Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian

"The smallpox scourge that swept the upper Missouri tribes in 1837-1838 altered the course of history in many ramifying ways. Robertson's treatment of this profoundly significant episode, laid against the backdrop of the disease since first introduced by European colonists, is an important and readable contribution to Indian and western American history." --Robert M. Utley.

On April 17, 1837, the steamboat St. Peter's pulled away from a St. Louis dock and began its annual journey up the Missouri River. Its mission was to deliver supplies to fur trading posts on the upper Missouri.

On that spring day, no one abord the St. Peter's could have imagined the effect the voyage would have on Western history and the American Indian culture. The steamboat carried a disease not listed on its manifest--a disease so horrible Indian parents sometimes killed their children to save them from terrible agony. Its scientific name was Variola major. Its common name was smallpox. Many natives knew it as "Rotting Face."

In this book, R.G. Robertson details this smallpox epidemic of 1837-1838 altered the political and social structure of Native American tribes. In less than a year the disease virtually destroyed the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arickara cultures. It claimed entire villages of Blackfeet, stripping that proud nation of its power and wealth, leaving it too weak to stop invasion by other tribes and white settlers.

Before it ran out of human fuel, Rotting Face claimed an estimated 20,000 natives, doing more damage to the Northern Plains tribes in one year than all the military expeditions ever sent against American Indians.

In this book, Robertson details the history of smallpox and the profound impact the disease had in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, where it killed or maimed rich and poor, royalty and peasants.

Robertson's gripping and graphic account dispels some popular myths about the role of whites in the spread of this devastating disease.