— 150,000 Kohn (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence… (Rev.). 2001, 249-250.
–~80,000 Oregon and Washington.
–~70,000
— >30,000 Blanchard estimate of California and Oregon fatalities.
–>20,000 California (Anderson; Cook, 1955; Duflot in Cook 1976.)
–>10,000 Oregon and Washington. (Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest.)
California:
— 70,000 Kohn (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence… (Revised). 2001, p. 249.
— 20,000 Anderson, M. K. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge…, 2006, p. 78.
— 20,000 Duflot de Mofras, E. Travels on the Pacific Coast. 1844, 174; in Cook 1976, 211.
–>20,000 Cook. The Epidemic of 1830-1833 in California and Oregon. 1955, p. 322.
— ~4,500 Cook. The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization, 1976, 213.
— ~800 Maidu.com. “History of the ConCow Maidu.”
— ~800 Santoro. Atlas of the Indian Tribes of North America…Clash of Cultures. 2009, 124.
Oregon:
–4,000-5,000 Natives along Willamette River. Slacum. Letter to Secretary of State. 1837.
— 1000s Oregon State Archives. “Chronology of Events, 1543-1859.”
— ~70 Klackatack tribe at Cowlitz. Wilkes 1844, v.5, in Cook 1955, p. 315.
–100s-1000s. Kowalitsk (Cook. The Epidemic of 1830-1833 in [Cal.] and Oregon. 1955, 306.
— ? Multnomah “…as a tribe extinct.”
–“an important factor in the decimation of the Indian tribes of that time…”
Pacific Northwest: (Oregon and Washington)
–~80,000 Kohn (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence… (Revised). 2001, p. 249.
—<10,000 Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest. History of Washington State… p. 432.
--“…terribly lethal…” (Cook. The Epidemic of 1830-1833 in [Cal.] and Oregon. 1955, p. 313.
--“seven-eighths” to “nine-tenths.” (Cook. The Epidemic of 1830-1833 in [CA & OR. 1955, 314.
Washington:
-- ~400 Two villages near Fort Vancouver. Ogden. Traits of American Indian Life. 1933, 68-69.
Native Tribes Specifically Mentioned
1. Cholbones, San Joaquin Valley, CA. Cook. Epidemic of 1830-1833 in [CA and OR]. 1955.
2. Concow, Butte County, CA. Maidu.com. “History of the ConCow Maidu.”
3. Klackatack, Cowlitz, WA. Cook. The Epidemic of 1830-1833 in [CA and OR]. 1955.
4. Kowalitsk (Colombia Riv. area) Dr. John K. Townsend in Cook The Epidemic of 1830-1833… 1955, p. 306.
5. Kutenai (or Kootenai), Willamette Valley, OR. Kohn 2001, pp. 249-250.
6. Maidu, Sacramento Valley, CA. Cook 1976, pp. 211-213.
7. Miwok, Sacramento Valley, CA. Cook 1976, pp. 211-213.
8. Multnomah, Sauvie Island, Willamette River, OR. Kohn 2001, pp. 249-250.
9. Nisenan, Bear, American watersheds in northern Cal., and Central Valley. Cook 1955, 320.
10. Nootka, Pacific Coast. Kohn 2001, pp. 249-250.
11. Patwin (or Southern Wintu). Northern CA. Cook 1955, p. 320 and Wikipedia. “Patwin.”
12. Salish, Pacific Coast. Kohn 2001, pp. 249-250.
13. Wapato (or Wappato, of Sauvie). Columbia River between Vancouver, WA and Kalama, WA, centered on Sauvie Island, OR. “…particularly destructive…” Parker, also Wyeth, in Cook 1955, p. 309.
14. Wintu. Central Sacramento Valley. Radic. Genocides of California.
15. Wowol/Yoktut group Bubal village, San Joaquin Valley. Noted in Cook 1955, p. 320.
16. Yokuts, Central California. Cook 1976, pp. 211-213; Wikipedia. “Yokuts.” 1-29-2021 edit.
California (and Oregon)
Ahrens: “Abstract: In 1833 the Native American population of California’s Central Valley was decimated by an epidemic variously identified as remittent fever, cholera, typhus, or malaria. This article confirms that it was malaria introduced by the Hudson’s Bay Company fur brigade led by John Works, based on the conjunction of weather, carriers, and contact and on the eyewitness accounts of Works, George Yount, and J.J. Warner. The Indians’ catastrophe contributed to the American colonial conquest of the region.” (Ahrens, Peter. “John Work, J.J. Warner, and the Native American Catastrophe of 1833.” Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 93, No. 1, Spring 2011, p. 1.)
