Douglass Houghton, Medicine Man

Adam Berger

Douglass Houghton (1809-1845) is usually remembered for his work in the field of geology. He graduated with a degree in the subject from the respected Rensselaer Scientific School in 1829. Houghton was selected as Michigan’s first State Geologist, a position he filled from 1837 until his drowning death in 1845. The expedition Houghton led in 1840 along the southern shore of Lake Superior confirmed the presence of rich copper holdings in the Keweenaw. When his report compared the mineral wealth of Michigan to that of Cornwall, international attention turned to the commercial potential of mining in the Upper Peninsula.

Houghton was also a licensed medical doctor. At the time, medical training was far less standardized than the rigorous curriculum required for a geology degree. In 1831, he was licensed by the Medical Society Chautauqua County in New York.  He served on the 1831 and 1832 Schoolcraft Expeditions in the role of physician.

Schoolcraft Expedition leader Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864), the Indian Agent then based at Sault Ste. Marie, was supervised by Secretary of War Lewis Cass (1782-1866). After his long tenure as the second territorial governor of Michigan, Cass went to Washington, D.C. to work in the administration of Andrew Jackson (1767-1845). The 1820 Cass Expedition that explored the Michigan territory misidentified the source of the Mississippi River. Schoolcraft, who served Cass as geologist on the 1820 expedition, sought to correct the record. Abnormally low water levels made travel by canoe impossible and caused the party to turn back in 1831. In 1832, the Schoolcraft Expedition resumed, and identified Lake Itasca as the river’s true source.

The 1832 Schoolcraft Expedition had two official goals. The first was to broker peace between the Ojibwe and Dakota, traditional enemies often at war for control of the western Lake Superior region. The second was to vaccinate Native people against smallpox. This latter point was mandated by the Indian Vaccination Act of 1832, the first law enacted by the U.S. Congress to deal with Native American health issues. As the expedition’s doctor, Douglass Houghton oversaw the vaccination process.  

Until the beginning of the 1800s, preventative treatment for smallpox was not vaccination in the modern sense, but inoculation, also called variolation. Scab tissue or puss from people with mild cases of smallpox was intentionally introduced into patients via small incisions made in their arms with lancets. In most people, this prompted immune response without serious symptoms of the disease. However, the process was imperfect. Some patients did develop full-blown smallpox, which occasionally proved fatal, though far less commonly than when contracted through natural contagion. This form of inoculation could spark outbreaks, making it a potentially dangerous practice from a community health standpoint. Houghton’s home state of New York banned smallpox inoculation in 1816 for this very reason.

British doctor Edward Jenner (1749-1823) developed a true vaccine for the disease in 1796, using the far less hazardous cowpox to prompt immune system response against smallpox in humans. The word vaccine comes from the Latin word ‘vacca’ for cow, in reference to Jenner’s use of cowpox. This safer technique spread throughout the world in the early 1800s and became the standard preventative intervention for smallpox by 1853.

Though Jenner’s vaccine represented the cutting edge of medicine, and his method was preferred by many doctors in Houghton’s day, inoculation with human smallpox was still practiced at the time of the 1832 Schoolcraft Expedition when the vaccine itself was unavailable. It is unclear if all so-called vaccinations administered as a result of the Indian Vaccination Act used cowpox virus, or if inoculation with the far more dangerous human smallpox virus was used in some cases. The federal government supplied physicians with “vaccine matters” for this project, and Houghton describes “crusts furnished by the surgeon-general” to do his work. This material was presumably dried cow lymph. Houghton vaccinated one quarter of his subjects “directly from the pustules of patients labouring under the disease.” The process of arm-to-arm vaccination could spread other dangerous diseases including syphilis and hepatitis B. More research into the medical risks of the 1832 vaccination project is warranted.

It is not known when smallpox first came to the western Great Lakes. A major smallpox outbreak in 1639-1640 spread from the Atlantic coast to the Wyandot (Huron) population and may have reached Odawa people living on Manitoulin Island. An outbreak in 1752 spread the disease west from the Ohio Valley into Odawa and Potawatomi bands living near the Detroit River. After helping French forces take British Fort William Henry in 1757 during the French and Indian War, Anishinaabe warriors brought smallpox into the western Great Lakes region along with the scalps of their defeated enemies. In 1763, during the pan-tribal uprising known as Pontiac’s War, officers at Fort Pitt intentionally infected Native opponents to British rule with smallpox in a now infamous act of biological warfare. In 1770, disgruntled British fur traders may have deliberately loosed the disease among the Ojibwe along southern Lake Superior. Outbreaks in 1781-1783 killed many Ojibwe people. An 1801 smallpox epidemic hit Odawa and Ojibwe communities. Smallpox came to Drummond Island and Sault Ste. Marie in 1824.

The Ojibwe people Houghton encountered in 1832 certainly knew of and feared smallpox. At least from his perspective, they were overwhelmingly eager to be vaccinated against the disease. In a letter to his brother, Houghton wrote “[a]s yet I have only found a few who had never heard of vaccination. It is astonishing to learn the fearful dread they have of the small-pox. When I commence operating they crowd around me with their arms ready, and anxiously waiting their turn.” In a report to Schoolcraft, who returned to Sault Ste. Marie after finding Lake Itasca, leaving others in the party to carry out the expedition’s official work, Houghton stated that “[i]n nearly every instance the opportunity which was presented for vaccination was embraced with cheerfulness and apparent gratitude; at the same time manifesting great anxiety that, for the safety of the whole, each one of the band should undergo the operation.” Douglass Houghton was given the Ojibwe name Mus-ke-ke-we-nin-ne, ‘Medicine Man,’ by which he was still known during the 1840 Houghton Expedition.

Douglass Houghton vaccinated 2,070 Native people, including the elderly and children, as part of the 1832 Schoolcraft Expedition. His records of this vaccination effort form an interesting enumeration of the Ojibwe population along Lake Superior, breaking down each band’s members into male and female and five age groups, as well as noting population trends in each Ojibwe community. Houghton’s original vaccination notes, once held by the Michigan Historical Commission, are thought to have been destroyed in the 1951 fire at the State Office Building in Lansing. The fire was intentionally set by a clerk acting on an ill-conceived plan to evade the draft during the Korean War. Copies of Houghton’s records from this vaccination project can be accessed at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.

Recent observers have speculated about agendas lawmakers had for passing the Indian Vaccination Act. Several points bear consideration. The program allowed government officials to move freely throughout Native lands and report demographic information. As in Houghton’s case, physicians reported to Indian Agents who answered directly to the United States Department of War. Money from the program was diverted to fund other projects. The 1832 Schoolcraft Expedition received $800 under this law. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft himself was clearly more interested in exploring the Michigan territory than vaccinating Natives, evidenced by the fact that he went home after the party reached Lake Itasca. The vaccination campaign was also a way to bolster Native perception of the power of the United States by offering to shield compliant peoples against a dreaded illness. Secretary of War Lewis Cass arguably used the program to pressure Native groups into treaties favorable to the United States.

In 1832, all Americans feared smallpox. Preventative treatment for the disease was in flux, with Jenner’s cowpox-based vaccine overtaking the more dangerous practice of inoculation with human smallpox. The Indian Vaccination Act resulted in the vaccine being distributed to at least 38,745 Native individuals throughout the United States. This effort marked a test of the federal government’s ability to distribute the smallpox vaccine in remote parts of the country. At least in the region served by Houghton, the vaccine administration process went reasonably well, but there was no advance guarantee that the approach would meet with success. The 1832 Indian Vaccination Act gave the government a chance to experiment with a large-scale vaccination program on a population that was politically expendable should major problems arise.