Lorna

—       ~1,000  Hunter, Frances. “William Clark and the New Madrid Earthquakes.” 11-19-2009.

—  500-1,000  Stewart and Knox. The Earthquake America Forgot. 1995, p. 209.

—          >379  Blanchard tally of specific, more or less, accounts noted by Stewart and Knox.

–Dozens-100s  Clay. Still Casting Shadows.  2006, p. 166.

—         <100  Hendricks. “New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812,” Encyclopedia of AK History.

 

Arkansas                    ( >20)

— >10  Big Prairie area.[1]

—     1  Newport area, White River, Dec 16, 1811. Man drowned when water rose; swept away.[2]

— >10  Little Prairie area.[3]

Kentucky                   ( >10)

— >10  Blanchard guestimate.[4]

—     1  About 80 miles east of New Madrid, Jan 23. Christ Girl. Stewart and Knox, pp. 207-209.

—   >5  Stewart and Knox write that “many” families besides the Christ family lost members.[5]

Missouri                     ( >139)

—     1  Kennett area, Jan 23. Boy looking for cattle never returned (quicksand or sand boil?).[6]

—   10  New Madrid, Dec 16, 1811. Stewart and Knox, pp. 207-209.

—     1  New Madrid, after Dec 16. Exposure; elderly person. Stewart and Knox, pp. 207-209.

—   >3  New Madrid, Feb 7. MS Riv. “giant wave” rushed overland at St. John’s Bayou mouth.[7]

—    24  New Madrid area, Island #94, Feb 7. Stewart and Knox write 2 dozen pirates drowned.

–>100  New Madrid “second waterfall,” Feb 7-10.  Stewart and Knox, p. 208.[8]

Tennessee                   ( >10)

— >10  Reelfoot Lake area. Native Americans.[9]

Mississippi River       (~200)

— ~100  Feb 7-10, Vincent Nolte convoy.  Stewart and Knox, p. 108.[10]

— ~100  Feb 7-19, other boats than those of Vincent Nolte convoy. Stewart and Know, p. 108.[11]

 

Narrative Information

 

Clay: “The power unleashed during the most severe quake, on February 7th, 1812, was so massive that the 2,300 mile long mighty Mississippi changed course, diverted water (one consequence of which was the forming of Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee), created temporary waterfalls that claimed several boats – which capsized when they plunged over the falls –, opened up fissures below the River which generated large whirlpools that sucked boats into its depths, killed dozens or possibly hundreds of people (even though the region was sparsely settled)…”  (Clay.  Still Casting Shadows.  2006, p. 166.)

 

Stewart and Knox: “How Many Died”

 

“Ten people were reported dead at New Madrid on December 16.  On the same date a man drowned in Arkansas when the Write River, near present-day Newport, suddenly rose during the tremors and swept him away.  The squeezing action of seismic waves on underground aquifers can cause sudden large discharges of groundwater into streams causing earthquake-induced flash flooding.  A boy in the St. Francis River bottoms near present-day Kennett, Missouri, was also counted as dead from the quakes.  He was looking for lost cattle on January 23 and never returned.  He was probably drowned in a sunk land, washed away by a seismic flash flood, or caught in the quicksand of a sand boil.  At least one elderly person is known to have died of exposure when the populace of New Madrid evacuated and camped in tents and lean-tos at the start of the series, which was during the coldest months of winter. No doubt there were many others.  A number of people died at New Madrid during the dark hours of February 7th when the waters of the Mississippi rushed over the land in a giant wave at the mouth of St. John’s Bayou, but no one knows how many.  Also killed were a couple of dozen pirates on Island # 94.

 

“The Crist family living in Kentucky, approximately 80 miles due east of New Madrid, lost one daughter on January 23, but they were not alone.  Many of their neighbors had been injured and had also lost loved ones….

 

“According to some accounts less than twenty deaths were documented on land but this is extremely misleading.  No systematic effort was ever made to compile all the reports and obtain a true account.  Since communications were so poor and many families and communities lived in isolation, most deaths on land, like those on the river, probably were unrecorded.  Reasonable estimates would be at least a hundred deaths on land, if not double or triple that figure.  These casualties would have been from a variety of earthquake phenomena, including landslides, earthquake flooding, caving river banks, crevasses, and collapsing cabins.

 

“According to the traditions of the Indians, there were more redskins killed than white men.  This would make sense, for the Native Americans outnumbered the settlers at least two to one throughout the zone of the greatest disturbances.  Since they often camped on the river’s edge, they would have been particularly vulnerable to the threat of earthquake-induced flooding and failing banks that pushed many of their camps into deadly waters.  There were probably many Indian villages that were sunk and flooded like Little Prairie…

 

“For example, in the formation of Reelfoot Lake, Indians say that a village was drowned and everyone killed.  We should probably take them at their word on this instead of considering such a report as ‘legend.’  It is also highly probable that one or more Indian villages were drowned in the formation of Big Lake.  And when the town of Big Prairie disappeared in Arkansas, Indians along the river there also reported the submergence of one or more Indian villages with complete loss of life.

 

“In totaling deaths from the New Madrid earthquakes, those of the Native Americans have never been really considered.  One reason for this was that there was no mechanism by which red man’s losses were tallied into white man’s records.  Hence, these data were just not available.

 

“One thing is certain.  Hundreds of Native Americans died who were never counted. Many were lost in their camps and villages, and many were lost from their canoes, as testified by the large numbers of empty ones seen drifting downstream during the five months of the siege.

 

“The River of Death

 

“As or the Mississippi River, untold hundred lost their lives.  A crude accounting could be made for some. For example, at least a hundred lives were probably lost over the second waterfall at New Madrid between February 7 and 10, as witnessed by those on shore.  There were also the nineteen lost boats of the Vincent Nolte convoy, which could account for another 100 lives lost.  And Nolte’s boats weren’t the only ones to disappear below New Madrid that day.  These, plus scattered records of other boats lost, might add up to another 100-200.  No one knows how many died over the first waterfall ten miles above New Madrid and while Mathias Speed and his crew survived the violence of the river’s retrograde motion, no one knows how many others did not.  Most deaths on the river could never be accounted for.  Only the battered debris of their broken, empty vessels were available to tell the tale.

 

“Surviving passengers, and those fortunate enough to preserve their lives while witnessing events from the shores, reported seeing numerous enormous river bank cave-ins.  Sometimes a mile or more of land would collapse at once.  Boats tied up to slumping banks were buried, swamped and sunk, often with everyone still aboard.  These massive cave-ins also caused huge waves that rapidly swept across the channel, bashing the other side and bouncing back.  Many boats caught in the middle were capsized by this process. [208]

 

“During the five months of the earthquakes, from December to May, boatmen became so afraid of being sunk and killed by a failing bank that many preferred to drift in the middle of the river at night rather than take a chance by tying up on the edge.  Stories of sinking islands deterred many from tying up there, as well.  Some reported seeing chasms opening up in the river where turbid waters rushed in – sucking boats and their occupants into the abyss, never to be seen again.  At other times the waters would suddenly rise or suddenly fall several feet.  The river was a very dangerous place to be….

 

“In total, then by our manner of reckoning, deaths of all races from the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 would definitely be in excess of 500.  That would be the low estimate.  It would not be unreasonable to postulate that the number of deaths was greater than 1,000.  Most would not have been residents of the area, but travelers passing through on the river.  Any way you figure it, 500 to 1,000 is a significant percent of the sparse population of the region in that time, which numbered no more than 15,000 – including every white settler, black slave, and redskin.

 

“Many previous publications have remarked on the low number of fatalities attributable to the New Madrid earthquakes.  Some sources have placed the number of deaths on land at less than a dozen and have not added to this any estimate of deaths on the river.  As for Native Americans, it does not appear that anyone has included these mortalities, which were considerable.  By attempting to account for everyone, as we have done here, an entirely different picture emerges….”   (Stewart and Knox. The Earthquake America Forgot. 1995,  p. 207-209.)

 

USGS: “In the winter of 1811-12, the central Mississippi Valley was struck by three of the most powerful earthquakes in U.S. history. Even today, this region has more earthquakes than any other part of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. Government agencies, universities, and private organizations are working to increase awareness of the earthquake threat and to reduce loss of life and property in future shocks.

 

“The 400 terrified residents in the town of New Madrid (Missouri) were abruptly awakened by violent shaking and a tremendous roar. It was December 16, 1811, and a powerful earthquake had just struck. This was the first of three magnitude-8 earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks to rock the region that winter.

 

“Survivors reported that the earthquakes caused cracks to open in the earth’s surface, the ground to roll in visible waves, and large areas of land to sink or rise. The crew of the New Orleans (the first steamboat on the Mississippi, which was on her maiden voyage) reported mooring to an island only to awake in the morning and find that the island had disappeared below the waters of the Mississippi River. Damage was reported as far away as Charleston, South Carolina, and Washington, D.C….”  (USGS.  “The Mississippi Valley – “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.’)

 

Sources

 

Clay, Shannon, B.  “The Father of Waters Runs Backwards,” pp. 164-168 in Still Casting Shadows: A Shared Mosaic of U.S. History.  Lincoln, NE:  iUniverse, 2006.  Accessed at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=hBY_tIqFBysC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 

Hendricks. Nancy. “New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812,” The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. Nov 18, 2009 update. Accessed at:  http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2218

 

Hunter, Frances. “William Clark and the New Madrid Earthquakes.” Frances Hunter’s American Heroes Blog, 11-19-2009. Accessed 11-23-2016 at: https://franceshunter.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/william-clark-and-the-new-madrid-earthquakes/

 

Stewart, David, and Ray Knox. The Earthquake America Forgot: 2,000 Temblors in Five Months… Marble Hill, MO: Gutenberg-Richter Publications, 1995. Partially digitized by Google at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=v-bfoPtOnW4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 

Additional Reading

 

New Madrid, Missouri. “Earthquakes of 1811-1812.” Accessed 11-23-2016 at:  http://www.new-madrid.mo.us/Index.aspx?NID=102

 

1812. S. Geological Survey. History Earthquakes. “Mew Madrid 1811-1812 Earthquakes.” 10-31-2012 modification. Accessed 11-23-2016 at: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/events/1811-1812.php

 

[1] Stewart and Knox write “…when the town of Big Prairie disappeared in Arkansas, Indians along the river there also reported the submergence of one or more Indian villages with complete loss of life.”

[2] Stewart and Knox, pp. 207-209.)

[3] Stewart/Knox write “There were probably many Indian villages that were sunk and flooded like Little Prairie…” (For the purpose of our tally we convert  into >10, though Stewart and Knox speculate that hundreds died.

[4] If many families in western KY lost a family member, as Stewart and Knox write, it appears to us that if one considers this as well as unrecorded White and Native American deaths, then it  seems there were at least ten deaths.

[5] For the purpose of a tally, we convert “many” into >5.

[6] Stewart and Knox, pp. 207-209.)

[7] Stewart and Knox (pp. 207-209) write “A number of people died at New Madrid during the dark hours of February 7^th when the waters of the Mississippi rushed over the land in a giant wave at the mouth of St. John’s Bayou, but no one know how many.” (For the purpose of a tally, we convert “a number of people” into >3.)

[8] “…at least a hundred lives were probably lost over the second waterfall at New Madrid between February 7 and 10, as witnessed by those on shore.”

[9] Stewart/Knox write :…in the formation of Reelfoot Lake, Indians say that a village was drowned and everyone killed.  We should probably take them at their word on this instead of considering such a report as ‘legend.’)

[10] “There were…nineteen lost boats of the Vincent Nolte convoy, which could account for another 100 lives lost.”

[11] “Nolte’s boats weren’t the only ones to disappear below New Madrid that day. These, plus scattered records of other boats lost, might add up to another 100-200.”

–42  Rappaport and Partagas. The Deadliest Atlantic Tropical Cyclones, 1492-1994. 1995, p. 24.

 

New Jersey                 (21)

–21  Rose In Bloom, 20 miles off Barnegat Inlet, NJ. [27 people survived.] Hairr 2008, p. 35.

–21  Rose in Bloom, ~Barnegat Inlet NJ.  NWS FO, Philly/Mt. Holly. “Hist. Weather Facts…,”

–21           “                                “               Nash.  Darkest Hours. 1977, p. 678.

North Carolina          (~5)

—>10  Wilmington and vicinity and coastal waters. (Blanchard.)[1]

—    1  Core Banks near Portsmouth (Outer Banks). Body washed ashore.

—  >5  Wilmington and vicinity. Hairr 2008, p. 33, citing a Wilmington newspaper.[2]

 

Narrative Information

 

Hairr: “The Twin Hurricanes of 1806.

 

“The year 1806 was an active one along the Carolina coast. Two powerful hurricanes came ashore, ravaging the area between Charleston and the Outer Banks. Ships were wrecked, buildings damaged and crops ruined. Lighthouses at Hatteras and Shell Castle were temporarily put out of commission, while the lighthouse at Georgetown was totally destroyed.

 

“The first hurricane to affect the coast that year made its presence felt in South Carolina on August 21, 1806. The storm passed by offshore, giving Charleston only a glancing blow, so damage was not particularly catastrophic. Several ships were wrecked or driven ashore in the harbor, including a United States Revenue Service Cutter. Farther up the coast, at the mouth of Winyah Bay, the storm’s winds blew down the wooden Georgetown Lighthouse.

 

“One observer in Georgetown noted the conditions of the damage near his town left in the storm’s wake. ‘The crops on [end of p. 31] the upland have been considerable damaged, and the roads rendered almost impassable from the number of trees blown across them. Our town suffered but little damage.’

 

“The storm continued north and made landfall on the North Carolina coast on August 22, 1806, near the mouth [end of p. 32] of the Cape Fear River. At Smithville, several ships were damaged and much property destroyed, including the wharves lining the riverbank. One eyewitness in this town reported: ‘Happily no lives were lost, but we fear much damage has happened along the coasts and to the crops, it being allowed to be the severest hurricane and longest storm ever known here.’

 

“Upriver at Wilmington, the slow-moving storm caused widespread destruction. The winds began blowing at hurricane force on Friday morning, August 22, and continued until finally subsiding on Saturday afternoon. ‘We have witnessed the most violent and destructive storm of wind and rain ever before known here,’ a writer for the Wilmington newspaper wrote…. [p. 33.]

 

“One of the casualties of this storm was the Governor Williams, a U.S. Revenue cutter that was dismasted and driven ashore near Bald Head Island during the hurricane. Thomas Coles and Jonathon Price were using the vessel as they mapped the coast, and were at the time charting the Frying Pan Shoals. The other cutter, Diligence, was in port in Wilmington and suffered no damage. The Governor Williams was soon thereafter refloated, and the party continued their work, heading north up the coast to work in the vicinity of Ocracoke.

 

“The center of the storm passed over New Bern, as an account of the storm written there notes that the winds began blowing Friday out of the northeast and ‘shifted about to every point of the compass. Damage at this city, however, was not extensive.’ Most of the fierce winds and rains apparently stayed east and south of the city.

