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Memories of Another day

Memories of Another day
While my Parents Pulin babu and Basanti devi were living

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Tranquilizing the Indians: Part I - The Context of Treaty 3 An Historical Analysis

from Cougar Den included below]


From the Eagle Watch #191

Tranquilizing the Indians:  Part I - The Context of Treaty 3
An Historical Analysis
November 23, 2011


Our critique of the Keewatin Judgement leads to a closer look at Treaty 3 itself and the circumstances surrounding it, the context.  We will look at the Content in Part Two.

What was going on before, during and immediately after the negotiations?  What were the driving forces that moved the two parties together?  What is significant about this particulr treaty aka the North-West Angle Treaty?  Why did two Commissioners and the Lieutenant Governor quit just before the Treaty negotiations?  One question leads to another and another. 

Some people may be offended at the title.  It came from Indian Affairs Treaty Commissioner Alexander Morris' official report to the Governor General.  

Since Morris, being a lawyer trained by John A himself, often used other people's wording, the phrase may well have originated with Joseph Howe, then Secretary of State of Canada, "This treaty was one of great importance, as it not only tranquilized the large Indian population affected by it, but eventually shaped the terms of all the treaties, four, five, six and seven, which have since been made with the Indians of the North-West Territories--"   

Morris, a boy from Perth, was parachuted into Manitoba in 1872 as a Justice.  He soon replaced long-time Hudson' Bay Company man, Wemyss Simpson as Indian Commissioner for unknown reasons.  Morris was lead negotiator for all five treaties and had a hand in modifying or amending Treaties 1 and 2.  At the same time, he was Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba, the NW Territories and Keewatin.

GENOCIDE AND COLONIAL POLICY
Definition of Genocide

The 1948 UN resolution defined Genocide in Article 2:
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; 
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; 
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (See Part III, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1927)
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." 

The purveyors of the Colonial Policy were and are guilty on all 5 points.

There are some important differences between the Canadian and US methods used to subdue the Indigenous people of Turtle Island.   The intended outcome remains the same one of genocide:  Extermination (a) vs Civilization, (b & c), ie Assimilation through Conciliation.  A refined form of psychological warfare was waged through the Treaties which covered the conciliation part while the residential schools (e) aka "child concentration camps" were responsible for the civilization part.  The colonial agents wanted to pacify the Indians into submission.  It was a diabolical and crafty blend of beguilement and coercion.

The US army massacred astronomical numbers of Indigenous men, women and children and then moved the survivors away from their ancestral homelands.  The Canadians wanted to avoid open warfare and keep Indigenous people on reserves within their own territories.  The reasons behind this strategy had much to do with the daunting northern climate.  The British knew they would always need the help of Indigenous in these areas.

The circumstances surrounding the Treaties included a number of factors, among them infectious diseases, waging war with superior weapons and numbers, psychological warfare and the steady and growing influx of immigrants. The buffalo were slaughtered in great numbers so as to starve the Indians quite literally.  This continued the colonial policy started as early as Champlain burning the Mohawks' corn 250 years before.  

The British plan to move all Anishnaabek to Manitoulin Island was a failure.  After the Manitoulin Treaty was signed in 1862, many Anishnaabek continued to disagree with it.  An incident on the island kept the colonial entities anxious.  It was just one example of dissent and resistance to the British land grab throughout Nishnaabe territory. 

Uprisings of the Metis resistance movement occurred around the same time, the first in 1869-70.  According to army man William Butler, "Early in the month of December, 1869, Mr. M'Dougall issued two proclamations from his post at Pembina, on the frontier: in one he declared himself Lieutenant-Governor of the territory which Her Majesty had transferred to Canada; and in the other he commissioned an officer of the Canadian militia, under the high-sounding title of "Conservator of the Peace," "to attack, arrest, disarm, and disperse armed men disturbing the public peace, and to assault, fire upon, and break into houses in which these armed men were to be found."

The second Metis uprising was put down by British/Canadian armed forces in 1885.  The soldiers were quickly brought in on the new trains from Kingston.  Louis Riel was hanged.

Indigenous people were pressured to participate in and sign the Treaties which meant surrendering their lands.  The ever present threat of military force was most persuasive.  Negotiators like the very slick Morris used a divide and conquer strategy of psychological warfare, creating hierarchy where before none had existed, pressuring Indigenous to meet the colonial timetable and pressuring them to accept all the colonial terms or else.  

