Frances Hunter
blog of the author To the Ends of the Earth
Frances Hunter's Journal
July 2005
July 28, 2005: Montana State Capitol, Montana Historical Society, and the Three Forks of the Missouri
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Montana State Capitol and statue of Francis Meagher |
Our third day in Montana. Today we spent the morning indoors for a change.
Our first stop was the Montana
State Capitol. Helena is a very small city (only 26,000), and the capitol
is not large, but it is very attractive. The grounds are enhanced by attractive
flower plantings. The entryway is more reminiscent of a county courthouse
than the Texas
Capitol, but the inner rotunda was quite beautiful, with a red and green
Italian paint job and stained glass windows. The depictions of Montana history
were completed by an Italian painter: his conception of a cowboy was hilarious.
Our purpose for being there was to see a famous Charles M. Russell painting
of L&C in the House chamber, Lewis
and Clark Meeting the Flatheads in Ross's Hole. Seeing the enormous
painting in real life was quite a different experience from seeing a small
reproduction. In addition to the breathtaking scale, it was easy to see
interesting symbolism in the painting's clouds and grasses that are not
visible in a small version.
We saw another well-known painting, Edgar Paxson's Lewis
and Clark at Three Forks, there just outside the chamber. This was the
favorite painting of Stephen Ambrose and appears on the front of Undaunted
Courage. It was also recently used in a Nike ad in which L&C,
Sacagawea, etc. were all wearing Nikes, with the slogan, "You'll Never
Know If You Don't Go." We all decided to adopt this as the motto for
our group.
Next, we we got to spend a little time at the very good museum of the Montana
Historical Society. I wish we could have spent more time here! The exhibits
about Montana life were very interesting, and the museum has a great collection
of Charley Russell paintings. We also saw the preserved body of Big Medicine,
a white buffalo who lived from 1933 to 1959. The exterior of the museum
has a gigantic sculpture of a cow skull that makes a great photo op.
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Three Forks |
We proceeded on to the Three
Forks, the point at which the Missouri River divides into three rivers,
the Jefferson, the Madison, and the Gallatin (L&C were sucking up to
their bosses back home with these names). Once again, this was a big decision
point as they had to decide which river to follow into the Rocky Mountains.
It was also a time of great anxiety for the Expedition. They had hoped to
find Sacagawea's people, the Shoshones, at Three Forks. Upon these elusive
Indians depended the Corps' ability to buy horses to cross the Rocky Mountains.
When they failed to hook up with the Shoshones here, the captains privately
feared for the fate of the entire enterprise.
A big highlight for me was at our picnic lunch nearby. Another person visiting
the park happened to have brought along her Newfoundland dog which was exactly
like Lewis' dog Seaman,
who accompanied his master all the way to the Pacific and back. We persuaded
her to have lunch with us and after we ate Gary gave a talk about Seaman
with this cute, well-behaved dog as a model. We also had a good talk about
Sacagawea. It was in the Three Forks area that she was kidnapped from her
native people, the Shoshone, and taken to the Hidatsa where she eventually
met Lewis & Clark.
Overnight in Dillon. We had dinner at the University
of Montana (Western) where Gary gave a lecture about the journals.
July 26, 2005: April Morning
It's a long way ahead of us, and what's started ain't easily finished...
Somehow in my years of reading, I've missed out on Howard Fast and April Morning. Judging from the number of copies at the used book store, it must be taught in schools, but I never even heard of it until recently. Now I'm glad I did. The novel takes place over a 24-hour period encompassing the battle of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, often called the opening battle of the American Revolution and the "shot heard round the world."
"A boy becomes a man" is been the theme of countless novels, and is in fact central to our current work-in-progress. April Morning, written in 1961, reveals what a skilled writer can do with a basic idea. The novel starts innocently with Adam Cooper, a 15-year-old Lexington boy, being scolded by his stern father for laziness in doing his afternoon chores. But today is no ordinary day. As the evening progresses, Adam's dad is called to a town committee meeting--it seems the British are marching out of Boston to seize the colonists' arsenal and put them back in their places.
