A few tales of historical spooks for you this All Hallow’s Eve

Déjeuner dans le trou de la Sorcière (Forêt noire)/ Breakfast in the Witch Hole (Black Forest), a print from 1854. Image from Gallica.

One of the books that’s been on my shelf for a while is Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson’s hefty work The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England’s Legends, from Spring-Heeled Jack to the Witches of Warboys. It’s almost an encyclopedia of folklore from across England, peppered with references to the primary material from which they draw these little snippets of lore. Here are a few I thought you would appreciate, writing this as I am on All Hallow’s Eve:

Knutsford, Cheshire: There are two explanations for the name of this town, both mentioned by its historian, Henry Green, in the 1850s. One is that there was once an old woman who sold nuts for her living, and when dying asked to be buried with a bag of them under her head. This was done, but she found this pillow so uncomfortable that, after turning over in her coffin and finding the other side no better, she one night clambered out of her grave, emptied the bag, cracked all the nuts against her gravestone, and ate them – all but one, which she dropped without realizing it. She then refolded the bag to use as a pillow, got back into her coffin, and has slept there peacefully ever since. But a fine hazel sprouted from the nut she dropped on her grave. Henry Green, telling this tale in 1859, says that there really had been a tree growing from a grave here; by the time he was writing only its shattered stem remained, but he himself had once plucked a leaf from its branches, which was seen as ‘an undeniable witness’ that all this was true.(81)

Crowcombe, Somerset: It was believed in Somerset (as in several other regions) that anyone who kept watch in a church porch at midnight on Midsummer Eve or Halloween would see the wraiths of all those fated to die in the parish in the coming year entering the church for their own funeral service. (641)

Pinkney Park, Wiltshire: In a niche overlooking the main staircase of this house . . . there is a skull, thought to be that of a woman; traditions about it were told to the local writer Kathleen Wiltshire in the 1970s. There are also marks said to be irremoveable bloodstains on the floor of one room, and a woman’s handprint on the door of another; according to the traditions, the story behind all that is two sisters in the family loved the same man, so one murdered the other, out of jealousy. . . .
the skull is said to have been there for centuries, despite many attempts to remove, smash, or burn it, from which it invariably returns unharmed, as is the normal case with stories of this type. Legend used also to claim that it would fall to dust of its own accord when the last Pinkney died and the house and estate passed into other ownership, but the property did in fact change hands several generations ago, without affecting the skull at all.(792)

Black Heddon, Northumberland: M.A. Richardson’s Table Book (1842-5) includes an account, sent him by Robert Robertson of Sunderland, of the haunting sixty or seventy years previously of Black Heddon, near Stamfordham, by a supernatural being known as ‘Silky’ from her predilection for appearing dressed in silk:
“Many a time, when any of the more timorous of the community had a night journey to perform, have they unawares and invisibly been dogged and watched, by this spectral tormentor, who at the dreariest part of the road. . . would suddenly break forth in dazzling splendour. If the person happened to be on horseback . . . she would unexpectedly seat herself behind, ‘rattling in her silks.’ There, after enjoying a comfortable ride; with instantaneous abruptness, she would. . . dissolve away . . . leaving the bewildered horseman in blank amazement.”
At Belsay, a few miles from Black Heddon, there was a crag under the shadows of whose trees Silky loved to wander at night. At the bottom of the crag was a waterfall, over which an ancient tree spread its arms, amid which Silky had a rough chair, where she used to sit, rocked by the wind. Sir Charles M.L Monck, of Belsay Castle, had carefully preserved this tree, still called ‘Silky’s seat.’
Horses were sensitive to Silky’s presence and she seemed to take pleasure in stopping them in their tracks, so that no manner of brute force could get them moving. The only remedy was ‘magic-dispelling witchwood’ (rowan, mountain ash). . . .
Silky is described as ‘wayward and capricious.’ Like many bogeys, she revelled in surprise. Women who cleaned their houses on Saturday night, ready for the Sabbath, would find them next morning turned upside-down, but, if the house had been left untidy, Silky would put it straight.
Eventually, she abruptly disappeared. People had long surmised that she must be the restless ghost of someone who had died before disclosing the whereabouts of her treasure. Supposedly, about this time, a servant, alone in one of the rooms of a house at Black Heddon, was terrified by the ceiling giving way, ‘and from it there dropt, with a prodigious clash, something quite black, shapeless and uncouth.’ The servant fled to her mistress screaming at the top of her voice, ‘The deevil’s in the house! The deevil’s in the house! He’s come through the ceiling!’ IT was some time before anyone dared to look, but finally, the mistress, stouter-hearted than the rest, ventured into the room and found there a great dog or calf’s skin – filled with gold. After this, Silky was never more heard or seen. (549-50)

Canewdon, Essex: Canewdon was once notorious for its witches, a reputation linked with the tall tower of Canewdon church, of which, says Philip Benton in his History of Rochford Hundred (1867), ‘A tradition exists, and is believed by many, that so long as this steeple exists, there will always remain six witches in Canewdon.

In the 1920s, it was likewise said that there were always six witches – three in silk and three in cotton (meaning three well-to-do- and three working women). Charlotte Mason, writing in 1928, says an old man then living in Rayleigh told her that one was supposed to be the parson’s wife, and another the wife of the butcher. He said that a Canewdon girl who had gone to keep house for his uncle at Woodham Ferrers was also one of the witches, and his uncle knew no peace after her coming there ‘for nothing in the house would keep still.’ (He is referring to the witch’s power of moving objects by telekinesis . . .) It was also claimed that a stone fell out of the church wall every time a Canewdon witch died. . . .