Anderson: “…two major epidemics spread through the Indian population and left many dead. In 1833 an unidentified disease…reached epidemic proportions in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys. The ‘pandemic of 1833’ annihilated whole Indian villages….12,000 indigenous deaths in the San Joaquin Valley and 8,000 in the Sacramento Valley. The epidemic also spread to the American, Feather, Yuba, Tuolumne, and Merced Rivers, and that year Wilkes discovered large numbers of Indian skeletons at the fork of the Feather and Sacramento.” (Anderson, M. Kat. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources. University of California Press, 2006, p. 78.)
Butte Creek Watershed Project: “In 1833, an epidemic, possibly of malaria and smallpox, killed up to 75% of the Konkow population.” (Butte Creek Watershed Project, California State University, Chico. Butte Creek Existing Conditions Report. Chapter 8, “Historical Uses and Cultural Resources….Historical Land Use.” Butte Creek Watershed Conservancy, August 1998. p. 134.)
Cook, 1955: “In the summer of 1830 a new disease appeared on the banks of the lower Columbia River which rapidly incapacitated most of the white settlers and decimated the native population. In the course of the year 1833 what seems to have been the same malady overtook white man and red man alike in the great Central Valley of California. The origin of this epidemic has been long under discussion, and several conflicting opinions have been expressed concerning its nature. There is little conflicting opinions have been expressed concerning its nature. There is little doubt, however, about its significance for it was directly responsible for the destruction of the Sacramento River and Columbia River tribes, thereby facilitating the settlement of these valleys by the Americans….” [p. 303]
“The foregoing citations [which we skip over] including the testimony of three physicians, Tolmie, McLoughlin, and Townsend, establish beyond reasonable doubt that the epidemic introduced in 1829-1830 along the lower Columbia River was ‘fever and ague,’ or ‘intermittent fever.’ It is a matter of common medical knowledge that the infection referred to by these terms in the mid-nineteenth century was malaria. Therefore with justification Stage and Gjullin (1935) write the following sentences: ‘It was therefore with considerable interest that the authors in their mosquito studies of this region discovered numerous accounts of malaria by old residents or visitors. It appears to have been introduced over one hundred years ago, to have been in important factor in the decimation of the Indian tribes of that time, and since to have remained, with varying degrees of intensity, endemic to at least the Willamette Valley, in Oregon.” [p. 307]
The Origin And Course Of The Epidemic
“According to Douglas (1836) the epidemic became noticeable at Fort Vancouver in mid-July, 1830, and according to McLeod (1914) in August of that year. McLoughlin (1941) first mentions it in his letter of October 11, 1830, at which time the disease had already done considerable damage. The first flare-up thus seems to have occurred in the late summer of 1830….” [p. 308]
“At its peak the northern epidemic embraced roughly the lower 200 miles of the Columbia and the lower 100 miles of the Willamette rivers. McLoughlin (1941, p. 233, letter of October 21, 1831) says the mortality was great among the Indians ‘from Oak Point to the Dalles.’ Oak point is on the Washington side, a few miles above the mouth of the river. Parker (1846) says that it extended ‘from the vicinity of the Cascades to the shores of the Pacific.’ Parker, and also Wyeth (1899, p. 148), mention the epidemic as particularly destructive on the Wappatoo (or Sauvies) and Deer islands at the mouth of the Willamette. Minto (1900) in his discussion mentions that the malady was still prevalent in 1843 and comments that it apparently was confined to the villages along the large rivers. Stage and Gjullin (1935) quote manuscript sources to show the manner in which the white population on the Willamette was afflicted by malaria….” [p. 309]
“From the Columbia-Willamette basin the malaria took a long jump, in both space and time. It appeared again in the Sacramento and northern San Joaquin valleys in the summer of 1833, three years after its first outbreak in Oregon and 500 airline miles away….” [p. 310]
The Damage To The Native Populations
“That the epidemic of 1829-1833 was terribly lethal to the native population has been conceded in principle by nearly every writer who has had occasion to refer to the matter. But whether or not the real magnitude of the disaster to the Indian communities involved has been fully appreciated is somewhat doubtful. Certain accounts, particularly if they indulge in the extravagant rhetoric of the period, create the impression among modern readers of wild exaggeration and fancy unrestrained. Nevertheless these very lurid passages, coming as they do from the pens of unimaginative and utterly practical men, are clear indication of the tremendous impact of the events themselves. Hyperbole and overemphasis, to be sure, are often present, as undoubtedly are local distortions of fact. Yet the general picture cannot be disbelieved.