 

“The hurricane emerged back over the water between Cape Henry and Cape Hatteras, headed northeast up the coast. Norfolk, Virginia, reported damaging winds and heavy rains. Farther north, on the Massachusetts coast, it was estimated that the storm dumped over thirty inches of rain at Edgartown, on Martha’s Vineyard.

 

“The most notable casualty from this storm was the ship Rose In Bloom, which was buffeted by the heavy seas and winds while en route from Charleston to New York. It had safely passed the treacherous waters of the Outer Banks, but on Sunday, August 24, 1806, twenty miles off [end of p. 34] Barnegat Inlet, New Jersey, the ship was struck by a wave that ‘threw her on her beam ends.’ Twenty-one of the forty-eight people on board perished….

 

“After the storm moved on, many vessels were discovered wrecked upon the sandy shores of North Carolina. The identities of most were unknown, as they were ‘broken in pieces’ and their remains had been deposited on the beach. Among those identified on the Bogue Banks were the Adolphus and the Atlantic….Folks on the Core Banks near Portsmouth [Outer Banks] made some interesting finds: ‘The corpse of a man who perished in the storm has drifted ashore, but so much eaten by the fishes that he cannot be known.’….” [p. 36] (Hairr 2008)

 

NWS FO, Philly/Mt. Holly: “Aug 23 …1806…A hurricane of great size and destructive power raged along the Atlantic coast from the 21st to the 24th. As the slow moving storm gained forward speed, shipping suffered severely. The coastal ship “Rose in Bloom” upset during the morning in the NE gales off Barnegat Inlet, NJ, with the loss of 21 of the 49 persons aboard. This disaster received wide national publicity. (EAH).” (NWS FO, Philly/Mt. Holly. “Hist. Weather Facts…,”  10-17-2005.)

 

Rappaport and Partagas: “Appendix 1. Atlantic tropical cyclones causing at least 25 deaths.

“[No.] 202. Offshore US E coast  23 Aug 1806  42.”[3]

 

Rubillo: “The coastal hurricanes of 1806….This storm made landfall near Cape Fear in North Carolina. A local newspaper there described it as the ‘most violent and destructive storm of wind and rain ever known here.’[4] That is a powerful assertion coming, as it did, from someone living near the ‘graveyard of ships’ — the point along the coast where the Gulf Stream (which nurtures and drives hurricanes) collides with the cold waters of the Labrador Current flowing from the opposite direction. This hurricane ‘blew with utmost violence’ for over twenty-four hours before abating. ‘The tide rose to a height hitherto unknown and ‘when the wind shifted to southwest it seemed to threaten universal destruction’.’[5] ….” (Rubillo 2006, pp. 54-55.)

 

Sources

 

Hairr, John. The Great Hurricanes of North Carolina. Charleston: History Press, 2008.

 

Nash, Jay Robert. Darkest Hours – A Narrative Encyclopedia of Worldwide Disasters from Ancient Times to the Present. New York: Pocket Books, Wallaby, 1977, 792 pages.

 

National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office, Philadelphia/Mount Holly. “Historical Weather Facts for the Philadelphia/Mt. Holly, NJ Forecast Area.” Mount Holly, NJ: NWS FO, Oct 17, 2005 update. Accessed at: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/phi/hist_phi.html#0311

 

Rappaport, Edward N. and Jose Fernandez-Partagas. The Deadliest Atlantic Tropical Cyclones, 1492-1994 (NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS NHC-47). Coral Gables, FL: National Hurricane Center, National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, January 1995, 42 pages. Accessed 8-20-2017 at:  http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/NWS-NHC-1995-47.pdf

 

Rubillo, Tom. Hurricane Destruction in South Carolina: Hell and High Water. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2006.

 

 

[1] We surmise that at least ten people must have died based on statements that (1) five died in Wilmington and vicinity, (2) one body washed ashore on Core Banks, and (3) after the storm passed “many vessels were discovered wrecked upon the sandy shores of North Carolina.” (We make assumption that at least four lives were thus lost). In addition, it should be noted that Rappaport and Partagas note 42 deaths while identifying only 21 (Rose In Bloom).

[2] “….Mr. Isaac Baldwin was killed by the falling of an old burnt wall, and we hear that several Negroes have been killed and one drowned on plantations in the vicinity.” [Blanchard note: in order to add to the tabulation we convert “several” to >3.

[3] Cites: Chapman, D. J. “Our southern summer storm.” Report from National Weather Service, Norfolk, Virginia.

[4] Cites: Wilmington Gazette, (Wilmington, NC), August 26, 1806.

[5] Cites: Ludlum, Early American Hurricanes, p. 56.

— 169  Blanchard tally based on breakouts below.

Alabama                     (   1)

—    1  Greensboro                               Augustin.  History of Yellow Fever, 1909, 442.

New York                   (   3)

—    3  NYC at Marine Hospital.         US MHS 1896, 433.

Pennsylvania              (   3)

—    3  Philadelphia                              US MHS 1896, 433.

South Carolina          (162)

–162  Charleston                                Keating 1879, 82; Sternberg 1908, 719; USMHS 1896, 433

–162   “  NYT. “Yellow Fever. Epidemics in Charleston, S.C. – Statistics from 1700.” 9-18-1871

–162  Ramsay. “Medical History From 1670-1808,” Ramsay’s History of SC, 1858, p. 47.

 

Narrative Information

 

Ramsay: “For forty-four years after 1748, there was no epidemic attack of this disease [yellow fever], though there were occasionally in different summers a few sporadic cases of it. In the year 1792 a new era of the yellow fever commenced. It raged in Charlestown in that year, and in 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797, 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1804, and 1807. The number of deaths from it in these, its worst years, were…In 1799, 239; in 1800, 184; in 1802, 96; in 1804, 148; in 1807, 162.”

 

Sources

 

Augustin, George. History of Yellow Fever. New Orleans: Published for the Author by Search & Pfaff Ltd., 1909; General Books reprint, Memphis, TN, 2010. 1909 copy digitized at: http://archive.org/stream/historyofyellowf00auguuoft#page/n4/mode/1up

 

Keating, J. M. A History of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 in Memphis, Tenn. Memphis, TN: Howard Association, 1879. Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=WEIJAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

New York Times. “Yellow Fever. Epidemics in Charleston, S.C. – Statistics from 1700.” 9-18-1871. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FB0C13F938541A7493CAA81782D85F458784F9

 

Ramsay, David (M.D.). Ramsay’s History of South Carolina, From its First Settlement in 1670 to the Year 1808. Published by W. J. Duffie, Newberry, SC, printed in Charleston by Walker, Evans & Co., 1858. Digitized by archive.org and accessed 9-11-2016 at: https://archive.org/stream/ramsayshistorys00ramsgoog#page/n4/mode/2up

 

Sternberg, George M. (US Public Health Service, US Marine Hospital Service). “Yellow Fever,” pp. 39-72 in A Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences (Vol. 8), Albert Henry Buck, (Ed.). NY: William Wood & Co., 1894. Google digitized: http://books.google.com/books?id=Jr00AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

United States Marine-Hospital Service, Treasury Department. Annual Report of the Supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine-Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1895 (Document No. 1811). Washington, DC:  GPO, 1896.  Digitized by Google and accessed at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=aTnxAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

 

 

–~800  Thextremeweather. “Georgia major hurricane #1…Dredful Hurry-Cane of 1804.” 9-17-2011.[1]

–~500  Blanchard.[2]

–<500  Dunn and Miller. Atlantic Hurricanes (Revised Edition). 1964, p. 311.[3]

–>500  Drowning deaths along coast, not including building collapse/flying debris or maritime.[4]

–~500  NWS WFO Charleston, SC. Tropical Cyclone History for Southeast South Carolina…[5]

–>500  Rappaport/Partagas. The Deadliest Atlantic Tropical Cyclones, 1492-1994. 1995, p22.[6]

—  500  Rappaport/Partagas. The Deadliest Atlantic Tropical Cyclones, 1492-1994. 1995, p.22.[7]

–>500  Sandrik and Landsea (NOAA). Chronological Listing of Tropical Cyclones affecting…

–>260  Blanchard tally of locality breakouts below.

—  >84  Rappaport/Partagas. The Deadliest Atlantic Tropical Cyclones, 1492-1994. 1995, p22.[8]

 

Florida (Sep 7)                       (     ?)

–?  St. Augustine, Sep 7. “…rising winds at St. Augustine sank 10 out of 11 ships there.”[9]

Georgia (Sep 7-8)                  (>217)

— >217  Blanchard tally of breakouts below.

—   <70  Broughton Island, McIntosh Co. (so. of Savannah). Slaves in boat attempting mainland.[10]

—     19  Butler plantation. (Fraser, 2006, p. 44.)

—       ?  Cumberland Island.[11] [Hurricane made landfall in vicinity.] (Fraser, 2006, p. 42.)[12]

—       ?  Darien. [Landfall vicinity.][13] (Fraser, 2006, p. 42.)

–12-13  Fort Greene, Savannah. (Rubillo, p. 52.)[14]

— >100  Hutchinson’s Island and vicinity. Slaves on plantations, especially rice plantations.[15]

—       ?  Jekyll Island. Landfall vicinity. (Fraser, 2006, p. 42.)

—       5  Ossabaw Island, Sep 8. Brig Reward of Portsmouth, NH, grounds.[16]

—       ?  Saint Simons Island. [Landfall vicinity.] (Fraser, 2006, p. 42.)

—       3  Savannah. Falling houses; man, 2 children. Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, Oct 10, p. 4.[17]

—       5  Sunbury (south of Savannah). Slaves of Mr. Cubbedge; drownings/hit by flying debris.

—       2  Wilmington Island.[18] Hannah Proctor Screven, wife of rice planter, and her infant son.[19]

South Carolina (Sep 7-9)      (  >13)

–4  Ashley River, Charleston vicinity. Drownings; canoe of slaves capsized. (Fraser, p. 49.)[20]

–1  Charleston. Man killed by falling chimney of William Veitch home. (Fraser, 2006. p. 49.)

–5  Daufuskie Island.[21] Drowning; slaves of Mr. Hopkins, owner of plantation on the island.[22]

–2  Georgetown, Sampit River. Slaves in canoe drown after it was upset. (Fraser, 2006, p. 52.)

–1  Sullivan’s Island. Boy. (Charleston City Gazette, 9-10-1804 in Rubillo, p. 54.)

Maritime                                (  >30)

—    1  Brig Consolation, SC coast. Wave knocks boat over; sailor lost before righted.[23]

—    7  Schooner Favourite capsizes off shoals of Cape Romain, SC. (Fraser, 2006, p. 50.)

—>10  Schooner Liberty lost with all aboard. (Fraser 2006, p. 41.)[24]

—    2  Schooner Patsy. Two hands — William Dabney (white) and John Planter (black).[25]

—>10  Schooner Traveller lost with all on board.

—    ?  Ship Columbus (full-rigged), sank at Charleston, SC.[26]

Narrative Information

 

Dunn and Miller, Appendix B: “Table 28 Tropical Cyclones in the South Atlantic States — Carolinas and Georgia.” ….

 

“1804  Sept. 7  Ga., S.C. [Area]  Extreme [Intensity]  More than 500 drowned.” P. 311.

 

Fraser: “A Major Hurricane, 1804…. [p. 38.]

 

“The first great storm of the new century crashed into Antigua, St. Kitts, and St. Bartholomew on the morning of September 3. It raged for over twenty-fur hours. At St. Kitts every ship in the harbor (about a hundred) was ‘entirely lost.’….Wreckage of vessels littered the beaches of the Windward Islands.

 

“Fueled by warm waters, the massive hurricane moved west-northwest. It crossed the western end of Puerto Rico, sinking numerous vessels there, swept by Turks Island,[27] and brushed the southeast Bahamas on September 4…. [p. 39]

 

“The tropical cyclone gained strength and curved toward the American coastline. High winds lashed St. Augustine, Florida, on September 6-7, leaving afloat only one of the ten vessels in the harbor…..

 

“After crippling and sinking dozens of vessels far offshore, the hurricane closed over those sailing near the mainland. On that storm Friday [Sep 8]….some leagues north of Tybee Island, between Charleston and Kiawah Island…the Liberty…was caught in the full fury of the hurricane. With rigging, sails, mast, and spars torn away, the vessel finally capsized. Driven keel up into the breakers of Kiawah Island, the sloop was destroyed. To those who found the wreckage and salvaged the contents, it was ‘a painful certainty’ that everyone aboard perished.[28]…. [pp. 40-41.]

 

“The crashing sea inundated most of Jekyll Island…. [p. 43.]

 

“Broughton Island was a small, low-lying island, about six miles long and two miles at its widest point, developed by Henry Laurens for rice growing….The Altamaha River separated Broughton Island from General’s Island on the north. Buttermilk Sound separated it on the south from Little St. Simons Island. About three-quarters of Broughton Island was marshland, with its eastern end exposed to Altamaha Sound and the sea beyond. An embankment encircled the rice fields that were intersected by ditches. A broad and deep canal with a small bridge separated the rice fields from the plantation house and slave quarters at the western end of the island. This was also the site of a solidly constructed rice barn that was to be used as a refuge in the event of a storm…. [pp. 43-44.]

 

“….the overseer [of slaves] [was instructed] to move the slaves into the rice barn at the first indication of a storm. For unknown reasons the overseer hesitated…By the time efforts were made to get the slaves to safety, ocean waves driven by hurricane winds had breached the embankment built to keep saltwater out of the rice fields. These now flooded. The wide canal spilled over its banks….Terrified, the men, women, and children tried to cross the now turbulent and boiling waters of the canal in rice flats. More than seventy drowned. Swept out to sea, their bodies were never recovered….

 

“During the hurricane, slaves…perished. Major Butler lost nineteen slaves by drowning. On St. Catherines Island, two slaves owned by Mr. Owens drowned…. [p. 44.]

 

“Winds sent waves racing up the Savannah River, capsizing vessels in the harbor and sending others smashing into the wharves from one end of the city’s bluff to the other. The ship Mary slammed into the wharf opposite Fort Wayne. The revenue cutter Thomas Jefferson landed on Hunter and Minis’s Wharf, the ship General Jackson collided with McCradie’s Wharf, the sloop Liberty sank off Howard’s Wharf, and the brig Minerva came ashore at the Coffee House Wharf.[29] When vessels broke apart, their rigging and hulls knocked away planking on the wharves, leaving pilings exposed. On Williamson and Morel’s Wharf, the brig Hiram was impaled on the pilings. Some vessels were tossed so high onto the wharves that it appeared they ‘were built there.’ Other ships, sloops, and brigs sank at wharfside. Dozens of smaller creek and river craft littered the area below Savannah’s bluff. The fish market, poultry market, and stores of merchants along the wharves collapsed into a shambles of wood and tabby that tumbled into the river….After seventeen hours, the hurricane…passed.”[30] (Fraser, Walter J. Jr. Lowcountry Hurricanes: Three Centuries of Storms at Sea and Ashore. 2006.)