A well-known procedure for identifying the culprit when witchcraft was suspected was by heating a witch-bottle containing the victim’s urine and sometimes nail-clippings, ordinary nails, pins, and other items. Eric Maple, writing in Folklore in 1960, puts the proverbial number of Canewdon witches at seven, and says that an old woman told him she was present as a girl at one such ceremony.

. . . . a witch who stole a bell from Latchingdon church, on the other side of the river, tried to bring it back in a washtub, using feathers as oars. She was seen by a waterman, but she bewitched him into forgetting what he had seen by saying, ‘You will speak of it when you think of it.’ It was not until years later, when he heard the bells toll for the funeral of the witch, that he remembered. (251)

Edmondthorpe, Leicestershire: In the parish church of St Michael is the tomb of Sir Roger Smith of Edmondthorpe Hall. He died in c.1655 after two marriages, and both his wives are represented in alabaster effigy on the tomb. The left hand of Lady Ann has been broken and the wrist stained a dark red, perhaps by iron rivets used to mend it. The local explanation of the stain, however, is that Lady Ann was a witch who, as was the habit of witches, could turn herself into a cat. Her butler, trying to drive this cat out of the kitchen, struck it with a meat cleaver, wounding it in the paw. When the cat resumed its human form, the wound was plain to see in the corresponding position on the wrist of Lady Ann. At her death, this ‘wounded hand’ also appeared miraculously on her effigy.
And that was not all: as the result of this supernatural event, Edmondthorpe Hall gained an ‘indelible bloodstain’. The cat’s blood had fallen on a kitchen flagstone and the stain proved to be ineradicable. At some time between 1918 and 1922, the Countess of Yarborough, then living at the Hall, had the stone taken up because the maids complained that, however much they scrubbed, it would not come clean. The stone was removed to the workshop of J.W. Golling in the main street of Wymondham, Leicestershire, where it became the object of much curiosity.
The phenomenon whereby the wound inflicted on her wer-animal is transferred to the witch is known as ‘repercussion’. Many traditional tales of witches hinge on this belief.(419-20)

Potterne, Wiltshire: It is common in folklore to encounter tales about witches turning into hares. A more unusual experience was reported by a young man in the 1920s to the folklore collector B.H. Cunningham, who printed it in 1943. This young man said that when he was courting a Potterne girl he used to take her for a stroll along the lanes every evening after work. They were always followed by an unknown greyhound; he was convinced that this was the girl’s mother, keeping an eye on them. As proof, he told Cunningham how one rainy evening the dog ran ahead of them as they got near the girl’s home, jumped the garden gate, and disappeared; when they reached the house they could see through the kitchen window the mother standing in a tub, washing mud off her legs.(792)

“Manly-Hearted Women” and Other Stories of Epic Indigenous People We Need to Hear Right Now

The past week has been a difficult one for many people. I’ve been spending a lot of my time feeling anxious and overwhelmed, scrolling through social media to stay informed, and trying to meditate on how to use my privileged position to take action in meaningful ways to combat racism, particularly in my own country. Many in the United States are facing violence while protesting against racist police violence. However, Canada in general and Saskatchewan in particular have their own problems with racism, particularly anti-Indigenous racism. I’m an educator, both in my personal life and work life. A lot of what I do is try to amplify the right voices and stories, and change hearts and minds in wider society. I provide historical context for the world came to be as it is today, challenge misunderstandings of the past, and try to bring to the fore lesser-known stories that may cast nuance and shades of grey on a past many see in terms of black and white.

It’s a chilly and rainy day today where I am, so as I often do I turn to some of my favourite history books. Sarah Carter’s The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation-Building in Western Canada is one of the first books I ever read that really tilted my understanding of the world on its axis, just a little bit. (You can download a PDF of this book in full for free from Athabasca University Press’s website.) In her introduction, Carter discusses how the idea of “traditional” marriage – ’til death do you part, between one man and one woman of the same race in a church ceremony – was not in fact ubiquitous in what is now Western Canada. Intra-racial marriages, plural marriages, non-church ceremonies… these were all very, very common in the West for generations.

In this post, I want to highlight the stories of a few people, largely Blackfoot, who bucked what some would call “traditional” gender norms. I think that the stories of these awesome people, thriving, are the kinds of stories I and others need to hear right now, particularly during Pride Month. This passage is taken directly from Carter’s book:

“Aboriginal people of the plains also permitted marriages of people of the same sex. One of the spouses might be a ‘two-spirit’ who took on the activities, occupations, and dress of the opposite sex, in whole or in part, temporarily or permanently. There was no insistence on conformity to binaries of masculinity and femininity. Indian agents were frustrated by their inability to tell men and women apart, and they made mistakes, or were misled, when describing certain individuals. Oftentimes they did note the flexibility of gender roles when they described individuals to which annuities were paid, as evident in terms such as ‘wife shown as boy last year,’ ‘boy paid as girl last year,’ and ‘boy now a man formerly ran as a girl.’ Clothing, hair, footwear, and personal décor did not differentiate men from women in the way that Euro-Canadians were accustomed to. Qu’Appelle storekeeper Edward J. Brooks wrote in an 1882 letter to his wife-to-be that ‘I saw a couple of pure blooded Indians down at the station a couple of days ago and could not tell whether both were [women] or not but finally made up my mind that they were man and wife. They were both dressed as nearly alike as possible, had long braided hair, wore lots of jewellery and had their faced painted with Vermillion paint.’ An English visitor to Western Canada named Edward Roper wrote in his 1891 book that “most of us found it almost impossible to tell the young men and women apart; they were exactly alike in face [the men had no ‘beards or whiskers’], and being generally enveloped in blankets the difficulty increased.’ All wore similar beautifully decorated moccasins, bangles, and earrings, Roper wrote.

