Mortality among the Indians of the Wallahamette has been very great. Dr. John McLoughlin, September, 1831

The Indians, frightened at the mortality amongst them, came in numbers to camp alongside us, giving as a reason that if they died, they knew we would bury them. Dr. John McLoughlin, Chief Factor, Hudson’s Bay Company, 1830

A dreadfully fatal intermittent fever broke out in the lower parts of this river about eleven weeks ago [late July] which has depopulated the country. Villages which afforded from one to two hundred effective warriors are totally gone, not a soul remains. The houses are empty and flocks of famished dogs are howling about while dead bodies lie strewn in every direction on the sands of the river. I am one of the very few persons among the Hudson’s Bay Company people that have stood it, and sometimes I think even I have got a shake, and can hardly consider myself out of danger, as the weather is yet very hot . . . not twelve grown-up persons remain of those whom we saw when we were here in 1825. Scottish Botanist David Douglas, 1832

. . . The disease is supposed to be occasioned by the putrid exhalations and penetrating damps which issue from the stagnant water left in the neighboring swamps when the river overflows its banks at the height of the season. While the river was confined within its own channel the complaint was unknown, but it has been unusually high both last and the preceding years overflowing a great part of the lowlands in the neighborhood of the establishment and to this cause as we ascribe the very unhealthy state of the country . . . it is expected that the waters will be low this season, and from that circumstance we confidently hop e that the disease will not make its appearance this summer, but should it unfortunately turn out otherwise we think it will be absolutely necessary to abandon Vancouver . . . for the mouth of the river. . . George Simpson, Hudson’s Bay Company Governor, 1832

In the fall of 1832, the fever and ague was very prevalent at Vancouver, and at one time we had over forty men laid up with it, and great numbers of Indian applicants for La Medicine, as they called it; and as there was no physician at the fort, Dr. McLoughlin himself had to officiate in that capacity, although he dislike it, as it greatly interfered with his other important duties, until he was himself attacked with the fever, when he appointed me his deputy, and I well remember my tramps through the men’s houses with my pockets lined with vials of quinine, and making my reports of the state of the patients to the doctor. George Allen, aide to Dr. John McLoughlin, Fall, 1882

The symptoms are a general coldness, soreness, and stiffness of the limbs and body, with violent tertian ague [i.e., shaking fits every other day]. Its fatal termination is attributable to its tendency to attack the liver, which is generally affected in a few days after the symptoms are developed. Dr. John Townsend, 1833

I suffered much while residing on my farm from the ague, a disease said to be unknown to the Indians or traders, till within some four or five years. It first broke out among the Indians near the fort, and spread far into the country, except near the ocean. And with the natives it proved very fatal, sweeping off whole bands, partly probably owing to their plunging into the water when the fever came on, and other improper ways. Still they seemed wonderfully aided by the use of such medicine as they procured from the whites. John Ball, Fort Vancouver schoolteacher, 1833

It may be inquired how such fatal effects arose from a cause not generally productive of them. This may be easily accounted for in the trust with these poor deluded savages reposed in the juggling mountebanks with whom the science therapeutic solely rests among them, and the total neglect of the precautions that were recommended by us for their adoption. Maddened by fever, they would rush headlong into the cooling stream, where in search of relief, they found only the germs of dissolution. Peter Skene Ogden, Fort Vancouver, 1830s (Boyd, 120)

9/20, 1840 “Toward fall . . . I took a trip with my family to Willamette (from Wascopam Mission at The Dalles]. It was the sickly season of the year, and most deeply were we called to repent of the visit . . . about the time we were ready to leave, one of my Indians began to show symptoms of the prevailing fever . . . The heat was intense and the poor sick native was obliged to lie down in the bottom of the canoe in great distress. When we reached our evening encampment he was burning with a high fever . . . The darkness and damp, chill miasma of the Willamette soon closed over us, and under their cover the poor fellow, being unable to endure the pains of fever longer crawled to the river’s brink and tried to allay the burning inward heat by large draughts from the running stream . . . in the morning our patient was a picture of disease and distress. We were obliged, however, to proceed and by noon had nearly reached the Lower Settlement of the Willamette, when the violence of his pains obliged us to put ashore under the shade of some low willows. In a few minutes violent retchings of the stomach commenced, accompanied at intervals with short spasms and in less than an hour he lay stretched upon the grass before us a frightful corpse . . . At length my second man died in the same manner. (Boyd, 129). Willamette Mission missionary, 1840

2/15, 1844 “. . It was during the few weeks passed at Wallamette that I caught the ague (trembling fever). This illness, unknown in Canada, starts with a violent headache accompanied by pains in the limbs and a high fever. After a few days one begins to shiver. This is a chill that comes suddenly and no heat relieves it. If one were to put himself in a hot oven it would not do any good. Then one trembles from head to toe and to try resisting is futile. One feels just as hot now as one felt cold before and it lasts much longer than the chills. This sad illness sometimes lasts two months if one is not careful to stop it in the beginning. It is epidemic and remains in the blood. A person once visited by this illness is sure to experience it again the ensuing years at the same period of time. Usually it is during the months of September and October. White people do not die from it, but it almost always effects their health. The Indians die very frequently because they cannot resist the temptation of dunking cold water, and when the fever overcomes them they at once run and dive into the river which caused instant death. (Boyd, 129). Cowlitz Mission Missionary, 1844

The Indians of the Columbia were once a numerous and powerful people; the shore of the river, for scores of miles, was lined with their villages; the council fire was frequently lighted, the pipe passed round, and the destinies of the nation deliberated upon . . . Now alas! where is he? –gone; —gathered to his fathers and to his happy hunting grounds; his place knows him no more. The spot where once stood the thickly peopled village, the smoke curling and wreathing above the closely packed lodges, the lively children playing in the front, and their indolent parents lounging on their mats, is now only indicated by a heap of undistinguishable ruins. The depopulation here has been truly fearful. A gentleman told me, that only four years ago, as he wandered near what had formerly been a thickly peopled village, he counted no less than sixteen dead, men and women, lying unburied and festering in the sun in front of their habitations. Within the houses all were sick; not one had escaped the contagion; upwards of a hundred individuals, men, women, and children, were writhing in agony on the floors of the houses, with no one to render them any assistance. Some were in the dying struggle, and clenching with the convulsive grasp of death their disease-worn companions, shrieked and howled in the last sharp agony.

Probably there does not now exist one, where, five years ago, there were a hundred Indians; and in sailing up the river, from the cape to the cascades, the only evidence of the existence of the Indian, is an occasional miserable wigwam, with a few wretched, half-starved occupants. In some other places they are rather more numerous; but the thoughtful observer cannot avoid perceiving that in a very few years the race must, in the nature of things, become extinct; and the time is probably not far distant, when the little trinkets and toys of this people will be picked up by the curious, and valued as mementoes of a nation passed away for ever from the face of the earth. The aspect of things is very melancholy. It seems as if the fiat of the Creator had gone forth, that these poor denizens of the forest and the stream should go hence, and be seen of men no more. Dr. John Townsend, 1834