April Morning is a short book, but it at first seems to unfold quite slowly. There is plenty of time to see Adam clash with his pompous dad, seek solace from his tart-tongued grandmother, argue with his little brother, and grab a furtive kiss with his young girlfriend. The modern reader, used to each book opening with an exploding helicopter, might be forgiven for wondering where Fast is going with all this. (Our novel Ends has been rejected by one editor with the comment that it starts too slowly--this when the main character is in bed with a whore and gets propositioned for treason in the opening chapter!)
Then something happens that is so shocking and so unexpected, that we, like Adam, are thrown forever out of the ordinary world and into the nightmarish beginning of war.
We had made a mistake. We were stupid people. We were narrow people. We were provincial people. But over and above everything, we were civilized people, which was the core of everything. We were going to argue with the British and talk them out of whatever they intended. We knew we could do that. We were the most reasonable, talkative people in all probabilities that the world had ever seen, and we knew we could win an argument with the British hands down. Why, no one on our side had even thought of firing a gun, because when you came right down to it, we didn't like guns and did not believe in them. Yes, we drilled on the common and had all sorts of fine notions about defending our rights and our liberties, but that didn't change our minds about guns and killing. That Major Pitcairn on his champing horse knew exactly what we were and how we thought. He knew it better than we knew ourselves.
In the course of the next hours, Adam is forced to confront the realities of a war he never asked for and a world that is forever changed. April Morning is excellent as a novel, and it also opened my eyes to what happened that day at Lexington and Concord, the lives that were lost and what it really meant to the people involved.
I plan to read more books by Howard Fast, and I did a little reading about him. He turns out to have been a really interesting guy. Like many successful authors, he didn't get the critical respect he deserved, probably because he was so prolific and commercially successful. His publishing career lasted from 1933, when he was not yet 19 years old, to 2000--an amazing 67 years of writing! He is best known for his historical novels and his immigrant sagas, written later in life. But there was another side to Howard Fast. For decades, he was an extremely active and outspoken Communist. He was tried and imprisoned for three months on federal charges in 1950 for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Affairs Committee, and was blacklisted for some time. But even more traumatic for Fast was the aftermath of the so-called "secret speech" of Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, in which the Russian leader revealed some of the crimes of Joseph Stalin to the Communist Party (and, eventually, to the world). Fast was stunned to realize that the political movement for which he had labored and sacrificed was a evil lie.
He regrouped and self-published Spartacus, which was enormously successful and was made into an outstanding movie with Kirk Douglas. His career recovered. Interestingly, he continued all his life (he died in 2003) to be a committed leftist, and in 1990 published a memoir called Being Red in which he recounted his experiences as a Communist and the impact on his life of the movement, the Red Scare, and his subsequent disillusionment.
July 22, 2005: Great Falls of the Missouri, the
Portage, and the Gates of the Mountains
Mary at the Upper Portage Camp |
Liz at the Gates of the Mountains |
On our second day in Montana, we focused on learning about the great portage made by Lewis & Clark around the Great Falls of the Missouri. It's difficult to get a grasp on what the Expedition faced during this ordeal. I found that even after reading Undaunted Courage and seeing these sights in real life, I had a hard time understanding what Lewis and Clark and their men really experienced. Later, I read a wonderful description in James Alexander Thom's Sign-Talker of this portion of the journey that really brought it to life.
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The Great Falls of the Missouri |
We began the day at the Great
Falls of the Missouri, one of the most spectacular sites described in
the journals. Even today, the road down to the falls seemed remote. We had
to walk across a scary suspended footbridge to get to the overlook. The
falls are partially hidden today by Ryan
Dam (built 1915), but are still a truly magnificent sight. We also saw
a little bunny grazing nearby, always a good omen for us since we are bunny-lovers.
The scenery in the portage area is exceptionally beautiful. The mountainous
terrain and blue river are spectacular. We had to miss seeing the lower
portage camp because heavy rain had made the road impassable. For me, the
most touching scene of the morning was the site at the upper portage camp
where the Expedition rejoined the river and set out again after their ordeal.