 

Ludlum: “The Great Gale of 1804 in Georgia and Carolina.

“Of the three major hurricanes in 1804 which generated in the West Indies after September 1^st, two aimed severe blows at the American mainland. At St. Kitts ‘the worst hurricane since 1772’ struck on 3 September, and then next day moved west-northwestward to rake the western end of Puerto Rico where many vessels were sunk.[31] The storm was reported in the south-eastern Bahamas on the 4^th when Turks Island, always a check-point for American-bound hurricanes, had damaging winds.[32]

 

“In approaching the American coastline, the hurricane had already commenced to recurved to the northward while striking a glancing blow at the north Florida coast. St. Augustine experienced a very severe northeast gale on the 6-7^th, the tide rose to an uncommon height, and only nine vessels in the harbor rode it out, though ‘the town received no very serious damage.’[33] The hurricane also lashed at the Nassau area in the Bahamas on the 6^th.

 

“The low-lying coastal plantations of Georgia and the thriving seaport of Savannah, which had not been hit by a great hurricane since 1752, lay in the direct path of the whirling winds as the whole mass turned more and more to the north….

 

“The wind at Savannah, coming from the northeast at first, but later varying occasionally to the north, raged for 17 hours. The tide surged over the sand bars, into the bays, up the rivers, and over the wharves — over everything that was less than 10 feet above sea level. So powerful was the gale, the Georgia Republican reported that the rain had a saline taste from being mixed with sea spray, and sand picked up by the gale was blown into the upper stories of houses as high as 30 feet above ground level.[34] ….

 

“David Ramsay, who made a particular study of this storm, states that the gale was not felt north of Wilmington [NC], but he appears to have been in error on this point. The extent of the gale inland may be judged from reports that trees were blown down as far as 100 miles from the sea coast. Near the entrance to Cape Fear River a brig, the Wilmington Packet, was cast away on Bald Point during the height of the blow after striking Frying Pan Shoals in ‘the gale of the 8^th.’[35]

 

“Little information is at hand about the storm from North Carolina to New England. At Norfolk the wind was east-northeast on the 7-8^th with a shift to east on the afternoon of the 8^th, and to east-southeast early on the 9^th.[36] If these winds are an accurate portrayal of conditions at Norfolk, it would appear that the storm center moved west of that place.

 

“Southeastern New England had a severe blow on the 11-12^th of September. Several ships were sunk in Boston harbor, while at Salem the steeple of the new South Church of Mr. Hopkins was demolished by the high wind on the afternoon of the 11^th.[37] Whether this was a separate tropical storm or part of the Georgia-Carolina Gale of the 7^th is an open question….” (Ludlum, David M. Early American Hurricanes 1492-1870. Boston: American Met. Society, 1963, pp. 53-55.) [Blanchard note: Ludlum does not provide an estimate of lives lost.]

 

Rappaport and Partagas: “[No.] 57. Georgia, SC, NC  7-9 Sep 1804  >500, 500, >84.”

 

Rubillo: “….This storm originated in the West Indies, devastated St. Kitts, sunk many vessels as it crossed the western end of Puerto Rico, passed to the southeast of the Bahamas and took aim at the southeastern coast. It savaged the plantations of the Georgia coast and the city of Savannah….Fort Greene at the entrance to the Savannah River was leveled, ‘all buildings destroyed, and thirteen lives lost. Muskets were scattered all over the island. Cases of canister shot were carried from one hundred to two hundred feet, and a bar of lead of 300 pounds was likewise removed to a considerable distance. A cannon weighing 4,900 pounds is said to have been carried thirty to forty feet from its position.’

 

“Nearby Broughton Island was totally flooded. ‘[U]pwards of seventy negroes, the property of William Brailsford, were drowned by the oversetting of a boat in which they attempted to escape from the island to the main.’…. [p. 52.]

 

“As the storm progressed up the South Carolina coast, its eye struck at Beaufort. The town and surrounding area was left in ruins. All of the dwellings on Bay Point were washed away. Crops were destroyed as a five-foot tidal surge swept across the cotton fields. The causeway that had been built during the previous seven years was washed away in just a few minutes, leaving none of it on the mainland side and only about half on the island side….”[38] (Rubillo, p. 53.)

 

Sandrik and Landsea:

“Year: 1804

“Date(s): 7-8 September

“Principle Affected Area(s):  Northeast Florida – hurricane

Northeast Florida coastal waters – major hurricane

Upper Georgia – major hurricane

Upper Georgia coastal waters – major hurricane

Lower Georgia – major hurricane

Lower Georgia coastal waters – major hurricane

“Landfall Point(s): St. Simons Island

 

“Remarks: “Great Gale of 1804”, sometimes called “the Antigua-Charleston Hurricane of 1804″.

 

“Aaron Burr noted in a correspondence that St. Simons Island was flooded with water 7′ above normal and described the eye transiting his location. The tide rose 10′ above MSL on the Savannah waterfront, approximately 60 miles north of landfall, and in the same area Gunboat #1 was driven 7 miles over marshes finally coming to rest in a cornfield on Whitemarsh Island. The storm was severe at Dungeness, on Cumberland Island, and the severely flooded Pablo Creek (currently the intracoastal waterway) inhibiting Aaron Burr’s travel to St. Augustine on the 10^th . More than 500 persons drowned.

 

“The Spanish Quasada Battery, at the mouth of the St. Johns River, was destroyed by the storm surge and had to be rebuilt. Dunn and Miller list this storm as, “Minimal for land areas and intense offshore for the northeast Florida coast on the 7^th ”, yet Marx (1994) describes eight ships being sunk in St. Augustine harbor “during a fierce northeast gale.”

 

“Based on the above accounts and the Marx report, clearly the damage in northeast Florida was greater than previous commentators accounted for and this storm was more significant in northeast Florida than indicated in past studies.

 

“ It seems reasonable that the storm moved on a northwest course just offshore finally making landfall at St. Simons Island and Darien….

 

“Summary: This storm will be counted as, a hurricane for northeast Florida and a major hurricane for Upper Georgia, Lower Georgia, the Northeast Florida coastal waters, Upper Georgia coastal waters and Lower Georgia coastal waters.” (Sandrik and Landsea)

 

Weather Prediction Center, NOAA: “September 8, 1804 (Antigua-Charleston Storm): This system was first spotted near the Northern Leeward Islands on the 3^rd and moved west-northwest, to very near the Florida coast. It then moved inland near Charleston with disastrous consequences, before moving northeast along the coast of the Atlantic Seaboard.” (WPC, NCEP, NOAA. “Early Nineteenth Century [Hurricanes].” Accessed 8-16-2017.)

 

Newspapers

 

Sep 10 on Charleston: “Charleston, September 10. “Gale of Wind in the Harbour of Charleston. On Friday night last [Sep 7], about 11 o’clock, a dreadful gale of wind came on in this harbour, & continued to blow with the most extreme violence until Sunday morning [Sep 9], one o’clock; the wind was first at north east, in the course of Saturday morning it changed to east, and in the afternoon to southeast. It is impossible at this time for us to describe accurately the destruction caused by this gale; the whole of the wharves from Gadsden’s on Cooper river, to the extent of South Bay, have received very considerable damage, the heads and sides of most of them are washed away. Of the vessels in the harbour, but three or four have escaped without injury, several are totally lost and many more are much damaged.

 

“At seven o’clock on Saturday morning, the period of low water, the tide was as high as it generally is at spring-tides; it appeared that during the preceding ebb but little water had left the rivers; at twelve o’clock it was from two to three feet higher than it had been seen for many years, and made a complete breach over the wharves and drove many small vessels on them, where they now lie. On General Gadsden’s wharf several stores were washed or blown down, and their contents of rice and cotton much damaged and some lost.

 

“On South Bay, the whole of the bulwark made against the water is in ruins and the house of Mr. William Veitch, built on made ground was washed down — the new street made to continue East Bay to White Point is greatly damaged, the sea made breaches through it in many places. On Blake’s wharf, a brick building occupied as a scale and counting house, was beat down by the bow sprit of the ship Lydia.

 

“In the city no other damage is done than many houses which were covered with slate, are in part unroofed, and most of the trees in the streets and many fences are blown down….

 

“A negro man was killed by the fall of Mr. Veitch’s chimney on South Bay, this is the only life lost in the city, that we have heard of. Most of the families residing in South Bay, left their dwellings in the course of Saturday, expecting that if the gale continued it would be unsafe to remain in them.

 

“Many of the coasting craft and wood boats, are drove ashore on the marshes nad in the heads of the docks, and are much injured.

 

“This gale was more violent and of much longer continuance that the one which took place in 1783, from the description given of the hurricane in 1752, we believe that to have been the most dreadful, though it is to be feared that the loss of property is now much greater than at any former period.” (Maryland Herald and Hager’s-Town Weekly Advertiser. “Gale of Wind in the Harbour of Charleston,” 10-3-1804, p. 2.)

 

Sep 12 on Savannah: “Savannah, (G).) Sept. 12. On Saturday last [Sep 8] we experienced one of the severest gales of wind, that has happened within the recollection of our oldest inhabitants. In fact, few…among us, can recollect ever to have seen any thing, the effects of which was so destructive, as has been the late hurricane. The storm commenced on Friday night [Sep 7], with a degree of violence by no means unusual or alarming. On Saturday morning it had in some measure abated; but about 9 o’clock its violence increased until four or five o’clock, when it appeared to have gotten to its height, and continued to rage with dreadful fury until about ten o’clock, when it began to subside; during the early part of the day the wind was from the north; but at bout the middle, and during the latter part of the day, was shifting almost continually from N. to N.E.

 

“Confined as the inhabitants were to their houses, & unaccustomed to such scenes, the imagination wandered uncontrolled over the most highly coloured pictures of destruction and devastation, and fancy presented to the mind’s eye the most horrid and awful consequences. But when the morning came, and the storm had so far subsided as to suffer the inhabitants to look about them, it was found that busy fancy ever apt to exaggerate, had formed but an imperfect picture of the dreadful scene of havoc and destruction. The trees in every part of the city were prostrated. The chimneys of a great many houses were blown down, and several houses themselves. The steeple of the Presbyterian meeting, and part of the walls of the Episcopal church were blown down. The wharves from one end of the city to the other were torn up, and almost every store which was erected at any distance from the foot of the bluff, was either totally destroyed or much torn to pieces, as to spoil every thing contained within them. Every vessel in the harbour was thrown upon the wharves, except such as were totally destroyed, and large ships are laying on some of the highest wharves. There was no passing from one wharf to another; lumber, cotton, tobacco, hogsheads of rum, sugar, and in fact every article of domestic and foreign produce, were strewed from one end to the other of them.

 

“We have heard but of three deaths in the city, a man and two children, who were killed by the falling of houses, but humanity shudders in attempting to describe the sufferings of the people on Hutchinson’s island and other rice plantations in the vicinity of this place. All the buildings upon these places, almost without exception were swept away in the general destruction, and many lives were lost among the negroes and overseers with their families. The loss of negroes from the different plantations is computed to exceed one hundred. Mr. Campbell, Mr. Oliver, Mr. Young, Mr. Procter, Mr. Smith, Mr. Telfair, and Mr. Wards, are among the number who suffered most considerably by the loss of negroes.

 

“Fort Green, on Cockspur island, is entirely destroyed, and most of the men drowned; the officers were fortunately in town and a few of the privates….” (Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, PA. “Savannah, (G.) Sept. 12.” 10-10-1804, p. 4.)

 

Sep 14 on Fort Greene at Savannah: “Savannah, (Georgia) Sept. 14. We have since our last (for this account see our last page of this week) obtained a more particular account respecting the fate of the soldiers who were at for Greene. From the accounts they give of their situation, it is truly distressing. About 10 o’clock on Saturday morning, the water had covered the whole surface of Cockspur island — The soldiers, three of their wives, with two of their children, and a son of capt. Nicholl, ascended in the house as the water rose; but this was so extremely rapid, that it was with difficulty they were enabled to get on the roof of the house. Here they continued for some time, and the wind blowing so high that it was as much as they could do to keep in this situation; add to this, the incessant fall of rain, prevented them from seeing twenty yards in any direction; about one o’clock, P.M. the house gave way, and every person on the roof floated with it; not long after the roof parted, and they were all separated, some seized hold of part of the roof, others got plank or scantling, which were afloat from a vessel that had previously gone to pieces below them, loaded with lumber; and in this situation those who were saved (eight in number) drifted on Wilmington island, after having remained 7 hours in the water — during the time they were in the water, the lumber to which they held sometimes would be carried out of the water some distance by the violence of the wind, and some were very much bruised by pieces falling on them, being previously raised in this way. The survivors suppose that some of their comrades were killed by blows from pieces of lumber — one of the soldiers by the name of Lacy, was drowned in attempting to save the live of captain Nicholl’s son, another was saved by drifting on the top of a tree, and came in twenty four hours after the rest.

 

“Lieutenant Platt, commanding officer of the fort, with five of his men, were saved by a fortunate accident. Finding it absolutely necessary to have fresh water, he went with his boat and hands to procure some, on Friday morning, when he came high enough up the river to obtain it, the gale increased so much from N.E. and a strong flood tide, that he was obliged to come to this city, and after that it was impossible for him to return; many of the soldiers who escaped are very much bruised and wounded by nails [?unclear], splinters, &c.

 

“The men who were lost, were

 

Reuben Armstrong, Corporal.

William Crafts, Musician.

Daniel Lacy, Private

Thomas Moore, Private,

John Glynn, Private

Samuel M. Williams, Private

James S. Nicholl, son of capt. Nicholl.

 

(Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, PA. “Savannah, (Georgia) Sept. 14.” 10-10-1804, p. 2.)

 

Sep 17 on St. Augustine, FL: “Charleston (S.C.) Sept. 17. Captain Franklin, who arrived on Saturday from St. Augustine, informs that the gale was very severe at that place — the tide rose to an uncommon height — of nine vessels that were in the harbor, one only (the schooner St. Trinidad) rode out the storm — some of those that went on shore, however, had been got off, and it was expected that most of them would be saved. The town had received no very serious damage.” (Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, PA. “Charleston (S.C.) Sept. 17.” 10-10-1804, p. 2.)

 

Sep 18 on Beaufort, SC: “Captain Bythwood, from Beaufort (S.C.) furnishes the disagreeable intelligence of the damage sustained at and adjacent to that place by the late storm. The Port Republic Bridge company have suffered a very severe loss; almost the whole of their labour for seven years, and at a great expense, they have beheld swept away in the short space of a few hours : all the causeway on the mainside, and about half of that on the side on the island, has been destroyed. A number of chimneys in the town were blown down; and Mrs. Agnew has suffered a very considerable loss in her out houses, &c.

 

“All the small bridges, causeways, &c. adjacent to Beaufort, have been swept away, and the roads rendered quite impassable.

 

“So high did the tide rise, as to overflow the cotton plantations in many places to the depth of four or five feet; and it is the general estimation that cotton enough will not be preserved for seed.

