Music, Unbought Stuffed Dogs, Phil Collins & Ernest Hemingway

This week came more proof of the importance of music to how my mind works….many of you may know that I have no ability to memorize anything…mean anything…I have never been able to memorize addition or subtraction facts, multiplication tables, spellings, dates, or…or anything…I could never memorize prose sections or poetry…If I understand the system that things work in I can remember them, but I have never been able to learn anything by rote memorization…the BIG exception to this block is music…I can hear a song twice and I will remember the words of that song forever…In fact, the only multiplication table I know, I know because my father realized this quirk in my memorization skills.  When I was in the 4th grade, he wrote a song about multiplying by 4s…I remember almost every word to this day.

These days, Lydia has gotten me into listening to fiction during my long work-related road trips instead of music…This week I had a 8 hour journey up to the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute (and back) to give a talk about the Arkansas Archeological Society’s “Summer Dig.”  I had just finished The Paris Wife, a novel about Hadley Richardson–Ernest Hemmingway’s first wife–so I chose to listen to Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises…I chose this book 1) because it was about 7 hours long ; 2) I had not read this novel since high school and 3) I wanted to see what insights The Paris Wife might offer to a reading of the novel.

I got back to Magnolia about mid-day on Wed…I intended to go to the office after a quick lunch…but I made the mistake of laying down for a nap…As I drifted off to sleep, I fumbled with my iPod to find some music to listen to while I snoozed…to my surprise I chose–of all things–Phil Collin’s first solo album Face Value (1981).

As I listened to the infinitely overdubbed horns and drum machines, I began to realize, through the foggy haze of my road-weariness, that there were some obtuse resonances between a couple of the songs and some of the plot points in The Sun Also Rises…next came the realization that I had made these connections before…then came the shock–I knew why I had chosen Face Value…I had been listening to this album when I originally read The Sun Also Rises back in like 1986-87…my subconscious still linked these two works…crazy.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite, random, surrealistic exchanges in The Sun Also Rises (presaging Henry Miller–one of my favorites):

“Here’s a taxidermist’s,” Bill said. “Want to buy anything? Nice stuffed dog?”
“Come on,” I said. “You’re pie-eyed.”
“Pretty nice stuffed dogs,” Bill said. “Certainly brighten up your flat.”
“Come on.”
“Just one stuffed dog. I can take ‘em or leave ‘em alone. But listen, Jake. Just one stuffed dog.”
“Come on.”
“Mean everything in the world to you after you bought it. Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog.”
“We’ll get one on the way back.”
“All right. Have it your way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.”

“Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.”

Hot Springs, Historical Memory, Native Americans & 1920s Masculinity

I am in Hot Springs, Arkansas, this weekend for the state-wide meeting of the Arkansas Archeological Society.  Although I have lived in Arkansas on and off since 1995, I have never really paid that much attention to Hot Springs…that is, until I moved to south Arkansas five years ago.  Although Hot Springs is not in my research station territory (it belongs to Mary Beth Trubitt at the HSU Research Station), Hot Springs is both a cultural and historical figure of importance to my region–culturally important because it provides a good place to have “getaway weekends,” visit a books store, eat at good restaurants, and drink a lot of alcohol….historically important as it is a major hub of 20th century leisure time in the region (and nation).  I have become increasingly interested in the history of leisure time and tourism in America…and, to play into Hot Spring’s reputation for gambling and gangsters, this town “has ‘em in spades.”

The fountain/statue in the Fordyce Bath House, Hot Springs

The area now known as “Hot Springs National Park” first became United States territory in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. According to NPS historian Sharon Shugart, the first permanent settlers to reach the Hot Springs area in 1807 were quick to realize the area’s potential as a health resort.  Dr. George Hunter and William Dunbar visited on an expedition commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to survey the newly acquired territory and make scientific observations. The party arrived at the hot springs on December 9, where they found “an Open Log-Cabin and a few huts of split boards…for summer encampment…erected by persons resorting to the Springs for the recovery of their health…”

To protect this unique national resource and preserve it for the use of the public, the Arkansas Territorial Legislature requested in 1820 that the springs and adjoining mountains be set aside as a federal reservation (not to be confused with the Indian reservations being established around the same time). On April 20, 1832, President Andrew Jackson signed legislation to set aside “…four sections of land including said (hot) springs, reserved for the future disposal of the United States (which) shall not be entered, located, or appropriated, for any other purpose whatsoever.” This makes Hot Springs National Park the oldest national park among current N. P. S. parks, predating Yellowstone National Park by forty years. Unfortunately, Congress failed to pass any legislation for administering the site. As a result, no controls were exerted in the area, and people continued to settle there, building businesses around and even over the springs (Shugart, 2004).

