This is well, just wrong. The methods of how diseases were transmitted
just wasn't well enough understood to run a campaign using such a
weapon. You didn't need to do it on purpose, it seems that moderns have
forgotten just virulent smallpox is and what it does to un-protected
populations. Now killing the buffalo, that was well understood.
Shel Belinkoff wrote:
> Not true ... they were purposely infected with smallpox and possibly other
> diseases, and the plains Indians had there main food source, the buffalo,
> almost completed wiped out. It was genocide, pure and simple.
>
> Shel
>
>
>
>
>> [Original Message]
>> From: Adam Maas
>>
>
>
>> The primary reason for the massive population drop wasn't wholesale
>> slaughter. It was the unthinking introduction of several virulent and
>> deadly diseases to a population with essentially no resistances to them.
>> And frankly there was no way the Europeans would have had any inkling of
>> how dangerous that was.
>>
>> This isn't to say that the survivors weren't treated extremely badly.
>> But the population crash wasn't caused by wholesale slaughter.
>>
>
>
>
>
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