Fear and Betrayal: Smallpox and the Turning Point of the French and Indian War

Abstract

Fear and BetrayalSmallpox and the Turning Point of the French and Indian War John Booss (bio) The Indians fear nothing so much as this disease …. —Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Adventures in the Wilderness It is in the nature of great events, as Francis Parkman has said, to obscure the great events that came before them.1 The American Revolution has greatly eclipsed the French and Indian War in the popular imagination and in scholarly attention; yet, it has been called "The War That Made America."2 In this article, I examine the French and Indian War in which the two great colonizing powers, France and England, grappled for control of the North American continent.3 For Indigenous peoples, the conflict threatened their lands, their way [End Page 246] of life, and their very existence. In 1758 the Moravian minister Christian Post was told by Delaware Indian leaders that "you and the French contrived the war, to waste the Indians between you; and that you and the French intend to divide the land between you."4 The focus here is on the role of an outbreak of smallpox in the turning of the tide, or in marking the turning point from French and Indian victories to English dominance and ultimate triumph. I examine a smallpox outbreak among the Native allies of the French between August 1757 and the start of 1758. As suggested by my use of "turning point," the war can be split into two periods: the first, in which the French and their Indian allies predominated, from 1754 to 1757; and the second, in which the British predominated and ultimately prevailed, from 1758 to 1760. A major cause of the turn of the tide was the infection by smallpox of Indians from the upper Great Lakes region (Pays d'en Haut) following the siege of Fort William Henry on Lake George in August 1757. The infection was carried by the Indians back to their home villages and caused a massive outbreak and, subsequently, devastating mortality. The consequent refusal of the Indians of the Pays d'en Haut to join the French in their campaign of 1758 ensued. The role of smallpox in the participation by Amerindian allies of the French has been studied by D. Peter MacLeod.5 He examined reports of the annual number of Indians serving with the French and determined that smallpox was critical to decisions about whether the Indians would participate in the annual campaigns. He noted that the fluctuations of the numbers of Indian warriors were "of limited significance to the outcome of the war." His concern was the "political independence and freedom of action of the Indians."6 I examine the refusal of the Indians from the Pays d'en Haut to participate in the campaign of 1758 as a consequence of the smallpox epidemic in their villages, which had resulted from exposure during the campaign for Fort William Henry in 1757. Modifying MacLeod's conclusion, I contend that their refusal, subsequent to the outbreak of smallpox, was a critical component in the turning point of the war. The explicit connection between smallpox brought from the campaign for Fort William Henry and the turning point of the war does not appear to have been previously developed in detail. In contrast to the highly focused role of a smallpox outbreak in the French and Indian War, historians have recorded the massive effects of smallpox on other conflicts in the New [End Page 247] World. Smallpox epidemics played a major role in bringing down the Aztec and Inca cultures in Mexico and Peru, respectively.7 The role of smallpox in the defeat of the Aztec empire by the Spaniards and Indigenous allies in 1519–21 at Tenochtitlan was so dramatic that William H. McNeil began his epochal book Plagues and Peoples with that "extraordinary story."8 He later stated, "Clearly if smallpox had not come when it did, the Spanish victory could not have been achieved in Mexico."9 Alfred W. Crosby opened his 1967 paper titled "Conquistador y Pestilencia: The First New World Pandemic and the Fall of the Great Indian Empires" with the assertion, "The most sensational military conflicts in all history...