The park would have to wait until the late nineteenth century to get off the ground, but it flourished in the early twentieth century…and today the town is filled with great 1920s architecture (lots of Spanish revival)…but, alas, by the 1960s the bath house industry had declined considerably.

But my colleague Ann Early (now State Archeologist, but former HSU Research Station Archeologist) alerted me to the intersection of Native American history and the history of Hot Springs…Hot Springs, so the legend goes, was a magical place where all tribes declared a “cease-fire” to all hostilities so they could come a take the healing waters…and as a place where a decidedly romantic version of contact between Hernando DeSoto’s expedition and local tribes took place…even that bastion of solid research, Wikipedia, mentions these unsubstantiated facts (note that even Wikipedia is dubious adding the “citation needed” comment at the end:

In 1541, the expedition became the first Europeans to see what Native Americans referred to as the Valley of the Vapors, Hot Springs, Arkansas. Members of many tribes had gathered at the valley over many years to enjoy the healing properties of the thermal springs. The tribes had developed agreements to put aside their weapons and partake of the healing waters in peace while in the valley. De Soto and his men stayed just long enough to claim the area for Spain.^{[citation needed]}

detail of the Fordyce fountain: a wood duck effigy bowl with Winterville-Incised-like designs...it woud sort-of be in keeping with the idea that the Quawpaw used these spings.

This is quite a popular and interesting set of tropes in the historical memory of Hot Springs…it is even mentioned on the Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce website, (“Even DeSoto didn’t want to leave…“) and the website of the very hotel where I am staying this weekend (“Since Hernando DeSoto wintered here over 400 years ago, the healing springs and hospitable people of Hot Springs have been pampering guests”).  Even a local  group calling itself the “Mantaka American Indian Council” see themselves as the caretakers of the sacred springs and the traditional that Native Americans have used them for healing….archeologists, however, have found no artifacts or other physical evidence to show how or if Native Americans used the springs during the millennia they lived in the area…and although we once thought DeSoto may have come through the Hot Springs area, recent scholarship is not so sure.  When historians turn their attention to these stories, they often reach dead ends…Like the probably mythical figure of Nathan Dale who claimed to have been born in 1833 on the site of the present Quapaw Bathhouse and testified to the fact that the Qawpaw used a spring in a cave to ritually  heal their ills.  Dale’s name does not appear in any of the local federal censuses, including the earliest one taken in 1840. If Dale had existed, he would have been seven years old at that time and unlikely to be anywhere but at home when the census takers came through. The name never occurs in the sworn testimony on pioneer land use taken from early Hot Springs settlers in 1830s and 1840s, or in the 1884 Congressional hearings on the creek arch that included testimony on area history. The name is absent from the long lists of land claimants in 1875 and 1877. It is also missing from the extant city directories in the 1870s and 1880s (see Shugart’s article on the Qua paw Cave for more details) .

But back to my current visit…what got my mind wandering in this direction this morning was the statue in the men’s side of the Fordyce Bathhouse.  The Fordyce operated from 1915-1962, when it closed due to declining business. It remained vacant until reopening as the park visitor center in 1989.  It was the most elaborate and expensive of the bathhouses, the costing over $212,749.55 in furniture alone.  The Fordyce provided for the well-being of the whole patron – body, mind, and spirit. It offered a museum where prehistoric Indian relics were displayed, bowling lanes and a billiard room for recreation, a gymnasium for exercise, a roof garden for clean air and sun, and a variety of assembly rooms and staterooms for conversation and reading…and in the men’s side of the bath you will not only be confronted by an elegant water-themed stain-glass skylight (giving the patrons an underwater feeling, and reminding them that they are in a spa of European caliber), but a fountain/statue of a kneeling Native American woman offering water to a Spanish conquistador.

