Note 837 — Chapter XIV · WAR AND THE PLAGUE
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Hyde, Early Medical Chicago, 18-19. I have not had access to the original report on which this statement is based. Hyde says these two hundred cases occurred among "the Entire force of one thousand." This statement, which does not include Whistler's two companies, is evidently erroneous. The entire force ordered to Chicago numbered only a thousand men, and several hundred of these had already been dissipated through death and desertion, or by delaying at Fort Gratiot and elsewhere. I have not learned the number of men at Fort Dearborn at this time, but evidently it was much less than one thousand; the rate of sickness and mortality was, of course, correspondingly greater.
[838] New York Mercury, July 18, 1832.
[839] Letter from an officer of Scott's command, dated Fort Dearborn, July 12, Niles' Register, August 11, 1832.
[840] Ibid.