Page:The Columbia river , or, Scenes and adventures during a residence of six years on the western side of the Rocky Mountains among various tribes of Indians hitherto unknown (Volume 1).djvu/308

 on the countenances of the elderly men and women. It is believed in the north-west that this disease was wilfully introduced by the American traders among the Indians of the Missouri, as a short and easy method of reducing their numbers, and thereby destroying in a great measure their hostility to the whites. The Americans throw the blame on the French; while they in turn deny the foul imputation, and broadly charge the Spaniards as the original delinquents. Be this as it may, the disease first proceeded from the banks of the Missouri, and the British are free from having had any participation in the detestable act. It travelled with destructive rapidity as far north as Athabasca and the shores of the Great Slave Lake, crossed the Rocky Mountains at the sources of the Missouri, and having fastened its deadly venom on the Snake Indians, spread its devastating course to the northward and westward, until its frightful progress was arrested by the Pacific Ocean. Some of the old voyageurs who were stationed at English River and Athabasca, when this scourge made its first appearance, give the most harrowing details of its ravages. The unfortunate Indians, when in the height of the fever, would plunge into a river, which generally