The pose is reminiscent of John Smith and Pocahontas…and just as fanciful.  Interestingly some of the details of the Native American pottery ring true, while other do not…but clearly this fountain says a great deal about how the 1920s liked to envision European/Native American interaction–a tantalizing encounter with a compliant, exotic woman.  The fact that this art was installed on the men’s side of the bath house is not without importance either (there are some great art-glass installations on the woman’s side, but no large statuary)…this is especially true given the very sexualized nature of the pose…an image that the hot, steamy, nude male bathers would gaze upon while relaxing and taking the waters…the arch of her back along is telling…but when viewed from a particular angle the statue might be seen to suggest actual sexual acts….

OK…I’m getting carried away…enough…

My point is made that this statue is a fascinating piece of material culture…one that binds up a place and it’s identity (particularly historical identity) with tourism, leisure time, wealth and masculinity in the early twentieth century…

Lascivious angle to the statue to be gazed upon my wealthy, elite males while in the steam bath?... Or a figment of my over active imagination (and dirty mind)?

March 2: Texas Independence Day

My Alma Matter informs me that for more than a century Texas Exes (where ever they may be) have remembered March 2nd (Texas Independence Day) as a time to celebrate both the State and the University of Texas. This observance apparently began with a missed class, a visit to Scholz’s Beer Garden, and a spiked cannon. See more on that story here.

“Texas Independence?” you ask….Oh, Yes…On March 2, 1836 a convention of American-immigrants to Texas met at Washington-on-the-Brazos and declared independence of from Mexico. The delegates chose David Burnet as provisional president and confirmed Sam Houston as the commander in chief of all Texan forces. They also adopted a constitution that protected the free practice of slavery, which had been prohibited by Mexican law.

At any rate….In 1900, the Association adopted a resolution which states: “Whenever two Texas Exes shall meet on March 2nd, they all shall sit and break bread and pay tribute to the institution that made their education possible.”

The bit about missing class, Scholz’s Beer Garden & a cannon seems more palatable than the “over-the-top” proclamation….but that’s Texas for ya….

So let’s celebrate the right of “foreign fighters” to declare slavery legal and overthrow a federal government…..WHAT?!?!?! or, better yet…. QUE?!?!?

Claming the Stones Review

By request, I’m posting a recent review I wrote…It was printed in Historical Archaeology 39(4):156-157, 2005.

Claiming the Stones, Naming the Bones: Cultural Property and the Negotiation of National and Ethic Identity. Barkan, Elazar and Ronald Bush (editors). Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2003. 384 pages, 33 illustrations, index, $50.00 paper.

Claiming the Stones/Naming the Bones is a timely volume which attempts to cross-cut multiple disciplines (including archaeology, physical anthropology, literature, cultural studies, ethnomusicology and museum studies) and offer perspectives regarding disputes over the definition and ownership of cultural properties. Although many of the chapters do not directly address historical archaeology (or archaeology in general), historical archaeologists, no matter what their subject of study, can benefit from this set of diverse case studies as all of our work is inextricably entangled with issues of heritage, representation and cultural memory.

The book begins with an introduction (Barkan and Bush) and an overview of restitution and cultural property (Barkan). These pieces serve to set the stage for a series of twelve case-studies by examining the nature and origin of the concept of cultural property, the history of its deployment and some of the current controversies surrounding the ownership of the material items and intangible concepts we have come to regard as a non-renewable resource. The remainder of the volume is organized into four parts: 1) “Nationalizing Identity,” 2) “Codifying Birthrights,” 3) “Legislating the Intangible” and 4) “Righting Representations.”

Interestingly, Barkan frames a portion of his overview in terms of tensions between advocates for a global approach to cultural property (i.e., those who see themselves as protecting a universal, global heritage) and those taking a particular local perspective (largely represented in this volume by marginalized and/or indigenous groups seeking to reclaim a cultural identity and heritage). The disjuncture is simple but profound; in Barkan’s words, people “view their own culture as patrimony, and other people’s cultures and treasures as global heritage” (p. 24).

