Post by rgthomas on Oct 24, 2011 12:11:06 GMT -6
Richard, all...good morning and what a grand autumn morning it is. Couple of responses:
While I agree conceptually with Richard's point in using non-Indian terms on specific Indian cultural aspects, the practicality of discourse in Cheyenne, Apache, etc., for most of us is not a viable option. Indians have, for the most part, told us how their words translate to non-Indian words. I'm not sure about anyone else but I find writings using two or three different languages in descriptive terms, albeit instructive, somewhat distracting and in some cases downright obstructionist. Having said that, more and more history is being presented with Indian langauge counterparts to English (and other languages as well) terminology.
I find it instructive, at least in my thinking, to use such terms as "army", "soldier", and other military terms when dealing with such subjects. It keeps my thinking clear as to the purpose of those entities in the societies in which they exist. Fred, and others as well, can attest to the Sun Tzu proscription that it is best to know the enemy and yourself. My study of history, especially res militiaria, tells me that it is most helpful when considering the five "W's" of an event to first template what ought to have happened based on capabilities, probabilities, and then compare the actualities. Others probably not so much. In any case, everytime we writers use a non-Indian term it should be with the full realization that we ought to give the Indian term the same scrutiny and use.
Sitting Bull, West Point, and S.L.A. Marshall (et all): A few years back I cleaned out my library and sold Crimsoned Prairie, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Son of Morning Star, and other "history" books in which the story telling was wonderfully done but the scholarship was sadly lacking. Knowing that, I finally located my research files from a long time ago about the subject of Sitting Bull and West Point. So, unless I go to the library and re-read Crimsoned Prairie (and the others) I can't pinpoint the specific pages on which Marshall discusses the widely-spread story/rumor that Sitting Bull graduated from West Point in 1848. Why?
Because my research notes only indicate Crimsoned Prairie and no page numbers. Not only that but my notes also refer to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Son of Morning Star, also sans page numbers and several other references. The Army-Navy Journal on September 2, 1876 contains a letter from a reporter at the Richmond "Despatch" discussing the ease with which the rumored West Point education of Sitting Bull could be proved. W. Fletcher Johnson discussed the story in his 1891 The Red Record of the Sioux: Life of Sitting Bull and History of the Indian War of 1890-'91. on pages 18, 29-35, and 38. The other references are to newspapers of the times. I assumed, that most folks knew of this rumored graduation. Perhaps not.
The story goes that he attended the Academy from 1844 until 1848 when, ready for graduation, he was denied his diploma. Disenfranchized he goes back west and leads the Lakota to victory until the flight to Canada. Literature of the period is also replete of the same individual leading "West Point trained" Indian fighting groups way before LBH. In short, many believed or at least passed on "corraborating" stories about the existence of one "Bison McClean." That's the only name I've ever seen associated with the cadet on the Hudson that might also have been Sitting Bull.
This is too good a story to have made up on my own and if anyone sends me an article for the Greasy Grass that half way explores this story in some detail, I'll pretty much tell you now it'll see print.
If you visit the LBH National Monument website you'll see a note about the story there. I've included below a book review from the Los Angeles Time in 1993 about the same story. Have fun!
"The Bard And The Bison"
Los Angeles Times
February 28, 1993
Under the guise of reviewing Michael Hart's "The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History" (Feb. 21), Charles Champlin squeezes in a proselytizing editorial about Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, as the "real" author of Shakespeare's plays and poems. Such claims are supposedly bolstered by the dubious logic that the actor William Shakespeare was a responsible citizen who became involved in mundane civil litigations. A poet, we are told, must be a velvet-frocked neurasthenic parasite who is much too lofty to be concerned with such matters. Family men with callouses on their hands need not apply.
This kind of pseudo-scholarship-cum-snobbery is not at all new, and perhaps a lesson from American history will serve: In 1876, after the astonishingly one-sided results at the Little Big Horn, many Americans refused to believe that the "ignorant, illiterate savage" Sitting Bull had so thoroughly out-generaled West Point graduate and Civil War hero George Armstrong Custer--someone who had studied Napoleon's tactics.
