History of smallpox In the late 1770s, during the American Revolutionary War, smallpox returned once more and killed thousands. Peter Kalm in his "Travels in North America", described how in that period, the dying Indian villages became overrun with wolves feasting on the corpses and weakened survivors. Smallpox was also used as a weapon by the British. In 1799, the physician Valentine Seaman administered the first smallpox vaccine in the United States. He gave his children a smallpox vaccination using a serum acquired from Edward Jenner, the British physician who invented the vaccine from fluid taken from cowpox lesions. Though vaccines were misunderstood
1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic the epidemic these groups were never able to recover. Ethnic backgrounds also merged as survivors from different communities joined together. As some communities such as the Saulteaux were able to take advantage of vaccination efforts by the HBC they also took advantage of struggling Indigenous groups. The HBC vaccination efforts were focused on populations that produced furs. As result, the Plains Cree and Saulteaux pushed out its borders as others retreated during the epidemic. There have been many documented cases of smallpox being intentionally spread among the indigenous people of the Americas by colonizers. As observed by academic researchers in