This framing has the potential to recast many of these case studies, even the familiar ones, in a different and thought provoking way. The best examples of this recasting are the two chapters which make up the section entitled “Codifying Birthrights.” Both papers examine the ever-present controversy surrounding the Kennwick skeleton—“Kennewick Man—A Kin? Too Distant” (Owsley and Jantz) and “Cultural Significance and the Kennewick Skeleton: Some Thoughts on the Relocation of Cultural Heritage Disputes” (Gerstenblith). Owsley and Jantz interpret the Kennewick case as “a clash between two systems of conceptualizing and tracing human history” (p. 141) although they assert that the origin of the law suit lies more with a lack of compliance with existing laws than with the ideological battle. In their chapter they describe in great detail the myriad of research questions that the Kennewick skeleton raises and, with scientific study, could potentially answer.

Gerstenblith’s article, on the other hand, frames the Kennewick case (and NAGPRA as a whole) in terms of social justice—returning to marginalized groups control over their own past (and thus their cultural identities). She argues from a particularistic stance; outlining the long history that has served to disconnect Native American groups from their cultural patrimony through a privileging of scientific evidence while simultaneously, through displacement and policies of cultural eradication, making it difficult obtain such evidence.

Neither Owsley and Jantz or Gerstenblith overtly draw attention to global vs. local frame in their chapters, however. This framing is done in Barkan’s overview and in another strong chapter that deals directly with archaeological representations—“Objects and Identities: Claming and Reclaiming the Past” (Lyons).

Lyons basic supposition, that cultural heritage is linked to identity, places archaeologists in the center of numerous struggles to establish and maintain cultural identities. She charts issues of ownership, representation, collecting and control over artistic heritages through examples such as a gold philae looted from northwestern Sicily.

Because of this reviewer’s own research interests, “The New Negro Displayed: Self-Ownership, Propriety Sites/Sights and the Bonds/Bounds of Race” (Ross) seems worthy of comment here. In this contribution to the book, Ross puts forth the proposition that “race marks categories that determine who is legally allowed and culturally endowed to hold certain kinds of property intellectual and otherwise” (p. 259). What Ross is talking about is ownership of identity—in this case, ownership of blackness.

In the United States, Ross tells us, “to belong to a particular race is to possess copyright in that race; the right to turn a profit—or not—on the reputation credited to that race; the right to image the race in particular ways; the right to hold property, invest in, and profit from one’s racial “stock” (p. 260). Ross charts the struggle over these rights through efforts of African-Americans to challenge and control popular images of blackness. From Booker T. Washington’s emphasis on bourgeois materialism evident in A New Negro for a New Century, to Alain Leroy Locke’s repudiation of Victorian ideals (in favor of a stylized modernity) during the Harlem Renaissance, Ross alerts us to the overt and subtle distinctions and visual punning present in racial representation. In the end, Ross closes with an ambivalent tone stating that “there are no adequate substitutes for the whole truth of the race” and, thus, “all we have are inadequate substitutes, the masks in place of the faces, for race itself constructs the myth that there can be a whole truth, one that is able to be possessed and reproduced by the voice of one group or another” (p. 293).

Ross’s chapter hits upon a second major framing in this book—an exploration of the cultural property debate and its relation to intellectual property rights. Papers topics in this vein include “bioprospecting” and the marketing of traditional knowledge (Posey), ethnomusicology and World Music (La Rue) and traditional Maori tattooing and the “modern primitive” (Awekotu).

Other articles deal with a variety of topics including a comparative exploration of indigenismo in Mexico, Gutamala and Peru (Coggins), the hypercanonization of the racially charged novel Huckleberry Finn (Arac), William Butler Yeats and his relationship to Irish nationalism (Foster), identity politics in Britain (Young) and attitudes toward cultural property and authenticity in the fiction of James Joyce and Philip Roth (Bush).

All of the articles are, of course, not of equal interest and/or use to everyone, but taken as a whole Claiming the Stones/Naming the Bones is a strong volume and potentially an excellent teaching text for those interested in exploring case studies in cultural heritage and representation.