In Plains societies there were women who did not marry and pursued activities mostly associated with men. They hunted buffalo and went to war. An informant to [anthropologist Esther] Goldfrank described a woman warrior who was treated as a true leader. She was renowned for acts of bravery such as going into an enemy’s tipi and taking headdresses from behind the bed. ‘She used to leave her legging at the enemy camp and they would say ‘that woman has been here again.’ She always slept alone, while the men remained in camp. She would sleep on top of the hill and she sang a song. The next day she would know where to lead the party.’ This may have been the warrior another informant identified as “Trim Woman,” saying that ‘that kind of woman is always respected and everyone depends on them. They are admired for their bravery. They are ‘lucky’ on raids and so the men respect them.” Another Kainai woman, Empty Coulee, had a story similar to Trim Woman’s, but she had more courage, killing enemies and capturing guns, while Trim Woman only captured horses. After she became expert in raiding she changed her name to Running Eagle, a man’s name. She wore women’s clothing, but she ‘got respect as a ‘real man.’’ She never married.

Some of the women who took on ‘manly’ roles were married. . . Edwin Thompson Denig, a fur trader during the years 1833 and 1856, described a Gros Ventre woman who was a respected warrior, negotiator and hunter, and who was regarded as the third-ranked chief of her band. She had a wife.” (page 123-4)

Carter goes on to describe several historical accounts of people we today may call transgender women, who went to war but also excelled at sewing and had “a devoted husband.”

We today are informed by our past but are not beholden to it. I have found that oftentimes, people use imperfect understandings of the past to justify the status quo, that things can’t change because “it’s tradition” or “this is how it’s always been,” as if that is reason enough to justify a refusal to change things that hurt people. However, it is worth noting that many of these simplistic histories cited so triumphantly by people as they learned in school or in the movies erases the stories of people that run counter to their arguments. Our histories for many years were written by those in power, those who were literate, who could read and write in the dominant language of the state. The stories of women, the stories of people who didn’t fit the mold, were often ignored or written about by outsiders who didn’t know the people involved or who didn’t understand what they were seeing. If their stories were documented by contemporaries they may have been ignored or forgotten because they didn’t fit the dominant narrative.

However, just because we as a society aren’t broadly aware of these historical figures doesn’t mean they never existed. That’s one of the reasons why I really appreciate researchers like Sarah Carter and others, who use the very documents being produced by the state, read against the grain, to catch glimpses of these people: the men who formerly ran as girls and the women who took on men’s names and led men into battle.

In an age before telephones or telegraphs, how fast did news travel?

One of the most fascinating history books I’ve read is the social / geographic / linguistic history, The Discovery of France by Graham Robb. He really effectively and evocatively demonstrates the effects of geography on the culture and language of France, shining a light on something that I never thought much about but which touched so many elements of French history and society.

For much of the history of that country, it was really hard to get around. There are few navigable rivers and the network of roads the country had were not very extensive and often were poorly maintained. As someone who lives in Canada and doesn’t think much of driving for 700km for seven hours to visit relatives a province away, even in winter, geography in an age before asphalt roads or motorized vehicles is a bit abstract and academic. For such a “small” country (I live in Canadian territory, so that’s most countries), France was hard to travel and easy to be isolated or to disappear.

Stagecoach and travellers on their way to Puycerda, in Ax-les-Thermes in the French Pyrenees, second half of the 19th century. Image from the Gallica archive.

In the same way, I’m unused to delays in information due to geographical distance. If I, say, want to know the up to date results of an election in a different country, or where the latest confirmed cases of Coronavirus have been found, I can pull my smartphone out of my pocket and Google it. Boom, instantaneous information. (How accurate that information is, is an entirely different and concerning question that we’re still hashing out as a society, but regardless the point still stands.) 

We read about the events of the past – for instance, the developments of the French revolution – knowing the ending, the main milestones, in advance. We don’t have to wait anxiously for news. But how quickly would you hear about these things if you lived outside of Paris during the time period? There’s a fascinating passage in Graham Robb’s book discussing it:

Long before railways and the modern telegraph, news of important events could spread across the country at amazing speeds. The usual speed for an earth-shattering piece of news travelling over a hundred miles was between 4 and 7 mph. Le Havre heard about the fall of the Bastille (late afternoon, 14 July 1789) in the early hours of 17 July. In good conditions, Brest, at the tip of the Breton peninsula, was fifty-four horse-hours from Paris. Average speeds fell drastically on longer journeys, even on post roads, where horses and riders were relayed. Béziers – five hundred and twenty miles on post roads from Paris – heard about he fall of the Bastille almost seven days after the event (an average speed of less than 4 mph). Smaller towns might be closer in space but further away in time, unless a local inhabitant happened to bring the news. Vitteaux  – a hundred and sixty-five miles from Paris in the Auxois region east of Dijon – heard about the Bastille from a local tailor who travelled without stopping for two day sand two nights at an average speed of 3 1/2 mph. Even the high-speed messengers employed by groups of traders averaged only 7 mph over long distances.

