Lads - Well, taking a chance on angering someone, I want to note a very interesting discovery I made recently. I had read the Beleu articles in ML mag about "Into Western Waters", regarding the travels of Nicholas Cresswell in 1774-77 in America - we often see his journal quoted. Well, one of the most common quotes regards his "partner" a Mr Rice, "cutting down two Walnut trees and making dugouts by burning out a trench and cleaning out with an adze". Ok, sounds good enough. However, I just got done reading the actual Cresswell journal and that particular event is detailed there. First, Cresswell HIRED Rice to make the canoes, and he in turn hired "carpenters" to help. They spent "a fortnight" on the work, with Cresswell nowhere near the event. There is also no mention at all of an adze. So, how did the story get warped around like this? Is it ASSUMED that an adze "had to be used" and is therefore mentioned? Now, we also know that James Nourse, who joined Cresswell in his later travels, also kept a journal, but I have yet to read his accounts. However, Cresswell DOES NOT CONNECT WITH NOURSE until after the canoes are finished. Thus, it is not likely that the Nourse journal mentions the adze because he was not involved as yet.

So, are we to draw from this that "conjecture" ("they must have used an adze") on the part of the later reporters has blurred the actual facts?

Makes one question any recounting of "first person" information, unless it is directly from that original writer. Selective quotes have a way of "bending" things, it seems.

Sorry, I suffer from having a degree in History, so I am perhaps more myopic than some might be.

Col Boone

Having been interviewed several times by several different "writers" on several different topics I can speak with absolute very limited authority.

Writers are human and have outlooks, prejudices and agendas. That being so, all five of the stories involving me were either inaccurate or wildly inaccurate. None were political, two were news reporters, three were technical writers. All five made sh*t up as they went along. None were willing to correct even egregious errors.

So my take on "Historical" writings is that unless I see at least three independant reports of an incident written at the time, and all agree in detail, all must be considered to be heavily laden with BS and taken cum grana salis. (With a grain of salt) I prefer my BS very heavily salted. The BS may be intentional or not, doesn't matter as BS is BS.

Your mileage may vary.

Three Hawks

Three Hawks - Yep, right you are! I too have been interviewed quite a number of times, both for print and TV. It is amazing, even with an on-camera interview, how "selection" and "re-ordering" of clips can change the meaning!

In this case (the Cresswell example) however, nobody can interview him - so what we are getting is somebody's "credible addition" to a very well documented event, which in turn has been picked up by more than one later writer.

Of course, we know that an adze would have been the tool of choice and, if available, would certainly have been used. But, to add that to what is supposed to be a quote from a published, first generation source, is simply "invention" and no more.

Now I got to get hold of the James Nourse journal so I can compare the two and compare that to the later writings. This "morphing" of reality and passing it off as history just bugs me.

All the later writer needs to say is, "and we must assume he (Rice) had tools such as an adze available for this work"...the simply caveat that "we must assume" provides is enough.

Sure, all historians engage in "informed conjecture" based on much wider research - but at least tell us that is what you have done!

Col Boone

quote:

unless I see at least three independent reports of an incident written at the time, and all agree in detail, all must be considered to be heavily laden with BS

Well why three and why BS? Both are arbitrary positions on your part, no? I'm not busting your chops, just pointing out that you have chosen a "standard" and a "judgment" before the research. You have already announced your viewpoint is skewed by your standard.

First, a single source may be quite accurate, AND if it's the only source, you have a problem evaluating it. If you had two more sources that didn't agree, they might be full of it, they be accurate while the first account is not, OR they may be reporting from their viewpoint. (Do all of the refs in a football game all throw flags at the same time for every penalty OR do they see what they see? Some see and some do not. Haven't you seen something on the field that all of them missed?)

I deal with eye witnesses all the time, and there have been times when I wanted to ask, "Are you sure you were actually there?" Some folks write stuff down right away, some wait a while a talk to others, some change what they think they saw to conform to what they hear others say..., Some first hand accounts are recorded years after the event. Some are skewed by emotion, some are skewed by conversation. It's imprecise, but it is often all that we have.

FYI Timothy Murphy shot General Fraser and General Clarke. Well, I have been reading some research, and in actual accounts given by Murphy and another soldier who claims to have been with Murphy at Saratoga..., Murphy never claimed to have made the shots, and neither does his friend.

History IS bent, no doubt, as it is written by the victors. It means we have to be cautious when we relate what we have learned..., it should never become dogma. On the other hand although it is skewed, that does not give us carte blanche as historians to skew it further if we can help it, no?

LD

LD- Agree entirely about "first person accounts" potentially being variable among different folks witnessing the same event.

What I am suggesting here is that, IF a writer is going to go into areas of "informed conjecture", as history often can be, then at least TELL US! The simple caveat, "it seems to me", or "based on collateral evidence"...anything to tell a reader that this is NOT strict, first person history, but is an educated interpretation based upon other known facts that apply, or are parallel.

In the case of my Cresswell example, we KNOW that his journal was written pretty much as things happened, that it was not much changed from the handwritten to the printed versions, and that he spoke of events he witnessed, or was told about by participants. But, when we read the "quotes" regarding the event of the making of the dugouts, suddenly an adz appears (and, presumably a felling axe) one has to wonder what is afoot.

As I said, sometimes a little formal training in a field can lead one to ask too darn many questions...sorry about that.