“Dr. John K. Townsend (1905, pp. 332-334), an entirely reputable witness, presents an account which is as conservative as most and more circumstantial than many. The following are excerpts; ‘The Indians of the Columbia were once a numerous and powerful people; the shore of the river, for scores of miles, was lined with their villages….The spot where once stood the thickly peopled village…is now only indicated by a heap of indistinguishable ruins. The depopulation here has been truly fearful [i.e., near Fort Vancouver [WA side of Columbia]. A gentleman told me, that only four years ago [that is, in 1830], as he wandered near what had formerly been a thickly populated village, he counted no less that sixteen dead, men and women, lying unburied and festering in the sun in front of their habitations. Within the houses all were sick; not one escaped the contagion; upwards of a hundred individuals, men, women, and children, were writhing in agony on the floors of the houses, with no one to render them any assistance. Some were in the dying struggle, and clenching with the convulsive grasp of death their disease-worn companions, shrieked and howled in the last sharp agony. ‘Probably there does not now exist one, where, five years ago, there were a hundred Indians….’” [p. 313]
“Samuel Parker (1846, p. 191), a clergyman, and thus presumably not given to mendacity or unwarranted overstatement, was on the Columbia in 1835. He has this to say about the epidemic:
‘I have found the Indian population in the lower country, that is, below the falls of the Columbia, far less than I had expected, or what it was when Lewis and Clarke made their tour. Since the year 1829, probably seven-eighths, if not as Dr. McLoughlin believes nine-tenths, have been swept away by disease, principally by fever and ague….So many and so sudden were the deaths which occurred, that the shores were strewed with the unburied dead. Whole and large villages were depopulated; and some entire tribes have disappeared, but where there were any remaining persons, they united with other tribes….’
“John McLoughlin himself (1941, p. 88, letter of October 11, 1830) says that ‘The intermitting fever…has appeared at this place and carried off three-fourths of the Indian population in our vicinity.’ This was in the early stages of the epidemic, and the cumulative mortality might have reached even higher levels subsequently.
“Referring to specific localities Parker (1846, pp. 150 and 152) states that Wappatoo (Sauvies) Island at the confluence of the Multnomah (Willamette) and Columbia rivers had been formerly inhabited by the Multnomah Indians ‘but they have become as a tribe extinct.’ …Deer Island, 33 miles below Fort Vancouver, ‘…was formerly the residence of many Indians, but they are gone, and nothing is left but the remains of a large village.’
“The condition of these islands is also mentioned by Nathaniel J. Wyeth (1899, p. 148) who says about Wappatoo Island: ‘…a mortality has carried off to a man its inhabitants and there is nothing to attest that they ever existed except their decaying houses, their graves and their unburied bones, of which they are heaps.’
“Wyeth also reports on the region of the Cascades, north of Mount Hood. In the journal of his first expedition, under the date of October 26, 1832 (p. 175) he says: ‘…the Indians are all dead only two women are left – a sad remnant of a large number – their houses stripped to their frames are in view and their half buried dead…’ In the entry for February 5, 1833 (p. 182) he qualifies the above statement to some extent: ‘There are here two fishing villages both now deserted as the people here say from the inmates being all dead of the fever but I suspect some are dead and the rest and much larger part fright(en)ed away…’ Wyeth’s suspicion that the mortality at this point was not fully 100 per cent may have been well founded. Nevertheless, that a very large part of the people had succumbed is demonstrated by the ‘half buried dead.’ It is also quite possible that the region of the Cascades represents more or less the eastern extremity of the epidemic. If this is true then the death rate and general severity of the disease may have been less than along the lower reaches of the Columbia.
“Returning to other testimony we have the following citation (1836, quoted by Stage and Gjullin, 1935) from David Douglas, the botanist for whom the Douglas fir is named: ‘October 11, 1830…A dreadfully fatal intermittent fever broke out in the lower parts of this river about eleven weeks ago, which has depopulated the country. Villages which had afforded from one to two hundred effective warriors, are totally gone; not a soul remains!’
