All Images Copyright of the artist. Location images courtesy of Peninsula Arts, Plymouth.
All Images Copyright of the artist. Location images courtesy of Peninsula Arts, Plymouth.
Colonisation: Variola vera
Peninsula Arts Gallery, Plymouth
Colonisation: Variola vera considers the contemporary sublime in relation to The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-1782 in North America.
Particularly, it utilises the famous story of blankets, infected with the smallpox virus from the smallpox hospital in Fort Pitt, being deliberately given to Native American tribes by local militia members of the British Army, during the time of Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763.
Amidst widespread accusations of biological warfare against General Amherst, General Gage, Colonel Bouquet and Captian Eucyer, the reality of which is richly chronicled and debated by historians, the incident is part of a much larger and very interesting story.
The transmission of the smallpox virus, across North America and Canada during the late eighteenth century, was horrific in its effect and pivotal in the course of North American history. As Elizabeth A. Fenn, Ass. Professor of History at University of Colorado, wrote 'By the time the pestilence was over, it had reshaped human destinies across the continent'. (Fenn 2002)
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Comprising a range of hand embroidered woollen blankets, the largest two blankets are wall hung Hudson Bay Point Blankets. Somewhat reminiscent of work by Rothko and Newman as fields of colour, these bright blankets are designed to explore the sublime (as delineated by Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into The Origins of Our Ideas of The Sublime and The Beautiful, 1756), but through the medium of contemporary textiles. As the audience contemplate and reflect upon the embroidered smallpox virus representations, stitched and hidden amongst the fibres, a sense of slight terror and awe at the subject, and its deadly consequences, arises.
THE WORK
EXPLORING THE SUBLIME THROUGH TEXTILES.
This is an ongoing and evolving body of work, comprising a range of hand embroidered woollen blankets.
In exploring the history of the famous 'smallpox blanket incident', I was struck by the contrast between the thoughts of comfort we usually associate with blankets, and with the intentions these men considered subverting them with. My own work uses the metaphor of the blankets to examine our notions of comfort, safety, security, warmth, a sense of place and home, and how this can be threatened or destroyed by something unexpected and dangerous, hidden inside something we trust.
The largest two blankets are both Hudson Bay Point Blankets; chosen because the Hudson Bay Company is famous for its long history of trade, as well as potentially being associated with European land and resource colonisation in the Northern Americas, especially the Great Lake area and Canada.
(The far reaching trade routes of the Americas, pre-dating Lewis and Clarke's journey, are identified as having enabled the smallpox virus to spread quickly and efficiently from person to person across vast distances).
Somewhat reminiscent of work by Rothko and Newman as fields of colour, these bright blankets are designed to explore the sublime (as delineated by Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into The Origins of Our Ideas of The Sublime and The Beautiful, 1756), but through the medium of contemporary textiles. As the audience contemplate and reflect upon the embroidered smallpox virus representations, stitched and hidden amongst the fibres, a sense of slight terror and awe at the subject, and its deadly consequences, arises.
The details of the smallpox epidemic are as sublime as they as terrible. It is hard to imagine for the generations who live now without its consequences. The last ever victim of smallpox died, in the twentieth century, on 11th September 1978 after the World Health Organisation (through a long and exhaustive campaign) eradicated smallpox from the world.
The terror evoked still has resonance for us today -
America and Russia both decided to keep smallpox samples within their government laboratories after the last case in 1978. Intelligence had indicated that secret supplies of the virus were at large in the world, through terrorist organisations, and with no vaccination programs in place they fear that Smallpox could once again become a biological weapon.
BACKGROUND
THE SEIGE OF FORT PITT AND THE SMALLPOX BLANKETS
European colonists introduced widespread epidemic diseases to the Americas from 1492 onwards, to which the indigenous populations had no prior exposure or resistance, and were the major cause of massive population decline across the indigenous peoples through the following centuries. The numbers of deaths involved, the scale of the devastation to the tribes and their culture, is beyond rational comprehension. Modern day historians estimate that at least 90% of the indigenous population were killed by the diseases and war that europeans bought with them. Smallpox was one of the most devasting diseases, physically, and socially, to the tribes. The mortality rate was high, and the physical effects horrific for those few who survived it.
Focusing my research on the European colonisation of the Americas, in regard to the effects of disease, one particular incident in 1763 caught my attention.
The Siege of Fort Pitt during 1763 was part of Pontiac's Rebellion, an effort by Native American indians to drive out the British from their lands in the area now called Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These events are most well known for the allegations of biological warfare, using blankets infected with smallpox virus, being conducted by the British against the Native tribes during this period.
My research into the stories around the blankets focused on letters from the time of the siege, between General Amherst, Colonel Bouquet and Captian Ecuyer of the British Army, and the journal of a miltia captain and trader named William Trent who was recruited by Captain Ecuyer.
In a journal entry dated May 1763 Trent writes:
... we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.
They were given to two Delaware delegates, Turtleheart, a principal warrior, and Maumaultee, a Chief, on June 24th 1763. Whatever the 'desired effect', happily neither Delaware delegates contracted smallpox afterwards.
Then, a month later, letters dated July 1763 show how General Amherst and Colonel Bouquet also discussed giving blankets from the smallpox hospital in Fort Pitt to the Native American tribes in the area. In a postscript of a letter to Bouquet, Amherst writes:
Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.
Further, in letter dated 13th July 1763, Amherst also suggests, again in a postscript, the distribution of smallpox blankets to inoculate the Indians. General Thomas Gage, who succeeded General Amherst, later approved payment to Trent, for the cost of the items he had given to the Indians.