 

“All the dwelling houses at Bay Point were swept away by the … [word unclear] of the tide and wind excepting that of Captain John Jenkins, the standing of which was, fortunately, the means of preserving the lives of all the negroes at that place; the white inhabitants took to an open boat, and after being … [word unclear] in this state thro’ the night, they were fortunate enough to get safely on shore in the morning.

 

“Of three vessels which were lying at Beaufort two went on shore….Fortunately no lives have been lost….”  (Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, PA. “September 18.” 10-10-1804, p. 2.)

 

Sources

 

Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, PA. “Charleston (S.C.) Sept. 17.” 10-10-1804, p. 2. Accessed 8-19-2017 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/adams-centinel-oct-10-1804-p-2/?tag

 

Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, PA. “Savannah, (G.) Sept. 12.” 10-10-1804, p. 4. Accessed 8-16-2017 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/gettysburg-adams-centinel-oct-10-1804-p-4/?tag

 

Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, PA. “Savannah, (Georgia) Sept. 14.” 10-10-1804, p. 2. Accessed 8-19-2017 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/adams-centinel-oct-10-1804-p-2/?tag

 

Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, PA. “September 18.” 10-10-1804, p. 2. Accessed 8-19-2017 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/adams-centinel-oct-10-1804-p-2/?tag

 

Dunn, Gordon E. and Banner I. Miller. Atlantic Hurricanes (Revised Edition).  Baton Rouge LA:  Louisiana State University Press, 1964, 377 pages.

 

Fraser, Walter J. Jr. Lowcountry Hurricanes: Three Centuries of Storms at Sea and Ashore. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2006.

 

Ludlum, David M. Early American Hurricanes 1492-1870 (The History of American Weather). Boston, MA: American Meteorological Society, 1963. Digitized by The University of Texas; accessed 8-19-2017 at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=txu.059173023379471;view=1up;seq=9

 

Maryland Herald and Hager’s-Town Weekly Advertiser. “Gale of Wind in the Harbour of Charleston,” 10-3-1804, p. 2. Accessed 8-16-2017 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/hagerstown-maryland-herald-and-hagerstown-weekly-advertiser-oct-03-1804-p-2/

 

National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office, Charleston, SC. Tropical Cyclone History for Southeast South Carolina and Norther Portions of Southeast Georgia. Charleston, SC: NWS WFO, NOAA, US Dept. of Commerce, updated 12-22-2016. Accessed 8-17-2017 at: https://www.weather.gov/chs/TChistory

 

Rappaport, Edward N. and Jose Fernandez-Partagas. The Deadliest Atlantic Tropical Cyclones, 1492-1994 (NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS NHC-47). Coral Gables, FL: National Hurricane Center, National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, January 1995, 42 pages. Accessed 8-16-2017 at:  http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/NWS-NHC-1995-47.pdf

 

Rubillo, Tom. Hurricane Destruction in South Carolina: Hell and High Water. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2006.

 

Sandrik, Al (Senior Forecaster NOAA, NWS, Southern Region, Jacksonville) and Landsea, Christopher W. (NOAA/Hurricane Research Division, Miami). Chronological Listing of Tropical Cyclones affecting North Florida and Coastal Georgia 1565-1899. May 2003 update. Accessed 8-17-2017 at: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/history/

 

Thextremeweather.com (Bryan C. Schoonard and “HurricaneJunky” [no name provided]). “Georgia major hurricane #1: The Dredful Hurry-Cane of 1804.” 9-17-2011. Accessed 8-17-2017 at: http://www.thextremeweather.com/the-blogs/georgia-major-hurricane-1-the-dredful-hurry-cane-of-1804.html

 

Weather Prediction Center, National Centers for Environmental Prediction, National Weather Service, NOAA, U.S. Dept. of Commerce. “Early Nineteenth Century [Hurricanes].” Accessed 8-16-2017 at: http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/research/roth/vaerly19hur.htm

 

Wikipedia. “List of shipwrecks in 1804….7 September.” Accessed 8-20-2017 at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_1804#September

 

 

 

 

 

[1] “At least 500, (And this is a minimum figure) died on land drowning from the surge in Georgia nd South Carolina during the hurricane of 1804. About 90% of these deaths were slaves. This does not include more than 30 people who died in Savannah and Charleston from flying debris and falling chimneys, and it does not include at least 200 deaths in ships offshore in the Charleston and Savannah shipping lanes. So the death toll in GA/SC was ~800 people. I do not have the figures for how many died in the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico. Numerous ships east of the Bahamas disappeared as well.”

[2] Ours is not an estimate, but an acceptance of approximately 500 deaths noted by sources noted herein. We do not know the original source for 500 deaths. Additionally, we do not know if the original estimate included just sea surge drowning deaths onshore, or whether it also included wind-related deaths onshore or maritime deaths in surrounding waters. Thus, we do not feel comfortable accepting thextremeweather.com estimate of approximately 800 deaths (sea surge drownings onshore in GA and SC, wind-related trauma deaths in GA and SC, and maritime deaths in GA and SC vicinity waters).

[3] Writes: “More than 500 drowned.”

[4] Fraser 2006, p. 52: “It is estimated that along the coast more than five hundred people drowned — that does not include those who died because of falling or flying debris or the deaths at sea. The loss of life among the Lowcountry slave population perhaps accounted for as many as 90 percent of all deaths at sea and ashore.”

[5] “Strong hurricane skirted the GA and SC coasts. Produced considerable wind damage, severe storm surge flooding (about 3 feet higher than the storm in 1752) and around 500 deaths.”

[6] Cites: Dunn and Miller. Atlantic Hurricanes. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976, 377 pages;  Stevenson, J. D. History of Tropical Cyclones and North Carolina. National Weather Svc., Wilmington, NC, 1989.

[7] Cites: Chapman, D. J. Our Southern Summer Storm. National Weather Service Office, Norfolk, Virginia.

[8] Cites: Ludlum, D. M. Early American Hurricanes, 1492-1870. Boston: American Meteorological Society, 1963.

[9] Thextremeweather.com. “Georgia major hurricane #1: The Dredful Hurry-Cane of 1804.” 9-17-2011. Fraser writes “only one of the ten vessels in the harbor” was left afloat. (p. 40.) Neither source mentions loss of life.

[10] Fraser (page 44) writes that “Terrified…men, women, and children tried to cross the now turbulent and boiling waters of the canal [on Broughton Island] in rice flats. More than seventy drowned. Swept out to sea, their bodies were never recovered.”

[11] Cumberland Island is just off the coast of GA and is just north of St. Mary’s River, which marks FL/GA border.

[12] “After nightfall that evening and for the next twenty-four hours, the massive tropical cyclone lashed coastal Georgia and South Carolina, apparently making almost simultaneous landfalls at Cumberland, Jekyll, and St. Simons islands, Darien, and Beaufort.” [Cumberland is to the south of Jekyll which is south of Saint Simons.]

[13] Darien is north of Brunswick and Jekyll Island and just south of Sapelo Island.

[14] Thirteen deaths is from Rubillo. A newspaper article writes that “Fort Green, on Cockspur island, is entirely destroyed, and most of the men drowned; the officers were fortunately in town and a few of the privates.” (Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, PA. “Savannah, (G.) Sept. 12.” 10-10-1804, p. 4.) The Fraser account appears to indicate 12 deaths, but not without some ambiguity: “The twenty-one people in the structure [where soldiers, wives, children and four washerwomen had sought refuge] began moving to the second floor of the blockhouse as water poured into the fort’s interior. When water continued to rise, they climbed onto the roof, only to be blinded by wind-driven rain and sea spray. Down below, powerful waves moved a forty-eight-hundred-pound cannon more than thirty feet. Around 1:00 p.m. the blockhouse collapsed. The roof drifted away with its passengers, a flotilla of terrified men, women, and children. Waves quickly pounded the roof to pieces. Some held to portions of the roof; others grabbed planks and scantling from a vessel that had broken up on the shoals off Cockspur Island. About half were swept out to sea. Seven clung to bits of flotation and eventually washed ashore on Wilmington Island. Another survived when he drifted into a treetop on the island. Rolling and crashing swells sucked others under the waves to their deaths. Seven enlisted men perished; other soldiers were injured but survived. Of the wives and children, it is known that only Mrs. Abimael Nicoll was accounted for. When Private Daniel Lacy attempted to save Mrs. Nicoll’s youngest son, Charles, both drowned. (Cites: Charleston Courier, 9-10-1804; Lattimore, “Destruction of Fort Greene,” p. 2-7.

[15] “The loss of negroes from the different plantations is computed to exceed one hundred.” (Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, PA. “Savannah, (G.) Sept. 12.” 10-10-1804, p. 4.) [Blanchard note: Hutchinson Island is between Little Black River and Savannah River, opposite Savannah.] Fraser (2006, p. 47) writes: “Around 9:00 a.m. on September 8, winds from the north then northeast swept low-lying Hutchinson Island. Tides seven to ten feet higher than usual rushed in, submerging rice fields and carrying away buildings on the plantations of such prominent families as the Campbells, Olivers, Youngs, Proctors, Smiths, Telfairs, and Wards. Lives were lost. The Oshams, caretakers of one plantation, drowned. Upwards of one hundred slaves perished because no leader emerged to save them.” Cites: Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser, 9-12-1803; Georgia Republican and State Intelligencer, 9-14-1804; Charleston Courier, 9-15-1804 and 9-19-1804.

[16] “On Saturday night [Sep 8] in the gale, the brig Reward, of Portsmouth, captain Plummer, from Jamaica bound to Portsmouth (N.H.) went ashore on Osabaw island, cargo rum and molasses. Capt. P. Henry French, supercargo, Joseph Jones, Winthop Read and Andrew, a Dutch boy, were lost, the mate and one of the hands has arrived in town.” (Adams Centinel, Gettysburg, PA. “Savannah, (G.) Sept. 12.” 10-10-1804, p. 4.) [Blanchard note: a “supercargo” is a representative of a ship’s owner on board merchant ship.]

[17] Fraser (2006, p. 47) writes that the ten-year-old son and three-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Nelson, who had a house on the bay, died in a back room when a chimney collapsed. Fraser next notes that in a nearby house a Captain Webb died when a chimney fell into his house. Cites: Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser, 9-12-1803; Georgia Republican and State Intelligencer, 9-14-1804; Charleston Courier, 9-15-1804 and 9-19-1804.

[18] Near coastal SC border between Wilmington River to southwest and Bull River to the northeast.

[19] Fraser 2006, p. 46.

[20] Cites Charleston Courier, September 10-12, 1804.

[21] A sea island between Hilton Head Island, SC, and Savannah, GA.

[22] Fraser 2006, p. 48. Cites Charleston Courier, 9-22-1804.

[23] Fraser 2006, p. 51.

[24] Crew size/complement not noted, thus we guess at something on the order of ten or more.

[25] Fraser, at page 41, writes that the “Schooner Patsy, out of Norfolk, bound for St. Marys, battled fierce east-northeast winds fifty miles off Charleston until it was knocked over. Huge waves swept away two hands, William Dabney, ‘a white man,’ and John Planter, a black man. Surprisingly the schooner righted itself.”

[26] Wikipedia. List of shipwrecks in 1804. “7 September.”

[27] Turks and Caicos Islands are to northwest of Puerto Rico and southeast of The Bahamas.

[28] Cites: Charleston Courier, Sep 28, 1804; Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser, Oct 7, 1804.

[29] Cites: Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser, 9-12-1803; Georgia Republican and State Intelligencer, 9-14-1804; Charleston Courier, 9-15-1804 and 9-19-1804.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Cites: “Poulson’s Amer. Adv. (Phila.), 13 Oct 1804; N.Y. Post, 22 Oct 1804.”

[32] Cites: “S. L. Mitchill. Some Particulars of a Terrible Hurricane. Medical Repository (New York). 8, 354-365.”

[33] Cites: “Charleston, 17 Sept, Amer. Adv., 1 Oct 1804.”

[34] Cites: “Georgia Republican in Amer. Adv., 13 Oct 1804.”

[35] Cites: “Wilmington Gaz. In Amer. Adv., 6 Oct 1804.”

[36] Cites: “Public Ledger (Norfolk), 18 Sept 1804.”

[37] Cites: “Boston Weekly Magazine, 15 Sept 1804; William Bentley. Diary. 3, 110.”

[38] Cites: Davis, Matthew L. (ed.). Memoirs of Aaron Burr, quoted in Ludlum, Early American Hurricanes, p. 54.

–198  Blanchard tally based upon State break-outs below.

 

Brooklyn, NY                        (  40)

—     40  Putnam.  The World’s Progress: A Dictionary of Dates.  1851, p. 605.

–Some. “At the Wallabout.” Townsend. An Account of the Yellow… 1823, p. 369.

 

Charleston, SC          (148)

–148  NYT. “Yellow Fever. Epidemics in Charleston, S.C. – Statistics from 1700.” 9-18-1871.

–148  Sternberg 1908, p. 719.

–148  Ramsay. “Medical History From 1670-1808,” Ramsay’s History of SC, 1858, p. 47.

–148  U.S. Marine-Hospital. Service.  Annual Report…FY 1895. 1896, p. 432.[1]

 

New Orleans, LA      (>10)

— >10  New Orleans. Blanchard guestimate from Carrigan. The Saffron Scourge. 1961, p. 40-45.

 

Narrative Information

 

Charleston, South Carolina

 

Ramsay: “For forty-four years after 1748, there was no epidemic attack of this disease [yellow fever], though there were occasionally in different summers a few sporadic cases of it. In the year 1792 a new era of the yellow fever commenced. It raged in Charlestown in that year, and in 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797, 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1804, and 1807. The number of deaths from it in these, its worst years, were…In 1799, 239; in 1800, 184; in 1802, 96; in 1804, 148; in 1807, 162.”

 

New Orleans, Louisiana

 

Carrigan: “Although the records of yellow fever’s visits in the early 1800’s are rather sketchy and sometimes contradictory, during the first two decades of the century New Orleans experienced at least five major outbreaks of the disease: 1804, 1809, 1811, 1817, and 1819….

 

“In August of 1804, less than eight months after the American acquisition of Louisiana, yellow fever again appeared in New Orleans, and finding a bountiful supply of unacclimated individuals, subjected the city to a three-month period of death and desolation. In his official letters Governor William C. C. Claiborne outlined the course of the epidemic and thus may be credited with providing the most comprehensive account of the pestilence of 1804. By August 10 the fever had appeared, but the city was not yet considered ‘generally unhealthy.’ On August 25 Claiborne’s secretary, who fell victim to the scourge a few weeks alter, wrote that the disease had carried off a number of ‘Americans, Strangers to the climate.’[2] The fever continued to increase its ravages during late August and September, and in his letters the Governor commented repeatedly on the malignant disease called yellow fever which was ‘particularly fatal’ to Americans and other strangers. Having suffered a violent attack of the scourge early in the epidemic, Claiborne remarked, ‘…I am represented as the only American who had yet recovered.’[3] Apparently the disease did not confine itself solely to strangers, for in mid-September the physicians of New Orleans began to observe cases of the prevailing fever among the ‘old Inhabitants.’[4] ….

