Journal Surveys the Comparative Wests

As detailed in this post at the Bill Lane Center,

Journal Surveys the Comparative Wests | The Bill Lane Center for the American West.

the e-journal Occasion has published some papers on U.S. and Australian Wests.

Historical Sound Walks

Historian Michael Harcourt takes students on “historical sound walks.” I find his 5 criteria for students to pay attention to a place fascinating:

Power – It is a place which reveals power relations in society. Its meaning for some people might have been silenced or marginalized in the past. Perhaps some people felt or continue to feel a sense of belonging there while others are excluded.
 
Legendary – The place is ‘storied’. People tell legends there and it is used to sustain myths.
 
Affected by change – The place has changed over time, either physically or in terms of how it is used or viewed.
 
Contested and connected – The place is argued over and is or was a source of debate. People may feel a strong sense of connection to it, often for different reasons.
 
Evocative – The place is one where you can ‘feel’ history.

For more, see:

The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Historical Sound Walks.

A Tourist’s View of New York City in 1939 — In Color

In 1939, a French tourist filmed some of the streetscape of New York City. Filming by a tourist at that time was not unheard of, but not that common. Far more remarkable, however, is that the film was in color.

This is an amazing “taste” of another time, in a particular place.

How many other such tastes of how many other places might be out there?

For more on this film, see

Take a Tour of New York City in 1939 — In Color.

More on Pilgrimage–but with ties to tourism and the source of the Mississippi

Art Remillard has contributed a chapter to a new book on religion and the Mississippi River. His focus is on Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi.

In his reflections about his project, he notes the close connection of tourism  and pilgrimage to a place such as Lake Itasca:

In Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner identify the traces of religious activity in secular travel, writing “a tourist is half a pilgrim, if a pilgrim is half a tourist.” Commenting on the American bicentennial, the authors discuss how millions of people had traveled to national parks and forests, both for recreation and “to renew love of land and country.”

While Itasca’s traveler-pilgrims weren’t talking much about national identity, they did use religious language to translate their accomplishments and transformations. One bicyclist, for example, finished at Itasca and remarked, “On the outside I may have looked the same. . . but my muscles and soul had changed me into a pilgrim.” Punctuating this sentiment, she “baptized” her bike in the headwaters, “for a spiritual amen.” When Eddie Harris began his canoe trip downriver from Itasca, he wrote, “It’s not a Gothic cathedral, but a lovely little chapel whose absolute artistry you do not expect, and you’re awestricken.” As he formed a bond with this environment, he also began relating to its history. Specifically, he recalled Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the explorer credited with locating the source in 1832 and providing its name (derived from the Latin words veritas and caput, for “true head”).

Not surprisingly, connections between tourism and pilgrimage are sustained by the emotional responses of tourist-pilgrims to places such as Lake Itasca. Remillard notes:

As I quickly learned, the story of the headwaters is one of discovery, discrediting, and re-discovery. On February 1, 1806, army lieutenant Zebulon Pike trudged through the snow to Leech Lake, and proclaimed that it was the river’s source. “I will not attempt to describe my feelings on the accomplishment of my voyage,” he wrote in his journal, “for this is the main source of the Mississippi.” Then, in 1828, Italian adventurer Giacomo Beltrami published A Pilgrimage in Europe and America, wherein he claimed to have “found” the source at Lake Julia. Beltrami said that the “sublime” site of the lake filled him with “an almost heavenly ecstasy.” Finally, Schoolcraft made the enduring claim that Itasca was the source. “What had been long sought,” he exclaimed, “at last appeared suddenly . . . the cheering sight of a transparent body of water burst upon our view.”

As I studied the details of their expeditions, I noticed that each explorer relied on emotion to validate his claim. In other words, they used an expression of wonder to legitimate their discovery, rather than citing any empirical evidence. From this position of feeling, they confidently inscribed new meaning on to the landscape, replacing an old map with a new one.

For the entire reflection by Remillard, see here.

Dutch Americans and War

In Pella, IA, at Central College, June 6, 2013, I will present a paper at the AADAS Conference on the Dutch-American Involvement in War: U.S. and Abroad.

• Here’s a pdf of the reading copy of my paper.

On Believing

Anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann, author of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, has a fascinating op-ed piece in the New York Times today. You can find it here.

Humility in seeking other voices from the past

Jennifer Graber is working on a book about Kiowa history.

Looking at the papers of Parker McKenzie, a Kiowa linguist, she worries about her own blind spots:

McKenzie collected articles by professional historians, as well oral histories from his relatives that McKenzie transcribed and translated. The articles and the oral histories serve a corrective purpose. For instance, one folder in the collection includes an article on Kiowa drawing by a respected Smithsonian anthropologist. McKenzie scribbled corrections in the margins, offering alternative translations of Kiowa names and providing different dates for particular events. Another folder contains a 1949 interview with his mother, in which McKenzie recorded her perspective on an 1871 violent encounter that most historians call the Warren Wagon Train massacre. McKenzie’s account is titled “Qajai et Topai de Hejega,” translated literally as, “Chiefs they them imprisoned story.”
            After three days in the archives at the Oklahoma Historical Society, McKenzie’s corrective efforts left me unsettled. Isn’t it inevitable that I will end up as one more in a long line of non-Kiowa historians who McKenzie needs to correct? Won’t he be the ghost, looming over my shoulder, scribbling corrections in my margins?

Graber’s full reflections are here:

Religion in American History: Visiting the Archives: Or, Parker McKenzie Is the Ghost of My Next Book.

Humility is what I and Graber and all scholars of the past need. The work of research, the work of attentively searching and listening and pondering and rethinking is a particular kind of pilgrimage. The end point is not that what was the case might be understood in its entirety, but rather that it can be comprehended in a way that fosters redemptive understandings in the present for more rather than fewer people.