Smallpox and the Kwakwaka’wakw

Published in the North Island Gazette January 31, 2013

The arrival of European traders brought many new diseases to the North Island, including measles, smallpox, tuberculosis, influenza, and sexually transmitted diseases.

 

The most ravaging of these was smallpox, spread through droplet infection, usually through personal contact but also through contact with items like blankets.  Taking a month to run its course, symptoms included the presence of small sores all over the body and a high fever.

 

Smallpox may have first reached the Pacific Northwest in either the 1520s as a part of the Northern Hemisphere smallpox pandemic, or during the first recorded coastal pandemic of the 1770s.  There was some oral history reported to anthropologists that blamed the disappearance of the Hoyalas peoples of Quatsino on an epidemic illness around this time.

 

Indigenous peoples in North America were very susceptible to smallpox, as it had never been endemic to the area, and people had no natural immunity. 

Ethnographer Franz Boaz noted that there is a Kwakwaka’wakw word which means a man whose body “was covered all over with mouths which laughed and shouted all the time.”  This is believed to refer to the presence of smallpox sores.

 

In 1847 Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, George Simpson, reported after a trip to Northern Vancouver Island that “curiously enough, they (Kwakiutl) have been exempted from the small-pox.”  

 

Simpson noted that the HBC was in possession of a vaccine, which they offered, but local Chiefs refused.  Simpson noted that they did not push the issue, feeling “that our medicine would get the credit of any epidemic that might follow, or perhaps the failure of the hunt or the fishery.” First Nations did not possess quinine, which Europeans successfully used to treat the active disease.

Drawing of a person with smallpox by an unidentified aboriginal artist.

 

In March 12, 1862, the Brother Jonathan arrived in Victoria en route to the Columbia River. After the ship left on March 13 it was discovered that with the ship smallpox had arrived in Victoria. Shortly after, another steamer, the Oregon, also arrived in Victoria with smallpox on board.

 

At the time there was debate in the local Victoria papers about whether a quarantine should be enacted, but only a voluntary hospital was set up for those suffering from the virus. Legislators were concerned that a quarantine would unnecessarily restrict the liberty of individuals.

 

After it was clear that there was a full blown outbreak in Fort Victoria,  HBC officials banished the large population of Indigenous who had come to trade from the Fort, and told them to go home.  Some scholars estimate this population numbered between 2500 and 5000 Indigenous peoples. 

 

Although a vaccination was available at the time, and many missions along the coast had inoculated Indigenous communities successfully, many Indigenous people in the early stages of active infection were physically removed from the area of Fort Victoria and told to return to the North Coast, Haida Gwaii, and the North Island. They spread smallpox along their travel routes. 

Fort Victoria around the period of the outbreak of the coastal smallpox epidemic.

 

Unfortunately the official journal from Fort Rupert for the year 1862 has been lost, but the reports of many ships’ captains in the area at the time report the ravages of the disease.  They note that “hundreds were swept away within a few days” and “the tribe native to that section was nearly exterminated.” 

 

There were some reports that unscrupulous traders would unwrap dead bodies and re-sell blankets to other Indigenous communities, thus further transferring the disease. There is not a lot of evidence to indicate that this was a widespread practice, and the number of non-Indigenous people in many communities along the coast at this time would have been quite low, so it is not clear what, if any, measurable impact this practice would have had.

 

Young and healthy people were largely effected, which had an impact on reproduction rates for communities.  Survivors were identifiable because of their extensive scarring. The first case was reported in March and by December the epidemic of 1862 was over.

 

An 1850 census of First Nations in the area placed the Kwakwaka’wakw population at about 8 850, and in 1866 the estimate was 3 750, which would be an overall loss of 53%. Some reports put the impact as high as 90% of Indigenous populations. The impact was so great that some settlers at the time said that for many years afterward human bones littered the coast.

 

Some anthropologists have commented that it is remarkable that First Nations cultures were able to retain so much of their knowledge and cultural traditions with the loss of so many community members.  The Kwakwaka’wakw are truly a resilient people.