An Unending Hoard of Voracious Intruders

The rate of immigration was overwhelming to Indigenous people.  It still is.  What started with hundreds then thousands of fur traders and missionaries soon became an unending hoard of millions of land-hungry  intruders and the speculators who follow them.  The new colonists were often hostile, aggressive, hungry and frightened.  They had an urgency about them.  They needed to find food and shelter and often arrived completely unprepared.  Indigenous people were becoming more alarmed each day as they saw the masses of strange people coming in like a swarm of bees.

The situation is clearly described in an 1871 despatch from W.J. Christie, Chief Factor to Lieut. Governor Archibald.

"On the 13th instant (April) I had a visit from the Cree Chiefs, representing the Plain Crees from this to Carlton, accompanied by a few followers.

The object of their visit was to ascertain whether their lands had been sold or not, and what was the intention of the Canadian Government in relation to them. They referred to the epidemic that had raged throughout the past summer, and the subsequent starvation, the poverty of their country, the visible diminution of the buffalo, their sole support, ending by requesting certain presents at once, and that I should lay their case before Her Majesty's Representative at Fort Garry. Many stories have reached these Indians through various channels, ever since the transfer of the North-West Territories to the Dominion of Canada, and they were more anxious to hear from myself what had taken place."

Christie reassured the Cree Chiefs that their Treaty was coming and that "they should remain quiet and live at peace with all men" while thieves overran their territory and claimed it all including the trees and the water.

ENGLISH CUNNING:  PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE IS PART OF WARFARE

In 1858, Morris made a speech to the colonial elite in Toronto.  Recorded in his book, "Nova Britannia", he said speaking of Indigenous, "We are brothers, we will lift you up, we will teach you, if you will learn, the cunning of the white man." 

One of the most horrific massacres of Indigenous by colonial soldiers took place at "a small and unarmed Cheyenne and Arapaho village", Sand Creek, (now Colorado) in November, 1864.  The colonial mood was reflected in the rhetoric of genocidal threats towards Indigenous, published in the Rocky Mountain News in March, 1863, "They are a dissolute, vagabondish, brutal and ungrateful race, and ought to be wiped from the face of the earth."

The same paper reported in August, 1864, the time was at hand to "go for them, their lodges, squaws and all."

When a family of settlers was killed by Indians, the Governor issued an emergency proclamation authorizing the killing of any and all Indians.  Former Methodist missionary, Colonel John Chivington then led 700 heavily armed soldiers in the early morning hours to Sand Creek.  He already knew that most of the men were away hunting but he did not care.  

Everyone in the camp was killed, man, woman and child.  Many bodies were mutilated.  Soldiers reports included such statements, "...The bodies were horribly cut up, skulls broken in a good many...I do not think I saw any but what was scalped; saw fingers cut off to get the rings off them...saw several bodies with privates cut off, women as well as men...I could not stand it...I heard one man say that he had cut a squaw's heart out and had it stuck up on a stick..."

Chivington then sent messages to the press boasting of his gory deeds.  Word also reached every Indigenous far and wide.  A Congressional inquiry was called but nothing was ever done.  Later President Theodore Rossevelt said, the Sand Creek Massacre was"as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier."

Religion
The Christian religion was used to justify horrible and cruel acts of genocide.  It was also used to intimidate Indigenous people by making them think bad things were happening to them because they were not Christians.  The sales pitch was that if they would accept Jesus, then their lives would be good.  Many Anishnaabek did not fall for it but yet it was always chipping away at our sense of who we are.

While the Creationists and Evolutionists are often at odds, colonial interpretations of both theories supported a racist and genocidal policy.  In his 1871 book, "The Descent of Man", Charles Darwin stated, "...at some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world."  

It Was a Setup
In 1871, William Lee, Clerk of Privy Council wrote to Joseph Howe, then Secretary of State for the Provinces which included Indian Affairs at that time,  "In anticipation of the movement of troops across the country lying between Thunder Bay and Manitoba, in 1870, agents were employed to visit the Indian Tribes along the route, to conciliate them by presents, and to assure them that while a peaceful right of way for troops and emigrants only was required, the Government would be prepared, at a convenient season, to compensate them for their friendly co-operation, and to cover by a Treaty any lands which they might be willing to part with and the Government deemed it politic to acquire.

