SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Just prior to the Louisiana Purchase, early settlers in Mississippi and Louisiana had the ability to vaccinate themselves and the enslaved against smallpox, but it appears that they did not share their vaccines with Native Americans in the region.

Here’s the story.

Meet William C. C. Claiborne

It was late November of 1801, and William C. C. Claiborne arrived in Natchez only a few months before a smallpox epidemic hit the Mississippi Territory.  

Claiborne had just been appointed to his position by U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, and at the time the Mississippi Territory was surrounded by French and Spanish empires. The Mississippi Territory had been settled, for thousands of years, by Native Americans who were still living off the land.

The Louisiana Purchase was still two years away.  

Natchez was pretty much the wild, wild west on the frontier of a young United States. It had become part of the border between nations, for once you crossed the Mississippi River you found yourself in French territory. If you went much further west after that, you were in Spanish territory. And if you were living in the Mississippi Territory and you decided to spend your spring break on the land that would later become Walt Disney World, you were vacationing in Spanish territory.

Natchez was an interesting place in 1801. Spaniards were more than happy to cross the Mighty Mississip and give Natchez’ settlers a hard time. Baptists were rushing toward the edge of the nation’s border to grow the Protestant faith in lands adjacent to Catholic settlements. Cultures were colliding in Natchez when suddenly, a few of the residents of the area developed smallpox.

Only a few people had smallpox in American Natchez and French New Orleans at first, but soon the numbers began to swell.

The history of smallpox vaccines

Smallpox didn’t begin in the New World. It plagued the Old World for thousands of years before Columbus ever “discovered” the Americas.

The Washington Post estimates that somewhere between 25 and 55 million people in the New World died of smallpox after Columbus first came to the Americas. But is it possible that many of the New World’s smallpox deaths could have been prevented?

Accounts from both China and India in the 1500s tell of how these civilizations were inoculating their people against smallpox. Some of the earliest methods of inoculating against smallpox included scratching matter from smallpox sore into the skin of a healthy person, which gave said person a mild case of smallpox that could be survived and would give them immunity to the disease. But those who were inoculated were still highly contagious.

Inoculation was a double-edged sword: good for the inoculated, bad for everyone else.

By the 1600s, smallpox was spreading across the New World.

But smallpox still wasn’t finished killing people in the Old World. In 1661, Chinese Emperor Fu-Lin was killed by smallpox, and his son, the new emperor, wrote the following letter:

“The method of inoculation having been brought to light during my reign, I had it used upon you, my sons and daughters, and my descendants, and you all passed through the smallpox in the happiest possible manner…. In the beginning, when I had it tested on one or two people, some old women taxed me with extravagance, and spoke very strongly against inoculation. The courage which I summoned up to insist on its practice has saved the lives and health of millions of men.”

That was in the 1600s, y’all.

By 1679, smallpox had a new name in the court of Count de Frontenac Louis de Baude in France: the “Indian Plague.” The queen of England, Mary II, died of smallpox in 1694.

In the early 1700s, a minister in Boston named Cotton Mather learned about something called smallpox variolation. Smallpox variolation is another way of describing smallpox inoculation, and we know that Cotton Mather learned it from an enslaved man named Onesimus.

More than likely, Onesimus learned the tradition from others who had been taught old Chinese and India(n) inoculation methods.

Benjamin Franklin’s 4-year-old son died of smallpox in 1736. A few years later, an epidemic had hit Charleston in South Carolina. It killed 4% of the city’s residents who had been variolated, but it killed 18% of the residents who weren’t variolated. It also killed half of the Cherokee Indians who were in the area. They didn’t even have a chance.

Then in 1751, more than 3500 people in London, England died when smallpox struck again.

Benjamin Franklin asked physician William Heberden to do something to help, and in 1679 the physician published Some Account of the Success of Inoculation for the Small-Pox in England and America: Together with Plain Instruction By which any Person may be enabled to perform the Operation and conduct the Patient through the Distemper.

Parents were encouraged to inoculate their children. But because the inoculated quickly spread the contagion and accidentally caused an epidemic in France, the practice was banned in Paris.

