Lewis Cass and the Politics of Disease: The Indian Vaccination Act of 1832

Abstract

On May 5, 1832, the U.S. Congress enacted the first piece of federal legislation designed to deal with a specifically American Indian health problem, epidemic smallpox. The legislation commonly known as the Indian Vaccination Act enabled the federal government to vaccinate around forty to fifty thousand American Indians. In the wake of an especially vicious smallpox epidemic savaging American Indian communities on the western frontier, various persons urged the secretary of war and the commissioner of Indian affairs to petition Congress for the money and authority to vaccinate affected Native Americans. As the largest program of its kind in the United States, protection of American Indians from a deadly disease was the ostensible goal of the program, though other federal agendas provided the real motivation. There was no input from American Indians during the conception, design, and implementation of the program, and vaccinations were used to enable Indian removal, to permit relocation of Native Americans to reservations, to consolidate and compact reservation communities, to expedite westward expansion of the United States, and to protect Indian nations viewed as friendly or economically important to the United States.