Despite this, there are several well-attested examples of news travelling at much higher speeds. The arrest of the royal family at Varennes in the Argonne was known on the other side of France in Quimper at 7a.m. on 24 June 1791. On post-roads, Quimper was five hundred and forty miles from Varennes, which means that the news reached this remote and poorly served part of France at an average speed of almost 11 mph, maintained for two days and two nights. This is faster even than the news of the Battle of Waterloo brought by fleeing soldiers. At Villers-Cotterêts, the young Alexandre Dumas found their speed of a league and a half an hour (just over 4 mph) quite extraordinary: ‘It seems that the messengers of misfortune have wings.’

The century’s greatest expert on gossip and pre-industrial telecommunications, Honoré de Balzac, suggested that rumour could travel at about 8 mph. (pages 140-1)

The author then goes on to discuss the fascinating implications of such speeds, namely how they travelled, and how much we don’t know. It wasn’t all by riders swapping horses whenever they got tired. Messenger pigeons were used by some merchants, and there was apparently at least one occasionally used network of stationary messengers who would just shout to the next person a distance away to pass along the message. But the speed that rumours travelled defies expectations, especially as researchers have determined that they often seemed to travel independently of the main arteries of roads. Geography slowed them down, but nothing can stop the human hunger for more information.

Further Reading

• For more interesting tidbits from Graham Robb’s book, take a look at my other blog post, Notable Knitters of Yore: the Stilt-Walking Shepherds of France

Author Erin Kinsella Interviews Me About My Bison Book

I have talented friends! The ever-gracious and enthusiastic Erin Kinsella interviews me in this video on her YouTube channel about my book, Through the Storm: Canada’s Bison Conservation Story. Learn some nifty anecdotes from my research and the publication process with the federal government, why my book has two different titles (or four, if you consider the French versions), and some photoshop secrets about the cover!

A Look at a Copy of Albert Lacombe’s 1874 Cree-French Dictionary

UNESCO has designated 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages. I currently live in Treaty 6 Territory, which is the traditional homeland of the Cree, the Dene, and the Metis, among others. (Use this website to find out whose territory you reside on if you are unaware already – or use it to look up familiar places!) I’ve been learning bits and pieces of the Cree language for several years now and I want to make accelerated effort at it this year of all years. I’m lucky that several of my staff members are Cree language learners and we have opportunities to try to learn and to use it in the work place. These are living languages so it’s important to use them; languages shape how we describe and see the world. I want to highlight some resources and sources of information about Indigenous languages, and encourage people to learn and use Cree.

As a historian, I’m fascinated by delving into the history of languages like Cree; I often use historical sources as a lens through which I view a topic I’m learning about. I’ve written before about people like Peter Erasmus and other Old Timers, people both from Cree-speaking cultures and not, who all commonly spoke Cree as a lingua franca in this territory in the 19th century.

The oldest book I personally own is a copy of Father Albert Lacombe’s Cree-French dictionary. I bought it from a book seller at the American Bison Society Conference in 2016 in Banff. I find the materiality of this book fascinating. Before it came into my possession, it was rebound (it has an English-language spine) and spent time in a library (it has a call number on the spine too), I think in British Columbia. Pasted in the back, there’s a pair English-language newspaper articles from the 1970s about the preservation of the Cree language and also Father Lacombe’s life. (I didn’t realize that his mother was half-Anishinaabe?)

One of my favourite details about the book is that someone at some point in its history has trimmed the edges and written in the letters of each section for ease of reference. It’s clear from the condition of the book that it was well-used.

This book had a clear audience and purpose; it was to teach prospective missionaries the Cree language so they could better convert and minister to Indigenous peoples. It only goes one way: translating French concepts into Cree. That’s reflected in the introduction. It is a book of its time, and it is trying to share knowledge of Cree people with an audience that already has a lot of preconceived notions about them.

For those who can’t read French, this page and the one following reads something to the effect of:

The Savage Languages / The Wild Languages

A lot has been written and spoken of the savage languages of North America. Some souls, who see themselves capable of judging everything, and deciding on questions outside of their competencies, have poorly appreciated savage languages. This new group of Indian-ologists, having spent a little bit of time among the Indians and after gathering a certain number of words, often very poorly written, have come to believe that these dialects are nothing more than inarticulate, truncated debris, almost unintelligible, and that they are not real languages. Others, in contrast, are better appreciators and are in a better state of judging (and we place missionaries in the first rank of these), after long studies and several years passed among the savage tribes, and have recognized that the poor child of the prairies and the woods have a regular language, intelligible and not without its beauty, with which they can transmit with sounds all that takes place in their soul. Even more than that, the savage, in speaking his language, speaks it correctly from a young age, and he is amazed to hear someone make the least grammatical mistake…. Savage languages in general are rich in vocabulary and in grammatical forms. In their complex structures, we find the grandest order and a most regular methodology.

Father Lacombe was fluent in both Cree and Blackfoot as well as French, but he was speaking to an audience that had to be convinced that First Nations actually had language, and that it was a complex one with its own beauty. That is, uh… quite a low bar for baseline knowledge.

Lacombe seems to quite admire Cree and favorably compares it to French:

La langue des Cris est belle, riche et peut-être la plus facile de toutes les langues sauvages de l’Amérique du Nord. On peut dire que le cris est pour le Nord-Ouest ce que le français est pour les pays civilisés.

The language of the Cree is beautiful, rich, and perhaps the easiest of all of the savage languages of North America. One could say that Cree is to the North-West what French is for civilized countries.

