Introduction
On November 8th, 1807, at Fort George in Upper Canada, leaders of Canada’s indigenous peoples were presented with an information pack explaining the newly developed science of vaccination, written by pioneering epidemiologist Edward Jenner. It was William Claus (1765-1826), Deputy Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs, who spoke for Jenner.
“BROTHERS of the Five Nations,* [said William Claus]
“Early in May last, His Excellency Lieutenant-Governor Gore* took every possible means to introduce vaccine inoculation among your tribes; but, owing to your people being then out on their hunt, it did not take place. When on public business hereabout a month after, I spoke to you again, and strongly recommended to your serious consideration introducing among your people this valuable discovery, the want of which you soon afterwards felt very severely in the loss of one of your chiefs, Oughquaghga John.
“Brothers! I have now the satisfaction to deliver to you a book, sent to you from England, by that great man Dr Jenner,* whom God enabled to discover so great a blessing to mankind: it explains fully all the advantages derived from so great a discovery.
“I, therefore, Brothers, at his request, and in his name,* present this book to the Five Nations, as a token of his regard for you and your rising generation, by which many valuable lives may be preserved from that most dreadful pestilence, the small-pox.”
(Signed by W. Claus, Deputy Superintendent-General of Indian affairs.)
* The Iroquois Confederacy or the Five Nations, comprising the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca nations. From 1722, a sixth was reckoned among them, the Tuscarora, but they mostly backed the USA in The American Revolutionary War (1776-1783) and drifted south. The English continued to refer to the Five Nations.
* Colonel Francis Gore (1769-1852), Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada from 1806 to 1811 and again from 1815 to 1817.
* Dr Edward Jenner (1749-1823), who realised that the relatively harmless cowpox virus could be used to bring about immunity to the fatal smallpox, and developed the science of vaccination with Benjamin Jesty. See Jesty and Jenner’s Jab. Jenner was granted £10,000 from public funds in 1802, and another £20,000 (some £1,560,000 today) in 1807, the year of the meeting at Fort George in Ontario, Canada, a short distance from the Niagara Falls.
* By this time, Jenner’s name was quite literally a universal passport in Europe and the colonies, where the Napoleonic Wars were raging. “I hereby certify,” wrote Jenner in 1810 on behalf of one acquaintance “that Mr. A. the young gentleman who is the bearer of this, and who is about to sail from the port of Bristol on board the Adventure, Captain Vesey, for the island of Madeira, has no other object in view than the recovery of his health.” A letter from Jenner more than once obtained the release of political prisoners held in Spain and France.
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