During the Revolutionary War, Continental Army troops were intentionally exposed to smallpox by their enemies, so in 1777 George Washington insisted that troops be inoculated against smallpox.

Of men and microbes

After the Spaniards first arrived in the New World in the 1490s, smallpox assisted them in overcoming massive indigenous populations. Take Tenochtitlan, for instance. Smallpox killed 40% of the native population of the city in 1520, making it much easier for the Spaniards to take the city from the natives.

Tenochtitlan may sound far-removed from the ArkLaTex, but it’s not. Tenochtitlan was directly connected to Natchitoches in modern-day Louisiana and even Natchez in modern-day Mississippi.

Old World cities could be quite massive prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. Tenochtitlan (today we call it Mexico City) had hundreds of thousands of residents before the Spaniards battled the Aztecs.

A Franciscan monk who traveled with one of the Spanish explorers wrote, ““As the Indians did not know the remedy of the disease, they died in heaps, like bedbugs. In many places it happened that everyone in a house died, and as it was impossible to bury the great number of dead, they pulled down the houses over them, so that their homes became their tombs.”

It was awful.

By the 1700s, the British were attempting to infect Native Americans with smallpox by giving them blankets from a smallpox hospital. Smallpox became used as a weapon against innocent people.

It is estimated that around 90% of Native Americans died of smallpox and other contagious diseases that were spread to the New World from the Old World. But were many of those deaths unnecessary?

Breakthrough treatment for smallpox

In 1796, Edward Jenner noticed that people who worked near cows and developed cowpox were not catching smallpox. The poxes, Jenner determined, must be related.

Jenner invented a way to prevent smallpox by giving people vaccines that caused them to have a mild dose of cowpox.

Jenner’s kind of a big deal, y’all.

So is the woman who inspired his work.

Meanwhile, in the New World, Winthrop Sargent was the first Governor of the Mississippi Territory. He approved an act on Mar. 18, 1799 that was called “A law concerning aliens and contagious diseases.” The law “declared lawful for the governor, upon information from any physician within this territory that the plague, yellow fever or smallpox, or other contagious disorder, is at any house in the town or country, or on board any boat or vessel at or near the shores of the said territory, to take such measures to prevent a communication of the infection and for the aid and comfort of the sick as he shall deem meet–and all expenses incurred in the prosecution of this humane intention, may in the first instance be made by the territory, and upon the warrant of the governor, whenever there shall be monies sufficient in the territorial treasury…”

Two doctors, who just happened to be brothers (David Lattimore and William Lattimore) set up a medical practice in Natchez sometime around 1801, a few years before the Louisiana Purchase.

Laura D. S. Harrel’s book Preventative Medicine in the Mississippi Territory, 1799-1802 explains that the new governor of the Mississippi Territory (Claiborne) “was fully cognizant of the procedure of vaccination” for the prevention of smallpox because of the Drs. Lattimore.

It’s also interesting to note that Edward Jenner’s study of the cause and effects of Variolae Vaccinae had been published in England four years earlier. The Royal Jennerian Society for the Proper Spread of Vaccination was founded in London in 1803, after the residents in and around Natchez in the Mississippi Territory. (A remarkable feat when you consider that communications in those days were dependent upon letters sent by horse-back or sailing vessels.)

Orphan children used to vacinnate Spanish territories in the New World

In 1803 a dozen orphans were placed on a Spanish sailing ship named the Maria Pita. The voyage departed from Spain on a medical mission to the Americas.

There were physians, surgeons, and four nurses onboard. And it was the job of the adults to slowly infect the children, one at a time, with cowpox.

They were using Jenner’s new vaccine, but because there was no refrigeration to keep samples alive on the trip across the ocean, the orphan children were infected one at a time.

The idea was that if cowpox could be kept alive while crossing the ocean, once the ship reached the New World they could then find new children to infect. Vaccinations could then be made from their sores for Spanish citizens.

The orphan boys were told that if they cooperated, they would be protected and educated once they reached Spanish territory in the New World. That was their reward.

The Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition, as it was called, traveled from Spain to Spanish holdings in the New World, including the Caribbean, modern-day Mexico, South America, the Philippines, and into China.

Twenty-six children became a part of the campaign. Four boys died. And more than 100,000 people in New Spain were immunized against smallpox as a result of the expedition.