Lacombe in his introduction scatters about Cree words, and occasionally gets a dig in at the English. In a footnote explaining the origin of the name of the Saskatchewan River:

Ce mot est défiguré par les Anglais et ne veut rien dire en cris. Il faudrait : Kisiskatchiwan, courant rapide.

This word has been disfigured by the English and doesn’t mean anything in Cree. You should use Kisiskatchiwan, swift current.

Father Lacombe was an interesting figure at the intersection of several communities and cultures. He was a peace maker but also an agent of colonialism; he was beloved and did both harm and good. All of things can be true at once. His book in its attention detail does seem to show admiration for the Cree language… and yet it has a clear (and understandable) focus on Catholic terminology, intended in large part to supplant parts of that culture. He often has to clarify that Cree doesn’t quite have a word that means that, or that this word could be used in that way but has unexpected connotations. For instance, in his definition for “to adore” (as in “to adore the Christ child”), he includes a note (my incredibly rough translation):

We could also say manitokkâtew, but this expression seems improper here, because it really means he is like a God, a phrase better suited for idols and objects of superstition. The word manâtjihew, used in prayer to mean to adore, is not quite suitable either, as it means simply that he respects [it], he has regard for him.

He also really struggled with “superstition” and “superstitious”, and ended up effectively just listing superstitious acts (ceremonies) in Cree.

As someone who is fascinated by linguistic history, this focus on how to translate biblical passages and catholic catechisms, as well as pejorative translations of Cree culture, is not surprising but it is interesting, illustrating how language can be used (and mangled) to communicate a very specific message. That being said, Lacombe records very specific cultural concepts, including for instance a specific word designating the act of crying in very specific circumstances. Other words frame European concepts in a way that is more comprehensible to the Cree, framing their concepts as normal and the Euro-Canadian ones as those needing clarification. The word Lacombe lists for domestic cattle, for instance, includes the word “slave”, framing them as “enslaved buffalo”. The dictionary is fascinating to me because of its specificity of language and window into Cree culture at a time of encounter and change.

However, I have to acknowledge here that I am interpreting the history of this language through the lens of Father Lacombe and the languages that he spoke, that he and I share. That means I am trying to access this information about Cree language and culture already from an outside perspective. It’s a fascinating one to me that resonates with my experience, but one that holds a certain worldview. Father Lacombe chose to include words that he felt his audience would find useful – they betray a certain obvious focus and perspective. Dictionaries are not impartial lists of vocabulary. They are written with a purpose.

Material objects are a tangible link with the past. One thing struck me when I was handling this book last year: its publication date. It was published in 1874. What was happening at that time? Treaty 4 was signed that year. Bison populations were in steep decline. That was also the year when Samuel Walking Coyote (or Peregrine Falcon Robe) captured a small seed herd of bison that would eventually become the Pablo-Allard herd from which a majority of Plains Bison are descended from today. Judging from notes and stamps on the inside cover, by the 1960s this particular copy had found its way to Victoria, BC. What happened to it in the 90 years in between? Who used it? Did it make its way to Treaty 6 territory in the 19th century? By canoe, horse-drawn cart, or later by train? Or was it purchased and kept in Quebec for decades before making its way to British Columbia by car or by plane? Who used it so often they needed to trim the edges of the pages for easy reference? Was the most useful period of its life before or after it entered into a library? How did it come to be on that bookseller’s table, where it caught my eye?

When I hold this book, I think of who else could have held this book, and both how near and yet how far we are to their world.

Note

I am not a native French speaker, and I welcome corrections on my rough interpretations of the French elements of the text. I also welcome insight from any Cree or French speakers about what they read here!

Further Reading

• History of the Cree Language talk by Reuben Quinn
• For a more modern dictionary accessible to English speakers: Cree Dictionary Online
• Wordreference.com: a useful resource for people who frequently translate between English and French, or for those of you who want to puzzle over my translations.
• A bit about territorial acknowledgements
• Media Indigena: a podcast that provides an Indigenous perspective on the news (because I shouldn’t just be reading what settlers have to say about Indigenous language and culture – I should be listening to Indigenous people).

 

Stepping Off the Page: Ron Chernow’s Biography of Alexander Hamilton

I have been working my way through Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton over the course of the last few months. It is a truly excellent work of popular history. As a Canadian historian, I’d never really been exposed to much of the detailed history of the American revolutionary era and early decades of the United States, and the early financial and political history of the independent country is surprisingly fascinating. I think a lot of my newfound fascination is a testament to Chernow’s ability to both humanize historical figures but also parse out their politics in an engaging, clear, and detailed way. The country could have gone in so many other directions. Chernow does an amazing job of laying out just how fragile the early republic was. Too often the success of the revolution and the formation of the American state as we know it today is treated almost like political certainty, or some sort of destiny, but reading this book you get a real sense of how figures like Washington and Hamilton could have lost, not just the revolution but in other great projects of theirs that they’re known for. I now understand much better why there were amendments to the American constitution. I understand early banking a lot better, and how sketchy people thought it was then … and I can see parallels to today with people who are not financially literate having very firm ideas about the politics determining the finances of a nation. I have a better sense of just how vicious the early politics could be, with politicians publishing anonymous diatribes about each other either using proxy authors or thinly-veiled pseudonyms themselves. Some of it was incredibly petty, and a lot of it was character assassination and treating rumours as fact. (So… the more things change, the more things stay the same?) Nevertheless, the sheer amount of detail that Chernow draws together in this work boggles my mind.

