Distinctly Montana Magazine

71 w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m particularly bands that lived near Fort Pierre, were "dispropor- tionately vaccinated. [In] terms of conferred immunity among the Plains tribes, they clearly were at an advantage during the 1837–1838 epidemic." Variola spread swiftly in 1837 through contact with infected crew members and passengers of the St. Peter's, a steamboat operated by the American Fur Company. During a provisioning tour from St. Louis to Fort Union, passengers who were still contagious disembarked at successive docking points, thereby delivering death to the doorsteps of tribe after tribe. As Trimble observed, smallpox infected virtually all indigenous peoples who lived "on or near the Missouri Trench [in only] seven weeks (first week of May to third week of June 1837)." This outbreak exacted a horrifying toll from the Upper Missouri tribes, albeit one that cannot be quantified precisely. Specialists in Blackfeet ethnohistory commonly cite the research of James H. Bradley, who concluded that the three allied tribes suffered no "less than six thousand [fatalities], or about two-thirds of their whole number." According to Denig, one Assiniboine band, which numbered "250 lodges or upwards of 1,000 souls" prior to the pox, was reduced to "thirty lodges or about 150 persons." The Mandans, however, experienced the most catastrophic loss- es. And their primary village of Mih-tutta-hang-kusch, located only a quarter of a mile from the viral repository of Fort Clark, be- came the epidemic's epicenter. According to Chardon, the first death in a steady stream of Mandan fatalities occurred on July 14, 1837. Journal entries from August 10–22 corroborate a con- sistent pattern of 8 to 10 deaths per day at Mih-tutta-hang-kusch. On September 19, Chardon received a visitor from the little vil- lage (Ruptare), where he learned that only 14 residents were still alive. He emphasized that "the number of deaths [there] Cannot be less than 800." By the end of September, Chardon concluded that smallpox had slain "seven eighths of the Mandans and one half of the Rees [Arikara] Nations." Chardon's journal is a uniquely valuable resource for tracking the progression of this outbreak, but it is not complete. By his own admission, he kept no record for the deaths of women and children. Consequently, estimates for the total number of Man- dan survivors exhibit tremendous variability. The following fig- ures may exclusively reflect the survivorship of adult males. Nev- ertheless, Indian Agent Joshua Pilcher informed William Clark in a letter dated February 27, 1838, that "thirty-one Mandans remained of an estimated population of sixteen hundred." By contrast, Roy Meyer, author of The Village Indians of the Upper Missouri, estimates that 23 men, approximately 40 women, and perhaps 70 children survived. Efforts to calculate the number of fatalities incurred collectively by the Upper Missouri tribes are complicated by the fact that rates of vaccination, infectivity, morbidity, and mortality varied signifi-

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