Kwaan Haat Jiwdagoodí (Quarantine Smallpox Area)

Also translated as, “Epidemic came to fight/make war.” “Right where the people were living, there was smallpox. What was it they called this? {Horace: Quarantine.} It came striking at everyone there, it was killing off the people. {Horace: Smallpox.} Because of the children, because the children might catch it, the men climbed on the opposite side of the {Chilkoot} river, way up there. There are caves there in two places. As a man was about to leave he would say to his wife, ‘Please be brave with our children. I will go up now.’ ” [14]. The Chilkat and Chilkoot knew very well the power of quarantine to mitigate epidemics, and these extreme measures may have spared them from near annihilation [1].