The Theme of “Blankets & Smallpox” in Canadian History
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If you are not a user of Elon Musk’s X, Jim McMurtry is a good reason to setup a profile. Jim has been producing videos of short lessons in Canadian history (and posting them to his X profile). You can also access his lessons on Substack: Jim McMurtry: A Falsification of History Revealed. Much of it focuses on teaching history through art. There is no better class on Canadian history one can find anywhere else in the country.
Regular readers know Jim McMurtry as the B.C. teacher who was cancelled for telling his students the truth about the prevalence of deaths attributed to tuberculosis, small pox, and other viral diseases, at former Indian Residential Schools. Jim made the mistake of attempting to comfort his hysterical students who were in the process of being traumatized by their school and the other foolish institutions that run society. The school, media and political leaders led students to falsely believe priests tortured and murdered indigenous kids during the Indian Residential School period.
We all know the fake story of the unmarked graves “discovered” in Kamloops that indigenous activists use to demoralize Canadians and extort our tax dollars. But when that cruel manipulation was coldly used against his students, Jim did the right thing by attempting to rationally set the record straight with historical facts.
But rationality and historical facts were not on the menu. Silly Jim, he should have acted hysterical, shed tears, and hung his head in shame. He should have made a solemn yet ahistorical speech to his students about the ongoing harms, leftover from the colonial era, experienced by indigenous communities. And even though no priests or oblate brothers ever murdered or incinerated illegitimate indigenous babies, fathered by them and the indigenous girls they supposedly raped, Jim should have apologized for that as well.
You see, the only way to properly traumatize children, and to manipulate them into hating their country, and the majority of Christians and white people who live in it, is to lie to them about inhuman nightmare inducing atrocities. Jim wouldn’t do that. So the school, worried that the children would not be emotionally scarred enough by the disgusting unmarked graves dog and pony show, felt it best to frog march Jim out of the school — making sure of course to humiliate him in front of staff and students — for not taking part in the uploading of terrifying narratives and images into the vulnerable and impressionable minds of children. Instead Jim choose to comfort and bring clarity to the disturbing histrionics unfolding around him. For that, Jim’s career was ruined. A brilliant career. A career he loved.
In an email exchange with Jim, I asked about his mission concerning the online classes on Canadian history. His response:
“My infamy is that of a teacher fired for questioning a false narrative, so it's imperative for me to build my case by proving that students are being lied to all the time, not just about residential schools. On the first page of TRC's Summary of its Final Report it mentions not only physical and cultural genocide but biological genocide, for which there is also no evidence. My online classes are an expression of defiance. My persecutors have cancelled me as a public school teacher, but I can find other ways to teach...and teach truthfully.”
There are many videos of Jim McMurtry’s Canadian history lessons on Substack and X. Below is a written version of a class Jim taught on the myth of the so-called “small pox blankets.” Enjoy!
The Theme of “Blankets & Smallpox” in Canadian History
By Jim McMurtry
Orson Welles’s radio broadcast of a Martian invasion on October 30th 1938, which was adapted from H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds, caused panic among listeners who thought it was real, some of them calling the police, gathering weapons, fleeing their homes or reporting for duty as national guardsmen. Gullibility is a universal characteristic and explains the prevalence of fortune tellers, palm readers, get-rich schemes, quack medicines, religious fanatics, Elizabeth May supporters, and a belief in 18th century biological warfare in the Americas – for it is said that colonists consciously bartered smallpox-contaminated blankets to Indigenous customers.
The earliest report of truck-and-trade in contaminated blankets was the canoe-and-trade of furs and fish for blankets, guns, pots, knives, hammers, nails, saws and beads around Fort Pitt in 1763. The Delaware Indians – who with other Natives would later that year lay siege to the fort under the command of Chief Pontiac – were given or sold, or simply stole, two blankets and a handkerchief that were from the fort’s hospital, which eventually caused the decimation of their villages. Yet that year about 400,000 Europeans died from smallpox, and one in seven Russians. What colonist would want to handle blankets from a smallpox ward?
Although the virus has been around for 3000 years, there was no cure at the time, with a vaccine not discovered until 1796 when English doctor Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who worked on farms near his house rarely caught the disease, but they all would have been exposed to the less virulent cowpox virus. Thus, he began inoculating patients with cowpox. By 1832 the U.S had the National Vaccination Act to help vaccinate Indigenous tribes, and a few years later the Hudson’s Bay Company began an ambitious vaccination program in the western part of British North America called Rupert’s land.
Recent politicians and others have used history as a tool to validate their treasonous idea that western society is historically and brutally racist, and the story of the Delaware Indians confirms their bias. The evidence they draw on is underwhelming, with only a few private letters to justify the blood libel on early Europeans in the Americas: that they conspired to conduct biological warfare against a vulnerable and innocent indigenous population, had the knowledge of virology to effectively and safely to do so, and were guided by the desire to wipe out their customer base – although they needed the fur and fish to make a living.
I doubt many of the rough men on the frontier had any education at all, but their commanders did, so it’s possible they knew that items of clothing from smallpox patients were contaminated. One of the private letters supporting this theory was written on June 24, 1763 by William Trent, a fur trader commissioned at Fort Pitt, who wrote in his journal after a failed negotiation with the Delaware tribe that they had given the chiefs food. As Trent wrote sarcastically, “Out of our regard to them we gave them 2 Blankets and an (sic) Handkerchief out of the Small pox (sic) Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.”
After hearing of the outbreak among the Delaware, the commander in chief of the British American forces, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, sent a private message from New York to Fort Pitt’s commander: “Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox (sic) among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to Reduce them.”
Amherst led the British to victory over the French in 1763 and had towns named after him, such as Amherst, Nova Scotia, and Amherstburg, Ontario – but in this woke world the two sentences above from a single private letter condemn him eternally to infamy, with Montreal’s Amherst Street recently renamed Atateken (a Mohawk name) Street.
I taught high school history for over four decades and contributed to the writing of school textbooks on Canadian history sold by Pearson, the world’s biggest publisher. Many of these textbooks, despite my objections, made reference to Jeffrey Amherst and his one controversial private letter – although he was not Canadian and lived in the U.S., and Canada wasn’t even a country for another 104 years.
This is symptomatic of the woke mind virus, the idea that a quip by a foreigner in another country 262 years ago is worth putting in our Social Studies textbooks while most great figures of our past receive no mention, including Sir John. A. Macdonald, the man who more than anyone else built Canada. Historians may one day see the woke virus as more virulent than smallpox.
Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read The “inbred” comment that swayed an election
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Perhaps 1832, and not 1932 in the section : "the U.S had the National Vaccination Act to help vaccinate Indigenous tribes, and a few years later the Hudson’s Bay Company began an ambitious vaccination program in the western part of British North America called Rupert’s land." ?
Seeing myself in print is uplifting, but what really pleases me is that James Pew has supported me for years. Most of my family, friends, and colleagues shun me.