 

“The epidemic of 1804 was indeed a source of heavy affliction for the American governor of the territory. Not only did Claiborne suffer a debilitating attack of yellow fever himself, but in late September he lost both his wife and his young daughter to the dreadful malady.[5] Although no mortality records are available for this period, the extent of the fatalities must have been exceedingly great. Claiborne believed that ‘more than a third of the Americans who emigrated thither in the course of the last 12 months have perished, and nearly every Person from Europe who arrived in the City during the Summer Months.’[6] ….

 

During the last days of October the malady still raged in New Orleans, but by November 4 the Governor reported to President Jefferson his belief that ‘the Fever had entirely Abated in this City, and Industry & Commerce seem to have revived.’[7] [pp. 40-45]

 

Sources

 

Carrigan, Jo Ann. The Saffron Scourge: A History of Yellow Fever in Louisiana, 1796-1905 (Doctoral Dissertation). Louisiana State University, LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses, 1961. Accessed 3-11-2018 at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1665&context=gradschool_disstheses

 

New York Times. “Yellow Fever. Epidemics in Charleston, S.C. – Statistics from 1700.” 9-18-1871. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FB0C13F938541A7493CAA81782D85F458784F9

 

Putnam, G. P. (Ed.). The World’s Progress: A Dictionary of Dates. NY: G. P. Putnam, 1851.  Digitized by Google: http://books.google.com/books?id=qz9HAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Ramsay, David (M.D.). Ramsay’s History of South Carolina, From its First Settlement in 1670 to the Year 1808. Published by W. J. Duffie, Newberry, SC, printed in Charleston by Walker, Evans & Co., 1858. Digitized by archive.org and accessed 9-11-2016 at: https://archive.org/stream/ramsayshistorys00ramsgoog#page/n4/mode/2up

 

Sternberg, George M. (US Public Health Service, US Marine Hospital Service). “Yellow Fever,” pp. 39-72 in A Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences (Vol. 8), Albert Henry Buck, (Ed.). NY: William Wood & Co., 1894. Google digitized: http://books.google.com/books?id=Jr00AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Townsend, Peter S., M.D. An Account of the Yellow Fever as it Prevailed in The City of New-York, in the Summer and Autumn of 1822. NY: O. Halsted, 1823. Google digital preview at: http://books.google.com/books?id=pfsOAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

United States Marine-Hospital Service, Treasury Department. Annual Report of the Supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine-Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1895 (Document No. 1811). Washington, DC:  GPO, 1896.  Digitized by Google and accessed at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=aTnxAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

[1] Cites Simons. Transactions, S.C. Med. Assn., 1851, p. 37. (Toner.)

[2] In footnote 23, Carrigan cites: William C. C. Claiborne to James Wilkinson, August 10, 1804, Dunbar Rowland (ed.), Official Letter Books of William C. C. Claiborne, 1801-1816 (6 vols., Jackson, MI, 1917), II, 306; Joseph Briggs to James Madison, August 25, 1804, 306-307; Claiborne to Madison, September 17, 1804.

[3] In footnote 24, cites: Claiborne to Thomas Jefferson, August 29, 30, 1804, Clarence E. Carter (ed.), The Territory of Orleans, 1803-1812 (Vol. IX of The Territorial Papers of The United States, Washington, 1940), 279-80, 286; Claiborne to Albert Gallantin, August 31, 1804, Rowland (ed.), Claiborne Letter Books, II, 314; Claiborne to Madison, September 8, 1804, 328.

[4] In footnote 25, Carrigan cites: Claiborne to Jefferson, Sep 13, 1804, Carter (ed.), Territory of Orleans, 294.

[5] In footnote 28, Carrigan cites: Claiborne to Jefferson, Sep 27, 1804, Carter (ed.), Territory of Orleans, 299.

[6] Carrigan footnote 29 cites: Claiborne to Jefferson, October 5, 1804, Carter (ed.), Territory of Orleans, 309.

[7] Carrigan footnote 32 cites: Claiborne to Madison, October 16, 1804, William C. C. Claiborne Letterbook, 1804-05 (Louisiana State University Archives, Baton Rouge); Sterrett to Nathaniel Evans, October 29, 1804, Nathaniel Evans Family Papers; Claiborne to Jefferson, November 4, 1804, Carter (ed.), Territory of Orleans, 319.

— >100,000 Adams; noted in Schmitt, R.C. Catastrophic Mortality in Hawaii. 2009, 2.
— >2,000 Blanchard.*
–>Half of pop. Early writers; noted in Schmitt, R.C. Catastrophic Mortality in Hawaii. 2009, 2.
— Thousands. Chambers, John H. Hawaii (On-the-Road-Histories). 2006, p. 83.
— Many. U.S. NIH. Native Voices. “Timeline. 1804: Epidemic Strikes…O’ahu.”

* We choose “2,000” in an effort to put a number to the Chambers’ note “Thousands of Oahuans died.” One account, most probably greatly exaggerated, notes 100,000 deaths. Another, half of the population.

Narrative Information

Chambers: “In early 1804 Kamehameha set up camp…in Oahu and in spring, when he was almost ready to sail into Kauai channel, Oahu was struck by an horrendous epidemic – cholera, or typhoid, or ever perhaps bubonic plague – the later a possibility because of they rapidity with which the disease progressed. Most likely the crew of a visiting ship brought the disease, but to the priests the only explanation was that the Hawaiian gods were extremely angry and had to be placated.

“The people made offerings and sacrifices with mountains of fruit and pig and coconuts – and humans too. Three men who had infringed an eating kapu were seized, for perhaps it was they who had annoyed toe gods. Their arms and legs were broken, then their eyeballs were removed. Their tortured screams and unending pain ignored, they were not killed until the appointed time as determined by the kahuna and then placed on the heiau at Waikiki. The plague continued.

“Thousands of Oahuans died. No group or class was immune. Kamehameha abandoned his intention to invade Kauai once again…” (Chambers, John H. Hawaii. 2006, p. 83.)

Schmitt: “Mortality from epidemics and famine is equally difficult to estimate. Early writers stated that the mai okuu of 1804 carried off more than half of the population, and Adams subsequently reported total mortality from this plague in excess of 100,000. Kuykendall, in contrast, was highly skeptical, and attributed these statements to “legendary exaggeration”.” (Schmitt, Robert C. Catastrophic Mortality in Hawaii. 2-2-2009, p. 2.)

U.S. National Institutes of Health: “As King Kamehameha prepares to attack the island of Kaua‘i from his base on O‘ahu to expand his influence in the Hawaiian Islands, an epidemic spreads. The disease, possibly cholera, is called oku‘u (which means “to squat”). Kamehameha is not affected, but the disease kills many in his army and many residents of O‘ahu.

“Cholera is a bacterial disease usually spread through contaminated water, which causes severe diarrhea and dehydration. Cholera can be fatal in a matter of hours.” (U.S. National Library of Medicine. Native Voices. Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness. “Timeline. 1804: Epidemic strikes Kamehameha’s warriors on O’ahu.”)

Lisyansky: According to Lisyansky, Kamehameha had 7,000 warriors and fifty armed foreigners. (Iurji F. Lisyansky. A Voyage Round the World in 1803-1806 (2 vols.) St. Petersburg: F. Drechsler, 1812; cited at p. 126 in Tumarkin, Daniel D. “A Russian View of Hawaii in 1804,” Pacific Studies, Vol. II, No. 2, Spring 1979, pp. 109-131.)

Sources

Chambers, John H. Hawaii (On-the-Road-Histories). Northampton, MA: Interlink Publishing Group, Inc., 2006. Partially Google digitized. Accessed 9-19-2012 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=HZpfH2LJoJoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Lisiansky, Urey. A Voyage Round the World in The Years 1803, 4, 5, & 6; Performed by Order of His Imperial Majesty Alexander The First, Emperor of Russia, in The Ship Neva, by Urey Lisiansky, Captain in the Russian Navy and Knight of the Orders of St. George and St. Vladimer. London for John Booth: 1814. Google digitized and accessed 1-4-2015 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=Gz9jAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Schmitt, Robert C. Catastrophic Mortality in Hawaii. 2-2-2009, 86 pages. Accessed 9-20-2012 at: Catastrophic Mortality in Hawaii – eVols – University of Hawaii.

Tumarkin, Daniel D. “A Russian View of Hawaii in 1804,” Pacific Studies, Vol. II, No. 2, Spring 1979, pp. 109-131. Accessed 1-4-2015 at: https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/PacificStudies/article/view/8992

United States National Library of Medicine. Native Voices. Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness. “Timeline.” Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services. Accessed 9-17-2012 at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/index.html

— 1,303-1,403  Blanchard tally based on breakouts below.

 

New York                  (708)

—           8       Catskill, NY     Keating 1879, 81.

—    6,700[1]  New York, NY    Keating 1879, 81; NYT, Oct 7, 1888.

—       700          “                     Sternberg 1894, 42.

–600-700          “                     U.S. Marine Hospital Service 1896, 432.

—       670          “                     Putnam.  The World’s Progress: A Dictionary of Dates. 1851, 605.

—       606          “                     Townsend. An Account…Yellow Fever…[NY]…1822. pp. 367-369

—     ~600          “                     Lossing. The Empire State: A Compendious History. 1888, 352.

 

Pennsylvania              (195)

—       195  Philadelphia           Keating 1879, 81; U.S. Marine Hospital Service 1896, 432.

 

South Carolina          (200-300)

–200-300  Charleston, SC.     Keating 1879, 81.

—         59         “                      Ramsay. Ramsay’s History of South Carolina. 1858, p. 47.

 

Virginia[2]                     (200)

—       200  Alexandria             Keating 1879, 81.

—       200  Norfolk                  U.S. Marine-Hosp. Svc.  Annual Rpt…FY 1895. 1896, 432.

 

Sources

 

Keating, J. M. A History of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 in Memphis, Tenn. Memphis, TN:  Howard Association, 1879. Google digitized and accessed at: http://books.google.com/books?id=WEIJAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Lossing, Benson John. The Empire State: A Compendious History of the Commonwealth of New York. Hartford, CT:  American Publishing Co., 1888.  Digitized by Google and accessed at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=KA2KZWfA-NYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

New York Times. “Yellow Fever Retrospect.” October 7, 1888. Accessed at:  http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9D03EFD81F38E033A25754C0A9669D94699FD7CF&oref=slogin

 

Putnam, G. P. (Ed.). The World’s Progress: A Dictionary of Dates. NY: G. P. Putnam, 1851.  Digitized by Google: http://books.google.com/books?id=qz9HAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Ramsay, David (M.D.). Ramsay’s History of South Carolina, From its First Settlement in 1670 to the Year 1808. Published by W. J. Duffie, Newberry, SC, printed in Charleston by Walker, Evans & Co., 1858. Digitized by archive.org and accessed 9-11-2016 at: https://archive.org/stream/ramsayshistorys00ramsgoog#page/n4/mode/2up

 

 

Sternberg, George M. (US Public Health Service, US Marine Hospital Service). “Yellow Fever,” pp. 39-72 in A Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences (Vol. 8), Albert Henry Buck, (Ed.). NY: William Wood & Co., 1894. Google digitized: http://books.google.com/books?id=Jr00AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Townsend, Peter S., M.D. An Account of the Yellow Fever as it Prevailed in The City of New-York, in the Summer and Autumn of 1822. NY: O. Halsted, 1823. Google digital preview at: http://books.google.com/books?id=pfsOAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

United States Marine-Hospital Service, Treasury Department. Annual Report of the Supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine-Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1895 (Document No. 1811). Washington, DC:  GPO, 1896.  Digitized by Google and accessed at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=aTnxAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

 

 

 

[1] Not using this number which is out of line with the Marine Hospital Service and Lossing estimates.

[2] We are only counting one of these estimates in that it seems unlikely that both cities would have had identical fatalities.

— <150  AK HF. Alaska’s Heritage. “Chapter 3-2: Settlement and population patterns.” 2017.

—     20 Russians

— <130 Aleuts

 

Narrative Information

 

Alaska Humanities Forum: “In 1799 the Russians built Fort[1] Archangel Saint Michael near a large Tlingit village at Sitka. This became the scene of a Russian set-back in 1802. Tlingits attacked the Russian fort and massacred most of the Russians and Aleut workers there. The Tlingits killed 20 Russians and up to 130 Aleuts. They also took over 4,000 sea otter pelts and burned a ship being built. In 1804 Alexander Baranov led a large Russian and Aleut force, supported by several ships with cannons, to reestablish a Russian fort at Sitka. The Shelikhovs had sent Baranov to Alaska in 1792 to manage their Alaskan fur-trading operation. An experienced Siberian merchant, he had vigorously expanded the fur trade. The Sitka Tlingits, led by Chief Katlean, fought bravely but were finally driven away by Baranov. The new fort he established at Sitka eventually became the Russian headquarters in Alaska.” (Alaska Humanities Forum. Alaska History & Cultural Studies. Alaska’s Heritage. “Chapter 3-2: Settlement and population patterns.” 2017.)

 

Wikipedia: “1802 battle….In spring 1802, the population of Redoubt Saint Michael had grown to include 29 Russians, 3 British deserters, 200 Aleuts, and a few Kodiak women. In June 1802, a group of Tlingit warriors attacked the Russian fort at mid-day. Led by Skautlelt (Shḵ’awulyéil) and Kotleian, the raiding party massacred many, looted the sea otter pelts, and burned the settlement, including a ship under construction. A few Russians and Aleuts who had been away from the post hunting, or who had fled into the forest, subsequently reached safety and relayed news of the attack. British Captain Barber, Unicorn[2] seized the ringleaders, rescued 3 Russians, 20 other native allies, and many of the pelts. The Unicorn then set sail for Kodiak, where it delivered the survivors and the news of the attack to Baranov on June 24. Barber extracted a ransom of 10,000 rubles for the return of the colonists — a mere 20% of his initial demand.[3]”

 

Sources

 

Alaska Humanities Forum. Alaska History & Cultural Studies. Alaska’s Heritage. “Chapter 3-2: Settlement and population patterns.” 2017. Accessed 8-25-2017 at: http://www.akhistorycourse.org/russias-colony/alaskas-heritage/chapter-3-2-settlement-and-population-patterns

 

Faulkner, Sandra McDermott Faulkner, William S. Hanable, Robert L. S. Spude. Russian America Theme. National History Landmarks. Anchorage: National Park Service, Alaska Region, U. S. Department of the Interior, 1987, 367 pages. Accessed 8-25-2017 at: https://www.nps.gov/nhl/learn/themes/RussianAmerica.pdf

 

National Park Service. Sitka National Historical Park, Alaska. “The Russians.” 4-26-2016 update. Accessed 8-25-2017 at: https://www.nps.gov/sitk/learn/historyculture/the-russians.htm

 

Wikipedia. Battle of Sitka. 7-16-2017 edit. Accessed 8-25-2017 at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sitka#cite_note-Khlebnikov-2

 

[1] National Park Service notes the “Fort” was in the form of a redoubt. Also notes the site today is Old Sitka. (NPS. Sitka National Historical Park, Alaska. “The Russians.” 4-26-2016 update. Accessed 8-25-2017.