I really like Chernow’s authorial voice. He sets the tone early, in his very first author’s note before the title page:

In order to make the text as fluent as possible and the founders less remote, I have taken the liberty of modernizing the spelling and punctuation of eighteenth-century prose, which can seem antiquated and jarring to modern eyes. I have also cured many contemporary newspaper editors of their addiction to italics and capitalized words. Occasionally, I have retained the original spelling to emphasize the distinctive voice, strong emotion, patent eccentricity, or curious education of the person quoted. I trust that these exceptional cases, and my reasons for wanting to reproduce them precisely, will be evident to the alert reader.

Chernow has an evocative way of gathering together content from what must be thousands of pages of primary research into an incredible cohesive narrative. It almost reads like a novel. The historical figures nearly step off of the page, and not just in their grander moments. Take, for instance, this bit about Hamilton’s immediately post-war job as an up-and-coming New York lawyer:

The departure of many Tory lawyers had cleared the path for capable, ambitious men in their late twenties and early thirties, including Burr, Brockholst Livingston, Robert Troup, John Laurance, and Morgan Lewis. They were constantly thrown together in and out of court. Much of the time they rode the circuit together, often accompanied by the judge, enduring long journeys in crude stagecoaches that jolted along jumpy upstate roads. They stayed in crowded, smoky inns and often had to share beds with one another, creating a camaraderie that survived many political battles. (pg. 188)

These are the kinds of details I find fascinating. (I am a social historian, not normally a political one.) How did these people know each other? What had they been through together? It’s often in little details like these that we get really good contextual information to the relationships of historical figures. It’s interesting how the everyday details of people’s lives influenced their politics.

I also loved the moment where Chernow describes the secular leanings of Hamilton at Constitutional Convention:

When [Benjamin] Franklin suggested on June 28 that each session start with a prayer for heavenly help, Hamilton countered that this might foster a public impression that ’embarrassments and dissensions within the convention had suggested this measure.’ According to legend, Hamilton also rebutted Franklin with the jest that the convention didn’t need ‘foreign aid.’ The Lord did not seem much in evidence at this point in the convention. One story, perhaps apocryphal, claims that when Hamilton was asked why the framers omitted the word God from the Constitution, he replied, ‘We forgot.’ One is tempted to reply that Alexander Hamilton never forgot anything important. (pg. 235)

I now have a much better understanding of how the story of Alexander Hamilton inspired Lin Manuel Miranda to write his amazing musical, famously based on this book. The life of Alexander Hamilton is almost too dramatic to be true. I wanted to highlight the following story in particular, as it really stuck in my mind. I believe it would make an amazing television episode by itself. During the revolutionary war, Hamilton was acting as aide-de-camp to General George Washington…

Washington dispatched Hamilton, Captain Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee (father of Robert E. Lee), and eight cavalrymen to burn flour mills on the Schuylkill River before they fell into enemy hands. While Hamilton and others were destroying flour at Daviser’s … Ferry, their sentinels fired a warning shot indicating the approach of British dragoons. To guarantee an escape route, Hamilton had moored a flat-bottomed boat at the river’s edge. He and three comrades now leaped into the craft and pushed off from shore, while Lee and others took off on horseback. Lee recalled the British raking Hamilton’s boat with repeated volleys from their carbines, killing one of Hamilton’s men and wounding another. All the while, the intrepid Hamilton was ‘struggling against a violent current, increased by the recent rains.’ Hamilton and his men finally drove from the boat into the swirling waters and swam to safety. Scarcely stopping for breath, Hamilton dashed off a message to John Hancock that urged the immediately evacuation of the Continental Congress from Philadelphia. Just before Hamilton returned to headquarters, Washington received a letter from Captain Lee announcing Hamilton’s death in the Schuylkill. There were tears of jubilation, as well as considerable laughter, when the sodden corpse himself sauntered through the door. (pg. 98-99)

This is what public history is supposed to do. It is a good story, and an evocative and accessible one. This one scene, in and among all of the others that Chernow writes about, highlights elements of Hamilton’s character, the part he played in the revolution, and the relationships he has with other historical figures such as Washington. Drawing these types of vignettes together to tell the story of a person’s life: that’s a historian’s job.

The role of a historian is in part to gather together evidence of past historical events, critically analyze them, and assemble them into coherent narratives. As Chernow himself has said: “History is long, messy, and complicated.” However, Chernow does an excellent job at portraying that messiness in a way that doesn’t put people on a pedestal, and makes sense of the many factions of that period in American history. The men and women that Chernow writes about don’t feel as remote to me anymore. I particularly like how Chernow sometimes highlights their handwriting. The materiality of a document can tell a historian a lot about the person writing it and the circumstances under which they wrote it. For instance, lot of the surviving dispatches in Washington’s name from the revolutionary war are in Hamilton’s handwriting (being an aide-de-camp involved effectively being a secretary among other duties), testifying to just how involved Hamilton was with Washington’s inner circle at critical moments during the war. There’s also this charming aside about Hamilton and his wife Eliza:

On April 30, 1781, Hamilton sent a marathon letter to Morris – it runs to thirty-one printed pages – that set forth a fully-fledged system for shoring up American credit and creating a national bank. Portions of this interminable letter exist in Eliza’s handwriting (complete with her faulty spelling), as if Hamilton’s hand ached and he had to pass the pen to his bride at intervals. (pg. 156)

I’m not only picturing them as static paintings and statues, as formal words spoken in florid or stoic language, but as real human beings with all their foibles and physical weaknesses and petty words, with their passions and dedication to duty.  The figures in Chernow’s biography get tired, they get sick, and they get frustrated with one another. They defend their ideals against all comers. They have great passions and they have tender moments with their loved ones. They’re people. Fascinating ones.

