The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of AmericaButler, William Francis, Sir
History
The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America
Butler, William Francis, Sir
Northwest, Canadian -- Description and travel
In the immediate neighbourhood of Fort Pitt two camps of Crees
established themselves, at first in the hope of obtaining medical
assistance, and failing in that--for the officer in charge soon exhausted
his slender store--they appear to have endeavoured to convey the
infection into the fort, in the belief that by doing so they would cease
to suffer from it themselves. The dead bodies were left unburied close to
the stockades, and frequently Indians in the worst stage of the disease
might be seen trying to force an entrance into the houses, or rubbing
portions of the infections matter from their persons against the
door-handles and window-frames of the dwellings. It is singular that only
three persons within the fort should have been infected with the disease,
and I can only attribute the comparative immunity enjoyed by the
residents at that post to the fact that Mr. John Sinclair had taken the
precaution early in the summer to vaccinate all the persons residing
there, having obtained the vaccine matter from a Salteaux Indian who had
been vaccinated at the Mission of Prince Albert, presided over by Rev.
Mr. Nesbit, sometime during the spring. In this matter of vaccination a
very important difference appears to have existed between the Upper and
Lower Saskatchewan. At the settlement of St. Albert, near Edmonton, the
opinion prevails that vaccination was of little or no avail to check-the
spread of the disease, while, on the contrary, residents on the lower
portion of the Saskatchewan assert that they cannot trace a single case
in which death had ensued after vaccination had been properly performed.
I attribute this difference of opinion on the benefits resulting from
vaccination to the fact that the vaccine matter used at St. Albert and
Edimonton was of a spurious description, having been brought from Fort
Benton, on the Missouri River, by traders during the early summer, and
that also it was used when the disease had reached its height, while, on
the other hand, the vaccination carried on from Mr. Nesbit's Mission
appears to have been commenced early in the spring, and also to have been
of a genuine description.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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