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But little difficulty has occurred in convincing the Indians of the efficacy of vaccination; and the universal dread in which they hold the appearance of the small pox among them, rendered it an easy task to overcome their prejudices, whatever they chanced to be. The efficacy of the vaccine disease is well appreciated, even by the most interior of the Chippewa Indians, and so universal is this information, that only one instance occurred where the Indian had never heard of the disease.
In nearly every instance the opportunity which was presented for vaccination was embraced with cheerfulness and apparent gratitude; at the same time manifesting great anxiety that, for the safety of the whole, each one of the band should undergo the operation. When objections were made to vaccination, they were not usually made because the Indian doubted the protective power of the disease, but because he supposed (never having seen its progress) that the remedy must nearly equal the disease which it was intended to counteract.
Our situation, while travelling, did not allow me sufficient time to test the result of the vaccination in most instances; but an occasional return to bands where the operation had been performed, enabled me, in those bands, either to note the progress of the disease, or to judge from the cicatrices marking the original situation of the pustules, the cases in which the disease had proved successful.
About one-fourth of the whole number were vaccinated directly from the pustules of patients labouring under the disease; while the remaining three-fourths were vaccinated from crusts, or from virus which had been several days on hand. I did not pass by a single opportunity for securing the crusts and virus from the arms of healthy patients; and to avoid as far as possible the chance of giving rise to a disease of a spurious kind, I invariably made use of those crusts and that virus, for the purposes of vaccination, which had been most recently obtained. To secure, as far as possible, against the chances of escaping the vaccine disease, I invariably vaccinated in each arm.
Of the whole number of Indians vaccinated, I have either watched the progress of the disease, or examined the cicatrices of about seven hundred. An average of one in three of those vaccinated from crusts has failed, while of those vaccinated directly from the arm of a person labouring under the disease, not more than one in twenty has failed to take effect—when the disease did not make its appearance after vaccination, I have invariably, as the cases came under my examination, revaccinated until a favourable result has been obtained.
Of the different bands of Indians vaccinated, a large proportion of the following have, as an actual examination has shown, undergone thoroughly the effects of the disease: viz. Sault Ste. Marie, Keweena Bay, La Pointe, and Cass Lake, being seven hundred and fifty-one in number; while of the remaining thirteen hundred and seventy-eight, of other bands, I think it may safely be calculated that more than three-fourths have passed effectually under the influence of the vaccine disease: and as directions to revaccinate all those in whom the disease failed, together with instructions as to time and manner of vaccination, were given to the chiefs of the different bands, it is more than probable that, where the bands remained together a sufficient length of time, the operation of revaccination has been performed by themselves.
Upon our return to Lake Superior I had reason to suspect, on examining several cicatrices, that two of the crusts furnished by the surgeon-general in consequence of a partial decomposition, gave rise to a spurious disease, and these suspicions were confirmed when revaccinating with genuine vaccine matter, when the true disease was communicated. Nearly all those Indians vaccinated with those two crusts, have been vaccinated, and passed regularly through the vaccine disease.
The answers to my repeated inquiries respecting the introduction, progress, and fatality of the small-pox, would lead me to infer that the disease has made its appearance, at least five times, among the bands of Chippewa Indians noticed in the accompanying table of vaccination.
The small-pox appears to have been wholly unknown to the Chippewas of Lake Superior until about 1750; when a war-party, of more than one hundred young men, from the bands resident near the head of the lake, having visited Montreal for the purpose of assisting the French in their then existing troubles with the English, became infected with the disease, and but few of the party survived to reach their homes—It does not appear, although they made a precipitate retreat to their own country, that the disease was at this time communicated to any others of the tribe.
About the year 1770, the disease appeared a second time among the Chippewas, but unlike that which preceded it, it was communicated to the more northern bands.
The circumstances connected with its introduction are related nearly as follows.
Some time in the fall of 1767 or 8, a trader, who