Soon, as recounted in Evan S. Connell's "Son of the Morning Star" and other sources, "proof" was being circulated that Sitting Bull was in fact a dark-skinned Caucasian West Point graduate, nicknamed "Bison" by his classmates, who had been a morose loner and who had been denied his officer's commission following a drunk-and-disorderly charge. Bison, who really existed, rode sullenly off into the West ca. 1850. After Custer's defeat, folklore about Bison became entwined with that of a "half-breed" named Charley Sitting Bull Jacobs who had attended college, where he was taught French by his Jesuit instructors. Jacobs was fond of reading Napoleon.
Feeding on the psychological need to believe that Custer could have been humiliated only by a college graduate, reporters--including book reviewers--began submitting stories that "proved" that Sitting Bull was in fact Bison and/or Jacobs. Pamphlets were sold that ostensibly contained "the writings of Sitting Bull in the original French and Latin." Never mind that Sitting Bull was a full-blooded Sioux whose lineage was well known; that he in no way physically resembled either Bison or Jacobs; that he was indeed illiterate, spoke no French and very little pidgin English; that he had never been east of the Dakotas until long after the Last Stand. . . .
Tom Burns
articles.latimes.com/1993-02-28/books/bk-369_1_bison-custer-s-defeat-george-armstrong-custer
A quick word on S. L. A. Marshall. Marshall's claim to fame was his book Men Under Fire in which he posited that only 20% of soldiers in WWII actually fired their weapons in battle and even less actually hit what they shot at. How did he discover this? With his "methodology" of talking with participants as soon as possible after an action. Viola'! The Army buys it and changes its marksmenship program and saw fruits in Korea and Vietnam. Marshall was made a BG in the Reserves and wrote books on both those conflicts as well. Sounds too good to be true huh? Well, it is.
In 1988, Dr. Roger Spiller of the Combat Studies Institute, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS brought Marshall's duplicity into the open. Seems that Marshall made up all the statistics, interviews, and what not for Men Under Fire. After that, more investigations into his very influential works revealed further such lack of honesty in his works about Korea and Vietnam. Colonel David Hackworth, based on personal experience with Marshall in Vietnam, thought the man a complete fraud. In short, Marshall's works have for the most part been discredited to the point that they are cited as examples of what not to do.
This is NOT saying the man could not tell a great story. He did and I, along with loads of others, loved them. He served in WWI as an enlisted man and did embellish his bio a bit with a non-existent battlefield commission. But this is a story for another time...
Please have a great day!
Regards, Rod...
While I agree conceptually with Richard's point in using non-Indian terms on specific Indian cultural aspects, the practicality of discourse in Cheyenne, Apache, etc., for most of us is not a viable option. Indians have, for the most part, told us how their words translate to non-Indian words. I'm not sure about anyone else but I find writings using two or three different languages in descriptive terms, albeit instructive, somewhat distracting and in some cases downright obstructionist. Having said that, more and more history is being presented with Indian langauge counterparts to English (and other languages as well) terminology.
I find it instructive, at least in my thinking, to use such terms as "army", "soldier", and other military terms when dealing with such subjects. It keeps my thinking clear as to the purpose of those entities in the societies in which they exist. Fred, and others as well, can attest to the Sun Tzu proscription that it is best to know the enemy and yourself. My study of history, especially res militiaria, tells me that it is most helpful when considering the five "W's" of an event to first template what ought to have happened based on capabilities, probabilities, and then compare the actualities. Others probably not so much. In any case, everytime we writers use a non-Indian term it should be with the full realization that we ought to give the Indian term the same scrutiny and use.
Sitting Bull, West Point, and S.L.A. Marshall (et all): A few years back I cleaned out my library and sold Crimsoned Prairie, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Son of Morning Star, and other "history" books in which the story telling was wonderfully done but the scholarship was sadly lacking. Knowing that, I finally located my research files from a long time ago about the subject of Sitting Bull and West Point. So, unless I go to the library and re-read Crimsoned Prairie (and the others) I can't pinpoint the specific pages on which Marshall discusses the widely-spread story/rumor that Sitting Bull graduated from West Point in 1848. Why?
Because my research notes only indicate Crimsoned Prairie and no page numbers. Not only that but my notes also refer to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Son of Morning Star, also sans page numbers and several other references. The Army-Navy Journal on September 2, 1876 contains a letter from a reporter at the Richmond "Despatch" discussing the ease with which the rumored West Point education of Sitting Bull could be proved. W. Fletcher Johnson discussed the story in his 1891 The Red Record of the Sioux: Life of Sitting Bull and History of the Indian War of 1890-'91. on pages 18, 29-35, and 38. The other references are to newspapers of the times. I assumed, that most folks knew of this rumored graduation. Perhaps not.