[2] Cites:  Black, Lydia T. Russians in Alaska 1732-1867. Fairbanks, AK: Univ. of Alaska Press, 2004, pp. 158-159.

[3] Cites: Khlebnikov, K.T. Baranov, Chief Manager of the Russian Colonies in America. Kingston: The Limestone Press, 1973, pp. 37-39.

–561  Blanchard tally based on numbers below.

 

Delaware                    ( 86)

–86  Wilmington         Keating 1879, 81; Sternberg 1908, 720; U.S. MHS  1896, 432.

 

Massachusetts            ( 60)

–60  Boston                 Keating 1879, 81; Sternberg 1908, 719, 720; U.S. MHS  1896, 432.

 

New Hampshire         (  10)

–10  Portsmouth           Keating 1879, 81.

 

New York                  (    2)

–2  New York             Sternberg 1908, 718, 720; U.S. MHS  1896, 432.

 

Pennsylvania              (307)

–835  Philadelphia        UShistory.org.  Philadelphia History, Philadelphia Timeline, 1802.”[1]

–307           “                  Sternberg 1908, 719, 720; U.S. MHS  1896, 432.

 

South Carolina          (  96)

–96  Charleston          Keating 1879, 81; Sternberg 1908, 719-720; U.S. MHS  1896, 432.

–96   “  NYT. “Yellow Fever. Epidemics in Charleston, S.C. – Statistics from 1700.” 9-18-1871.

–96   “  Ramsay. “Medical History From 1670-1808,” Ramsay’s History of SC, 1858, p. 47.

 

Narrative Information

 

Delaware

 

Scharf: “A third visitation of yellow fever occurred in Wilmington in 1802, following another epidemic in Philadelphia. The Board of Health inaugurated a rigid quarantine, and took every possible precaution against the introduction of the plaque, but without effect. The disease appeared on August 2d, and a week later there were several cases in town. There were, however, no deaths until September 1^st, when Johnson Owens, a shallopman employed by Cyrus and Robert Newlin, succumbed. A week later the fever assumed a malignant shape in the lower part of the borough, principally on King Street below Second Street; the alarm became general and people fled to the country in large numbers. Thirty-four deaths occurred during September. On October 1^st there were only six hundred and five people in town south of Market Street, of which number twenty-five were sick. The disease raged with increased violence subsequent to October 15^th and thirty-one deaths occurred from that time to November 2d, when the appearance of frost stopped the contagion.

 

“Among the later deaths was that of John Ferris, Jr., who during the epidemic of 1798, and the present year, had been unceasing in his attentions to the sick. He died on October 31^st. Colonel Thomas Kean, an officer of the Revolutionary army, was also one of the victims. The latter numbered eighty-six out of one hundred and ninety-seven cases, of which one hundred and fifty-six cases and fifty-five deaths occurred east of Market Street and south of Third Street.[2] Following is a list of the deaths which occurred in the period: [omitted here]”

 

South Carolina

 

Ramsay: “For forty-four years after 1748, there was no epidemic attack of this disease [yellow fever], though there were occasionally in different summers a few sporadic cases of it. In the year 1792 a new era of the yellow fever commenced. It raged in Charlestown in that year, and in 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797, 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1804, and 1807. The number of deaths from it in these, its worst years, were…In 1799, 239; in 1800, 184; in 1802, 96; in 1804, 148; in 1807, 162.”

Sources

 

Keating, J. M. A History of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 in Memphis, Tenn. Memphis, TN: Howard Association, 1879. Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=WEIJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA81&dq=Portsmouth+NH+Yellow+Fever+1802&ei=4SozSczeOoSUzASS7Z3VAQ#PPA454,M1

 

New York Times. “Yellow Fever. Epidemics in Charleston, S.C. – Statistics from 1700.” 9-18-1871. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FB0C13F938541A7493CAA81782D85F458784F9

 

New York Times. “Yellow Fever Retrospect.” 10-7-1888. Accessed at:  http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9D03EFD81F38E033A25754C0A9669D94699FD7CF&oref=slogin

 

Ramsay, David (M.D.). Ramsay’s History of South Carolina, From its First Settlement in 1670 to the Year 1808. Published by W. J. Duffie, Newberry, SC, printed in Charleston by Walker, Evans & Co., 1858. Digitized by archive.org and accessed 9-11-2016 at: https://archive.org/stream/ramsayshistorys00ramsgoog#page/n4/mode/2up

 

Scharf, J. Thomas. History of Delaware: 1609-1888 (Vol. 1). Philadelphia: L. J. Richards & Co., 1888. Accessed 2-28-2015 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=9wd5AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=true

 

Sternberg, George M. (U.S. Public Health Service, U.S. Marine Hospital Service). “Yellow Fever: History and Geographic Distribution.” Pages 715-722 in Stedman, Thomas L., M.D. (Ed.) Appendix to the Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences. NY: William Wood & Co., 1908. Google digitized and accessed at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=3ezqX415M5wC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

United States Marine-Hospital Service, Treasury Department. Annual Report of the Supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine-Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1895 (Document No. 1811). Washington:  GPO, 1896. Digitized by Google and accessed at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=aTnxAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

UShistory.org. Philadelphia History. “Philadelphia Timeline, 1861.” Accessed 8-10-2015 at: http://www.ushistory.org/philadelphia/timeline/1861.htm

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Not using in that this estimate is out-of-line with Sternberg and the US Maritime Hospital Service numbers.

[2] Scharf footnote 1 cites “Dr. John Vaughan, an eminent practitioner of that day [who] attended a large number of the yellow fever patients of this period in Wilmington, and by request of the American Philosophical Society published a history of the origin and nature of the disease. Dr. Vaughan introduced vaccination in Wilmington in 1802.”

— >9,090 Blanchard estimated minimum death toll.*

— ~100 Atsina (see Gros Ventre). Taylor. Sociocultural effects of epidemics… 1982, p. 45.
–150,000 Chinook city of Ne-cha-co-lee, present day Oregon. National Library of Medicine.
— ~1,500 Chinook. Blanchard guesstimate – see note below on my own overall “estimate.”
— ~300 Clatsop. Snodgrass, citing Lewis and Clark, writes they were nearly extinguished.
— <1,500 Omaha alone. Thornton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival. 1900, 94. -- 400 “ William Clark Journal in Snodgrass. World Epidemics, 2017, p. 121. -- >2,000 Osage alone. Robertson. Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian. 2001, 196.
— >90 Multnomah
— 3,600 All other tribes – arbitrary assumption of at least 100 deaths in each of 36 other tribes.

–>1,500 Reddy, Marlita A. Statistical Record of Native North Americans. 1993, p. 174.
–30% to 50% of tribes. (Nez Perce, Salish, Pend d’Oreille, Kalispell, Spokane.) Heiner 2014, 20.
— Over half the Plains tribes. (Baker 2002, p. 50)

* Blanchard. We are very skeptical of the 150,000 Chinook fatality report found on the National Library of Medicine cite Native Voices. Thus, we will arbitrarily ignore this number and assume something like the two other high-fatality numbers derived from sources (over 1,500 Omaha and over 2,000 Osage, say 1,500. That results in something like 5,000 deaths in three tribes. We add the approximately 190 deaths sources note for the Multnomah at Atsina, for a total of 5,190 for five tribes. We have noted our arbitrary attribution of 300 deaths to a sixth tribe — the Clatsop. This makes for a grand total of 5,490.

We have alphabetically listed the tribes mentioned as being affected by this epidemic, and this totals 42 named tribes. If we subtract the six for which we generally have numbers that leaves thirty-six tribes for which we have question marks. If we assume something like about 100 deaths for each of these (based on 90 Multnomah and about 100 Atsina deaths), that results in 3,600 deaths. Based on all these assumptions, we derive an estimated death toll of 9,090.

We are quick to add that we do not claim this to be “the” death toll. Sources note a general death rate of 30%-50% in native tribes, when a smallpox outbreak is not in their recent past. The geographical area for this epidemic, or “pandemic” as some sources write, is vast. It stretches north from the Gulf of Mexico (Texas) up through the Canadian border. East of Texas tribes were stricken in Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa (and perhaps Mississippi, in that there was an outbreak there in 1802, with the Governor ordering vaccinations in Natchez). To the west of the line of states to the north of Texas tribes in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and northern California were stricken. This is, again, a vast area of the country. The loss of life must have been much more than the number we note, however, we are already uncomfortable in presenting the number 9,090 in that it is based on arbitrary assumptions and bears the aspect of precision. We do not, though, seek to guess what this higher number might have been.

Arkansas (?)
–? Osage Robertson. Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian. 2001, p. 196.
–? Quapaw. “1801-1802. Smallpox ravages Osage and Quapaw.” Arkansas Timeline.

California (northern)(?) Heiner. Demographic and epidemiological changes on the
Flathead Reservation 1887-1935. 2014, p. 20.

Colorado (northeast) (?)
— ? Arapaho. Robertson. Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian. 2001, p. 194.
— ? Kiowa (especially eastern Colorado)

Great Plains (?)
— ? Kiowa. Mooney. Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians. 1898, pages 129-444.
— ? Pawnee. Mooney. Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians. 1898, pages 129-444.

Idaho (Many)
— ? Nez Perce. Boyd. “Disease Epidemics among Indians, 1770s-1850s.”
–Many. Nez Perce. Heiner. Demographic and epidemiological…Flathead Reservation… 2014, 18.
— ? Shoshone. “Northern Plains,” 253 in Fixico.

Iowa (?)
— ? Iowa Natives. (Thayer 2004, p. 207.) [We think Thayer reference is Natives in Iowa.]
— ? Dakota Sioux. (Map of Iowa Native tribes as of 1798 in Wikipedia. “American…Iowa.”)
— ? Ioway. (Map of Iowa Native tribes as of 1798 in Wikipedia. “American…Iowa.”)
— ? Omaha Nation. (Map of Iowa Native tribes as of 1798 in Wikipedia. “American…Iowa.”)
—<1,500 Omaha alone. Thornton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival. 1900, 94. -- ? Pawnee. Kansas (?) -- ? Kansa (northeast) -- ? Kiowa (especially western Kansas) -- ? Osage. -- ? Pawnee (especially northeast Kansas) -- ? Wichita. Mooney. Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians. 1898, pages 129-444. Mississippi (?) --? Whites and Natives, presumably. Snodgrass. World Epidemics. 2017, p. 121. Missouri (?) -- ? Missouria. Robertson. Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian. 2001, p. 197. -- ? “ “seriously depleted” Ronda. Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. 1984. -- ? Osage. Wikipedia. “Osage Nation,” 2-22-2021 edit. Homeland map. -- ? Unnamed. Collett. “Black-Bird – Indian Chronology Untrustworthy.” [KCRSI], 8/7, Nov 1884, 362. -- ? “ Mooney. Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians. 1898, pages 129-444. Montana (?) --~100 Atsina (see Gros Ventre). Taylor. Sociocultural effects of epidemics… 1982, p. 45. -- ? Crow Nation (also called the Apsáalooke ). (Thayer 2004, p. 207.) -- ? Flathead Nation (Salish and Kootenai Tribes) -- ? Gros Ventre (also known as A’ani, A’aninin, Haaninin, Atsina ). (Thayer 2004, p. 207.) -- ? Pend d’Oreille. (Thornton 1990, p. 91-92.) -- ? Semte’use. (Thornton 1990, p. 91-92.) -- ? Sioux. (Thayer 2004, p. 207.) Nebraska (about two-thirds of Omaha) -- ? Omaha nation. Collett. “Black-Bird – Indian Chronology Untrustworthy.” Nov 1884, p362. -- ~2/3’s “ Kohn (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence (Revised). 2001, p. 248. --Severe. “ (down to ~300). Pritzker. Native Americans: An Encyclopedia… 1998, p.496. --“dramatically reduced…numbers” Ronda. Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. 1984. --<1,500 Omaha. Thornton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival. 1900, 94. -- ? Oto Natives. (Thayer 2004, p. 207.) -- ? Pawnee (especially mid to eastern) -- ? Ponca Tribe. (Thayer 2004, p. 207.) (Especially north-central.) -- ? Sioux. (Thayer 2004, p. 207.) New Mexico (?) Mooney. Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians. 1898, pp. 129-444. North Dakota (?) --? Arikara (also known as Sahnish or Ree ). (Thayer 2004, p. 207.) --? Dakota. (Crosby. “Virgin-Soil Epidemics…Aboriginal Depopulation.” 1976, p. 295.) --? Hidatsa (Siouan people). (Fixico. Treaties with American Indians. 2008, p. 253.) --? Mandan. (Thayer 2004, p. 207.) --? Sioux (Dakota). (Thayer 2004, p. 207.) Oklahoma (?) --? Kiowa (large section of what now is the state of Oklahoma). --? Mooney. Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians. 1898, pages 129-444. (From MO to TX) Oregon (?) --150,000 Chinook, Ne-cha-co-lee. NLB. “1802: An estimated 150,000 dead at Ne-cha-co-lee…” -- ? Clatsop (nearly extinguished; Snodgrass citing Lewis and Clark) -- >90 Multnomah
— ? Salish native people. (Thornton 1990, p. 91-92.)
— ? Boyd. “Disease Epidemics among Indians, 1770s-1850s.” Oregon Encyclopedia, 2016.

Pacific Northwest
–? Boyd. Smallpox in the Pacific Northwest: the First Epidemics. “Epilogue,” 1994, p. 35.

South Dakota (?)
–? Dakota. (Crosby. “Virgin-Soil Epidemics…Aboriginal Depopulation.” 1976, p. 295.)
–? Mandan. (Thayer 2004, p. 207.)
–? Ponca (south-central)

Texas (?)
— ? 1801-1802 smallpox. Table 5-11: Epidemics Among Texas Indians, 1528-1892.
— ? Caddo (east TX). Mooney. Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians. 1898, pages 129-444.

Washington (?)
–? Boyd. “Disease Epidemics among Indians, 1770s-1850s.” Oregon Encyclopedia, 4-7-2016.
–? Colville Natives. (Thornton 1990, p. 91-92.)
–? Kalispel Tribe (also referred to as Pend d’Oreille). (Thornton 1990, p. 91-92.)
–? Salish native people. (Thornton 1990, p. 91-92.)
–? Spokane Tribe. (Thornton 1990, p. 91-92.)

Wyoming (?)
— ? Arapaho.
— ? Crow Nation (also called the Apsáalooke ). (Thayer 2004, p. 207.)
— ? Wyoming

Recap of Native Tribes Mentioned in Alphabetical Order
(Most Tribes did not restrict their movements to the borders of what we now refer to as States.)

