BadEagle.com has been privileged to hear directly from author and scholar, Dr. Adrienne Mayor. Mayor is perhaps most known for her book Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpioin Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World (Overlook, 2003), which we referenced earlier. (Here is the Stanford University web page for Dr. Mayor.) However, she has many other works, and works specifically related to the subject of small pox, contaminated clothing, and the intentional use of such as biological warfare.

Dr. Adrienne Mayor, Standford University

Probably the finest single piece on the subject is her article “The Nessus Shirt in the New World: Small Pox Blankets in History and Legend,” in The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 108, No. 427, (Winter, 1995), pp. 54-77. (The Nessus shirt is an ancient Greek myth about an infected, “poisonous” garment that killed Hercules.) While Dr. Mayor freely states the rumorous nature of much of the information about the white man’s employment of small pox as a means of eliminating the Indian population, she nevertheless believes that the stories “gain credibility” because they have “plausibility,” that is, they seem perfectly reasonable. She references the infamous 1763 Amhearst letter to Bouquet, but also concedes that this letter does not constitute evidence that small pox-infested blankets were part of a government plot actually carried out against Indians. The letter merely evinces the idea–which was passed from one white man to another.

In any case, “The Nessus Shirt” article is the most balanced, thorough single piece on the matter of contagion-as-weapon. It not only deals with the American Indian story, but also global, historical lore of the same nature. It puts the Indian story in perspective, ghastly and grim though yet it remains.

A more recent work of Dr. Mayor is Fossil Legends of the First Americans (Princeton, 2005). A sample of this exciting work is found here. It is certainly less ‘melancholic’ than Greek Fire. It is all about fanciful, imaginative explanations of the giant bones Indians found, together with a the early stages of paleontology such discoveries generated. (A fertile ground compared to the extended morose nature of Greek Fire. Indeed, for the latter, I would say Dr. Mayor is the Edgar Allan Poe of historians, exceeding the macabre of even the great Romanian religious anthropologist Mirceau Eliade.) As I have just become aware of Fossil Legends, I do not possess a copy. Dr. Mayor informs me that there is a goodly portion of Oklahoma lore therein. I am anxious to get a copy. I know Comanche had some stories about what were later understood to have been fossil remains above ground.

Now, on the matter of the pox, it seems that the issue really is about the ’shelf life’ of the Poxviridae-viriola virus. According to Dr. Mayor, the pestilential germ can survive for centuries. She testifies that archeologists have contracted the disease when opening old graves. I know this is a living issue. In recent years, the Comanche Nation warned Fort Sill contruction foremen not to descrate Comanche graves, and the small pox issue was at least part of the argument.

But I am skeptical. This is the stuff of science fiction. This is X-File script, like finding a prehistoric viral life form in arctic ice–surviving millions of years!

But facts are facts. And there are enough of them that the global warming folks warn of the spread of all kinds of horrid plagues as the iced bodies of the ancients thaw. And it doesn’t take ice to preserve small pox.

A construction worker in the United Kingdom did contract the disease while demolishing a building that had housed smallpox victims, and researchers in Holland found a live virus in a 13-year-old scab.

This is a bit remarkable, to say the least. My question is biological. I virus is not a true life form, but a complete parasite. How can a virus then live without a host–for any length of time, let alone hundreds, perhaps thousands of years? What do we conclude? Advantage–virus! Advantage, microbe. Germ survives all. Well, maybe Edgar Allan Poe was on the right track when he wrote “The Conqueror Worm” in 1843.

But there exists no written government command, order, or stratagem for the use of smallpox-infested blankets against American Indians. That is a fact. There is no command, order, or stratagem that called for the elimination of American Indian people. It almost happened, for the most part because of smallpox (and other diseases). But, to say that the smallpox virus is indestructable is another thing. Certainly, today, the hideous microbe is of great concern–as a biological weapon, indeed. The demon is alive and well.

Poxviruses are large brick-shaped viruses with a double stranded DNA genome. They are different from most other DNA viruses in that they replicate in the cytoplasm of the cell rather than in the nucleus.

Cheap thrills, eh? It offends Western morality that a viral micro-organism could out-smart a life form–even at the cellular level. This give new meaning to the term “intelligent design.”

We need now a philosphy of pathology. Is it about religion, then? Can we inject a theology? The ancient Egyptians deified nearly everything that moved, down to the insects. They had their idea of invisible forces. Perhaps this is why the Lord said, through Moses: “I am He, and there is no god with Me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of My hand.” Deuteronomy 32:39.

Never mind the microbes. Never mind the chemical, biological descriptions of what’s happening. Science always mistakes description for causation. Perhaps the only way out here is Carl Jung’s position on the “primitive” man. His presuppositions are different from the Western man’s. The primitive man has a different understanding of causation.

And so the question remains: how can a virus live apart from a host? Perhaps it doesn’t “live.” It is not a life form. It is a machine. It is activated by other life. It lives off another’s life. (Sounds kind of Democrat, eh? Why, this is a political issue, after all!)