Excerpt from Andrew J. Blackbird/ Chief Mack-a-de-pe-nessey's Complete Both Early and Late History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan, a Grammar of Their Language, Personal and Family History of Author, 1887:

         "[T]he Ottawas were greatly reduced in numbers from what they were in former times, on account of the small-pox which they brought from Montreal during the French war with Great Britain.  This small pox was sold to them shut up in a tin box, with the strict injunction not to open the box on their way homeward, but only when they should reach their country; and that this box contained something that would do them great good, and their people!  The foolish people believed really there was something in the box supernatural, that would do them great good.  Accordingly, after they reached home they opened the box; but behold there was another tin box inside, smaller.  They took it cut and opened the second box, and behold, still there was another box inside of the second box, smaller yet.  So they kept on this way till they came to a very small box, which was not more than an inch long; and when they opened the last one they found nothing but mouldy particles in this last little box!  They wondered very much what it was, and a great many closely inspected to try to find out what it meant.  But alas, alas! pretty soon burst out a terrible sickness among them.  The great Indian doctors themselves were taken sick and died.  The tradition says it was indeed awful and terrible.  Every one taken with it was sure to die.  Lodge after lodge was totally vacated - nothing but the dead bodies lying here and there in their lodges - entire families being swept off with the ravages of this terrible disease."

tin within tin
opened to expose
a moldy rag

maybe eyes widen
with curiosity     thinking
what strange humor

maybe heads shake
in awareness     recognizing
deceit

maybe hands bury
the metal miniature coffins
where no child plays

this is how
strategists reap death
distantly

intent on annihilation
to spare combat and
diplomatic negotiations

procuring death
with trade
in flattened musket balls

this is how
the white man strikes
suckling mouths and old tongues

unnamed English
traded the tin box
but titled tails do arise
and death follows each namesake
across the continent
of tribes

summer of 1763
the Ottawa chief Obwandiyag
anglicized Pontiac
rebels

Lord Jeffrey Amherst
writes letters to military inferiors
in significant postscripts

conveying genocidal intent
venom reserved for
Savage Indian Nations

     most Effectual Stop
     to their very Being

through gifts of infected blankets

     Total Extirpation

an accomplishment expressed by
Commander William Trent
from Fort Pittsburgh

     the desired effect

as Obwandiyag
holds him under siege

it plagues urban Europe
when Americans declare independence

it travels to George's troops
at Valley Forge

and through tribes
among whom one in ten survive

despite boundaries
people rub it every day

Indian Health Services is born from it
three decades after the breech birth of the USA

in 1832
Congress passes measures to vaccinate Indians for it

to shield soldiers

while tribes are demoralized
military containment tries to curb contagions

terrific havoc     PTSD     social collapse

its terror spreads into
subjugation by Whites

this virus of Empire abstractly goes by
post contact depopulation

some credit Variola's transit with
unwillingly uniting Americans

certainly its pestilence carves Turtle Island
shore to shore      shore to shore

experts claim it is
the most complex infective virus for humans

ridged in parallel rows
at times arranged helically

bumps raise
fluid fills space
opaque and thick
between layers of skin

its most fatal strains are
flat and hemorrhagic

the latter bleeds
conjunctive and mucous membranes

after small red spots
sores break
around the tongue
and inside cheeks

it brings death in less than one moon
as organs fail and pneumonia strikes

throat swallows pain
along a pebbled path
rash races face to limbs
to appendages

its highest mortality hits
the very young and the very old

pustules rise from
depressed centers
firm round pellets scab
and fall off     resolved

leaving behind survivors
scarred and blind

A smallpox outbreak is simulated
from Oklahoma City

--a.k.a
Indian Country--

and named Dark Winter,
a Hollywood title

like Red Dawn:
the nineteen-eighties depiction of

Midwest teens fighting Soviets
on nuked North American soil.

Remember how the Geneva Convention
bans germ warfare?
Yet the New World Order
refuses the document's relevance
as the US indefinitely holds hostages
at Guantanamo Bay
kiddy-corner to
the Bay of Pigs.

Smallpox returns worry
about weapons

in a use of language
by a privileged nation state

who fears the future,
whose history and present are rank

with civilian biological attacks,
whose borders for many are sights of terror.