We already knew the story of a (fake) typhus epidemic created by the doctors of two towns in Poland to avoid deportations to the Nazi camps, but there was also another epidemic, in this case real, intentionally spread by pale faces to put an end to the lenape indians (lenapes lenni , "real people"), also called Delaware Indians.
It was in the mid-eighteenth century, after the end of the Seven Years' War, a conflict that pitted the great European powers of the time, led by France and England, and which, on the American front, had a special role for Marshal British Jeffrey Amherst or Baron of Amherst, a noble title created for him by George III, the King of England. Due to its implications, the open fronts and the belligerent countries, this conflict could be considered the first attempt at world war.
Jeffrey Amherst
For his work on the battlefield, our Baron was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in America in 1758, becoming one of the architects of the French defeat on American soil. But the story of this renowned and acclaimed British soldier has, like the Moon, a dark side related to smallpox. After defeating the French, in 1763 he had to face the rebellion of Pontiac , the chief of the ottawa, that he led the native Amerindians dissatisfied with British policies, very different from the agreements they had with the French. These new pale faces liked to be called you and to keep their distance, and they took up arms against them. The marshal was caught by surprise, because at no time did he consider that a "shortcut of savages" could rebel against an empire.
But yes, they did. Faced with the impossibility of taking Fort Pitt (today, Pittsburgh) by force, in June 1763 the lenape tribe he surrounded the position and mounted a siege. And here the controversy begins. Inside the fort there was a small outbreak of smallpox that killed a few settlers, and outside there was a subsequent epidemic that killed thousands of Indians. It is said, it is told, it is commented, that the contagion of the indigenous people occurred when the British gave them infected blankets during a truce to parley. So, that epidemic would have been organized. The British argued, and continue to do so, that they had nothing to do with that smallpox epidemic, that they must have been infected by the assault on other European positions, and that it would be impossible for just a few blankets to generate such mortality. It is not known exactly what happened, but I think that in a trial the British defender would have a very difficult time when the indigenous prosecutor presented his accusatory evidence:the correspondence between Jeffrey Amherst and Henry Bouquet, the colonel who was preparing an expedition to liberate Fort Pitt. Among the letters that the military exchanged, the baron wrote…
Couldn't smallpox be sent to rebellious Indian tribes? We must, on this occasion, use any strategy in our power to reduce them […] You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as try any other method that may serve to extirpate that execrable race.
Given this, not even all the Suits lawyers together will save you. , Damage , The Good Wife and Ally McBeal . Jeffrey should have known that “Caesar's wife must not only be honest, but appear so ”, what would be said of Pompeii Sulla, the second wife of Julius Caesar.