The climax of our day was a boat ride through the Gates
of the Mountains on the Missouri, a magnificent canyon described by
Lewis. Today it opens on a beautiful lake created by dams. We saw some pelicans,
a great blue heron, mule deer, and Indian petroglyphs, as well as the site
of a 1949 disaster in which 13 firefighters were killed (the disaster described
in the Norman MacLean book Young
Men and Fire). This area really ranks up with the Grand Canyon
or anything else that nature has to offer.
We ended the day with a fajita supper at the Gates of the Mountains, where
we got to meet Stephenie Ambrose, the daughter of Stephen Ambrose and a
Lewis and Clark author in her own right (The
Lewis and Clark Companion). One of the fellows in our tour group
had made a study of the 1949 fire and had brought some very interesting
pictures and maps that he shared with the rest of the group. But the main
entertainment was watching a party of drunken young people run their motorboat
aground on the boat launch.
Tonight we stayed in Helena.
By the way, the National Park Service site referenced above for Ryan Dam contains excellent information about the Lewis & Clark Trail and how it has changed since the days of the explorers.
Lewis & Clark Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
July 19, 2005: Forth to the Wilderness
For over 150 years from the time the first British colonists landed at Jamestown (1607), the people faced eastward towards the mother country. Though their numbers had grown to more than two million, they thought of themselves as British, culturally, politically, and economically. Strung out along the coast, but never more than 75 miles from a seaport, the American colonies were firmly an outpost of Western Europe.
Dale van Every's great book, Forth to the Wilderness, is the story of the years from 1754-1774, when the American people turned their faces west and crossed the Appalachian Mountain barrier, an obstacle that was more arduous to cross and more remote from civilization than the Atlantic Ocean had been. Though today the westward journey has the flavor of inevitability to it, in van Every's skillful hands we see that the outcome was anything but certain.
Like van Every's other books about early western settlement that I have read (Ark of Empire and The Final Challenge), political and military history take center stage--this is not a book in which you learn about the daily lives of the settlers. Instead, we read about how the British fought a bloody world war with the French and Indians in order to claim the Forks of the Ohio river near present-day Pittsburgh, the key to unlocking western Pennsylvania and Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and the Illinois country. Once that war was won in 1763, the British and Americans found themselves almost immediately plunged into a new and incredibly bloody conflict led by a remarkable Indian named Pontiac, the first of several Indian leaders who were able to unite the tribes in order to try to throw the white invaders back over the mountains. Thousands of American settlers and hundreds of British soldiers were killed before Pontiac agreed to terms, mostly because his French allies deserted him in the aftermath of their own defeat in the French and Indian War.
To appease Pontiac and avert a further war, the colonial authorities opposed any settlement over the mountains and actually forbid it by royal proclamation. They were determined to control and reserve the western lands for fur trading and other large money-making ventures and to keep the Indians off of the war path. Van Every introduces us to forgotten men such as the trader George Croghan, the diplomat Sir William Johnson, and the general Henry Bouquet who tried to advise the British government of the cost of enforcing and controlling their hard-won territory. But after so many years of war, economy was in vogue, and the authorities back in London decreed that no money would go into Indian diplomacy or enforcing the ban on settlement. Taking their lives into their hands, Americans began to set out, a trickle of rugged hunters at first, then whole families, seeking a new life in the west despite the risks and constant dangers.
Though almost no one fighting at the time grasped the significance of the events they were living through, the Revolution of the thirteen colonies became a war for the possession of an entire continent. I have read the van Every books out of order, but each of them stand alone and are full of incredible insight and clarity of thought. They have their scholarly moments but on the whole are as gripping and accessible as the works of Stephen Ambrose or David McCullough. Some publisher needs to bring this great series back into print. I'm looking forward in the extreme to reading A Company of Heroes, the book that focuses on the west of the Revolutionary War.
July 14, 2005: Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, Giant Springs, Decision Point, and Fort Benton
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Mary & Liz at Decision Point, Montana |
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Giant Springs in Great Falls, Montana |
Many of you may be planning a trip to the Great Northwest to follow in the footsteps of Lewis & Clark. Here's the first in several entries covering a Montana and Idaho itinerary which we followed in 2003.
