Thoreau on Local History

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An Archival Quality Quotation

Wherever men have lived, there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not.

I remember talking a few years ago with a young man who had undertaken to write the history of his native town, a wild and mountainous town far up-country, whose very name suggested a hundred things to me, and I almost wished I had the task to do myself, so few of the original settlers had been driven out, and not a single clerk of the exchequer buried in it. But to my chagrin I found that the author was complaining of want of materials, and that the crowning fact of his story was that the town had been the residence of General C— and the family mansion was still standing. Around this all the materials of this history were to arrange themselves.

You can't read any genuine history, as that of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede, without perceiving that our interest depends on the subject but on the man — on the manner in which he treats the subject and the importance he gives it. A feeble writer and without genius must have what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of others, but a genius — a Shakespeare, for instance — would make the history of his parish more interesting than another's history of the world. Wherever men have lived, there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not.

Henry David Thoreau, Wild Fruits: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript, Bradley P. Dean, ed. (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 234-235.

Notes on a Museum at Big Bone Lick

This evening I crashed a "by invitation only" party of the Friends of Big Bone, and was asked not to say anything. That was a good thing, because it is always tempting to say what needs to be said, even if it doesn't do any good.

The question at stake was this: Since there is never going to be a Museum at Big Bone, what do we do instead?

Now that is not really a very good question. Rather, a better question is "What do you mean by Museum?" or "Do we really have anything to do at Big Bone Lick?" or even better "If something needs to be done at Big Bone Lick, are we the people to do it?"

I think the answer to the first is: "A building with exhibits that tells about the history and natural history of the Lick."

The answer to the second is: "Maybe we will have something to do if we can get the right people involved."

The answer to the third is: "No 'we' are not the right people to do this, but that doesn't mean that nothing can be done."

What needs to happen at Big Bone is for someone (me) to publish a history of the area. I am working towards that, and hope to finish before too long. I have some done already, and more in the planning stages. I am also collecting and editing the original documents from which this must be done.

The problem with the people who want to "do something" about Big Bone Lick, is that it is not "their" history. They see it as something interesting, something to be exploited, either personally, or for the community. They do not know enough about the history of the area to truly appreciate it as a place. They see it as a footnote to science: The birth-place of "inveterate" paleontology. That is not the way I see it at all. The local people have always appreciated Big Bone as a unique geographical place. It was an integral part of the community long before it became a park. There have been numerous attempts to make it into an attraction like other natural wonders, but all of the major attempts failed for some reason or other. It has always aroused fascination, but it has never been quite attractive enough to become a commercial attraction. Its history has never been written. How do you write the history of a Lick? You write the history of the people who thought about it, worked at it, were influenced by it in any way.

It is a history of salt — sweat and tears. It is a history of exploitation. It is a history of fame, near fame, and obscure fame. It is both more and less than its promise. It will never be Niagara, or the Grand Canyon, or even Natural Bridge. It is not that spectacular. Not even when there were bones on the ground. It was more subtle in its influence and required more appreciation than those places required. It was such that people could use the bones for everyday purposes. They could use the springs for domestic and commercial purposes; not until Niagara was harnessed for electricity could the same be said for any of the other attractions I have named. Big Bone Lick was like a vast hoard of treasure that is carried away a little at a time, till at last there is nothing but the name; even the springs have gone into abeyance, and are at a very low ebb. Knowledge about the area's past trickles out into the world at about the same rate.

Anyone who is truly interested in Big Bone will be more interested in the history of the area than any other aspect of it. That history cannot be just the study of some old bones. A museum must be more than just a collection of old bones and teeth. Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem. What is needed is a living history museum. What was taken in the past is basically worthless for research purposes in any case. I think Adrienne Mayor is on the right track when she writes: "Both scientists and traditional Indians agree that context is crucial in reading the messages of past life-forms, that something important is lost when creatures of the deep past are torn from their matrix. Johnson Holy Rock, Lakota elder, explained it to me this way: 'To take fossils out of the ground snaps the line of knowledge.' Later at the Sternberg Museum in Hays, Kansas, I mentioned this to paleontologist Greg Liggert. He nodded, 'Excavation is information destruction.' " (Fossil Legends of the First Americans, Princeton, 2005, p. 321.) Most of the finds of the past are now virtually worthless.

The past is what is left to us. This we can understand, if we approach it the right way. Fustel de Coulanges, one of the great early historians, said "Fortunately, the past never dies for man. Man may forget it, but he always preserves it within him." ( The Ancient City, 1864; Anchor ed., p. 14) Since this is true we can be sure the true significance of Big Bone will never be lost.

James Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone University
Big Bone, Kentucky
2008

Falling Through Space

 

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"The work of a writer is to create order out of chaos. Always, the chaos keeps slipping back in. Underneath the created order the fantastic diversity and madness of life goes on, expanding and changing and insisting upon itself. Still, each piece contains the whole. Tell one story truly and with clarity and you have done all anyone is required to do."

Falling Through Space: The Journals of Ellen Gilchrist (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987), p. 128.

 

On the Writing of History by Neltitíca

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"Young lord and lady students, this illustrates what I have often told you before now. Be skeptical of the many versions of the world's history you are likely to hear, for some are as full of impossible invention as they are of vanity. What is more, I have never met a historian — I have never met any sort of professional scholar who could put into his work the slightest trace of humour or ribaldry or jollity. I have never met one who did not consider his particular subject the most momentous and weighty of all studies. Now, I concede the importance of scholarly works — but need importance always wear the long face of stern solemnity? Historians may be serious men, and history may sometimes be so somber that it saddens. But it is people who make the history, and they often play pranks or cut capers while they are doing it."

Cited in Gary Jennings, Aztec, p. 106.

This is an Archival Quality Quotation. (Lighten up a little!)

Lowell On Biography

"The modern biographer has become so indiscriminate, so unconscious of the relative importance of a single life to the Universe, so careless of the just limits whether of human interest or endurance, so communistic in assuming that all men are entitled to an equal share of what little time there is left in the world, that many a worthy, whom a paragraph from the right pen might have immmortalized, is suffocated in the trackless swamps of two octavos. Meditating over these grievances with the near prospect of a biography to write, I am inclined to apply what was said of States to men also, and call him happiest who has left fewest materials for history."

James Russell Lowell, "Walton", in Latest Literary Essays and Addresses

(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1892), p. 58.

Research in History: Importance of the Task

"Too often, the work of research still wanders aimlessly with no rational decision about where it is to be applied."
Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft (1953), p. 86.

Historical research is tempting. As one thing leads to another, and each thing as interesting as the last, or more so, there is a temptation to run amok finding out a little about everything. There is also the desire to become a specialist, and to find out everything there is to know about a single subject. And this is the peculiar temptation of modern scholarship. An example is the noted scholar, Ignác Goldziher, better known to students of Oriental history as the "Geniza mouse", from the vast amount of time he spent among those interesting discards of the past. This is well for such a scholar, but is it the best way to introduce history to the young mind?

Tolkien speaks of students (encouraged by their professors), who run about "after the manner of research-mice running off with little bits nibbled out of unexplored sacks to build up a little thesis." These people, he says, get the degrees. The idea is to promote original research and use of sources, but it can lead to a false sense of confidence and a feeling of having exhausted the fountain of history. It can destroy the ability of students to see the big picture, and to regard history as an academic exercise, rather than the fount of the present. In compiling everything found on one subject there is a tendency to ignore the significance of the material, that is what it means in a broader context. The student is content to order and recite his findings without questioning them. He has no plan other than to present the material, and get the degree.

Is research mere compilation, and can research wander aimlessly and still be considered research? This needs to be considered.

The steps in research should be directed towards solving the problem or problems which arise from material in context. The researcher, like every other worker, should have a plan. (Napoleon, the master of strategy, once remarked that there is nothing so rare as a plan.) The terms of a question also imply the answer. False problems, usually set by a teacher, might include such open ended questions as: research the War of 1812. This means the student goes along thinking everything he finds mentioning this war is equally important. In fact, all "facts" are not equally important. The historian must always choose. He chooses, as Collingwood remarks, from an infinite welter of past events, and he must do so based on his own judgments of value. If everything is of equal value then the question of what a general ate for breakfast the morning of the battle is as important as the decisions he made, and the orders he sent. No one thinks this to be true. Our novelists do not detail every step the hero takes as he crosses the desert; our historians may detail what a general is said to have eaten for breakfast if his death before or after the battle is due to poisoning, and so on, especially if it led to some significant historical condensation of incident. Since we must choose what to concentrate on, we must have a criteria by which to choose what is important in our story, and if we are to write history it must be an historical criteria.

Information is not something that simply exists, nor does history, which is a highly structured kind of information about the past. At the root of the word "information" is the Latin forma — informare means to "shape, form an idea of something, or to describe." Information without interpretation does not exist. Information is a kind of perception, as well as an articulation of that perception. No one simply writes the history of an area or event; he writes his history, that is his perception of that event and its significance. Whether the work produced is good history or not depends for the most part what kind of person he (or she) is, and how well they know their business. The criteria of success can only be judged in relation to the task that person has set to accomplish.