The Museum of Ephemerata

After news of John’s successful prospectus defense, I was feeling all nostalgic for Austin, Texas…So I was browsing The Austinist (a website about Austin) and came across a blurb on MachinesMimesis (TM), a walk-thru musical installation event at the Cathedral of Junk held late in January (click on the image for a larger view of the poster). It was presented by the curators of the Museum of Ephemerata–Scott Webel and Jen Hirt. These folks are old friends from UT (via the the Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies) and I had no idea that 1) they were still in Austin and 2) they were continuing their great work with the Museum of Natural and Artificial Ephermerata. If you have never come across their work, check it out….I noticed the following advert under current projects …

The Museum of Natural and Artificial Ephemerata

is currently developing our next novelty exhibition

MACHINES….

REPRODUCING that constellation of OBJECTS heretofore known as MODERNITY!

NO CHILD SHOULD MISS the March 11, 2006, GRAND OPENING of the Machines exhibition,7-10pm at the Museum’s new facility on Austin’s east side!

Remembering Slavery…In the Francophone World

France’s President Jacques Chirac has called for the “indelible stain” of slavery to be remembered in a national day of commemoration on May 10, the first of its kind in Europe.

I found this interesting as it is a state-acknowledged remembrance in a nation that has not historically endorsed the idea of “race” in official documentation and legislation. I am further intrigued as I recall heated discussions between myself and my colleagues that work in the francophone world who claimed that French racism and slavery were historically not the crippling institutions that they were in the English and Spanish colonies.

The article also reports on the backlash to Chirac’s “Slavery Day” proclamation. Some historians are upset about the government’s attempts to dictate how history should be taught in schools.

A petition, entitled “freedom for history” and signed by 600 historians, was published this month calling for the repeal of laws imposing a certain view of history, including a 1990 law on racism, a 2001 law recognizing the Armenian genocide and the 2001 law on slavery.

I wonder how anthropology will fit into this debate….Especially given the recent Savage Minds post about anthropological funding from the French CNRS (National Center For Scientific Research) being cut as a result of the conceptualization of anthropology as being only “contemporary history.”

The complete Chirac “Slave Day” story can be found here:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/09b03b58-91fe-11da-bab9-0000779e2340.html

Thanksgiving & Our Historical Narratives…

What is the US holiday “Thanksgiving” all about? We are, of course, taught in grade school about Pilgrims, Indians, and a great feast to celebrate the survival of white Europeans in the dangerous New World (anthropologists love to talk about feasting, eh?). Now the holiday has come to mean family get togethers, football games, televised parades and, of course, lots and lots of food.

On the other hand, to others, such as some Native American activist groups, Thanksgiving has become a site of contention–pointing toward the beginning of the attempted genocide of the North American Indian….Some have labeled it a “National Day of Mourning.” For instance, check out this protest in Plymouth in 1998:

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/11-98/11-27-98/a01sr010.htm

For more on the “National Day of Morning” check out this wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Day_of_Mourning

Several scholars have dissected the history of the holiday and how it has become a part of our collective cultural memory…

Take a look at Catherine Clinton’s recent article in the on-line journal History Now to get a handle on how the holiday came to be….it has a much more recent origin than some might imagine:

http://www.historynow.org/06_2005/historian3.html

Because I’m an archaeologist…I also will point out that James Deetz took a turn at dismantling the historical veracity of our conception of the first Thanksgiving in his posthumously published The Times of their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony (Deetz and Deetz 2001). You can read the excerpt courtesy of the Plymouth Colony Archive Project:

http://etext.virginia.edu/users/deetz/Plymouth/deetzexcerpt.html

Happy Turkey Day….or National Day of Mourning!!!!!!

Nov 4, 1864 : Battle of Johnsonville, Tennessee

I grew up in Eva, Tennessee….on land that was just down the road from Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park. Forrest has, of course, become an icon for Neo-Confederates (e.g., “I Ride With Forrest” bumper stickers), hate groups (he was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan) and many Tennesseeans in general (there are more historical plaques to NBF in Tennessee than there are to any other single historical figure in all of America). For those who revere him, Forrest is known for his guerrilla tactics–he was one of the first to grasp the doctrines of modern “mobile warfare” that became prevalent in the 20th century. In our historical memories he embodies the image of the renegade rebel, charging into the fray and using unorthodox tactics to win the day.

