For Marilyn Hudson, the administrator of the Three Affiliated Tribes Museum in New Town, N.D., the oral traditions of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation are sacrosanct.
Following the traditions, tribal members still recount how the three tribes were nearly wiped out in a raging smallpox epidemic in 1837. It is considered the most traumatic event in the history of the Three Affiliated Tribes, said Hudson, who is a member.
In its critical appraisal of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill released Tuesday, a CU investigative panel looked at Churchill’s claim that the U.S. Army deliberately spread the smallpox among the Indians. Churchill claims the Army did this by purposely distributing smallpox-infected blankets, didn’t administer a vaccine and sent the infected Indians back to their families.
The committee said Churchill didn’t commit academic misconduct in making the allegation because early accounts of what was said by Indians and certain native traditions provided “some basis” for that interpretation.
But the committee concluded that the embattled professor had embellished the smallpox tragedy, creating “myths under the banner of scholarship.”
Moreover, the committee said, Churchill didn’t respect the Indian oral traditions because he did not mention Native American oral sources – and had no evidence that he had done any research in the traditions of the tribes – in his writings about the smallpox epidemic before the investigation began.
According to oral history passed down by Jefferson B. Smith, an esteemed leader of the tribes, Smith never blamed the Army for deliberately spreading smallpox, Hudson said.
“Those claims we have not heard until recently – that there were pox-infested blankets and things like that,” Hudson said.
“They were not part of the oral history,” she said. “He (Smith) said a boat came up the river and he said there was a sick white man on board. This person was ill and then it just spread.”
“The oral history is heavily relied upon for many of the customs, many of the legends because they are really the cornerstone of the social makeup of the tribes,” she said.
Calvin Grinnell, a resource specialist at the Three Tribes cultural preservation center, said he understood that smallpox reached the tribe when infected white settlers on a steamship traveled up the Missouri River.
But some oral versions claim the smallpox was spread “through fault or through negligence,” he said.
“Two men were assigned to travel upriver to bring the vaccine to the Indian tribes, and they only got as far as South Dakota, and then they decided to turn back,” Grinnell said. “It could have been prevented.”
Professor Michael Yellow Bird of the University of Kansas, who grew up on the Three Tribes reservation, told the CU committee that older people generally agree that the smallpox was deliberately introduced by whites, but they don’t specify which whites were involved – whether military or traders.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-820-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