“George M. Colvocoresses, who, some years later was with Wilkes on his exploring expedition, writes (1852, p. 258) : ‘We saw in both banks many Indian villages, some of which were at the time without inhabitants. This last feature was attributed to the ravages of the fever and ague, and the appearance of burying grounds in the vicinity served to confirm the statement; they were large and thickly studded with graves.’
“Ogden (1933, pp. 68-69) describes two villages near Fort Vancouver, each of which contained 60 families (about 400 persons) before the epidemic. They were completely annihilated. Ogden says that apparently there were no survivors whatever.
“William A. Slacum (1837, p. 16) claimed that from 1830 to 1837, approximately, the ‘fever and ague’ on the Willamette killed 5,000 to 6,000 souls. These figures may well be excessive, but they indicate the order of magnitude of the mortality, at least in the mind of one man.
“Charles Wilkes (1844, vol. 5,) gives some very sober data concerning the effects of the epidemic on the Columbia. Thus (p. 149) he says: I satisfied myself that the accounts given of the depopulation of this country are not exaggerated [Cook italics]; for places were pointed out to me where dwelt whole tribes, that have been entirely swept off; and during the time of the greatest mortality, the shores of the river were strewed with the dead and dying.’ In volume 4, page 338, he mentions the Klackatack tribe at Cowlitz, of which only three Indian women are left. ‘The mortality which has attacked them of late has made sad ravages; for only a few years since they numbered upwards of a hundred, while now they are said to be less than thirty.’ On page 387 he cites Dr. Bailey of Willamette Valley, to the effect that in this area one-fourth of the Indians were dying off yearly (during the epidemic). On pages 395 and 396 he tells about Casanove, chief of the Klackatacks near Fort Vancouver. Fifteen years before (about 1827 or 1828) this tribe could muster ‘four or five hundred warriors; but the fever and ague have, within a short space of time, swept off the whole tribe, and it is said that they all died within three weeks.’ ‘Casanove’s tribe is not the only one that has suffered in this way: many others have been swept off entirely by this fatal disease, without leaving a single survivor to tell their melancholy tale.’
“Considering all this testimony in the aggregate, I believe that the general lines of exceedingly severe mortality are established beyond reasonable doubt. Without going so far as to accept without question the implication of the 100 per cent death rate contained in the statements of Wilkes and others, nevertheless the estimate of roughly 75 per cent advanced by Parker and McLoughlin does not appear excessive. It is also quite within the bounds of credibility that many villages, having suffered the loss of three out of four inhabitants, were thereafter deserted by the survivors, thus creating the impression of total extermination. Such a displacement and reorientation is entirely consistent with the stories of empty houses and unburied skeletons. From the ethnographic and the historical point of view the effect was the same, regardless of the exact proportion of deaths. The Indians as an effective social and biological organism were destroyed in the lower valleys of the Columbia and Willamette rivers. As a result the advancing tide of white settlement met with little or no resistance from the demoralized survivors. [pp. 314-316]
“When we pass to the California phase of the malaria epidemic we encounter records of a nature similar to those describing the Columbia phase with destruction perhaps even more widespread…” [p. 316] Blanchard note – there follows seven pages relating to malaria in Cal.
(Cook, Sherburne Friend. The Epidemic of 1830-1833 in California and Oregon. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 43, No. 3, 1955, pp. 303-326.)
Cook, 1976: “With respect to non-venereal chronic and epidemic diseases, there is remarkably little evidence to show that these were present to a serious extent among the wild tribes prior to 1830….” (Cook 1976, 209)
“Shortly after 1830, epidemic plagues did get into the interior with devastating results. The first outstanding epidemic was that of the so-called ‘pandemic of 1833.’ Just what was the infection has never been determined. It certainly was not smallpox, but was designated variously as ‘cholera,’ ‘fever and ague,’ ‘remittent fever.’ Dr. E. W. Twitchell, who has studied the visitation from the standpoint of a physician, rules out malaria and smallpox and admits the possibility of cholera and typhus. Nevertheless, he finally refuses to commit himself definitely.” (Cook 1976, pp. 210-211.)
