The Questions Begin

I told you from the outset that part of the reason I want to ride the Nez Perce Trail is to seek answers to the questions that arise from its history. In general research, I stumbled across one of these questions -- or rather, an example of my reason for asking said question:

Chief Joseph's surrender speech is the most famous evidence of his character and eloquence. In case you skipped that page in your history book, I've reproduced the familiar lines below:

"Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Too-hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

I was irritated (but not altogether surprised) to discover a reference stating that these words are "attributed" to Chief Joseph, but were actually penned by Lieutenant Charles Erskine Scott Wood. It seems Wood was present at the surrender and claimed to have transcribed Chief Joseph's speech on the spot, but his original, handwritten report from that day instead includes a note in the margin reminding, "Here insert Joseph's reply to the demand for surrender."

I have yet to trace this claim to a more reliable source, but it gives me reason to doubt. Perhaps it isn't true. Perhaps it is true, but Wood had an exceptional memory for language and was able to render Joseph's speech faithfully even after the fact. Perhaps Wood, who later expressed talent as a poet, embellished Joseph's words for popular consumption. (It seems likely to me that he got the gist of Joseph's message right, as the two men maintained a friendship for years afterwards.)

Anyway, my point is this: I do not trust history as it is spoon fed to us in school. Oh, I doubt many of our teachers intended to mislead us. It is likely that most textbook authors were likewise innocent (if ignorance can be considered innocence, particularly when it claims authority). Indeed, I have almost certainly made false claims, albeit unwittingly, in this very blog.

But someone, at some point, willfully misrecorded history for his own ends. Perhaps it was done early on, as in the supposed case of Wood's poetic translation of Joseph's speech. Perhaps it happened later, to put a political spin on modern understanding of historical events. I am not the first to observe that to control the education of children is to control the direction of a society.

Nor am I the first to agree with George Santayana that "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." But what, exactly, are we to learn? What are we otherwise doomed to repeat? Much of the history we have been taught as truth is merely the romanticized result of a decades-long game of Telephone, heavily warped by the influence of human nature.

Take the Nez Perce War: Chief Joseph and his people = Good. U.S. Cavalry and white settlers = Bad. Right? That's what they taught me in school.

Anyway, the Nez Perce War is only a case study. The question toward which I'm leading is rather larger. We'll get to that.