It’s unlikely that it was all done at once, if it was done at all.
It’s like the smallpox infected blankets legend. It never happened and grows in the telling. During the Pontiac Rebellion a British colonel suggested giving smallpox infected blankets to the Indians. They realized it was highly likely to backfire so the idea died. Now the US is blamed for giving the Indians smallpox.
Do you mean the white eyes were as afraid of smallpox as the Native Tribesmen? Say it ain’t so.
I always used logic, like how could smallpox infected blankets get trafficked without plastic being invented? The things would have had to be placed in a crate that could not really be sealed, moved on a wagon that moved violently up/down side to side on rutted trails, without killing those bringing the plague. People aren’t that stupid, only bureaucrats are like Fauci and Mengele.
No one knew what caused smallpox. The Indians later caught smallpox when the British left a fort for the French, and the Indians went in and murdered the smallpox patients still in the fort hospital. Then they when into the graveyard and dug up the dead from smallpox, scalped them and took all the cloths they found in the graves.
Not long after a massive smallpox outbreak hit the village.
Wonder why....