These conciliatory measures were eminently successful, and the troops and employs of the Government passed to and fro without obstruction."

In other words, it was a setup.  Their reports state that the Indigenous went to them to treat when it was really the other way around.  The smooth talking "agents", minions of the Crown, were spreading false information which led to the Indigenous thinking it was only a "right of way" the Dominion Gov wanted.  

Those Choo Choo Trains
Trains have long been romanticized into a childhood fantasy.  Fortunate children of all ages have little train sets that are the envy of their friends.

The reality of the railroad pushing into the wilderness is another story.  Trains stink and roar and rattle as they rush along their smelly tracks.  People and creatures are at first terrified of these menacing iron monsters.  There are many innocent casualties.

Yet to the colonial elitists the trains along with canals and roads, symbolized their conquest of Nature and the strength of their Empire.  The early trains facilitated the mass slaughter of the buffalo as well as the quick transport of troops wherever they were required.  The outcome of the second Red River Metis uprising might have been very different had the soldiers not arrived so quickly from Kingston.

SLAUGHTER of the BUFFALO

The wholesale SLAUGHTER of the BUFFALO at its peak during the 1870's led to mass starvation for Indigenous people.  At the beginning of the 1800's, there were nearly 60 million American buffalo.  When the slaughter got going in the 1870's with repeating rifles, the railroad and a new technology for tanning their hides, the numbers were reduced to near extinction. 

Traders and trappers killed buffalo just for the hides and left the rest of the animal to rot. Indigenous people were angry and horrified at this.  Hides were sold for about $2.00 to $3.50 each. During the winter of 1872-73, more than 1.5 million buffalo hides were sent on trains to New England! The bones were also sold for use in bone china, fertilizer, and in sugar processing. A ton of buffalo bones sold for about $8.00. 

During the winter of 1883-84, an estimated 10% of the Plains Indigenous population died of malnutrition and disease.  Augustus Jukes, a North West Mounted Police doctor described the conditions, "The disappearance of the buffalo has left them not only without food, but also without robes, moccasins and adequate tents or 'tepees' to shield them from the inclemency of the impending winter. Few of their lodges are of buffalo hide, the majority being of cotton only, and many of these in the most rotten and dilapidated condition... Their clothing for the most part was miserable and scanty in the extreme... It would indeed be difficult to exaggerate their extreme wretchedness and need, or the urgent necessity which exists from some prompt and sufficient provision being made for them by the government."

An estimated 31,000,000 buffalo were killed between the years of 1868 and 1881 with only 500 buffalo left by the year of 1885. Indigenous people all over Turtle Island were very aware of what was happening. Our ancestors felt unspeakable grief and anger.  Many were literally "shell shocked". 


INFECTIOUS DISEASES 

The Saulteaux Ojibwe would be very fearfully aware of the strange and deadly sicknesses that sometimes hit their people.  Smallpox was ravaging the NorthWest during 1870.

A century before, at the same time that George III was signing the Royal Proclamation of 1763, Lord Jeffrey Amherst,  commanding general of British forces in North America, was trying to irradicate Indigenous in any way that he could.  His letters are filled with venomous comments of genocidal intent.

Colonel Henry Bouquet at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was preparing to lead an expedition to relieve Fort Pitt. Amherst wrote to him in June, 1763: "Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them."

Bouquet agreed, "I will try to inoculate the bastards with some blankets that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself." 

Amherst wrote in letters to Sir William Johnson Superintendent of the Northern Indian Department,
"... measures to be taken as would bring about the total extirpation of those indian nations...it would be happy for the provinces there was not an indian settlement within a thousand miles of them, and when they are properly punished, i care not how soon they move their habitations, for the inhabitants of the woods are the fittest companions for them, they being more nearly allied to the brute than to the human creation..." 

Many Puritan settlers shared his views.

Since smallpox was so widespread at that time, it is impossible to know when Indigenous were deliberately infected as part of a military strategy or when Indigenous got sick from contact with the settlers.  Smallpox was the worst of the infectious diseases, killing as many people as all other diseases combined.  The list includes diphtheria, measles, mumps, scarlet fever, typhoid, malaria, yellow fever, influenza and tuberculosis. 

Colonel Bouquet's famous line, "... every Tree is become an Indian,"  was his description of a contagion of fear among "the terrified Inhabitants," for whom the Indians were a part of the wildness they perceived around themselves. Indian warriors would not stand in ordered ranks; they fell back into the forests only to emerge again in renewed attack; their leaders defied British logic and proved effective against a string of British forts; these were the enemy that nearly succeeded in driving the British out, and became the target for British genocide.

