Been thinking about....history

A while back, a friend of mine said, “We should not allow history to be taught the way we want it to be, instead of the way it actually happened.” The more I thought about what he said, the more I became convinced that the way history actually happened is hard to come by. History is usually some historian’s conclusions from a particular point of view.

When I visited the atomic bomb site in Hiroshima, Japan, history had recorded the exact year, month, day and time but the “Why” still has very different historical answers. When I first visited the site of “Custer’s Last Stand” in Montana, the American Park Ranger’s story of that engagement was different from the version of the Native American Park Ranger’s “Battle of the Greasy Grass” when I returned forty years later. When I think back on all the history I’ve heard, read and seen, every story had a starting point that supported the ending. The North, Central and South American populations and land policies in 1491 were eviscerated by 1691…..was that an acceptable outcome?….depends upon when you start the story.

The Lakota Sioux capture their tribal history in stories and winter count pictographs. The events, the locations, the people involved, and the year are preserved but the why is left to the artist or story teller. Seems to me that we do the same. Events usually have consequences that are good for some and bad for others. Prohibition made some feel good but it destroyed North Carolina’s wine industry. Pearl Harbor and the Arizona sinking were good for Japan but disastrous for Germany. Viet Nam was good for me at the time but bad policy for America. Sunrise is good for my flowers but a bummer for my bats. A heavy shower is excellent for the dahlias but a threat to NASCAR drivers.

Americans have always had a problem with their histories and with our nation’s short history. George Washington was an inept military tactician. The several colonies consistently reneged on their funding for the Continental Army. French support was pivotal in the defeat of England. Whigs and Tories disagreed, Yanks and Rebels still fight, Whites and Blacks blame each other, and the conflict between youthful dreams and old-age lessons is never ending. The year 2026 is America’s 250th anniversary and we are expected to revel in the coming together of thirteen colonies to form a more perfect union. We will be reminded of the signing of our Declaration of Independence with television specials, national advertising, and all manner of celebrations. What will be carefully overlooked, perhaps intentionally forgotten, will be the "Cotten States" reluctant support of the independence declaration. We will not be reminded that the succession of southern states from that union was a considered outcome that came to fruition in a few decades. The lasting apprehension of the consequences on their economic survival resulted in Fort Sumpter.  Perhaps we should all remember that history is just someone’s story. Revising history is just telling another’s story a different way. But, revising history sometimes means reassigning blame from a particular story-teller’s perspective. This is a toxic probability.

In her book, “An Indigenous Peoples’ History Of The United States,” Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz tells the American story from the Native Americans’ perspective. Reading this story is a marvelous, but uncomfortable, way to put your foot in another’s moccasins.

There is a line in “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” which addresses all revisionist history "The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”

Believe the story you choose; it’s your story; it’s only a story. Have the tolerance to acknowledge a contrary version

Esse Quam Videri