And oh man I’m only about 400 pages into an 800 page tome, and I’m so excited to read more.

Resources

• Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. (Of course.)
• Ron Chernow Interview: Hamilton on Broadway: Chernow talks about how he came to be involved in Lin Manuel Miranda’s project, and the process of adapting an 800 page book into a two hour musical. Adaptation necessitates a straightforward narrative, so how does a historical consultant grapple with ideas of “historical accuracy” in a new medium?
• Speaking of writing: if you’re interested in learning more about the clever writing of Lin Manuel Miranda in his musical based off of this book, I highly recommend this video: “Hamilton and Motifs: Creating Emotional Paradoxes.” (Bonus, it has clips of the musical that I can’t find elsewhere!)

Save Erasmus from the Supercilious Manners of Englishmen: Scenes from the Life of Peter Erasmus, Part II

Photograph of Peter Erasmus (left) in his old age. Image courtesy of the Saskatchewan Archives, via the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Metis interpreter Peter Erasmus lived a full and adventurous life. He travelled thousands of kilometres across the interior of the North American continent, acting as a guide and interpreter for a variety of now-famous people. He never went to Europe. At one point, Erasmus was offered the opportunity to travel to England for an education, expenses paid by Captain Palliser and Doctor Hector of the Palliser expedition, for whom Erasmus had worked as a guide. After much internal debate, Erasmus declined the offer. I found the reasoning for deciding not to go to England both tongue in cheek but also telling of the attitudes of settlers.

Perhaps I had missed an opportunity of bettering my condition. At any rate my pride soon established itself. Reading the captain’s letter of recommendation I became convinced that I had made the proper decision I would hold the respect and friendship of these two men, the better in their memories than would otherwise have been. I knew it would have been difficult to adjust myself to the attitude of a million Englishmen when, in my own environment, it took a lot of self-restraint to ignore the supercilious mannerisms of the few who found their way into my country.

• Peter Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 113.

Further reading on the life and times of Peter Erasmus, interpreter extraordinaire:

• Previous blog post all about the use of Cree as a lingua franca in what is now Western Canada: Scenes From the Life of Peter Erasmus, “Prince of Interpreters”
• Previous blog post: A Visit from a Cree-speaking Santa Claus in 1862 
• Erasmus, Peter. Buffalo Days and Nights. Calgary: Glebow-Alberta Institute, 1976.

Excerpts from “The Cook Not Mad”, a Cookbook from 1831

I appreciate an elegant and whimsical turn of phrase. I have in my possession a facimile copy of an 1831 cookbook, “The Cook Not Mad, or Rational Cookery”, with bonus modern interpretations of some of the recipes. The book contains not only directions for food but for life, including instructions to ensure safety and health. There is a variety of “voices” in the text – I suspect that it was drawn from many sources. I thought I would share a few of my favourites:

• Some of the recipes I can definitely see myself trying to recreate. They list, for example, six different ways of making puff pastries for tarts. Other recipes are less practical or desirable in the 21st century, such as “To pickle one hundred pounds of Beef to keep a year” or “To smother a fowl in Oysters.”
• “To dress a Calf’s head – Turtle fashion”. I love that variation. On the adjacent page, I kid you not, is “Calf’s head turtle fashion – another way.”
• “An excellent Ketchup which will keep good more than twenty years.” It involves “two gallons of stale strong beer, or ale, the stronger and staler the better” and “one pound of anchovies.”
• They have a two and a half page long description on how to prepare coffee, including roasting the beans yourself.
• There are practical pieces of advice for how to deal with “Foul air in Wells” (for “all persons who follow subterraneous occupations”), how “To wash printed Calicoes”, how “To prevent disagreeable smells in sinks, etc.”, and a “Mode of whitening Straw for Bonnets.”
• How “To make a Sticking Paste” (because “Every good housewife should know how to make paste, but few do, however”) also includes a variant on the recipe if you need “to make a very small quantity for some trifling purpose”.
• The original “stop, drop, and roll”: “The only sure way to stop the blaze of a female’s dress when accidentally caught on fire.” Be sure to follow the directions, the author cautions, because “To stand upright or run is sure destruction.”

  

  I’d call this really good advice.

• I also appreciate descriptive, overly long 19th century titles. On the same page there are three recipes; one for “Currant Jelly”, another for “Peach Preserve”, and a third “To preserve plums and cherries, six months or a year, retaining all that bloom and agreeable flavour, during the whole of that period, of which they are possessed when taken from the tree.”
• Let it not be said that the author doesn’t have a sense of humour. Here is the evidence:

This New Year’s Eve, Party Like It’s 1828

The Fort Langley Journals are an amazing treasure trove of little details of life at this Hudson’s Bay Company fort in its first handful of years. (Unfortunately, unlike many other HBC posts, only the journals from 1827 – 1830 survive, despite the fact that the fort was in operation for decades more.) They record the day to day activities as well as surprising things that happened to the inhabitants of the fort during that time.

There are also a lot of accounts of the weather, particularly rain: “dirty disagreeable weather”, “raining the whole day”, “Much rain for the last three days – very little doing About the Fort”, a selection from a bare two pages of the journal.

They also discuss the holidays, in brief. During the fur trade era, while Christmas was celebrated it was largely a religious holiday. New Year’s was the real party. Here are some excerpts from the Fort Langley journals (first highlighted for me by Amandeep Johal, a dedicated longtime historical interpreter at Fort Langley National Historic Site):

Tuesday 1st January 1828. New Year’s Day.