A task (and the historian's work, if it is to be of value, is always a task), is objective, that is, it involves judgments of value; but it is never merely objective, it also involves subjective, or personal evaluation. The philosophy of the historian (as of all other knowledge workers) will determine what he can know: this is particularly the case in terms of his conclusions, for that conclusion is the result of decisions concerning what he thinks important and unimportant in the "infinite welter" of the past. To seriously ask a question about the past means that already the researcher has assigned it some importance. Knowing his business means asking the right questions, in the right order. All knowledge exists in relation to a question, but what gives the question value, or makes it important, is the task. This is why knowledge acquisition, and teaching (including writing or speaking for an audience), is a co-ordinate part of the research experience. There is no task where there is no call to make use of the findings. The task, which means the work of solving the problem (that is getting the questions in the right order, and answering them based on the evidence one has uncovered), goes on in the researchers head, as we say. It is not solved in the laboratory or library (however helpful these may be). Thoughts do not happen in people's heads, and you do not even have a thought until it can expressed in some kind of language, for thought and language, which means speaking or writing, always go together.

The historian who is forever "researching" but never producing anything (and I do not mean formal publication, but also teaching, or passing his knowledge along to others in some significant way), is merely entertaining himself with trinkets from the past. The sign of this is that every minor detail appears to such people to be equally significant and interesting. At this rate no problem can ever be solved; in fact the first criteria of research is missing, the question, and such a one can only go on reading and collecting trifles.

This is an Archival Quality Communication 15 Mar 2008

Origin of Nations: The Importance of History

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"Nations do not shake off their origins, they only learn to see them in different ways."

J. M. Roberts, History of the World (New York: Oxford, 1993), p. 519.

Comment on this Archival Quality Quotation:

By saying that we learn to see our origins in different ways it might be assumed that means to whitewash the past and see our origins in terms flattering to ourselves. This has been often done. Apparently the Aztec historians did this, though the historians of the nations around them were well aware that this was propaganda, and that the Aztecs though the dominant group had a highly unflattering origin compared with the others. Other groups have done the same, but self-delusion often leads to destruction, and this has a tendency to bring out the truth. The past is much harder to hide than most people think. Virtually no one now believes the Nazi version of the past. I think what is really meant here is that as we learn more about our past we gain a deeper understanding of who we are and how we got to this point; as we gain more understanding we are able to see more in the past, and this leads to more self-knowledge: the more you know the more you can learn. As Collingwood once said: "A people, like a single individual, is what its past has made it."

Cause in History

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"The cause of an event in history is its intrinsic relation to other events in history, and the causal nexus is not external to them but lies in their very nature."

R. G. Collingwood, Speculum Mentis (1924)

Comment on the Archival Quality Quotation:

There is no "cause and effect" in history, if that means that one thing causes a chain of events. People think of cause and effect in terms of hitting a pool ball, which hitting another, is the cause of the movement on the table. In fact the table, the position of the rest of the balls, the skill of the player, and what is going on in his head, is as much a part of the causal nexus as the movement of the cue ball. In history there is no single cause for any event; people react the way they do to stimuli of various sorts in one way because of the situation they are in, or think they are in, and might have reacted very differently in another situation.

How Pioneers Felt about Trees

Conrad Richter's The Trees is a beautiful book of pioneer times. The heroine, Sayward, fears the forest, and the trees she hates dominate the book in a negative way. As Richter's series progresses the pioneers begin to make headway in clearing the forest. The second volume is The Fields. But in the last volume, The Town, there comes a point at which the last tree in the town in which Sayward now lives — it has grown up around her — is destroyed in a storm. Then at last she finds her feelings about trees are different, and she, and her family, are surprised at the change. With the destruction of the old tree she at last begins to plant some trees; she realizes that they are not the malevolent beings she has always imagined, but in talking to herself of her feelings she gives us a good idea of how many of the people of that early time looked at trees, a feeling difficult for most of us to understand today:

"It couldn't be that old tree lying on the ground that bothered her, she told herself. Why, all her life she had hugged herself to see a tree come down. It meant you could see the sun and stars a little better. A mite more light and air could come in. A few more stalks of corn could grow and give meal to hungry young mouths. Why, back in the woods, she and every other settler woman hated the trees like poison. They were your mortal enemy. All your life you had to fight them, chop, split, nigger them off till nothing was left. And then their wild sprouts kept coming up to plague you. Even now long after the trees were gone, the big butts still lived on in your joints. Heavy lifting and rolling had thickened them till you sometimes felt like an old tree walking."

Conrad Richter, The Town, Cap. 23; in the Trilogy The Awakening Land, (1989), p. 520.

This is an Archival Quality Communication 4 Mar 2008