SMALLPOX AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
This is only a small part of the story, the nuances of which historians have thoroughly discussed for many years. Amidst these accusations and plans of biological warfare, beyond the question of "did he or didn't he" towards General Amherst, I discovered much more fascinating and profound stories.
It is only through the excellent research of Elizabeth A Fenn, Professor of History at George Washington University, and her seminal book Pox Americana, that the whole picture emerges:
'The Amherst affair becomes not so much an aberration as part of a larger continuum in which accusations and discussions of biological warfare were common, and actual incidents may have occurred more frequently than scholars have previously acknowledged...'
For greater depth of research on this subject, please refer to Prof. Fenn's book, Pox Americana, with comprehensive notes and bibliography.
SMALLPOX AND HISTORY
The story of how smallpox travelled across North America and Canada changes our view of American history; it preceded M. Lewis and W. Clarke's journey to the Pacific by 20 to 30 years, revealing a vast pre-existing network of human interactions and trade routes. Smallpox was a decisive factor in the British Seven Year War in the Americas, the Colonial Wars, and the American Revolution and "By the Time the pestilence was over, it has reshaped human destinies across a continent".
SMALLPOX - THE EFFECTS ON ITS VICTIMS
Excerpt taken from: The Great Smallpox Epidemic
Caused by a moderately contagious virus known as Variola major, the initial signs of smallpox came twelve days after exposure, usually by infection of the respiratory tract. Mild at first, the early symptoms were much like those of the flu. They included headache, backache, fever, vomiting and general malaise. In many cases, victims began feeling better after the first day or two, often thinking that they had indeed suffered a bout of influenza.
Relief, however, was fleeting. By day four, the face flushed and the first painful lesions appeared – not on the surface of the skin, but in the mouth, throat and nasal passages. Within twenty-four hours, the distinctive skin rash surfaced. On some, the rash turned inward, haemorrhaging beneath the skin and through the mucous membranes. These patients died early, bleeding from the eyes, nose, gums or vagina. On most patients, however, the pustules pushed to the surface of the skin. If they did not run together the prognosis was fairly good. But if the pustules ran into each other in what was called ‘confluent’ smallpox, patients stood at least a 60 per cent chance of dying.
As the rash progressed in the mouth and throat, drinking became difficult, and dehydration often set in. Around day ten, when the pustules softened and turned blistery, many dehydrated patients simply reabsorbed the fluid they contained. Soon thereafter, in the words of an eighteenth-century Boston physician, the sores began ‘to crack run and smell’. Even under hygienic conditions, secondary bacterial infections might well set in, with consequences fully as severe as those of the smallpox. Near the end of the second week, scabs started to form. In his description of smallpox among the Narragansett Indians in 1634, William Bradford described this condition:
... they lye on their hard matts, the poxe breaking and mattering, and runing one into another, their skin cleaving (by reason therof) to the matts they lye on; when they turne them, a whole side will flea of[f] at once.
By week three, mortality dropped off sharply. Fever subsided, and patients generally improved as unsightly scars replaced scabs and pustules. The usual course of the disease, from initial onset to the loss of all scabs, took roughly one month. Survivors, though often scarred and on rare occasions even blinded by the disease, were also blessed. Having endured smallpox once, they were now immune. They would never catch the disease again.
HUDSON BAY POINT BLANKETS
As part of my work I employ two large (100" x 108") Hudson Bay Point Blankets, both for their aesthetic appeal, and for the history behind them.
In the North American fur trade, point blankets were one of the main European items sought by native peoples in exchange for beaver pelts, buffalo robes, pemmican, moccasins, and other trade goods. They were desired because of wool's ability to hold heat even when wet, and because they were easier to sew than bison or deer skins.
In the North American fur trade, point blankets were one of the main European items sought by native peoples in exchange for beaver pelts, buffalo robes, pemmican, moccasins, and other trade goods. They were desired because of wool's ability to hold heat even when wet, and because they were easier to sew than bison or deer skins.
Wool
cloth of one kind or another was traded as far back as the French regime
in North America (1534-1765), but Hudson Bay Company Point Blankets were
introduced in 1780 to compete with similar blankets offered by the
Montreal-based private traders. The blankets were often produced
with a green stripe, red stripe, yellow stripe and indigo stripe on a white
background, as the four stripe colours were popular with the native peoples and easily produced using good
colourfast dyes at that time.
The
Hudson Bay Company was incorporated by English royal charter in
1670 as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into
Hudson's Bay and functioned as the de facto government
in parts of North America before European states and later the United States
laid claim to some of those territories. It was at one time the largest
landowner in the world, with the area of the Hudson Bay watershed, known
as Rupert's Land, having 15% of North American acreage.
From
its long-time headquarters at York Factory on Hudson Bay,
the company controlled the fur trade throughout much of the English
and later British controlled North America for several centuries. Undertaking early
exploration, its traders and trappers forged early relationships with many
groups of aboriginal peoples. Its network of trading posts formed
the nucleus for later official authority in many areas of Western Canada and
the United States. In the late 19th century, with the signing of the Deed of
Surrender, its vast territory became the largest component in the newly formed
Dominion of Canada, in which the company was the largest private landowner.
Although
Hudson Bay Point Blankets were not the same blankets as those used at Fort
Pitt, they do represent the powerful role trade played in the history of the Americas: the role trade played in building relationships between the different nations and peoples living there, the spread of old world diseases along trade routes, and the consolidation of European power, and Colonialists land ownership throughout North America and Canada.
These iconic blankets are still sought after and valuable today, as well as being one the most famous goods traded with the indigenous peoples.
These iconic blankets are still sought after and valuable today, as well as being one the most famous goods traded with the indigenous peoples.
SMALLPOX AND THE BATTLE OF BUSHY RUN
