15,697
edits
Changes
no edit summary
For this example, Fenn used several firsthand accounts including Alexander Ross’s <i>Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River</i> (1849), the Richard Glover version of David Thompson’s <i>Narrative</i> (1962), and a number of other secondary stories to craft this account. Fenn used this vignette to suggest that Indians from this region were familiar with smallpox and were justifiably angered by the Indian women’s threat to spread smallpox, but the vignette fails to prove anything. While Fenn accurately cites the Thompson and Ross texts, these observers fail to explain when this epidemic occurred.
Fenn then examined the accounts of earlier European travelers to the Pacific Northwest to determine whether or not they could have started the epidemic. Fenn stated that over eighty Russian fur trading missions went from Siberia to North America from 1744 to 1789. Even though the Russian traders had transmitted smallpox to Indians as far south as Sitka, Alaska in 1768 and 1769, Fenn argued that these outbreaks were localized. Fenn relied on the account of Grigorii Shelikhov to demonstrate that the regions farther north and west of Stika (areas often occupied by Russian fur traders) remained smallpox-free until the 1790s. Shelikhov’s account appeared to be the sole source for this claim by Feen that smallpox had not struck before 1783. Based on this evidence, Fenn concluded that the Russians could not have transmitted the disease during the 1770s or 1780s. It is impossible to determine whether or not Shelikhov’s account merits Fenn’s faith without a direct examination of the text.
Fenn also rejected the notion that Spanish explorers who visited the Pacific Northwest during the 1770s could have given the Indians. Fenn argued that Variola did not attack any crew members on any of the potential expeditions that visited the Pacific Northwest because the historical records of these missions failed to mention any smallpox deaths of the crew. While these voyagers were not free of illness, the sailors suffered from scurvy, not smallpox. Fenn did not believe that these crew members would have confused these two illnesses. Fenn cited the published records of these voyages to confirm this claim.