By the time of the British Treaty of 1873 with the Saulteaux, Indigenous people all over Turtle Island had been decimated by contagious diseases.  Everyone knew.  The diseases killed the settlers too but not in such great and dramatic numbers.  The devastation had shaken whole nations.  

One author describes the effect on survivors as a form of PTSD and social collapse, "In their minds they had been overcome by evil. Everything they had believed in had failed. Their ancient world had collapsed  Their medicines and their medicine men and women had proven useless. ...the missionaries now openly accused them of being agents of the devil himself and of having led their people into disaster."

Scarlet Fever
Against this backdrop, scarlet fever hit the Stone Fort Treaty One negotiations in 1871.  Simpson casually reported on July 11, 1871, " Three deaths occurred among them to-day, and in all, eleven persons, chiefly children, have been carried off since our arrival, and there are, many more in a precarious state."

Think of it this way:  Your people are gathered at an extremely important meeting.  Suddenly several people die, including one of your children.  Many more are so sick they are completely incapacitated, delirious and vomiting all over the place.  Fear grips everyone.  It makes it even harder for your spokespeople to think and speak.  They cannot postpone the meetings anymore because the Commissioner says you will be blamed if negotiations fail.

Morris reports that Simpson was meeting "at the Lower Fort Garry, or Stone Fort, with the Indians of the Province, and certain adjacent timber districts, and with the Indians of the other districts at Manitoba Post, a Hudson's Bay fort, at the north end of Lake Manitoba", just two weeks later.

Scarlet fever is highly contagious through contact.  It is also airborne and can remain in unwashed clothing and blankets indefinitely.  In all his travels, Simpson himself could have carried the scarlet fever to the Anishnaabek.

Most people nowadays have no experience and little if any knowledge of scarlet fever aka scarlatina.  The streptococcus bacteria is best known as strep throat.

These words were written by a doctor for an 1871 family medical guide:
"The most suddenly fatal cases under my care were those in which the disease commenced with inflammation of the membranes of the brain, and violent delirium, in which the dose of the poison seemed to be so great that the constitution was overpowered, and could not rally." 

In June, 2011, over 500 cases of drug resistant scarlet fever were reported in Hong Kong.  At least two children died.   Some 9,000 cases have been detected in mainland China with pockets of the disease all over the world.  WHO is monitoring the situation.


THE POLICIES AND REPORTS

There are piles of English records over centuries that clearly reveal the colonial intent and thinking.  Some of them are hidden.  Some are posted online.  Church and State worked together relentlessly, one justifying the inhuman policies, the other administering them.  The Dominion reports to Indian Affairs are generally written in a more subdued but coldly clinical language than some of the earlier documents that are more vociferous.  The volume of material is so great that we put a set of quotations into a separate file.  See Part III: Tranquilizing the Indians: The Ongoing Context Of The Colonial Thinking.  

CONCLUSION
Our Nishnaabe ancestors were against the wall.  In signing these Treaties, they knew full well that they were acquiescing to extreme conditions. It was very humiliating for the Chiefs and Spokespersons.  Many proud people left in anger.  The participants were only buying time so we could rebuild our communities and nations.  If we had all stood on pride and died fighting on our feet, then there would be no one left "to live and fight another day".  The colonial entities never thought we would persevere with such determination.

That the colonial elitists still dominate the world is a troubling fact.  Yet their pre-eminence daily becomes more tottering in its rottenness as they try to expand and maintain their global reach.  At the same time, more and more people realize our commonality of human interests, the need for peace and security born of respect, equality and sharing.  These are not hollow words but action is required.

Kittoh
<kittoh at storm.ca>
We welcome your feedback!  Forward, post and consider printing for your cyberphobic friends and relatives.

The Eagle Watch Newsletter is sent to interested individuals, both Indigenous and nonNative, politicians especially the Canadian ones and an assortment of English language media.

Notes and Sources

Oxford dictionary defines "conciliate" as 1. make calm and content; 2. mediate in a dispute.

http://www.archive.org/details/novabritanniaoro00morriala
"Nova Britannia; or, Our new Canadian dominion foreshadowed. Being a series of lectures, speeches and addresses" by Alexander Morris. 

