Hasta los Católicos Don Fernando y Doña Isabel (Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1878), III, 668; Journals and Other Documents of Columbus, trans. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Heritage Press, 1963), 226–7.
2 2 Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery, Admiral Philip (London: Fisher & Unwin, 1909), 74–5.
3 3 I shall always be referring to the often fatal variola major smallpox. The mild variola minor did not appear until late in the nineteenth century. Donald R. Hopkins, Princes and Peasants, Smallpox in History (University of Chicago Press, 1983), 5–6.
4 4 John Duffy, “Smallpox and the Indians in the American Colonies,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 25 (July–August 1951): 327.
5 5 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Knopf, 1952), 271.
6 6 Alfred W. Crosby, “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series 33 (April 1976): 290–1.
7 7 Richard White, Land Use, Environment, and Social Change. The Shaping of Island County, Washington (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980), 26–7; Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown, The Chinook Indians, Traders of the Lower Columbia River (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), 80.
8 8 Juan López de Velasco, Geografía y Descripción Universal de las Indias desde el Año de 1571 al de 1574 (Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico de Fortanet, 1894), 552.
9 9 Thomas Falkner, A Description of Patagonia (Chicago: Armann & Armann, 1935), 98, 102–3, 117; Handbook of South American Indians, ed. Julian H. Steward (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1946–59), VI, 309–10; see also Guillermo Fúrlong, Entre las Pampas de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos “San Pablo,” 1938), 59.
10 10 Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto, trans. Buckingham Smith (New York: Allerton Book Co., 1922), I, 65, 70–1.
11 11 Charles Creighton, A History of Epidemics in Britain (Cambridge University Press, 1891), I, 585–9; Julian S. Corbett, ed., Papers Relating to the Navy During the Spanish War, 1585–1587 (Navy Records Society, 1898), XI, 26.
12 12 John R. Swanton, Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of the Gulf of Mexico (Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, bulletin no. 43, 1911), 39. See also Henry F. Dobyns, Their Number Become Thinned, Native American Population Dynamics in Eastern North America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983), 247–90; George R. Milner, “Epidemic Disease in the Postcontact Southeast: A Reappraisal,” Mid-Continent Journal of Archeology 5 (no. 1, 1980): 39–56. The archeologists are beginning to produce physical evidence that supports the hypothesis of fierce epidemics, swift population decline, and radical cultural change in the Gulf region in the sixteenth century. See Caleb Curren, The Protohistoric Period in Central Alabama (Camden, Ala.: Alabama Tombigbee Regional Commission, 1984), 54, 240, 242.
Documents
Frank Givens, “Saynday and Smallpox: The White Man’s Gift”
Where the reading above conveys a sense of universal and near-total vulnerability of Native Americans to Eurasian pathogens, in fact, different peoples had different degrees of vulnerability depending on a range of factors, from proximity to an outbreak to whether they lived in semi-sedentary homes or more nomadic encampments. Generally speaking, sedentary peoples, who lived with more exposure to larger groups of people, were more vulnerable than nomads, who routinely dispersed in smaller groups. Over time, Native people developed ways of avoiding and containing epidemics, often through dispersal and avoidance. Here a Kiowa man, Eagle Plume (also known as Frank Givens), tells a story of how his nomadic people escaped the worst ravages of smallpox. This text, which Eagle Plume dictated in the early twentieth century, is a rare example of Indian testimony about smallpox. Few Native people possessed a written language. Most recorded the formative events and developments of their history in stories passed from generation to generation. In this story, the Kiowa’s mythic hero, Saynday, who always protects his people from harm and who is also notoriously crafty, meets smallpox, a venomous mass-murderer who comes from the world of white men. At first, this seems like a story scripted from a simple good versus evil drama, with the Indian hero facing the white monster. But pay careful attention to what happens here. Notice that smallpox is only one of a host of environmental changes mentioned in the story. Is the disease a spiritual presence, and if so, is it as powerful as the spirits that Native people could invoke for their own protection? In what ways does this document show how Kiowas came to understand smallpox and how they could ameliorate its effects? How does Saynday protect his people from smallpox? How does its deadly presence shape their relations with other Indians? Are whites and their dreaded disease the only enemies of the Kiowa people? How does Saynday think he will overcome smallpox in the long run?
* * *
(Excerpt from Alice Marriott and Carol K. Rachlin, American Indian Mythology. New York: Thomas Y. Cravell Co., 1968.)
Saynday was coming along, and as he came he saw that all his world had changed. Where the buffalo herds used to graze, he saw white-faced cattle. The Washita River, which once ran bankful with clear water, was soggy with red mud. There were no deer or antelope in the brush or skittering across the high plains. No white tipis rose proudly against the blue sky; settlers’ soddies dented the hillsides and the creek banks.
My time has come, Saynday thought to himself. The world I lived in is dead. Soon the Kiowa people will be fenced like the white man’s cattle, and they cannot break out of the fences because the barbed wire will tear their flesh. I can’t help my people any longer by staying with them. My time has come, and I will have to go away from this changed world.
Off across the prairie, Saynday saw a dark spot coming toward him from the east, moving very slowly.
That’s strange, too, Saynday thought to himself. The East is the place of birth and of new life. The things that come from the East come quickly; they come dancing and alive. This thing comes as slowly as death to an old man. I wonder what it is?
Almost absent-mindedly, Saynday started walking eastward. As he went the spot grew larger, and after a while Saynday saw that it was a man on a horse.
The horse was black, but it had been powdered to roan with the red dust that the plows had stirred up when they slashed open the plains. Red dust spotted the man’s clothing – a black suit and a high hat, like a missionary’s. Red dust blurred his features, but behind the dust Saynday could see that the man’s face was pitted with terrible scars.
The stranger drew rein, and sat looking at Saynday. The black roan horse lifted one sore hoof and drooped its head as if it were too weary to carry its burden any farther.
“Who are you?” the stranger asked.
“I’m Saynday. I’m the Kiowas’ Old Uncle Saynday. I’m the one who’s always coming along.”
“I never heard of you,” the stranger said, “and I never heard of the Kiowas. Who are they?”
“The Kiowas are my people,” Saynday said, and even in that hard time he stood up proudly, like a man. “Who are you?”
“I’m Smallpox,” the man answered.
“And I never heard of you,” said Saynday. “Where do you come from and what do you do and why are you here?”
“I come from far away, across the Eastern Ocean,” Smallpox answered. “I am one with the white men – they are my people as the Kiowas are yours. Sometimes I travel ahead of them, and sometimes I lurk behind. But I am always their companion and you will find me in their camps and in their houses.”
“What do you do?” Saynday repeated.
“I bring death,” Smallpox replied. “My breath causes children to wither like young plants in spring snow. I bring destruction. No matter how beautiful a woman is, once she has looked at me she becomes as ugly as death. And to men I bring not death alone, but the