Others, such as myself, are critical of Forrest–pointing toward historical items such as the controversial Battle of Fort Pillow (also now a TN State Park) on April 12, 1864 (depicted on the right in an 1892 Kurz & Allison print, click on the image for a larger version). In that battle, Forrest demanded unconditional surrender, or else he would “put every man to the sword.” The battle’s details remain disputed and controversial to this day…But what is known is that Forrest’s men stormed the lightly guarded fort, inflicting heavy casualties on its defenders who quickly fell into disarray as the Union command collapsed. Some alleged that the Confederates targeted several hundred African-American soldiers inside the fort, although one battle account says the killing was indiscriminate. Only 80 out of approximately 262 blacks survived the battle, however. After the battle, reports surfaced of captured solders being subjected to brutality, including allegations that they were crucified on tent frames and burnt alive. Whether or not these reports are accurate will probably never be known for certain as both sides used the battle as a political rallying cry and were prone to casting events through their own interpretive lenses.

The fact that I grew up next to NBF State Park probably has something to do with why my anthropological work has centered around race in the nineteenth century…..at any rate, back to why I’m telling you all of this…

Forrest has been associated with Bedford County (TN), Memphis (TN), Hernando (MS), and various other places, but he never lived anywhere near my hometown….so why is it the home of NBF State Park? On this day (Nov. 4th) in 1864, Forrest subjected a Union supply base at Johnsonville, Tennessee, to a devastating artillery barrage that destroyed millions of dollars in materiel. The History Channel describes it like this:

This action was part of a continuing effort by the Confederates to disrupt the Federal lines that supplied Sherman’s army in Georgia. In the summer of 1864, Sherman captured Atlanta, and by November he was planning his march across Georgia. Meanwhile, the defeated Confederates hoped that destroying his line would draw Sherman out of the Deep South.

In the fall, Forrest mounted an ambitious raid on Union supply routes in western Tennessee and Kentucky. Johnsonville was an important transfer point from boats on the Tennessee River to a rail line that connected with Nashville to the east. When Sherman sent part of his army back to Nashville to protect his supply lines, Forrest hoped to apply pressure to that force. Forrest began moving part of his force to Johnsonville on October 16, but most of his men were not in place until early November. Incredibly, the Union forces, which numbered about 2,000, seem to have been completely unaware of the Confederates just across the river. Forrest brought up artillery and began a barrage at 2 p.m. on November 5. The attack was devastating. One observer noted, “The wharf for nearly one mile up and down the river presented one solid sheet of flame.” More than $6 million worth of supplies were destroyed, along with four gunboats, 14 transports, and 20 barges.

The Battle of Johnsonville may not be a part of larger, popular historical narrative(s) about the Civil War, but Forrest is. The American Civil War has never receded into the remote past…It is a point of national trauma, carnage, and emancipation. At the same time, the Civil War is, through historical memory, at the nexus of American national identity, reconciliation and, unfortunately, continued racism and nostalgia for a past that never was. It divides many of us to this day (take, for instance, the current fights over the Confederate battle flag that is incorporated into many state flags throughout the South). In this vein, Jonathan Gianos-Steinberg tells us that “[s]tudying the historiography and social perception of Confederate Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford since the 1860s offers scholars a chance to comprehensively analyze how social undercurrents and memory shape historiography.” Want to know more? Check out Jonathan Gianos-Steinberg’s Assessing Civil War Historiography and Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Place in It (May 12, 2005)

Manifest Destiny From Nashville to Nicaragua…

The Story of William Walker

William Walker was born in Nashville, Tennessee on May 8, 1824. He was a graduate of the University of Nashville, earned a medical degree, practiced medicine in Philadelphia, studied law in New Orleans, and then became co-owner of a newspaper, The New Orleans Crescent–incidentally where the young poet Walt Whitman worked for a short time.

Like much of the nation, Walker headed west in the 1850s in search of a reinvention of identity and a way up the social ladder of a budding modern American capitalism. In California, he first worked as a reporter in San Francisco before setting up a law office in Marysville. Around this time Walker conceived the project of privately conquering vast regions of Latin America, where he would create states ruled by white English speakers.

