Smallpox blankets hoax

Genocide of one Amerindian group (Dorset) by another (Thule).

The smallpox blankets hoax is the common false belief that the United States military gave Amerindians blankets with smallpox. This is parroted as fact, and spread by Marxists, but it is entirely fictional

History

Smallpox blankets

Professor Anne Stone, of Arizona State University, discovered in 2014 that African tuberculosis killed off most of the Amerindians before European contact. From a study of the bones of seals and sea lions in Peru, the evidence was conclusive that sea creatures traveling from Africa to South America carried the tuberculosis that wiped out many Amerindians. Human skeletons from Peru, dated 750 AD-1350 AD showed conclusive proof that people back then already had tuberculosis, long before Columbus arrived. By studying the DNA strains of the disease on the remains of Amerindians, they showed that it was the African strains rather than European strains.

The very first claim that the United States distributed "smallpox-infested blankets" to Indian tribes originated in Ward Churchill's (born October 2, 1947) book Indians Are Us?. This book was not first published until 1994. The claim has been debunked by scholars.

In at least six different essays, Churchill alleged that the United States Army deliberately distributed smallpox-infected blankets to the Mandan Indians at Fort Clark in 1837 to spark a smallpox pandemic, and that hundreds of thousands of Indians died of smallpox as a consequence. Other scholars who have studied this episode agree that smallpox killed many Indians in this time frame, but deny that there is any evidence to support Churchill's allegations of deliberate genocide by means of smallpox blankets. They also charge Churchill with exaggerating the death toll and with falsifying the sources he cites in support of his claims. Professor Thomas Brown wrote in the journal Plagiary that, "Every aspect of Churchill's tale is fabricated."

In November 2004, Guenter Lewy, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, published an essay charging Churchill with misrepresenting his sources. Lewy says Churchill's assertion that the U.S. Army intentionally spread smallpox among American Indians by distributing infected blankets in 1837 is false. "He just makes things up," said Lewy. Lewy calls Churchill's claim of 100,000 deaths from the incident "obviously absurd".

In an article in the journal Plagiary, entitled "Did the US Army Distribute Smallpox Blankets to Indians? Fabrication and Falsification in Ward Churchill's Genocide Rhetoric", Lamar University sociology professor Thomas Brown also accused Churchill of fabricating the incident and falsifying his sources. Brown argues that Churchill's claim that his cited source—Russell Thornton—supports Churchill's smallpox blanket allegations is a falsification of Thornton. Brown also charges Churchill with fabricating the presence of US Army personnel on the scene, with fabricating the distribution of blankets taken from a military infirmary in St. Louis, and with concealing evidence in his possession that disconfirms his allegations.

Three of the authors that Churchill cites in support of his smallpox thesis, Evan Connell, RG Robertson and Russell Thornton, have rejected Churchill's interpretation of their work. Thornton characterized Churchill's smallpox thesis as "fabrication."

In an interview in 2005, Churchill stated that he had obtained documentary evidence confirming his description of events at Fort Clark.

The May 2006 report by the Investigative Committee of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct at the University of Colorado corroborated Churchill's critics. The committee concluded that for over a period of 10 years, Churchill consistently falsified his sources and fabricated claims regarding the Fort Clark epidemic. The committee criticized Churchill for failing to recognize and correct his errors, and for his insistence that he intends to republish his indictment of genocide in the future without substantive changes. The committee also criticized Churchill for answering his critics with ad hominem attacks instead of reason and evidence.

Additionally, the committee found Churchill guilty of serious research misconduct in his claims that John Smith initiated a smallpox epidemic against Wampanoag Indians when he visited New England in 1614. The committee found that the source Churchill cited for his claim (Manitou and Providence: Europeans, Indians, and the Making of New England, 1500–1643 by Neal Salisbury) actually gave evidence contrary to his claim, namely that Smith viewed the Indians as a potential source of labor to be exploited militarily (rather than exterminated) and that the epidemic did not break out until at least eighteen months after Smith had left the area. Based on these and other inconsistencies, the committee determined that Churchill had fabricated this event and cited sources in a misleading way.

Churchill has also published other false claims, such as in two articles published in the 1990s, University of New Mexico where he repeatedly published false claims about the General Allotment Act, attributing a "blood quantum" standard of Indianness to the Allotment Act.

He has also been found guilty of plagiarism from Annette Jaimes and Rebecca Robbins, The Water Plot, and Fay Cohen. Churchill was fired in July, 2007 from University of Colorado, thus mooting any investigation of the additional charges.

Real genocide of Amerindians

Although all death by disease of Amerindians was unintentional, there was a real genocide of the Amerindians. The only actual genocide of the Amerindians was in Latin America where they were genocided through mass miscegenation with Europeans and Africans, producing the spiritually inferior mestizo race, which unlike the Amerindians no longer can live independently off the land and so are easily manipulable. In Anglo-America, there are more pure-blooded Amerindians today than when Columbus arrived due to the white man's medicine. Based on 2012 US Census data, there are an estimated 4 million people who identify as pure or largely pure Amerindian and about 53 million who identify as mixed Amerindian "Latino" in the United States.

There was an actual wiping out of a distinct group of people in the history of the Amerindians. It was the Dorset people, living in Canada. As the Thule people immigrated into the area, eventually the Dorset died off. The Dorset people are now extinct with no descendants, including those interbred with others. The two groups of people were hostile to each other and the Thule people out-competed them.