The Project Gutenberg EBook of 
"The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories" by Alexander Morris

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/indianaffairs/001074-119.03-e.php?page_id_nbr=145&PHPSESSID=kocp1m5gt4dl1rj81qnq10rrr1
Library and Archives Canada
Report Of The Indian Branch Of The Department Of The Secretary Of State For The Provinces.

http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Background
Resistance at Manitoulin:
http://biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=4508
    As the decade of the 1850s passed, it became obvious that the original hopes for Manitoulin Island would not be met. Sir Francis Bond Head*'s notion of using the island as a reserve for all the bands in Upper Canada had been quickly abandoned, as few even from central and north central Upper Canada went to the island. Moreover, the lesser aim of using the government supported Indian community of Manitowaning, where the Church of England was active in educational and pastoral work, as a model for others to emulate had to be given up when the Indians gradually abandoned it to return to their traditional ways of hunting and fishing. With the failure of the Manitoulin Island experiment, Indian fears of white encroachment increased rapidly in the late 1850s and resulted in growing discontent. The signing in 1862 of the Manitoulin Treaty for the surrender of the island, which Ironside helped William McDougall* and William Spragge to negotiate by persuading the Indians around Manitowaning to support the government's intentions, brought the situation to a head [see Jean-Baptiste Assiginack].

      Anti-government feeling was particularly potent among the people in the eastern end of the island around Wikwemikong. The Indians of this flourishing, predominantly Roman Catholic settlement had felt betrayed by the 1862 treaty, which they saw as part of a design on the part of the government "to deprive them of their Island." The chiefs at Wikwemikong had, with only two exceptions (who, it was claimed by some, were not representative or had been appointed illegally by Ironside), refused to sign the treaty. In December 1862, a few months after it was signed, a number of white families were expelled from Wikwemikong, along with some Indian families who disagreed with the majority there over the treaty; Chief Francis Tehkummeh, a signatory of the treaty, was forced to seek refuge with Ironside at Manitowaning. In July 1863 William Gibbard, fisheries commissioner for the Great Lakes, came to the island to arrest the chiefs responsible for the incidents. Encouraged by two Roman Catholic missionaries at Wikwemikong, Auguste Kohler and Jean-Pierre Chon, the Indians mounted a physical force and resisted; Gibbard withdrew with his force and a captive Indian who was charged for his involvement in the expulsion of a white family from an island off Manitoulin. The confrontation demonstrated the intensity of Indian feeling after the 1862 treaty. The deteriorating situation affected Ironside's health, and in the midst of the excitement surrounding the incident he died suddenly on 14 July 1863, probably of a heart attack.

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/15401/pg15401.txt
"The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America" by W. F. Butler,  1872

Sand Creek Massacre
summarized from "American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World" by David Stannard
There are photos from the Chicago Inter-Ocean, one captions reads,  "Big Foot lay in a sort of solitary dignity", wrote reporter Carl Smith.  "He was shot through and through.  A wandering photographer propped the old man up, and as he lay there defenseless his portrait was taken."

"Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race" by Thomas Dyer, 1980
http://www.dickshovel.com/lsa3.html Mt. Rushmore is a Shrine of HYPOCRISY!

"The Descent of Man" by Charles Darwin, 1871
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2300

Slaughter of the Buffalo
http://itbcbison.com/education/eduresource.php?id=79
http://www.cbc.ca/history/EPISCONTENTSE1EP10CH2PA2LE.html
http://www.cbc.ca/history/EPISCONTENTSE1EP10CH2PA4LE.html

EPIDEMIC DISEASES
http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html
Jeffrey Amherst and Smallpox Blankets
."...that Vermine ... have forfeited all claim to the rights of humanity" (Bouquet to Amherst, 25 June) 
."I would rather chuse the liberty to kill any Savage...." (Bouquet to Amherst, 25 June).
2. The depiction of Indians as wild beasts was quite common among early American leaders, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. David E. Stannard writes: 'As is so often the case, it was New England's religious elite who made the point more graphically than anyone. Referring to some Indians who had given offense to the colonists, the Reverend Cotton Mather wrote: "Once you have but got the Track of those Ravenous howling Wolves, then pursue them vigourously; Turn not back till they are consumed. Beat them small as the Dust before the Wind." Lest this be regarded as mere rhetoric, empty of literal intent, consider that another of New England's most esteemed religious leaders, the Reverend Solomon Stoddard, as late as 1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts Governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs "to hunt Indians as they do bears."
' [American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press (1992)), p. 241] 