We decided to take our trip with an excellent tour company called HistoryAmerica,
which, as the name indicates, runs tours with a history theme. I went on
a "Crazy Horse and Custer" trip with this outfit a few years back.
Not only do these tours go off the beaten path, but you go with a historian
in the field. The great thing about History America tours is that you get
to see and do things that would be difficult or impossible to do on your
own.
This time our historian guide was Gary Moulton of the University of Nebraska.
Gary is probably the leading living expert on Lewis & Clark. For the
past 25 years, he has been editing and publishing the definitive
edition of the Lewis & Clark Journals (13 volumes). Fortunately,
he recently came out with a one-volume
abridged version with just the good parts! :-) This makes for great
reading! The best part of all was that Gary is not only extremely knowledgable,
but a genuinely nice person, interested in others and very easy to talk
to and get along with. This in itself was an outstanding aspect of the trip.
Our first day was spent in and around Great Falls, Montana. Lewis and Clark spent more time at the Great Falls of the Missouri than at any other location except for their winter quarters at Fort Mandan in North Dakota and Fort Clatsop in Oregon. This leaves behind a rich legacy of places to visit and enjoy. We arrived just in time to join up with the group, but if I had it to do over again I would come up a day early so we could spend time visiting the Charley Russell Museum. Everyone who took the time to do so said it was a highlight of their trip. Next time!
Today we started out at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, a very nice new facility built for the bicentennial of the Expedition, with a lot of interactive displays. We especially enjoyed the chance to try the "portage," in which the men had to tote their canoes and all their gear for miles around the falls of the Missouri River. I'm afraid the "Corps of Discovery" wouldn't have gotten too far with me as a member of the crew. I guess someone had to stay back in Philadelphia and run the store.
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Lewis & Clark & Sacagawea statue by Bob Scriver, Fort Benton, Montana |
The Center was next to Giant
Springs, a beautiful huge freshwater springs. Another great aspect of
this trip was the chance to see a lot of natural wonders that are very unspoiled.
We had a picnic lunch at the Springs and proceeded on out of Great Falls
to the "Decision
Point," the junction of the Missouri and Marias Rivers. It was
here that Lewis and Clark had to decide which river to follow, a key moment
in the journey.
The rest of the day was spent in Fort Benton, a neat old town that appeared
to be in the process of trying for a rebirth. (Many old towns in Montana
were once mining towns, since abandoned by the mining companies and now
seeking a new purpose. There are some towns that are quite badly polluted
and this is a great concern for the preservation of the above-mentioned
unspoiled sites.) We saw two famous sculptures, one of a local dog named
Shep and one of L&C. We had dinner at the VFW hall, where we dined on
some of the best steak I've had in a long time (or since) and had entertainment
by Jack Gladstone, a Blackfoot Indian
descendant who sang witty and insightful songs. (Note: We now have three
of Jack's CDs: Buffalo Cafe, Buffalo Republic, and Tappin'
the Earth's Backbone and have found they really hold up to repeat listening.)
Stayed again tonight in Great Falls. By the way, we stayed at the Hampton Inn Great Falls, rather an ordinary place in appearance but with an outstandingly helpful staff.
July 12, 2005: Lewis & Clark: The Great Journey West
We had toyed with the idea for years of going on a Lewis & Clark trip with History America Tours. A couple of years ago, we were lucky enough to see the awesome National Geographic movie Lewis & Clark: The Great Journey West on the giant IMAX screen here at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. What a beautiful and awe-inspiring movie this is. We signed up for our tour shortly thereafter. It was on this trip that we got the inspiration for our novel.
I've since seen GJW a number of times since, and it never fails to fire my imagination with the adventure, courage, and grace at the heart of the Lewis & Clark story. The National Geographic website has a number of great extra features, including photographs, wallpaper, and a virtual journey. I highly recommend this movie for all ages wanting to experience a little of the Lewis & Clark expedition. The DVD and video have a neat extra about the making of the movie.
Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be posting thoughts and details about the Lewis & Clark sites we visited on our trip to Montana and Idaho. After these postings appear on the blog, they'll be compiled and added to our Excerpts and Stories area.
