men who had been deported earlier had been killed. Admiral Bristol protested the deportations to the Turkish nationalist government based in Ankara. Most deportees were marched via Amasya and Sivas to Harput, and from there to Diyarbakir, Bitlis, and Van. As a result of the deportations that were ordered in June, nearly 21,000 people were forcefully deported from Samsun. In early September 1921, 1,500 women and children from nearby Greek villages who had recently found temporary refuge in Samsun were deported. A similar deportation was undertaken against c. 6,000 women and children from the adjacent Bafra district. American relief worker Edit Wood, on his way from Samsun to Harput, noted: In mid-November 1921, 700 women and children who had earlier fled to the hills returned to Samsun for fear of cold due to the approaching winter. The Turkish authorities did not hesitate to deport them altogether. Some reactions by the head of the Near East Relief to stop at least part of the deportation were ignored by the local Turkish governor. In April 1922, the commander of the USS Fox, William Leahy, reported that an additional 1,300 Greeks were sent out from Samsun, mostly women and children, but also a few old men. Witnesses Atrocities against the local Greek element were reported as early as March 1921, both by American Near East Relief missionaries and naval officers on destroyers that visited the Pontus region and especially the Black Sea ports of Trebizond and Samsun. On one occasion Admiral Bristol sent the cruiser St. Louis to Samsun as a show of concern for these atrocities. In another instance, an American naval officer witnessed Greek women in Samsun purchasing poison, being determined not to leave themselves "at the mercy of the Turks". From September 1921 on, ominous reports of Turkish atrocities from American destroyers stationed at Samsun became more frequent. Protests by Admiral Bristol to the Turkish authorities of Mustafa Kemal against the deportations were not enough to save the local Greek element. Aftermath By September 1922, when the Greco-Turkish War ended with the destruction of Smyrna, there were virtually no Greeks left in Samsun. The Greek cemetery of the city had been plowed up and planted with tobacco. The total death toll of the Pontic Greek community, as a result of the Ottoman and Turkish policies from 1914 to 1923, is estimated at 353,000 to 360,000. In 2010 Turkish construction workers