“As to the devastation inflicted, there can be no doubt that it was tremendous, even though we allow for a great deal of hyperbole and exaggeration on the part of contemporary writers. Omitting the more lurid rhetoric, we find that Duflot de Mofras puts the mortality at 12,000 in the San Joaquin Valley and 8,000 in the Sacramento Valley.
“Wilkes (Narrative, p. 195) found skeletons in large numbers at the fork of the Feather and Sacramento rivers. A man signing himself ‘Trapper’ says the Indians were ‘almost annihilated.’ George C. Yount says the epidemic struck on the American, Feather, Yuba, Tuolumne, and Merced, and on the first two rivers ‘whole tribes were exterminated.’ The stench of the dead bodies was ‘almost intolerable,’ and heaps of bones were a common sight. The decimation was so severe along the rivers that the salmon increased because of the lack of fishing by the natives. The most sober and enlightening account is that of J. J. Warner who went up to the head of the Sacramento in 1832 and returned to the upper San Joaquin in 1833. On his return he found the whole populous valley deserted.
From the head of the Sacramento to the great bend and slough of the San Joaquin we did not see more than six or eight live Indians; while large numbers of their skulls and dead bodies were to be seen under almost every shade tree near water, where the uninhabited and deserted villages had been converted into grave yards.
“Only at the mouth of the Kings River, far up the San Joaquin, did they find a live village, which ‘contained a large number of Indians temporarily stopping at that place.’ During one night in that village, a score of persons died, demonstrating that the epidemic was still rampant. Some ten years later L. W. Hastings reported that in coming down the Sacramento Valley he saw several abandoned villages with up to 100 houses each. The houses had fallen in, indicating long vacancy, and were filled with skulls and skeletons.
“From the Yount and Warner accounts it is probable that the disease was severe in its effects from the upper Sacramento Valley at least as far south as the Kings River. Its lateral extension may have been as far east and west as the bordering foothills, although we have no direct evidence on this point. Let us assume, however, that the primary devastation was confined to the valley floor. This would embrace the territory of the Wintun, the Maidu, the Miwok, and the Yokuts, and involve a population of conservatively 45,000 persons. The total mortality of 20,000 mentioned by Duflot de Mofras is obviously excessive, for it would have meant the practical extermination of the valley tribes.
“On the other hand, the large numbers of skeletons found certainly indicate a high mortality rate, at least in restricted localities. Among these was the region along the Sacramento from the American to the Feather River, for both Wilkes and Warner mention this territory specifically. The Yuba lies between and must have been equally affected. Yount’s implication is that farther south the region of the Merced and Tuolumne was less seriously devastated, but did not escape. This is in conformity with Warner’s statement that he found no ‘live’ village north of Kings River. Moreover, although there is no direct evidence bearing on the point, it is likely that, if the disease was very active at Kings River during Warner’s visit, it also extended somewhat to the southward. If we take at face value the stories of these witnesses – and in general they probably were not indulging in pure fabrication – we must conceive of the focus of the epidemic as lying along the lower Sacramento and San Joaquin. If in this region the death rate was as heavy as is indicated, perhaps one-half the inhabitants perished. To the north and south the severity so diminished that at the extremes it was zero. Thus for the whole area we might set a value of 10 per cent for the mortality of all the tribes concerned. If this be admitted, we may postulate a figure of from 4,000 to 5,000, say 4,500 as the number of persons who perished.” (pp. 211-213.)
(Cook, Sherburne Friend. The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization, Part 4, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976, pp. 209-213.)
Maidu.com: “The ‘ConCow Maidu’ as Euro-Americans call us, are the descendants of ‘Indians’ located in the Feather River drainage. All the tribes of the Feather River drainage spoke variations of the Penution language and are culturally and socially akin….
“To begin the story of the ConCow Maidu we travel back in time to the year 1828. Summer was coming to an end and the ConCow peoples were returning from their summer camps around Grassy Lake. Grassy Lake is about twenty-five miles northeast of their more permanent winter home in the KonKow Valley and surrounding foothills. The KonKow Valley is about twenty miles north of present day Oroville, in Butte County, California….
“…between 1828 and 1836 the Hudson Bay Company sent more trappers to the ConCow territory. As a result of the contact with the Euro-Americans, a malaria epidemic swept through the ConCow villages in 1833 killing an estimated 800 people.” (Maidu.com. “History of the ConCow Maidu.”)