July 7, 2005: We Are All Britons Today
Woke up this morning to the news of the blasts in London. Great feelings of rage, coupled with resolution.
I'm currently reading Forth to the Wilderness, Dale van Every's great book about the crossing of the Appalachian mountain barrier in the years before the Revolution and its enormous consequences for American history. I'll post a review later, but I wanted to share the passage I finished just last night before I turned out my light. At this point in the book, in the year 1774, colonial authorities had lost the resolution to fight the Indians. The world is a very different place now, but I thought of this passage this morning when considering the appropriate response to the latest terrible events in the world.
... The tremendous outpouring of energy which had characterized England's explusion of France from North America had been succeeded by as sweeping an ebb tide of indecision and irresolution. The ... government had remained convinced of the imperative necessity of restraining settlement to the area east of the mountains until such time as the westward advance might be supervised, Indian rights guarded, and wilderness peace maintained. But it had at the same time become unready to pay any part of the price required. Its every measure had been half-hearted, its every move vacillating, its every responsibility evaded.
The west was about to pass into the keeping of firmer hands.
July 5, 2005: Shelby Foote, 1916-2005
Author Shelby Foote passed away on June 27th. Foote won great literary acclaim for his three thousand-page, three-volume history of the Civil War and burst into the public consciousness when he appeared as one of the commentators in Ken Burns' 1990 blockbuster documentary. I suspect Foote saw his participation in that project as one of the worst mistakes he ever made.
Foote did not like being around people very much, as he made painfully clear when he appeared before a crowd at the LBJ Presidential Library in the mid-1990's. The room was packed with Civil War enthusiasts who had come to hear Foote give a lecture on the Texans' participation in the Red River campaign. It turned out not to be a lecture at all; Foote merely read from his Civil War narrative in a dull monotone without looking up, and declined to take any questions. When the program ended, one old lady near me exclaimed, "That was the most boring talk I ever heard!"
With dozens of other Civil War buffs, I approached Foote after the lecture hoping to get him to sign a copy of his wonderful novel, Shiloh. Foote put me off, along with everyone else, saying he only signed books for his friends. It was a curious reaction I have never seen from any other author, most of whom are thrilled that anybody actually bought one of their books. I went home feeling disappointed, wishing I hadn't spent my evening with someone who had come only to collect his speaking fee.
It's too bad Foote couldn't enjoy his fame and acclaim. He seemed to prefer the role of reclusive Southern gentleman author, akin to William Faulkner or his friend Walker Percy. He was obviously deeply offended by the idea of being thought of as "a TV star." All authors should have such problems. May he rest in peace.
19th Century Slang
How I wish I had a time machine and could go back to hear how Lewis and Clark really sounded when they talked. Assuming they spelled phonetically, their accents must have been delightful. For example, Clark writes on Christmas Day 1805:
This morning at day we were Saluted by all our party under our winders, a Shout and a Song ... I rcved a present of a Fleeshe Hosery [1] vest draws & Socks of Capt Lewis, pr. Mockerson of Whitehouse, a Small Indian basket of Guterich, & 2 Doz weasels tales [2] of the Squar of Shabono, & Some black roots of the Indians G. D. Saw a Snake passing across the parth.
You can hear his Kentucky twang as clearly as if you were standing in the room with him.
I also enjoy researching early American slang and expressions. Nowadays, a lot of colorful slang has been replaced by the prevalent use of profanity. But there's a much richer national heritage of oaths, insults, and intensifiers out there. If you're a writer, a re-enactor, or you just want to have some fun, check out these sites. There are some British and Civil War sites here, reflecting the overlap in time periods between colonial times, early America, and American slang as it evolved.
- Southern Expressions
- Hopkins County (Kentucky) Folklore
- How to Cuss Like a Soldier (Civil War Profanity)
And if you really want to find out what pressed someone's buttons in the 19th century, check out The Book of Insults: Ancient and Modern, by Nancy McPhee. You just haven't been insulted until you, like George Washington, have been called a
dark, designing, sordid, ambitious, vain, proud, arrogant and vindictive knave
Take that!