What led to the demise of indigenous people that once inhabited the land around Pomona College? Gabriel Dalton ’25 wants to challenge the conventional theory that smallpox epidemics in the late 1800s wiped them out.
With funding from Pomona College’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP), Dalton, a history major from Sierra Madre, California, is looking at primary sources this summer to find out how the smallpox theory began and how it took hold.
“You could say I’m complicating the theory,” says Dalton, one of 241 students participating in SURP this summer. “I’m looking at the sources and seeing, how much is smallpox the primary cause? Are there other causes associated? Is the smallpox theory substantiated in the historical record?”
The Claremont Colleges Library—specifically the materials in Special Collections—holds most of the resources that have aided Dalton’s research. He has also traveled to The Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and nearby Cal Poly Pomona’s library.
What Dalton has discovered so far is that there was indeed a smallpox outbreak in the 1860s, but an alleged epidemic in the 1870s is still in question. The first mention of the 1870s incident only appeared three decades later in The Los Angeles Times. Tooch Martin, the source of the information, was an early white settler in Claremont, and his 1909 interview is the earliest reference to the event that Dalton has discovered.
All subsequent references to the 1870s incident seem to stem from this initial interview with Martin.
To complicate things, population data for this era is scarce, says Dalton, because it comes after the Mission Period but precedes the Municipal Health Authority. “The number of people that are keeping good numbers is sparse,” says Dalton.
To probe other possible causes of the vanishing of the indigenous population, Dalton is looking at the development of water infrastructure as settlement in the area increased. But ultimately, it might be challenging to discover exactly what happened, he says.
“If that was something that could be uncovered, that’d be wonderful,” says Dalton. “But I think it’s almost more important to say, ‘I’m not sure we actually know this thing that we seem to think we know.’”
Dalton’s research this summer will lay the groundwork for his senior thesis, which he will complete this upcoming fall semester. Dalton will graduate this December after five semesters at Pomona College as a transfer student.
After arriving at Pomona from Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California, Dalton has found a home in the History Department. He has taken advantage of several opportunities for research and independent study. After he graduates, he hopes to continue studying history at the graduate level.
“Part of the appeal of history is figuring out what happened,” he says, “trying to uncover with very little information what actually happened.”
All SURP students, as well as Pomona College Internship Program participants and students working as research assistants for their professors under non-SURP auspices, will present key findings or experiences from the summer in the Intensive Summer Experience Poster Conference in late September.