Historic Quakes and Waves on the North Island

Vancouver Island was created as a result of the earth rising due to the pressure of the Juan de Fuca plate and the Explorer Plate slowly travelling under the North American plate in the Cascadia Subduction Zone.  For the same reason, this is one of the most earthquake prone areas in Canada.

Large ‘megathrust’ earthquakes have historically taken place in the vicinity of Vancouver Island approximately every 500 years.  Scientists believe that quakes of this type took place around 600 BC, 170 BC, 400 AD, 810 AD, 1310 AD, and in 1700 AD.

The most recent megathrust quake took place on January 26, 1700 at 9:00pm.  This time has been pinpointed due to the very accurate timekeeping of the Japanese, who reported an ‘orphan’ tsunami (a tsunami without a quake) that took place the following day. 

The 1700 earthquake was estimated to have measured about 9.0 on the Richter scale, and struck near the Canada border with Washington State. 

Many First Nations’ oral histories tell of this quake.  The Nuu-chah-nulth on the West Coast of Vancouver Island have stories that tell of a great quake that happened before the first white men came.  Some Coast Salish tribes have stories that tell of a violent shaking of the earth that went on for 20 hours (this likely includes aftershocks), made houses fall down, and people on land get seasick.

A Makah storey tells of great flooding which covered the land up to the trees for four days.  Other communities tell of sand that shook until it swallowed things up.

Local First Nations have earthquake dances, which tell of the earth shaking.

The effects of more recent earthquakes have been felt on Northern Vancouver Island.    

A 7.0 quake centered in the area near the Estevan Point Light Station woke up people around the island at 12:41 am on December 16, 1918, but did not cause much damage.

Damage to the highway near Sayward following the 1946 earthquake.

A 7.3 quake in the mid-island area at 10:13am on June 23, 1946 knocked down 75% of the chimneys in the Campbell River/ Comox area, and caused a soil failure that ripped apart the highway near Sayward.  It has the distinction of causing the most recorded damage of any quake on the island in historic times. 

On August 21 at 8:01PM in 1949 a strong 8.1 quake struck in Haida Gwaii which reportedly knocked over cows near its epicentre, but this quake was not felt strongly on the North Island.

A 9.2 quake in Alaska on March 27, 1964 caused a tsunami that hit many West Coast communities.  Most people are aware of the damage that happened in Port Alberni, but a number of more northern communities also felt its effects. 

Damage in Zeballos after 1964 tsunami

Hot Springs Cove and Zeballos both reported a rising tide that would not stop rising.  The water kept coming until almost every building was knocked off its foundations, and some floated some distance. 

The Zeballos Iron Mine, which was on higher ground, served as a makeshift shelter.  Crew busses transported women and children from the village to the mine camp, and cooks provided hot food for the refugees.

Local accounts told of massive churning of waters around Tahsis narrows killing thousands of bottom fish, rapidly forced to the surface when their swim bladders exploded. 

In Port Alice an airplane dock, mail wharf, and oil float were all damaged.

The coastal float camps were largely able to ride out the tsunami.  The tsunami occurred at a low tide, and damage would have been much greater if the tide was higher at the time.

 Another more local tsunami took place in Knight Inlet around 1600 AD.  First Nations oral history tells of a massive landslide on the South side of the channel, on the side of a mountain the First Nations knew as “Tohu.”

A landslide caused 3 – 4 million cubic metres of rock to fall into the inlet to a depth of 500 metres.  This caused a tsunami wave somewhere between 3 and 10 metres in height that travelled across the narrow inlet in less than a minute, sweeping away the unsuspecting village of Kwalate.

The village was believed to have been home to more than 100 people, with four chiefs, who were all lost in this tragic event.  A number of the victims were recovered and were laid to rest near the entrance to Simoom Sound, and pictographs of four coppers painted on the nearby rock were believed to commemorate the event.

Archeological excavations found evidence of the old village site, including middens and firepits under 1 metre of overburden.  Covering the village site were tsunami deposits 1 – 5 cm deep, mostly of sand.  The village was abandoned after this event, and never recolonized.  Today the event is much studied by geologists, looking at the potential of tsunamis from above and underground landslides.