Indigenous Alaska and the Great Influenza Pandemic

Masks like the one worn above provided little in the way of protection. 

In 1918, says historian Richard Crawford, children sang this song as they jumped rope:

I had a little bird,

Its name was Enza.

I opened the window,

And in-flu-enza.

This song concerned the influenza pandemic, known then as the "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe," which  spread throughout the world causing widespread disaster. According to a report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the flu infected 50 million people from the years spanning 1818 to 1919, leaving a wake of illness. The eruption proved greater than any recorded global virus before or since its outbreak. Some historians have traced the origins of the influenza and controversially argue that there was a dramatic increased of European influenza and pneumonia casualties during World War I in 1915-1917 that may have been related to the eventual rise of the pandemic. At that time, doctors reported focused outbreaks of similar viruses in English and French military camps. Some scholars forward debatable assertions that the pandemic spreading influenced the outcome of the war. Those arguments aside, its thought that in the Spring of 1918 the influenza emerged from avian sources which most likely brewed for years before spreading throughout the world.