By 1853 he become the leader of a group plotting to detach parts of northern Mexico (influenced, no doubt, by the success of the Texas Revolution). Recruiting a small army (170 men) and three field guns, he sailed to Baja, California. By the fall of 1853 he was proclaiming independent republics in northern Mexico (shades of the Wild Wild West’s Dr. Miguelito Loveless, eh?). First Walker proclaimed himself president of a “Republic of Lower California”, in La Paz on the Gulf of California. Quickly, however, he abolished the Republic of Lower California in favor of the larger “Republic of Sonora,” with Ensenada as its capitol. A few months later Walker’s army, low on food, retreated to San Diego with the Mexican army close behind. In 1854 he surrendered to U.S. authorities on charges of violating U.S. neutrality laws.

The Republic of Sonora incident, however, was simply a training ground and in 1855 Walker, who had been acquitted of criminal charges, turned his attention to an easier target–Nicaragua in Central America. This region was not only in political chaos but was the perfect site for a railroad linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The leader of the Democratic faction in Nicaragua invited Walker to bring an army and join the struggle against the Legitimists. In 1855, with backing from American speculators and his small army of 58 Americans–dubed “The Immortals” by the American press–he landed in Nicaragua and joined forces with 170 locals and 100 more Americans. Walker’s “Immortals” defeated the national army at La Virgen and took Granada, the capitol. As commander of the army, Walker controlled Nicaragua through puppet president Patricio Rivas. Despite the obvious illegality of his expedition, U.S. President Franklin Pierce recognized Walker’s regime as the legitimate government of Nicaragua on May 20, 1856. Walker’s agents recruited American and European men to sail to the region and fight for the conquest of the other four Central American nations: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica. He was able to recruit over a thousand American mercenaries, transported for free by the Accessory Transit Company controlled by Wall Street tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt.

As Walker’s power grew, he declared himself first Commander in Chief, and eventually President, of Nicaragua, creating a temporary, uneasy peace within the country. He then legalized slavery, continued to build up his army, and planned to conquer the aforementioned neighboring countries.

Walker also revoked the license of Accessory Transit Co. to ferry passengers overland between the two oceans. He then granted use of the route to Vanderbilt’s rivals in the Accessory Transit Company, Cornelius K. Garrison and Charles Morgan (two former employees of Vanderbilt), who had offered Walker a large sum of money and support for his military campaign in exchange for control of the inter-oceanic corridor. In response, Vanderbilt sent forces to Central America to overthrow Walker, while the British navy, attempting to thwart American influences in the region, regularly harassed efforts to supply him. Soon the other countries of Central America formed an alliance against him, and on May 1, 1857 Walker surrendered to Commander Charles H. Davis of the United States Navy and was repatriated. Upon disembarking in New Orleans he was greeted as a hero. He visited President Buchanan, then went on to New York, all the time seeking support for a return to Nicaragua. But support waned as returning soldiers reported military blunders and poor management and he alienated public opinion when he blamed his defeat on the U.S. Navy. Within six months he had set off on another expedition, but he was promptly arrested by the U.S. Navy.

Still undaunted and seeking support for yet another venture, Walker wrote a book, The War in Nicaragua. Knowing that his best prospects lay in the South, he assumed a strong pro-slavery stance. This strategy proved successful, and in 1860 he once again sailed south. Unable to land in Nicaragua due to the ever-present British, he landed in Honduras, planning to march overland, but the British soon captured him and turned him over to the Hondurans. Six days later, at the age of 36, he was executed by a firing squad. The Walker saga had ended (his grave in Trujillo, Honduras is shown to the left).

Walker is clearly a powerdul symbol for the complex interactions of manifest destiny, imperialism, and capitalism in an America rapidly facing modernity in the latter half of the ninteenth century. The intersetions of his story with race and regional struggles (both within the United States and Central America) are not lost on us either. Here in the United States, Walker has faded from our historical memory, but he is far better known in Central America than in the United States. Costa Ricans, for instance, honor Juan Santamaria, a young drummer boy who became a national hero by torching a fort in which Walker’s army was encamped, and a national park, Santa Rosa, commemorates the battle where Walker’s soldiers were expelled from Costa Rica.