Yuuyaraq: the Way of the Human Being, with commentary, edited by Eric Madsen (Fairbanks, Alaska: University of Alaska, College of Rural Alaska, Center for Cross-Cultural Studies (1991)), states that epidemics caused a form of post-traumatic stress disorder and social collapse (smallpox blanket)

Scarlet Fever - (thousands of hits on google)
http://historicaltidbits.blogspot.com/2010/02/scarlet-fever.html
1871 family medical guide:
The first symptoms of the disease [scarlet fever] are a sensation of chilliness, amounting in some cases to a rigor or shivering, accompanied with nausea, irritability of temper, and depression of spirits."

The prostration of strength in this form of the disease is always alarming, and should be counteracted by nourishing drinks or fluid food, as beef-tea, mutton-tea, chicken...

The amount of poison in the system seems, however, so great in many cases that it must prove fatal in despite of remedies; and none but the best constitutions can recover from the malignant form of this fever, which often destroys life on the third or fourth day.

The inflammation often extends from the throat to the ear by the internal passage behind the tonsils, and causes inflammation of the drum of the ear, which is destroyed, and with it the power of hearing."

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000974.htm
Complications are rare with the right treatment, but can include:

.Acute rheumatic fever
.Bone or joint problems (osteomyelitis or arthritis)
.Ear infection (otitis media)
.Inflammation of a gland (adenitis) or abscess
.Kidney damage (glomerulonephritis)
.Liver damage (hepatitis)
.Meningitis
.Pneumonia
.Sinusitis

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=700375&amp;publicationSubCategoryId=200
Mutated scarlet fever fuels Hong Kong outbreak June 27, 2011 

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/foun/contents.htm
Epidemic diseases occasionally reached Fort Union. In December 1873 the wife and seven children of a civilian employee in the quartermaster department experienced an outbreak of scarletina (scarlet fever), resulting in a miscarriage for the woman and the death of three of the children, ages two, four, and six. The older children had a milder form of the disease, as Surgeon Moffatt reported, "the severity of the disease seemed almost in inverse ratio to the age of the patients." In fact, "in the oldest of the family aged 16 the affliction was so mild that it was not necessary to confine the patient to bed." The children who died, however, suffered rapid deterioration of the nervous system and expired within forty-eight to seventy-two hours. The surgeon declared that their "convulsion movements, constant tossing to and fro upon the bed, the throwing of the limbs about, and moaning with delirium were painful to witness." Moffatt speculated that the origin of the outbreak may have come from "associating a good deal with the Mexicans from the surrounding localities" where scarletina was reported to be present with "great fatality in their respective communities." A few other cases were reported at the post, none of which was fatal. 

Another outbreak of scarletina occurred in March 1877. Royal Lackey, nine-year-old son of a civilian employee at the post, was the first case, reported on March 4, and his family was immediately quarantined. Royal's younger brother, Willie, age seven, died of the disease on March 19. Another boy at the post, son of Private and Mrs. Cunningham (first names and his regiment unknown), showed symptoms of scarlet fever on March 5, and the family was "at once isolated in one of the Hospital wards and their house thoroughly disinfected." No other cases were reported and there were no further fatalities from the disease. Surgeon Carvallo declared that "measures taken to prevent further cases of contagion were very successful in this instance and prove what can be done by vigilance."

http://www.questia.com/library/science-and-technology/health-and-medicine/diseases-and-disorders/scarlet-fever.jsp
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=80929300
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/scarlet-fever/DS00917


======================= DISCUSSION PAPER AVAILABLE in Print Format Only!! =======================
"A Calamity Threatens Your Happiness"  by J. "Kittoh" Stanley, 2010, 
self-published, 260p. with maps, perfect bound.
Copies are now available.  
This work, distributed by "gift or barter", is timely and controversial.  It came about as a result of the phoney police-led anti uranium mining protests at Sharbot Lake in 2007 and covers related incidents in nearby Ongwehonweh and Anishnaabek communities.  There's loads of info on the nuclear industry, Canadian militarization, water diversion and much more.
If you would like to receive a copy, send an email including your mailing address.  
<kittoh@storm.ca>
If you have promised to send a "gift or trade", please do so at your earliest convenience. ;-)


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