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Transcript: Robert Fortuine, M.D.

Many Natives turned down smallpox vaccination because of distrust

[Lindberg:]
When did smallpox arrive in Alaska?
[Fortuine:]
Well, smallpox probably arrived in southeast Alaska in the mid-1770s, and that was around the time there was a major epidemic in the northwest of the U.S., which was affecting Indians in that region, so it probably spread up northward from there. Interestingly enough, by that time vaccination was available, and the Russians who were in charge of Alaska at that time actually offered vaccination to the Natives, many of whom were already in close association with the Russians in some relationship or other, and some of the groups accepted vaccination and some didn’t. Some felt that vaccination was just another trick by the Russians to wipe them out, notably the Tlingit, and the Tlingit suffered very severely from the smallpox.