1. Arapaho ?
2. Arikara ? (also known as Sahnish or Ree) (“extraordinary death rates”)
3. Assiniboine ? (“pummeled”)
4. Atsina ~100 (or Gros Ventre). (“especially deadly for the young”
5. Blackfoot ?
6. Caddo ?
7. Chinook 150,000 (another account is that “Small Pox destroyed their nation.”
8. Clatsop ? (account of one village, is “they all died with the disorder…”)
Clatsop ? (Lewis & Clark noted the “nation [was] destroyed by the smallpox]
9. Colville ?
10. Crow ? (“devastated”) (“pummeled”)
11. Dakota ? (“this people suffered significantly”)
12. Flathead ? (“devastated”)
13. Gros Ventre ? (see Atsina)
14. Haida (Pacific coast) ?
15. Hidatsa ? (“extraordinary death rates”)
16. Iowa ?
17. Kalispel ? (also known as Pend d’Oreille) (“devastated”)
18. Kiowa ?
19. Lummi (Pacific coast) ?
20. Mandan ? (“extraordinary death rates”)
21. Missouria ?
22. Multnomah >90 (tribe of the Chinook)
23. Nez Perce 30-50% (or “many”)
24. Nootka (Pacific coast) ?
25. Omaha >1,500 (or 2/3s; down to ~300; 15%-40% mortality; “severely infected”)
26. Osage >2,000
27. Oto ?
28. Pawnee ? (“pummeled”)
29. Pend d’Oreille ? (also known as Kalispel) (“devastated”)
30. Ponca ? (“pummeled”)
31. Quapaw ? “many…perished”
32. Salish ? (oral tradition is that lodges were full of corpses.”
33. Semte’use ?
34. Shoshone ? (“extraordinary death rates”)
35. Sto:lo ? (or Staula; Stahlo; Fraser River Indians, or Lower Fraser Salish)
36. Sioux ?
37. Spokane ? (“seriously affected.”)
38. Tillamook (Pacific coast)?
39. Tlingit (Pacific coast) ?
40. Tsimshian (Pacific coast)?
41. Wichita ?
42. Wyoming ?

Narrative Information

Baker: “….In 1801-1802 another smallpox epidemic spread along the Missouri River, devastating the Flathead, Pend d’Oreille, and Crow, and it spread into and destroyed more than half of the Plains tribes (Thornton 1987; Boyd 1998).” (Baker, p. 50 in Vale 2002.)

Boyd, 1994: “”Epilogue. Epidemic smallpox would reappear among Pacific Northwest Indians at least four more times (circa 1801-02, 1846, 1853, and 1862-63) in the next century, dependent upon the dual epidemiological requirements of introduction from the outside and presence of a large enough pool of non-immune susceptibles. It was a generation atter the 1770s before these conditions were met again. The 1801-02 smallpox epidemic, on present evidence, was certainly introduced from the Plains and affected only the peoples of the central coast. Lewis and Clark (for Chinookans) verify the year of the second outbreak (Moulton 1990: 285-86) , while John Work, speaking in 1829 for Nez Perce district peoples, noted two early outbreaks, ‘about ten years’ apart (op. cit.), and Asa Smith, for Nez Perce, dated a second epidemic to ‘two years after’ [sic; probably ‘before’] Lewis and Clark (op. cit.: 137). Several ethnographic sources suggest this outbreak was also present among Salishan peoples. Teit (1900:176, 1930: 212, 315-36, on interior Salish), Elmendorf (1960: 272 on Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island Salish, and Jenness (1995: 34, on Sto:lo, dated by Duff 1952: 28) all describe an epidemic which they date to the first decade of the 1800s.” (Boyd, Robert T. Smallpox in the Pacific Northwest: the First Epidemics (Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations). Portland State University, Spring 1994, p. 35.)

Boyd, 2013: “There is not much question about the origin of Lewis and Clark’s second reported epidemic [smallpox] in the winter of 1801-2; it most certainly arrived via the northern Rockies route. Mortality was less, probably concentrated among nonimmunes under the age of 20 (Boyd 1999b:39)

“Other than Lewis and Clark, evidence for the early smallpox epidemics comes from archaeology and from records of the Astorians. It is difficult to isolate, archaeologically, evidence of he smallpox epidemics from others that followed, but the likeliest example appears to be at the Sauvie Island village Clannarminamon excavated by the Oregon Archaeological Society in 1968, where ‘over 90…skeletal remains were encountered throughout the entire excavation area at the same depth and all in complete disarray’ (Jones 1972:182). This was the site where an 1812 observer reported that a formerly ‘very powerful tribe’ had been ‘reduced by the small Pox to 60 Men’ (Stuart 1935:32).” (Boyd. Lower Chinookan Disease and Demography. 2013, p. 237.)

Boyd, 2016: “Smallpox. The earliest documented epidemic in Oregon was smallpox. The year was most likely 1781, the date of a major epidemic throughout North America east of the Rockies, though this has been hard to pin down because most estimates come from after-the-fact observations by white explorers of pockmarked individuals. An oral tradition from the Clatsop of a shipwreck and the introduction of a spotted disease, however, dates to a decade before Robert Gray entered the Columbia in 1792, providing a close fit with the timing of the East Coast epidemic.

“The epidemic probably occurred throughout the Pacific Northwest. There are records in oral traditions or from white explorers of pockmarked individuals among the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakwakawakw (Kwakiutl), Nuuchahnulth (Nootka), Lummi, Puget Salish, Tillamook, Colville, Flathead, and Nez Perce….

“The journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition describe two instances of pockmarked people in Oregon, one from Clatsop and one from a Chinookan village near the Sandy River. William Clark wrote: “they all died with the disorder…Small Pox destroyed their nation.” ….

“By the time Robert Gray entered the Columbia in 1792 and non-Native fur traders began frequenting the Oregon Coast, Native populations were already depleted and their cultures were damaged….

“There were more smallpox epidemics in the Pacific Northwest, and their timing—1800-1801, 1824, 1836, 1853, and 1863—suggests that the disease recurred whenever there was a sufficiently large cohort of non-immune people who had been born since the last outbreak and were, hence, vulnerable to infection. In Oregon, both the 1800-1801 and 1824 epidemics are documented, but neither seems to have been as severe as the epidemic of the late 1700s….” (Boyd. “Disease Epidemics among Indians, 1770s-1850s.” Oregon Encyclopedia, 4-7-2016.)

Collett: “….Augustus Chouteau came to St. Louis with its founder, Laclede, in 1764, and was personally cognizant of every fact relating to the city he mentions in his depositions. His statements are the accepted data of much of St. Louis’ early history. He testifies (Hunt’s Min., Vol. 1, p. 107,) that on May 15, 1801, the small-pox first made its appearance in St. Louis. There are other depositions to the same effect. In St. Louis local annals the year 1801 is universally known as année de la picotte – small pox year….It has always been an accepted fact that the small-pox was brought to St. Louis by boats coming up the river, and thence spread among the Indians. The month and date given by Chouteau was the usual time of the arrival of the merchants’ supplies. The traders left for the Missouri in the fall of the year, the large boats on the opening of navigation, at the beginning of March if possible. The first departure, after the appearance of the disease in the village, would arrive at the Maha country [Omaha] in the last months of the year 1801; the next, in May, 1802. If by those the small-pox was communicated to the Indians of the Maha locality, it may have become epidemic during the winter of 1801-2, but if by these, not until the summer of 1802. As the Omaha chief [Black-Bird] is believed to have died after the malady had become epidemic, we can scarcely escape the probable conclusion that his death occurred in 1802, but in no event earlier than the close of 1801.” (Collett. “Black-Bird – Indian Chronology Untrustworthy.” Kansas City Review of Science and Industry, 8/7, Nov 1884, p. 362.)

Crosby: “The Dakotas kept annual chronicles on leather or cloth showing by a single picture the most important event of each year. These records indicate that all or part of this people suffered significantly in the epidemics listed below, at least one of which, cholera, and possibly several others were virgin-soil. It should be noted that the considerable lapses of time between the smallpox epidemics meant that whole new generations of susceptibles were subject to infection upon the return of the disease and that the repeated ordeals must have had much of the deadliness of virgin-soil epidemics.

[Table] “Epidemics among the Dakota Indians, 1780-1851
….
“1801-1802 Smallpox (‘all sick winter’).” (Crosby, Alfred W. Jr. “Virgin-Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America.” P. 19; Chapter 2 in Nichols.)

Encyclopedia.com. Disease And Westward Expansion. 2019. Accessed 3-18-2021.

“….Smallpox. No other disease ravaged Indian peoples more than the dreaded smallpox. The first major pandemic in the nineteenth-century West occurred in 1801-1802 among tribes in the Central and Northwestern regions of the continent. This epidemic devastated people along the Missouri River with particular ferocity.”

Fixico (Ed.): “When Lewis and Clark entered the northern plains, they encountered a world that was undergoing rapid change. The expansion of trade between Native groups and Europeans in the late eighteenth century had engendered several major changes. Trade spread disease, particularly smallpox, which devastated the Native nations of the northern plains. The smallpox epidemics of 1779-1781 and 1801-1802 led to extraordinary death rates among the Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa, Shoshone, and other groups of the northern plains, making them vulnerable to incursions from more nomadic groups, such as the Sioux, who quickly became the dominant force on the plains.” (Fixico. Treaties with American Indians. 2008, p. 253.)

Heiner: “1801/1802 Smallpox Epidemic”

“From oral history and recordings from fur traders and missionaries, a subsequent smallpox epidemic [1777-1782] occurred in 1801 a generation later among some tribes on the Plateau. This epidemic was similar to the one that occurred in the late 18th century, ‘in that this epidemic proceeded unwitnessed and unrecorded by Euroamerican eyes, extant accounts consist largely of oral traditions collected from Native informants in later years’ (Boyd 1985:99).

“Thornton (1987) [below] writes that the 1801 smallpox pandemic spread north along the Missouri River, devastating the Plains tribes….Salish oral tradition recounts that, ‘so many people died that the lodges were full of corpses. Some of the ‘long lodges’ were quite full of dead and dying people. So many people died, that they could not be buried and the dogs ate their bodies’ (Teit 1927:279-280). From the Salish, smallpox spread to other Plateau tribes including the Pend d’Oreille, the Kalispell, Colville, Spokane and down to the Salish tribes along the Columbia River where the smallpox epidemic eventually subsided (Thornton 1987:92). Stern and Stern (1945:76) write that ‘the Spokane suffered the worst though, all were seriously affected.’

“This smallpox epidemic also affected tribes down the Mississippi River to the Louisiana Gulf, spreading into Texas, and the Southern Plains (Thornton 1987:92). Several tribes are reported to have suffered from this epidemic severely. ‘The prairie tribes are said to had lost more than half of their populations at this time, while the Wichita, Caddo, and others in the south suffered almost as severely’ (Mooney 1898:168) [Below].

Plateau mortality from this second smallpox epidemic seems lower than the earlier smallpox epidemic (Teit 1927 [1985]) Asa Smith recorded the second smallpox epidemic among the Nez Perce ‘was a milder form, perhaps the varioloid & did not prove so fatal. Many however died. Marks of this disease are now to be seen on the faces of many of the old people. (Drury 1958: 137)….” (Heiner. Demographic and epidemiological changes on the Flathead Reservation 1887-1935. “1801/1802 Smallpox Epidemic.” 2014, pp. 17-18.)

Kohn: “Omaha Indian Smallpox Epidemic of 1802”

“Outbreak of smallpox that killed about two-thirds of the Omaha, a Siouan tribe of North American Indians living in the Missouri River valley of present-day northeast Nebraska.

“Increasing trade and contact between the Plains Indians and Europeans resulted in the former being more and more infected by smallpox and other ‘foreign’ communicable diseases in the late eighteenth century; smallpox seriously attacked the Mandan, Shoshone, and Blackfoot tribes in the upper and middle Missouri River regions after 1780…It is most likely that the smallpox (variola) virus also reached the Omaha Indians in the lower Missouri region, for explorers had observed pockmarked Omahas (the disease leaves pockmarks on the skin of survivors).

“The Omaha, who had actively engaged in trade with white Europeans, were severely infected by smallpox in 1802. The systemic infection was acute and spread rapidly through the Omaha villages, some of whose members became desperate and crazed and burned their houses to try to stop the spread of the lethal disease. Some Indians put their wives and children to death so that they might be spared the agonies of smallpox, frequently including blindness and, usually, disfigurement. At the time the mortality rate was higher among the Omaha than it was among Europeans, of whom 15 percent to 40 percent usually died.

“At the height of the 1802 epidemic, the Omaha chief Wash-gun-sah-ba, better known as Blackbird, who had been one of the first Indians in the Missouri Valley to trade with whites, was stricken by smallpox. His loyal people did not desert him, but instead they drew around his bedside and unwittingly became infected themselves. (It is one of the most communicable of diseases, requiring only a breath to blow the variola virus from one mouth to another.) Honoring Blackbird’s dying request, the surviving Omahas buried him astride his favorite horse on the summit of a bluff overlooking the Missouri Valley, so that he could observe the whites’ boats coming up the river to trade with his people.

“In 1803 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were sent to explore the vast Louisiana Territory and later reported the Omaha smallpox epidemic and catastrophe (the tribe was sizably depopulated) to U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, who in turn directed Lewis and Clark to promote vaccination among the Indians in this new territory of the United States. The Indians, despite their sufferings, remained wary of vaccination.

“Further reading: Heagerty, Four Centuries of Medical History in Canada; Hopkins, Princes and Peasants: Smallpox in History.” (Kohn (ed.). Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence From Ancient Times to the Present (Revised). 2001, pp. 248-249.)

McCoy: “Boyd asserted that the first smallpox epidemic arrived in the Pacific Northwest between 1775 and 1781 and started as a result of Euro-American exploration and trade along the North Pacific coast. Boyd noted that this epidemic most likely emerged from contact with Spanish ships and their crews in 1774. Disease transference intensified during this period since the purpose of most of these expeditions in the late eighteenth century was to obtain furs and the exchange of goods and foods probably enhanced the chances of Native Americans contracting deadly diseases….According to Boyd, another smallpox epidemic occurred in 1801-1802, four years before the Lewis and Clark expedition arrived on the Plateau. Hunn noted that approximately fifty percent of the population perished in these two epidemics….” (McCoy. Chief Joseph, Yellow Wolf and the Creation of Nez Perce History in the Pacific Northwest. 2004, p. 49.)

Mooney: “….we know that in 1801 a Pawnee war party, returning from New Mexico, brought the smallpox home with them, with the result that it spread among the tribes from the Missouri to the coast of Texas. The prairie tribes are said to have lost more than half their population at this time, while the Wichita, Caddo, and others in the south suffered almost as severely (Morse, 2; Lewis and Clark, 4) .” (Mooney. Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians. 1898, pages 129-444.)