Col Boone

Sort of like the heroic events,When so and so kills a,You pick it,say bear in a hand to hand fight.Ive seen some bears that were small enough my 5 year old grandson could whip.Load them in a truck with one hand and not strain yourself.Like when the soldiers won,GREAT VICTORY,Wounded Knee,over the savages!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!If the Indians won,Big Horn,well it was a slaughter,massacre,murderious,killing without restraint.
If/when you win,write it anyway you want,even if you have to prudently realign a few facts/events to make the story more exciting or acceptable or PC.
I have a history book written in 1852,now fellas let me tell you the events in there are some different that what we learned in school.
History: The study of the past,so we can understand the present,and prepare for the future.

And it would appear we havn't learned a thing.

Lads: To follow up on my Cresswell post - today I found the James Nourse journal (on line, just Google his name) and read it through carefully. As I had surmised, he does not join Cresswell until AFTER the pair of dugouts have been made. He says nothing about their construction, in fact he does not even mention they are dugouts. So, FOR SURRE the later writers are not combining info from Nourse to embellish Cresswell.

I had suspected that all along. Mere fabrication - sure, based on what HAS to have happened.....or, did it?

Ya see, that's how it is.

Col Boone

Now don't misunderstand. My only point was some of the arbitrariness of a pre-set standard. For example, IF you have a source that is backed up on several occasions with additional sources..., and is shown to be very accurate and timely, the source has demonstrated credibility. It's OK to use that source in the future as a sole source, based on the previous "track record". (You use it with caution, but it's not automatic BS) So Mr X's journal mentions three events, and the first two have corroboration in additional journals, and the facts all match..., but the third event is only mentioned by Mr X..., he suddenly doesn't lose his value as a historical source for that third event.

You correctly pointed out that by going to the actual documents, as opposed to sources that report what they found in the research (with interpretation), that factual "creep" has occurred.

Creep happens for many reasons. One is emotional attatchment to the topic, as was mentioned is it a battle or a massacre, is the leader a hero or a villian?

Another is cross contamination of original sources. Otherwise one may find several sources that agree, and are timely, BUT which (unknown to us today) were influenced by the primary witness, and differing observations were lost. Such accounts might meet the 3 agreeing sources rule, but still be wrong. (Witnesses are kept apart so that information does not get mixed at modern crime scenes.) More than two centuries ago Robert Rogers issued standing orders, one of which was to wit: If you have the good fortune to take any prisoners, keep them separate, till they are examined...,, and Kenneth Robert's the author of Northwest Passage paraphrased the order in the 20th century writing..., If we take prisoners, we keep 'em separate till we have had the time to examine them, so they can't cook up a story between 'em.

A third problem is ignorance of the witness. A witness might note something that was inaccurate simply because they didn't understand what they were actually seeing.

A fourth vector for creep is conjecture. Which seems to be what happened in the Creswell case. "They had to have done it this way" thinking is indeed a problem. It is in my opinion "sloppy" archaeology. We find lots of it in the 20th century by so called experts who think that merely because we have electricity and gasoline engines that we are masters of all technology that has ever existed. The "mystery" of how the Egyptians raised obelisks is not a mystery to a master stone mason, and recent research based on interviews with such masons determined at least one way (note not the "only" way) that ancient Eqyptians could have accomplished the feat. Ancient smelting and the ice-man's-copper-axe, was a mystery until archaeological experts spoke to smiths who knew how to smelt copper and bronze.

FYI I read a portion of a book called A History of Beer and Brewing published by The Royal Society of Chemistry. ZOUNDS! What a group of scholars! This must be an excellent source thought I. Being a brewer, and facinated by ancient methods, I was astounded and disappointed at the amount of conjecture. The "required" brewing steps for ancients was too complicated, and demonstrated that the authors assumed too much. (Example paraphrase "You can't boil enough liquid in a pottery vessel by adding hot rocks to do proper brewing"... hmmm well I've seen it done) Instead of experimentation to determine how simply the task could be done..., they asked an outside source to save time. In another part of the book they took an "accepted" archaeologic interpretation of an artifact..., and repeated the conjecture instead of (again), asking questions and experimenting.

OH well this is why history is not a science, and archaeology is not an exact science.

Good job in finding the creep in the data!

LD

LD -
Not to belabor this point to death, but I wanted to return to the matter of "informed conjecture" as it relates to history. For more than 30 years I have been studying, and publishing articles regarding early railroad history. As in the matter of the Colonial Frontier, the dead ends, poor records, missing records and the like create a minefield for historians. However, after a lot of study one does develop a body of knowledge of collateral information (example is that we know of the means to manufacture hardware and can apply that to a study of the equipment itself).

So, I have long lobbied within that group for a simple caveat to tell readers this is what has taken place. With the canoe caper, we KNOW that the adze was widely used by carpenters of the time and anyone who has even seen, let alone made a dugout canoe, and used, or seen an adze used, would "know" that such a tool would be ideal, if not required. Fine, JUST SAY SO!

The problem with publishing history is that we are "creating" it at the same time. Readers often accept what is said as "gospel" and then used by them in their own later work. BE CAREFUL, WRITE CLEARLY, and for goodness sake tell readers when you are using "informed conjecture" in your work.

Ok, I quit! Enough of this.

Col Boone