224 BULLETIN, PUBLIC MUSEUM, MILWAUKEE [Vol. 19 



the Wisconsin Chippewa in this regard are absent for the early historic 

 period, it is known that such epidemics infiltrated this general area and un- 

 doubtedly took their toll of this group. "From 1633 to 1641 there seems to 

 have been an almost unbroken series of smallpox epidemics through the 

 Great Lake — St. Lawrence River region." (Stearn and Stearn, p. 24.) 

 Again (p. 131), "In 1781-2 it (smallpox) ravaged the Ojibway territory 

 as far west as Lake Superior." In the later historic period one encounters 

 specific references to the Wisconsin Chippewa, such as (Morse, p. 348), 

 "The Chippewas, during the past few years (i.e. previous to 1855), have 

 suffered extensively, and many of them died, with the smallpox." That the 

 problem was a serious one is indicated by the inclusion in the treaty of 1836, 

 between the United States and the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, of a sec- 

 tion providing for the payment of three hundred dollars a year for vaccine, 

 medicines, and the services of physicians. 



During the first half of the Nineteenth Century came the first real 

 attempt to protect the Indian against smallpox by means of vaccination, 

 isolation, and quarantine, but adequate control of the problem was not 

 realized until the end of the century. The last important outbreak of the 

 disease occurred from 1898 to 1901 in the United States and Canada, but a 

 mild form had replaced the virulent one, and while the incidence was high 

 the mortality was low (Stearn and Stearn, p. 113). In 1907 the vaccination 

 of children in Indian schools was made compulsory (p. 123), and by 1938 

 only one death from smallpox was recorded for that year among the entire 

 Indian population (p. 131). 



Just what the effect of the ravages of smallpox was upon the attitude of 

 the Chippewa can only be surmised. The appalling death rate from the 

 disease as well as the serious after-effects such as disfigurement, blindness, 

 or deafness frequently occurring among those who had recovered could not 

 have been lightly regarded. It seems probable than any intensity of concern 

 with health held prior to the arrival of the white man would have been at 

 least maintained, if not deepened, during the historic period. Certainly 

 such observations as Raudot's, in 1701, that "... there is not a single old 

 Indian man or woman who does not have some secret of medicine, real or 

 pretended." (Kinietz, 1940, p. 372), suggests that curing was important 

 in the minds of the Chippewa at that time, and Kohl's comment in I860 

 (p. 382), that one Chippewa had given forty packets of beaver skm 



