fond of Indians.
There were horrendous atrocities committed by both sides, as is usually the case. You would be mistaken to believe white man always waged a clean war.
Thank you for participating this way. It is a lot better than label-making.
Amen!
There was a movie called How Tasty was My Little Frenchman about a French man who was shipwrecked on the coast of Brazil in the 1500s. He was treated nicely for a year by the local Indians, then killed and eaten. Supposedly based on a true incident. The movie was not well received when it premiered in Paris.
Voltaire had fun with the reports of cannibalism by South American Indians in Candide. "Let's eat Jesuit!"
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