The story goes that he attended the Academy from 1844 until 1848 when, ready for graduation, he was denied his diploma. Disenfranchized he goes back west and leads the Lakota to victory until the flight to Canada. Literature of the period is also replete of the same individual leading "West Point trained" Indian fighting groups way before LBH. In short, many believed or at least passed on "corraborating" stories about the existence of one "Bison McClean." That's the only name I've ever seen associated with the cadet on the Hudson that might also have been Sitting Bull.
This is too good a story to have made up on my own and if anyone sends me an article for the Greasy Grass that half way explores this story in some detail, I'll pretty much tell you now it'll see print.
If you visit the LBH National Monument website you'll see a note about the story there. I've included below a book review from the Los Angeles Time in 1993 about the same story. Have fun!
"The Bard And The Bison"
Los Angeles Times
February 28, 1993
Under the guise of reviewing Michael Hart's "The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History" (Feb. 21), Charles Champlin squeezes in a proselytizing editorial about Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, as the "real" author of Shakespeare's plays and poems. Such claims are supposedly bolstered by the dubious logic that the actor William Shakespeare was a responsible citizen who became involved in mundane civil litigations. A poet, we are told, must be a velvet-frocked neurasthenic parasite who is much too lofty to be concerned with such matters. Family men with callouses on their hands need not apply.
This kind of pseudo-scholarship-cum-snobbery is not at all new, and perhaps a lesson from American history will serve: In 1876, after the astonishingly one-sided results at the Little Big Horn, many Americans refused to believe that the "ignorant, illiterate savage" Sitting Bull had so thoroughly out-generaled West Point graduate and Civil War hero George Armstrong Custer--someone who had studied Napoleon's tactics.
Soon, as recounted in Evan S. Connell's "Son of the Morning Star" and other sources, "proof" was being circulated that Sitting Bull was in fact a dark-skinned Caucasian West Point graduate, nicknamed "Bison" by his classmates, who had been a morose loner and who had been denied his officer's commission following a drunk-and-disorderly charge. Bison, who really existed, rode sullenly off into the West ca. 1850. After Custer's defeat, folklore about Bison became entwined with that of a "half-breed" named Charley Sitting Bull Jacobs who had attended college, where he was taught French by his Jesuit instructors. Jacobs was fond of reading Napoleon.
Feeding on the psychological need to believe that Custer could have been humiliated only by a college graduate, reporters--including book reviewers--began submitting stories that "proved" that Sitting Bull was in fact Bison and/or Jacobs. Pamphlets were sold that ostensibly contained "the writings of Sitting Bull in the original French and Latin." Never mind that Sitting Bull was a full-blooded Sioux whose lineage was well known; that he in no way physically resembled either Bison or Jacobs; that he was indeed illiterate, spoke no French and very little pidgin English; that he had never been east of the Dakotas until long after the Last Stand. . . .
Tom Burns
articles.latimes.com/1993-02-28/books/bk-369_1_bison-custer-s-defeat-george-armstrong-custer
A quick word on S. L. A. Marshall. Marshall's claim to fame was his book Men Under Fire in which he posited that only 20% of soldiers in WWII actually fired their weapons in battle and even less actually hit what they shot at. How did he discover this? With his "methodology" of talking with participants as soon as possible after an action. Viola'! The Army buys it and changes its marksmenship program and saw fruits in Korea and Vietnam. Marshall was made a BG in the Reserves and wrote books on both those conflicts as well. Sounds too good to be true huh? Well, it is.
In 1988, Dr. Roger Spiller of the Combat Studies Institute, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS brought Marshall's duplicity into the open. Seems that Marshall made up all the statistics, interviews, and what not for Men Under Fire. After that, more investigations into his very influential works revealed further such lack of honesty in his works about Korea and Vietnam. Colonel David Hackworth, based on personal experience with Marshall in Vietnam, thought the man a complete fraud. In short, Marshall's works have for the most part been discredited to the point that they are cited as examples of what not to do.
This is NOT saying the man could not tell a great story. He did and I, along with loads of others, loved them. He served in WWI as an enlisted man and did embellish his bio a bit with a non-existent battlefield commission. But this is a story for another time...
Please have a great day!
Regards, Rod...