People definitely knew that sickness could be spread well before Germ Theory was a thing, corpses were often used in wars as biological weapons to spread plague into enemy forts. But I highly doubt the US military would bother risking infecting themselves with smallpox just to kill a few natives when the natives were doing that job just fine themselves.
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But collide it with the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, who published his book on hand washing to prevent puerperal fever in 1861. Wikipedia says
> Despite his research, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He could offer no theoretical explanation for his findings of reduced mortality due to hand-washing, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it.
That is well after the 1837 small pox epidemic. Back in 1837 they were aware of person to person transmission and the need to bury corpses. But why? They didn't have a clue.
> Despite his research, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He could offer no theoretical explanation for his findings of reduced mortality due to hand-washing, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it.
That is well after the 1837 small pox epidemic. Back in 1837 they were aware of person to person transmission and the need to bury corpses. But why? They didn't have a clue.
Just like the Church never killed native children in Canada, but the Canadian (((media))) made sure to never tell the public about the claims being debunked by actual archaeologists who investigated the site.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill