SHREVEPORT, La. ( KTAL/KMSS ) – Just prior to the Louisiana Purchase , early settlers in Mississippi and Louisiana had the ability to vaccinate themselves and the enslaved against smallpox , but it appears that they did not share their vaccines with Native Americans in the region .
Here’s the story.
Meet William C. C. Claiborne, Governor of the Mississippi Territory
It was late November of 1801, and William C. C. Claiborne arrived in Natchez only a few months before a smallpox epidemic hit the Mississippi Territory .
Claiborne had just been appointed to his position by U.S. President Thomas Jefferson , and at the time the Mississippi Territory was surrounded by French and Spanish empires . The Mississippi Territory had been settled, for thousands of years, by Native Americans who were still living off the land.
The Louisiana Purchase was still two years away.
Natchez was pretty much the wild, wild west on the frontier of a young United States. It had become part of the border between nations, for once you crossed the Mississippi River you found yourself in French territory. If you went much further west after that, you were in Spanish territory. And if you were living in the Mississippi Territory and you decided to spend your spring break on the land that would later become Walt Disney World, you were vacationing in Spanish territory.