Massey: “Maidu society was devastated by contact with Europeans and Americans. A malaria epidemic in 1833 killed an estimated 75 percent of the tribe…” (Massey, Peter and Jeanne Wilson. Backcountry Adventures Northern California: The Ultimate Guide to the Backcountry for Anyone with a Sport Utility Vehicle (3rd printing). Adler Publishing Co, Inc. 2006, p. 97.)
Santoro: “…in 1833 the…[ConCow Maidu] was decimated by a malaria epidemic killing an estimated 800 people.” (Santoro, Nicholas J. Atlas of the Indian Tribes of North America and the Clash of Cultures. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2009, p. 124.)
Secrest and Secrest (2005) draw upon journals of trappers and explorers in 1832-1833 California: “According to [John] Work, Indian villages and smaller groups of huts lined the rivers and smaller groups of huts lined rivers and streams. Along a five-mile stretch of the Feather River, Work recorded in his journal four villages of forty to fifty houses each, with 250 to 300 Indians in each village, and a total of 15,000 Patwin and Nisenan Indians living along that particular stretch of ground. This was just one area, and an indication of [Jonathan] Warner’s amazement that so many natives had been seen on the trip. ‘On no part of the continent over which I had then, or have since traveled,’ Warner later wrote,’ was so numerous an Indian population…as in the valleys of the San Joaquin and Sacramento.’
“Young and his men proceeded north up the Sacramento Valley, which was also heavily populated with native inhabitants. The party then continued its beaver search in Oregon. In the late summer of 1833, Young’s party headed south again, retracing their steps through interior California. The men were staggered by what they now saw. Warner noted:
On our return, late in the summer of 1833, we found the valleys depopulated. From the head of the Sacramento to the great bend and slough of the San Joaquin, we did not see more than six or eight live Indians, while large numbers of their skulls and dead bodies were to be seen under almost every shade tree, near water where the uninhabited and deserted villages had been converted into graveyards. On the San Joaquin River, in the immediate neighborhood of the larger class of villages, which the preceding year, were the abodes of a large class of villages…we found not only many graves, but the vestiges of a funeral pyre.
At the mouth of the Kings River, we encountered the first and only village of the stricken race, that we had seen after entering the great valley. This village contained a large number of Indians, temporarily stopping at that place. We were encamped near the village one night only, and during that time, the death angel, passing over the camping ground of these plague-stricken fugitives, waved his wand, summoning from the little remnant of a once numerous people, a score of victims to muster in the land of the Manitou, and the cries of the dying mingled with the wails of the bereaved, made the night hideous in that veritable ‘valley of death.’
Secrest and Secrest write that a conservative estimate is that 75% of the native population died “in that cruel summer of 1833.” (Secrest, William B. Jr. and William B. Secrest Sr. California Disasters, 1812-1899: Firsthand Accounts of Fires, Shipwrecks, Floods, Epidemics, Earthquakes and Other California Tragedies. Quill Driver Books, 2005, pp. 5-8.)
Northwest Coast
Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest: “Beginning in 1829 and lasting through 1834, an epidemic raged on the western coast of North America, from the Sacramento River Valley of central California northward into Vancouver and British Columbia.
“The best account of this outbreak comes from physicians and other literate men stationed at Fort Vancouver, a trading post in the Oregon territory. They reported a fearsome occurrence of fever with a high native mortality. Almost all of the Caucasians became ill, but deaths were few among them. The Indians, however, died in droves. One clergyman wrote about his trip to Oregon in 1835, ‘I have found the Indian population…below the falls of the Columbia, far less than I had expected, or what it was when Lewis and Clarke (sic) made their tour. Since the year 1829, probably seven-eighths, if not as Dr. McLoughlin believes, nine-tenths, have been swept away by the disease.’
“He called the outbreak ‘fever and ague’ and claimed that villages and even whole tribes had just disappeared. The natives died so fast that heaps of unburied dead could be seen from the riverbank.” (Humphreys 2001, p. 22)
“An outbreak of malaria between 1830 and 1833 offers a powerful illustration of the effect of diseases upon relations between Indians and non-Indians in the Pacific Northwest. Over the course of three years, beginning in 1830, malaria swept through groups of Indians along the lower Columbia and Willamette rivers.
