on the St. Peter traveling up the Missouri River. R. G. Robertson, in Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian blames Pratt for the spread of the epidemic, due to his unwillingness to quarantine those suspected of infection. Writing that while “not guilty of premeditated genocide... he was guilty of contributing to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. The law calls his offense criminal negligence. Yet in light of all the deaths, the almost complete annihilation of the Mandans, and the terrible suffering the region endured, the label criminal negligence is benign, hardly befitting an action that had such horrendous consequences." Another frequently recounted story is that an Indian sneaked aboard the St. Peter and stole a blanket from an infected passenger, thus starting the epidemic. The many variations of this account have also been criticized by both historians and contemporaries as fiction; a fabrication intended to assuage the guilt of white settlers. "The blanket affair was created afterward and is not to be credited", notes B. A. Mann. Some scholars have argued that the spread of the 1836-40 epidemic was intentional. According to Ann F. Ramenofsky, "Variola Major can be transmitted through contaminated articles such as clothing or blankets. In the nineteenth century, the U. S. Army sent contaminated blankets to Native Americans, especially Plains groups, to control the Indian problem." An investigation related to these claims by the University of Colorado at Boulder, Standing Committee concluded that the general claim that the "U.S. Army deliberately spread smallpox to Mandan Indians at Fort Clark in 1837, using infected blankets", was not without merit and that "early accounts of what was said by Indians involved in that situation and certain native oral traditions provide some basis for that interpretation." So great was the distrust of the settlers that the Mandan chief Four Bears denounced the white man, whom he had previously treated as brothers, for deliberately bringing the disease to his people. After losing his wife and children to smallpox, and acquiring the affliction himself, he gave his final speech to the Arikara and Mandan tribes imploring them to "rise all together and not leave one of them alive", before dying on July 30, 1837. See also Population history of American indigenous peoples California Genocide Trail of Tears Long Walk of the Navajo Comanche campaign Yavapai Wars Northern Cheyenne Exodus References Smallpox Epidemic Smallpox Epidemic Smallpox Epidemic Smallpox Epidemic