Every one in high glee, Jean Bte. considerably elevated, and as a matter of course displaying his manhood.

Yes, you read that right, this is a historical account of someone flashing other people.

Wednesday 2d [January, 1828]

The men still enjoying themselves, tho’ the effervescence of Spirits has in a great measure subsided.

Print from October 1858 of Fort Langley, with view of the bastions (more on that in a moment). Image courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

Thursday January 1st, 1829

At an early hour, received the usual Compliments of the day from our men, and in his turn each was Regaled with a pint Rum, 3 lb. Flour – 1/2 lb. Grease and each House 1/2 Gall Pease – a quarter of Elk meat & a whole Beaver, with which to make merry rest of the day . . . . Our people, with the exception of one no wise irregular, were allowed lights and the use of a House to enjoy themselves at a dance this evening – mean time the watch was mounted, who discovered early in the night that the drunken Sot Delannis had Contrived to haule [sic] one of the Quaitline [Kwantlen First Nation] damsels up by a port hole in one of the Bastions – At first we apprehended there were no more than one in the Complo. But no. And even him, there being no irons at the place am at a loss what to do with him.

Friday January 1st, 1830

The new year was ushered in with the usual Compliments: after a Salute from all the Guns of the garrison the men and in Succession the women were received into the Hall & treated with just enough of the “Oh be joyful” – precaution however was taken that there Should be no excess of drinking to day, So that we could all again meet in the evening with propriety.

Saturday 2d.

As was intended, our people with their fair ones met in the Hall yesterday evening: and the amusement went off very well without any indecent frolic: but to day the fellows are at it tooth & nail.

Sunday 3d.

Some Glee going on among our Champions. Very little relaxation in the drinking way.

Monday 4th

After a debauch of three days we tried the people’s disposition to renew their Contracts… Our people being Still disposed to keep up the Spirit of the day, we Seized the opportunity of Calling them to renew their Engagements.

The men of the company traditionally renewed their contracts in the New Year. The journal goes on to note that several of them signed on with reduced wages – I wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that they were signing their contracts “After a debauch of three days”? Recall, too, that the HBC didn’t sell booze at this time, and the workers of the fort only officially got a hold of alcohol in the holiday season. That would have certainly made for a proper “frolic”!

Happy New Year, everyone, and I hope that in 2019 all of your research dreams come true!

Further Reading

MacLachlan, Morag, ed. The Fort Langley Journals: 1827 – 30. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1993 (2000).

A Visit from a Cree-speaking Santa Claus in 1862

Peter Erasmus, a Metis man who became famous in his lifetime as an interpreter, narrated an account of his life in 1920. In his book, Erasmus described the Christmas celebrations at Smoking Lake (now Smokey Lake) in 1862.

Photograph of Peter Erasmus (left) in his old age. Image courtesy of the Saskatchewan Archives, via the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

When Erasmus arrived at the settlement just before Christmas, he described how Mrs. McDougall (the mother of Erasmus’ friend and local missionary John McDougall) was quite distressed on behalf of the children because she thought it would be impossible to celebrate Christmas under current conditions. “This will be the first Christmas they’ll have without presents and all the things that make Christmas memorable for them,” she told Erasmus. He shared these worries with Mr. McDougall and they sprang into action. They collected money from various men in the community to purchase presents, and cut down a tree from down the creek. Then, Erasmus said:

We can get some white hair from that white mare of Woolsey’s if we can persuade her to keep her feet out of the skies while we cut her tail. Your Santa Claus wig and whiskers can be made by your mother and Mrs. Flett, so we are all set for the big day.

McDougall gave a token protest that he was given all the hard tasks while all Erasmus had to do was gather an audience. Erasmus said that it was his right to choose what he wanted to do because it was his idea.

Erasmus describes the event:

The time was set for the early evening of Christmas Day. Invitations were sent to the camps . . . . The presents, assembled under the tree, contained small parcels of tea, tobacco, cotton shirts for the men and dress goods for the mothers, trinkets for the children, and other articles which I have now forgotten. Mr. McDougall explained about the old man who always visited the people at this time of year. The white people believed he came purposely to see the children. His story was much the same as today except that he adapted the wording to the understanding of his Indian audience.

At the ringing of a bell, Santa Claus was ushered in from behind a curtain that sheltered the fireplace. The whole performance was realistic as the attention of our audience was centered around the ringing of the hidden bell, which the minister manipulated with his foot by a string. The McDougall children clapped their hands and couldn’t contain their enjoyment. The younger children among the Crees were somewhat frightened; but the older ones, following the lead of the white children, soon laughed and clapped their hands at the funny old man with his long flowing beard.

When Santa gave them an address of welcome in the Swampy Cree language, the elders gazed in astonishment. I had to speak to them in Cree and explain that the man could speak in all languages for he visited all countries over the Big Water. The presents were handed out and Santa took his departure. . .”

• Peter Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights, 169 – 170.

For some unknown reason, right before the bell rang, John McDougall disappeared and missed Santa’s visit.

Further Reading

• Erasmus, Peter. Buffalo Days and Nights. Calgary: Glebow-Alberta Institute, 1976.
• Previous blog post all about the use of Cree as a lingua franca in what is now Western Canada: Scenes From the Life of Peter Erasmus, “Prince of Interpreters”
• Credit where credit is due, I may have stolen a turn of phrase from Christmas wagon tours at Fort Edmonton Park (once you memorize an interpretive program and have your patter down it’s hard to forget)