I came across nother interesting twist in the story–a twist demonstrating the interconnectedness of historical narratives. Because I was curious about Walker’s alma matter, the University of Nashville, I did a little digging into that insistution’s history. The University of Nashville closed its doors during the Civil War. When the war ended, the South needed a teacher training school. The University of Nashville was revived due to the generosity of the philanthropist George Peabody. It became the Peabody Normal College at Nashville in 1875 and later the George Peabody College for Teachers. Interestingly, the college merged with Vanderbilt University in 1979. Vanderbilt University, of course, was founded in 1873 as the result of a gift of $1 million by shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt, despite having never been to the South, hoped his gift and the greater work of the university would help to heal the sectional wounds inflicted by the Civil War.

William Walker Pics (including historical monuments):
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/william-walker.htm

Greetings From the Republic of Sonora:
http://www.mysterious-island.com/aeronef/welcome/bienvenidos.htm

William Walker links from which this entry was drawn:
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/walker.html
http://www.calnative.com/stories/n_walk.htm
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/historical/william-walker/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walker_(soldier)
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0851333.html

Walt Whitman & The Historical Narrative(s)

On July the 4th, NPR’s Talk of the Nation ran a story & call-in segment on Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass as it supposedly was the 150th anniversary of its first publication. July the 4th was not actually the first publication date, however…but the fact that July the 4th, 1855 has come to be thought of as the first publication date, leads us to examine Walt Whitman and his relationship to the construction of historical narratives.

First. I should say that I have been a fan of Walt Whitman’s longer than I have been studying cultural and historical memory. . . and I must admit that there is probably some unexamined, underlying connection between my obsession with the construction of historical narratives and my admiration for Whitman. “What do mean by that,” you ask? What is the connection between Whitman and cultural memory?

Aside for his reputation as the “American Bard” (or the poet of democracy, the people’s poet, etc.), Walt Whitman was a man who actively constructed and constantly reconstructed both his sole major work and his own biography to create a particular, self-conscious space for himself in the American historical narrative. He was surrounded by “a series of authorial myths, often but not necessarily contradictory: Whitman the good g(r)ay poet, the nationalist, the moralist, the advocate of the family, the prophet, the crusader for liberty, the enemy of social injustice. It is not surprising that these conceptions of Whitman have had much to do with the desires of the mythmakers” (Mitchell 1997).

I actively collect different published version of Leaves of Grass. . . nothing too expensive, of course, but there are hundreds of inexpensive versions to choose from–all communicating different feelings and messages through there formatting and illustrations.

Am I reading too much into the format of these publications?

Whitman didn’t think so. As he was somewhat of a bookmaker himself he was also obsessed with the look and feel of his work–carefully choosing the type-face, the size and binding of his folios, and so on. Of course he didn’t stop there.

Whitman only produced one major work–Leaves of Grass–but in a pretty postmodern way this is not a single work. Whitman made many major changes from its first edition in 1855 through his last Edition in 1891. What poems he kept, threw out and edited all tell a part of the story of Whitman’s own creation of his identity as he wanted it remembered in our cultural memory. He actively worked to hone a particular face for himself while deleting and reworking poems that could lead to other readings.

His editorial changes show many contradictions–he inserts lines in his earlier poems to stress his youth as he writes lines in later poems describing himself as old (inviting the reader to create a chronology), he includes aspects of Darwinism in his post-war poems which seem in conflict with his egalitarian stance in his antebellum works, and, of course, he makes changes to obscure his sexuality (this is probably the most written about aspect).

Modern scholarly opinion tends belief that Whitman “merely tried to cover up his feelings in a homophobic culture. For example, in “Once I Pass’d Through A Populous City” he changed the sex of the beloved from male to female prior to publication. He even went so far as to invent six illegitimate children to correct his public image” (Wikipedia 2005).

I’ve just scratched the surface. . . more later.

Whitman Links:
The Whitman Archive
Poet at Work: the LOC Whitman Collection
The Walt Whitman Birthplace