Nash and Strobel: “Although the overall numbers for disease losses are hard to quantify, the impact of epidemics was dramatic. Scholars argue that as many as half of the Amerindian population of the plains died in the smallpox pandemic of 1779-1781. Another major smallpox epidemic occurred in 1801-1802. Researchers also argue that Plains Indian farming populations were generally more severely afflicted by disease than the horse cultures that surrounded them. The disease factor shifted the power advantage even further to the nomadic horse peoples. The 2,000 Mandans farmers who lived in villages along the Missouri River in North Dakota, for example, suffered a devastating smallpox outbreak in 1837. Largely due to disease, the Mandan population in the region had already declined from an original estimated populace of 15,000 people in the first half of the eighteenth century. By October 1837 there were only 138 Mandans still alive. Nearby Hidatsa and Arikara settlements also suffered, losing an estimated half of their population.” (Nash and Strobel. Daily Life of Native Americans from Post-Columbian Through Nineteenth-Century America. p. 223.)

National Park Service. Coastal Tribes.
“Information on the Coastal Indians. Recorded by Members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition 1805-1806.”

“Clark. Saturday November 23rd 1805.

“In the evening seven Indians of the Clatsop Nation came over in a canoe….This nation is the remains of a large nation destroyed by the smallpox or some other [malady] which those people were not acquainted with. They speak the same language of the Chinooks and resemble them…”

Pritzker: “….By the early nineteenth century, heavy involvement in the non-native trade had altered Omaha material culture. A severe smallpox epidemic in 1802 reduced the population to around 300.” (Pritzker, Barry M. Native Americans: An Encyclopedia of History Culture, and Peoples (Volume I-II). 1998, p. 496.)

Public History PDX (A Project of the Department of History at Portland State University):

“A Lower Columbia Chinook Historical Timeline.”

“….1801 An epidemic (likely smallpox strikes the Northwest Coast”

Robertson: “….In 1802, his horrified tribe [Omaha, chief Blackbird] witnessed the impossible as the rotting face claimed the revered and fearsome chief. About 300 Omahas survived the epidemic, too few to ever again menace fur traffic on the Missouri….

“In addition to the Omahas, the epidemic of 1801 and 1802 also pummeled the Pawnees, Poncas, Iowas, Kiowas, Arikaras, Mandans, Hidatsas, Assiniboines, and Crows. Carried by Indian hunting and war parties, the disease diffused across the Continental Divide to the Flathead tribe, then west to the Pend d’Oreilles, Kalispels and Spokanes. Hudson’s Bay Company factor Peter Fidler, who worked on the South Saskatchewan River, wrote that the Atsinas caught smallpox from a party of visiting Arapahos. The Arapahos lived around the South Platte River (in northeastern Colorado and western Nebraska) and were related to the Atsinas. The tribes regularly visited back and forth. According to Fidler, the Arapahos had been infected by Indians from the lower Missouri River. Among the Atsinas, the disease was especially deadly for the young, who lacked the immunity many of their elders had acquired during the epidemic of the early 1780s.

“At every village and camp it touched, Variola major rent the fabric of social order, destroying not only Indian families but also tribal direction and continuity. Traditional crafts and cultural links with the past disappeared amid fevers and blistered skin. This second major smallpox epidemic in twenty years completed the destruction of the once-vast native trading system. Indian survivors now had no choice but to turn to the white traders and their manufactured goods. Luxuries of the past became necessities. Smallpox had claimed so many female artisans among the Missouri River tribes that the craft of making pottery vanished. Having no one to teach them to mold clay into post and harden them with fire, coming generations of Indian women would be compelled to purchase metal kettles from the white traders. Similarly, future ranks of Native American boys would never gain the skills that had permitted their grandfathers’ grandfathers to hunt with bows instead of guns.

“In the Arkansas River Valley (in eastern Arkansas, above the mouth of the Arkansas River), the Quapaws – who had been ravaged by smallpox in 1698 – fell prey to this latest epidemic. So too did their northwestern neighbor, the Osages, who lived near the Marais des Cygnes and upper Osage rivers (in southwestern Missouri). For years the Osages had used the Quapaws as a protective but weak buffer against the aggressive and well-armed Choctaws and Chickasaws, who occupied the territory west of the Mississippi River (in western Tennessee and western Mississippi)….

“After being hit by smallpox in the spring of 1801, so many Quapaws perished, the tribe lost its ability to hold the line between the Osages and their Choctaw and Chickasaw foes.

“As it did to the Quapaws, the smallpox epidemic of 1801 and 1802 also invaded the Osages, killing at least half the tribe, better than 2,000 people by some estimates. After the pestilence died out, the surviving Osages had to face the Choctaws and Chickasaws with almost no help from the Quapaws….the Osages began a long slide toward compromise and subjugation. Within a few decades, this once-powerful tribe would find itself bunched together in the Indian territory (now Oklahoma) amid its former foes.

“Among the Missouri Indians, from whom the Missouri River took its name, the smallpox epidemics of the early 1780s and 1800s so reduced their numbers that their warriors could no longer defend the tribe against the Pawnees and Lakotas. Shortly after the latest epidemic ended, the Missouri Indians threw themselves on the mercy of their Otoe allies, who lived along the lower Platte River. The Otoes welcomed the Missouris into their villages and granted them protection against their common enemies, but the Otoes never accepted the Missouris as equals.

“While the Missouris were begging succor from the Otoes, most of the Hidatsas who had survived the epidemic of 1801 and 1802 were dwelling in a large town on the north side of the Knife River, about five miles upstream from its confluence with the Missouri. The nearly 900 lodges the tribe had boasted in the days before its contact with white traders had shrunk to about 130, enough homes for perhaps 2,700 people. ….

“In slightly more than a generation, smallpox had reduced the Mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikaras from five or six dozen villages to only eight. Before Variola major, the three tribes had possessed the strength to safeguard their domain. But after undergoing two major epidemics, they were powerless to do anything except delay the juggernaut of Lakota expansion.” (Robertson. Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian. 2001, pp. 194-198.)

Snodgrass. World Epidemics: A Cultural Chronology of Disease from Prehistory to the Era of Zika (Second Edition). 2017.

“early 1801 Smallpox blanketed the Great Plains from Canada to the Tex-Mex border. As described by the log of William Clark and Meriwether Lewis and by Nebraska historian Mari Sandoz in The Beaver Men: Spearheads of Empire (1964), the pox generated hostility between Native Americans and European insurgents. The fur trade between the French of Louisiana and the Iowa, Quapaw, Salish, Wichita, Pend-d’Oreille, Caddo, and Spokane tribes virtually ceased after an epidemic rendered natives too weak to trap and process pelts. The Osage lost 2,000 of their nation. The battered Missouri joined the Otoe. The 250 remaining Ponca fell victim of the Dakota. Pawnee numbers declined by 75 percent.

“Tribes lost as much as 90 percent of the former population. The Omaha, at half their former strength, burned their villages and became nomads and raiders. Parents feared that disfigured survivors would produce the same pock marking on the unborn.

“Too woo traders back to the pelt business, native trappers heaped skins on an island for smoking to kill pathogens. The French attempted to halt the spread of contagion less out of humanistic concern than on behalf of their dwindling income. The Omaha were so wary of Europeans that they halted a convoy of Spanish who tried to establish business in the upper Missouri region. Along the Pacific coast a hemorrhagic form of the pestilence struck the Flathead, Lummi, Nootka, Tsimshian, Tlingit, Haida, Tillamook, and Nez Perce, leaving severe disfiguration and disabilities and turning corpses black. Lewis and Clark noted the extinction of the Clatsop and Chinook.” (Snodgrass 2017, p. 120.)

Snodgrass: “summer 1801 The Atsina or Gros Ventre, prairie dwellers of southern Canada, caught smallpox from the Arapaho of the Missouri River region. An epidemic extended across the Columbia Plateau and reached the Salish of Vancouver Island on Canada’s Pacific coast. In the early 1900s, Mourning Dove, also known as Christine Quintasket, co-founder of the Colville Indian Association and the first woman elected to the Colville Tribal Council, explained how native medical care worsened smallpox in the previous century. She described her grandmother’s memories of its first appearance in the Northwest. Because people tried to sweat out the disease in steamy lodges and then plunged into cold streams, they quickly worsened and perished, sometimes by drowning or pneumonia.” (Snodgrass 2017, p. 121.)

Snodgrass: “January 1, 1802 Only a third of the Omaha on northeastern Nebraska survived an epidemic of smallpox, which they encountered from trade with whites. Tribe members shuddered at the advance of the unknown scourge from lodge to lodge. Some were crazed by fever and fled to the prairie to perish alone. The faithful honored their 50-year-old Chief Blackbird and mounted his body on a horse under a burial mound atop a ridge overlooking the Missouri River. Braves suspended scalps that Blackbird had taken from a pole extending from the cairn, which became a Nebraska landmark known as Blackbird Hill. In their weakened state, the surviving Omaha were unable to fight off invading Sioux from the Dakotas.

“On August 11, 1804, William Clark, one of the two leaders President Thomas Jefferson dispatched on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, wrote in his diary:

We landed at the foot of the hill on which Black Bird I, the late King of the Mahar who Died 4 years ago, & 400 of his nation with the Smallpox was buried, and went up and fixed a white flag bound with Blue, white & red on the Grave, which was about 12 foot Base & circular, on the top of a Pinnacle about 300 foot above the water of he river. From the top of this hill may be Seen the bends or meandering of the river for 60 or 70 miles round….Above the Bluff on this Creek the Mahars had the Smallpox & 400 of them Died 4 years ago [Journals, 1987].

“Clark, who dated the epidemic to 1800, commented on Blackbird’s equestrian burial, which had already become a frontier legend. Clark later remarked that the Omaha suffered so severely from disease that they abandoned ancestral lands.” (Snodgrass. World Epidemics, 2017, p. 121.)

Snodgrass: “spring 1802 When smallpox struck the Mississippi Territory, Governor William Charles Cole Claiborne took bold action to avert an epidemic. To save the town of Natchez, he initiated the territory’s first mass vaccination against the pox.” (Snodgrass. World Epidemics, 2017, p. 121.)

Taylor: “1801-1803: Pandemic—Smallpox, Measles, and Respiratory Infections.”

“Between the years 1801 and 1803, a pandemic appears to have occurred in the Northern Plains area. Smallpox entered the area from the south and a respiratory disease from the northeast. A third disease, perhaps measles, was present in the east.

“Smallpox struck St. Louis for the first time in 1799 (Houck 1980:62). During the winter of 179901800, this disease infected the Omaha, Iowa, and other groups living on the lower Missouri River (Delassus [Dolassus?]1952:631). Shortly afterward, the Pawnee contracted the disease (Dougherty 1931b). By summer, smallpox had spread into the Central Plains to the Arapaho who infected the Atsina by 1801. Atsina mortality was ‘upwards of 100 all young people” (Fidler 1976:294) but did not spread to other ethnic groups to the north and east (1976:317). The Crow also contracted smallpox during this epidemic from their allies, the Arapaho (1976:321; Larocque 1911:59), but the only estimates of mortality for this ethnic group also include those for the 1780-82 smallpox epidemic. (Teit (1930:315-316) reported that the Crow infected the Salish and smallpox spread westward into the Columbia as a severe epidemic. Spaulding (Spaulding and Smith 1958:137) was told of this epidemic by Nez Perce, and he saw the smallpox scars. Because he was told this epidemic was much less severe, Spalding hypothesized that the epidemic was alastrim rather than smallpox. Alastrim, or Variola minor, is a much less severe form of smallpox. The difference between the effects of this epidemic on the Salish and the Nez Perce probably does not lie in a difference in diseases but rather in a perception of the disease. The Nez Perce possibly had a greater number of immune individuals in the population than did the Salish, many of whom appear to have relocated to the eastern margin of the Salishan-speaking territory to more easily engage in bison hunting.

“Sioux winter-counts record that some Sioux bands contracted smallpox during this epidemic, while others did not. The infection was spread to the Sioux after that group attacked the Omaha during the epidemic (Tabeau 1939:100). …. (Taylor, John F. Sociocultural effects of epidemics on the Northern Plains. University of Montana, 1982. Accessed 3-18-2021.)

Thayer: “In 1801-1802, an epidemic in the U.S. Midwest and Northwest killed many among the Omaha, Ponca, Oto, and Iowa. It moved up the Missouri River to devastate the Arikara, Gros Ventre, Mandan, Crow, and Sioux. It also traveled down the Mississippi to affect tribes in the southern plains, Texas, and the South.” (Thayer, Bradley A. Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict. 2004, p. 207.)

Thornton: “The 1801–1802 smallpox pandemic occurred among tribes of the central and northwestern regions of the United States. During it the Omaha were all but destroyed, as were their neighbors the Ponca, the Oto, and the Iowa. The pandemic spread north along the Missouri River, devastating the Arikara, the Gros Ventre, the Mandan, the Crox, and the Sioux. Smallpox was transmitted to the Pacific Northwest when the Crow carried it to what was to become Washington Territory and the Flathead Indians. In the Northwest it also infected the Semte’use, the Pend d’Oreille, the Kalispel, the Colville, the Spokane, and the Salish tribes along the Columbia River, where it eventually subsided. It is said that in the Northwest, ‘the Spokane suffered the worst, though all were seriously affected’ (Stern and Stern, 1945: 76).

“The pandemic even raged down the Mississippi River to the Louisiana gulf, here it did not stop but spread into Texas, the rest of the Southwest, and the southern plains. It was brought to the Kiowa in northeastern Texas by a Pawnee war party returning from present-day New Mexico. From the Kiowa, the smallpox spread to adjacent Indian peoples; ‘The prairie tribes are said to have lost more than half their population at this time, while the Wichita, Caddo, and others in the south suffered almost as severely’ (Mooney, James. 1898: 168).” (Thornton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. 1987, 1990, pp. 91-92.)

U.S. National Library of Medicine. “1802: An estimated 150,000 dead at Ne-cha-co-lee, a Chinook city.”

“The expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark arrives at a Chinook village in Oregon that had recently been home to 150,000 Chinook. Clark hears from a survivor that the settlement’s name, Ni-cha-co-lee, means ‘the wreck of five houses of a very large Village.’ In their journals, Lewis and Clark record that the survivor ‘was badly marked with the Small Pox and made Signs that they all died with the disorder that marked her face.’

“The smallpox epidemic traveled along river systems, which served as trade routs for Native peoples. In Oregon, Lewis and Clark meet the Clatsop tribe who report that the smallpox epidemic traveled through villages along the Columbia River to the Pacific, then north over other trade routes to communities on Washington’s Sound.” (National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. Native Voices. Timeline. Accessed 3-18-2021.)

Weatherford: “….Hundreds of thousands of Native Americans, who lacked immunities to European infectious diseases, died. Smallpox was the deadliest: an outbreak in 1739 killed nearly half the Cherokee people, while another from 1801 to 1802 killed two-thirds of the Omaha….” (Weatherford, Doris. A History of Women in the United States: State-by-State Reference (Vol. 1). Grolier, 2003, p. 16.)

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