“The disease was probably brought to the region either by sailing vessels or by traders and trappers who had arrived from the malarial Mississippi River valley. Carried along by the mosquito Anopheles malculipennis, which flourishes in summer and which ranges between coastal areas and the Cascade Mountains, malaria broke out for three straight summer seasons. It hit especially hard in the vicinity around the future site of Portland, the swampy location of which had a special concentration of mosquitoes.
“From Oregon the disease spread south to the Central Valley of California, probably carried by one of the HBC trapping expeditions to move in that direction.
“Before the epidemic struck, in 1830, there are estimated to have been 13,940 Indians in the lower Columbia and Willamette valleys (and this figure, remember, represents an estimate of how many had already survived epidemics of smallpox and other diseases); by 1841 there were only an estimated 1175 natives remaining. In other words, the depopulation over about one decade's time—largely the result of malaria—was approximately 92%.
“White observers recounted entire villages destroyed, with nobody left behind to tend to the dead and dying.” (Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest (CSPN). History of Washington State & the Pacific Northwest (HSTAA 432). “Lesson Seven: The Changing World of Pacific Northwest Indians.”)
Kohn: “Oregon Malaria Epidemic of 1829-33”
“Catastrophic outbreak of malaria that killed an estimated 150,000 Native American (Indians) residing in what is now Oregon, Washington, and California. Because the mortality rate appeared to be overmuch for malaria, some have argued that the disease depopulating the various Indian tribes during these years was either influenza, scarlet fever, typhoid, or typhus. Also, malaria exists more in tropical or subtropical areas. However, accounts of the epidemic by white settlers and Indians have stressed malarial symptoms: high fever, aching, nausea, shaking chills, shock, delirium, and coma. They also referred to the disease as ‘ague’ (a fever of malarial character). In addition, the infection occurred only during the warm weather in the valleys and along the coast of America’s West.
“In February 1839 the brigantine Owhyhee unknowingly brought malaria into the Columbia River region. This trading vessel from Boston had made a port of call for peach trees at the Juan Fernández Islands, off the coast of Chile, before proceeding north to Oregon. Infective Chilean mosquitoes, which easily bred in water tanks on board ships, transmitted malaria to human beings through their bites, and another vessel a month later arrived with more disease-carrying mosquitoes. By spring, the Columbia River had overflowed its banks, creating ideal breeding spots (stagnant water bodies and swamps) for malarial mosquitoes.
“The Multnomah Indians on Sauvie Island at the mouth of the Willamette River (which flows into the Columbia) were the first to be struck by malaria, which wiped out the entire tribe in three weeks in the summer of 1829. Nearly 1,000 members of another tribe at nearby Fort Vancouver (Vancouver, Washington) also contracted the disease and died that summer.
“Similar devastating malaria outbreaks in the summers of 1830, 1831, and 1832 struck the Kutenai (or Kootenai) and Thompson Indian tribes in the Willamette Valley and the Nootka and Salish tribes along the Pacific coast. Other valley and coastal Indians were attacked too. In Fort Vancouver and other places, the mortality rate (deaths per thousand population) went as high as 95 percent at times. Each outbreak came to a close with the arrival of winter. Before the summer of 1829, the Indian population in this region (now parts of Oregon and Washington) totaled about 100,000 natives; at the end of the epidemic in 1833, their number had been reduced to about 20,ooo
“Indians who fled in terror from their villages carried the protozoan (miasmodium malaria) and infective mosquitoes with them into California, where eventually some 70,000 Indians fell victim to malaria. White settlers also contracted it, but the death rate among them was far lower. Some authorities have claimed that the deaths of some 150,000 natives in these regions made the settlement of white emigrants easier there in the succeeding years.
“Further reading: Harrison, Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man; Simpson, Invisible Armies.” (Kohn, George Childs (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence… (Revised). 2001, pp. 249-250.)
Oregon State Archives: “1830 Epidemics strike the Oregon Indians, killing thousands along the Columbia and Willamette Rivers.” (“Chronology of Events, 1543-1859.”)
Radic: “….When Jedediah Smith entered Sacramento Valley in 1826, neither he nor the Wintu could foresee the epic tragedy that would result from this first contact with Euro-Americans. Four years later the long chain of calamities – which have not ended to this day – began with a malaria epidemic introduced from Oregon by trappers, wiping out three-fourths of the entire Wintu population in upper and central Sacramento Valley.” (Radic, Theo. Theophany. “Excerpt 3, Genocides of California.”)
Sources
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