Vaccine makes it to the Mississippi Territory

On Apr. 16, 1802, Governor Claiborne wrote a letter to William Dunbar, an explorer with the Hunter/Dunbar expedition. Claiborne basically explained to Dunbar that the introduction of Small-pox would be a very bad thing in the territory. Claiborne wanted every precaution to be taken that would prevent smallpox from entering into the territory.

Claiborne explained that he was not going to allow inoculation in the territory, and he discussed how he wanted to locate vaccine matter. ” I am persuaded that in this quarter Inoculation will not be resorted to, but by general consent, and I flatter myself that the Citizens will every where observe the like propriety– It would be a fortuitous circumstance if the Vaccine Matter could be obtained & I hope that a disappointment will not ensue;–I should esteem it peculiarly unfortunate, if at this time, we Should not be benefited by this important discovery.

“…for my own part I should think the citizens would act wisely, were they immediately to assemble, and raise by subscription a fund, to employ a confidential character to proceed direct to Kentucky & procure the (cowpox) Matter,” wrote Claiborne. “From the account I have received of the Cow-pox, it is safe at all Seasons of the Year & so mild in its operation, as seldom to require either nursing or confinement.”

Claiborne also wrote to Captain Samuel Postlethwait on April 16, 1802. He told the Captain of his fears of merchants from French territories, including New Orleans and other places where cases of smallpox had been reported. He also banned the sale of any fur hats or wool cloths from New Orleans, as he believed that cloth carried the disease.

Claiborne also wrote William McCormick and asked settlers to be more empathetic with those who became sick after inoculation. He told McCormick that he wanted the people of Natchez to build a hospital for patients who had smallpox and had been forced to leave the town and reside in the woods.

“I must confess, that the idea, of having sent a fellow mortain in the woods, while on a sick bed, is distressing to my feelings,” wrote Claiborne.

A hospital camp for the isolation of smallpox patients was in operation near Natchez by May 1, 1802. Ten days later, on May 13, Claiborne approved An act to prevent the importation and spreading of the small-pox within this territory. The act fined and imprisoned people who brought small pox matter that could be used to inoculate people for small pox. Those convicted faced a $2000 fine and be imprisoned for up to twelve months per offense.

A few months later, on October 1, 1802, the Lattimore brothers wrote the following to Claiborne: “We avail ourselves of the first leisure to report to our Excellency, relative to the occurrences at the smallpox camp, which was erected in the Spring…”  

The brother-physicians listed the names of those who had contracted smallpox. Then they shared two people had been inoculated for smallpox in French-owned New Orleans, and when the two arrived at Natchez they broke out with smallpox. Six more people were infected with smallpox, three as a result of inoculations. The five inoculated persons had light cases of smallpox, but the other six who caught it by accident were so ill that two of them died of smallpox.

The brothers praised Governor Claiborne for his quick-thinking. They wrote that two-thirds of the inhabitants of Natchez took the vaccination and that no one who took the vaccine died.

“It is not easy to say, what might have been the fate of this menaced country, without the advantages of this invaluable preventative; but it would seem as if, its opportune arrival among us was something providential,” wrote the brother doctors.

Smallpox had been purged from Natchez before the vaccine virus (cowpox) sample had died.

The governor wrote to the brothers again on October 5, 1802.

“Accept gentlemen, my thanks for the attention and humanity with which the duty assigned you was discharged and I pray you to be assured of my great respect and sincere esteem.”

Many Mississippi Territory settlers were saved from smallpox in the early 19th century because of actions taken by William C. C. Claiborne. There is no question that he implemented smallpox vaccine methods (which used cowpox) and located the materials to create the vaccines while also forbidding smallpox inoculation methods and materials in the Mississippi Territory.  

But as wonderful as it is that many lives were saved because of the vaccination, there is still a side story that hasn’t been told.

More information is needed to determine if Native American populations in and around the Mississippi Territory were given access to information about the vaccines and materials needed to create them. The same is true of French and Spanish territories in the New World.

After all, there is a reason that the U.S. Government created an act in 1932 that finally provided needed vaccines that would protect Native Americans against the spread of smallpox.