Frances Hunter

blog of the author To the Ends of the Earth

 

Frances Hunter's Journal
May 2007

Check our MySpace page too!

May 31, 2007: Cries from the Earth

Cries from the Earth by Terry C. Johnston is a riveting historical novel about the outbreak of the Nez Perce War in 1877. Johnston, who passed away a few years ago, was a prolific author of historical novels about the Indian Wars. This was the first of his novels I've tried, but it won't be the last. Johnston does a blockbuster job of letting history unfold in a "you are there" style that puts the reader in the center of the action.

The story begins with a rash act. A Nez Perce man confronts a settler who has built a cabin upon the Indian's land. In the angry confrontation, the settler blasts him. Later, the Nez Perce's son and some of his buddies--immature hotheads all--begin an ill-considered revenge campaign that soon escalates to horrific proportions.

This is a novel that is all about misunderstanding. Chief Joseph on the Nez Perce side and General Oliver Otis Howard as the American in charge are portrayed as real men caught in an impossible situation. Neither can serve his own cause and his own conscience at the same time.

While Joseph and Howard emerge as sympathetic figures, Johnston doesn't hesitate to portray folly, incompetence, and malice on both sides that eventually leads to a U.S. Army debacle at White Bird Canyon. Coming just a year after Little Bighorn, this defeat must have left the country stunned. Ostensibly an Indian victory, White Bird Canyon also doomed the Nez Perce to be hunted down, a topic that Johnston covers in a sequel that I also plan to read.

While the history is fascinating and meticulously researched, the most powerful sections of Cries from the Earth deal with the terrifying reality of being attacked. Johnston has a remarkable ability to get inside the heads of women and children and imagine pain, fear, and helpless rage. Be warned: the Indian attackers here are not the gentle New Age plainsmen of Dances With Wolves. Johnston doesn't hesitate to portray murder, rape, and arson in a way that will leave you feeling shocked and vulnerable.

Cries from the Earth is not a novel in the sense of following character arcs or a structured plot. Instead, it is a dramatization of actual events, in the style of Jeff Shaara's war novels or the movie United 93. As such, it sometimes gets a little confusing or repetitive. However, events unfold quickly in this novel and I found that it was well worth it to be patient. At times, even the history disappears into words and feelings so universal that they could be happening today. Consider a letter from Emily FitzGerald, the young wife of an Army doctor:

I hope and pray my dear, old John will be spared to me and not sacrificed to those red devils for a country that isn't worth it.

My understanding of what happened in Idaho in 1877 and why has been greatly deepened by this uncompromising novel. Terry Johnston does not soft-pedal this story either as a historian or a novelist. In his hands, the Nez Perce War comes alive as brutal, raw, and tragic.

May 23, 2007: Robert E. Lee

We're currently doing research for a book we want to write about Robert E. Lee as a young man. I recently completed reading what is widely considered the best one-volume biography of Lee's life, Robert E. Lee by Emory Thomas. In his introducton, Thomas promises to deploy the cool eye and analytical prowess of the historian to present a Lee much more vulnerable and flawed than that portrayed in Douglas Southall Freeman's titanic classic, R.E. Lee.

I certainly learned a lot about Robert E. Lee from Thomas's book. He does a good job of summarizing Lee's eventful life and his character, and shows why this defeated Confederate retains a more potent place in American history than most of those who won the Civil War. I was most struck by his insight that Lee was a man whose deeds were more important that his words. Lee never wrote his memoirs. He gave no important speeches and left no pithy quotes. His letters were pedestrian and full of thoughts on household economy, family vacations, and the fates of various pets. To understand Lee, you have to look at how his actions revealed traits like honesty, courage, and grace. Lee embodied what every Southerner aspired to be. For many, he still does.

On a personal level, I also liked reading about Lee's careers as engineer, soldier, and educator. It's reassuring to realize that famous historical figures were actually fellow human beings who suffered the same frustrations as anybody else.

When Thomas strayed from his historian role, I found the book less satisfying. He puts Lee on the couch, psychoanalyzing his thoughts about God and his relationships with his ne'er-do-well father, self-sacrificing mother, crabby wife, and underachieving kids. As a novelist I found the speculation interesting but saw precious little evidence for some of Thomas's conclusions. In fact, I suspect they might tell us more about Emory Thomas than they do about Robert E. Lee.

Which brings me to my primary beef with the book, the portrayal of Robert's wife Mary Custis Lee. I've been reading a lot about Mary Lee as part of our research, and I was shocked at the harsh and unsympathetic portrait that Thomas paints of her. Here Mary emerges as a nagging shrew, a lazy housekeeper, and an indifferent mother, with the overarching bad grace to be ordinary-looking on her best day. Thomas shows how Mary was often disobedient, disregarding Robert's advice and substituting her own ideas. Let's face it, Thomas suggests -- Mary Custis just wasn't good enough to be the wife of a great guy like Robert E. Lee. (Despite his claims that he doesn't hero-worship Lee, Thomas compares him several times to Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.)

I was disturbed to realize that Thomas cherry-picked quotes from both Robert and Mary's letters to make Mary look bad, and I wonder why it was so important to him to do so. To me it's significant that no other observer ever gossips about Mary's housekeeping -- only her husband. Is it at least a possibility that Robert's standards were unreasonable?

And I doubt you'll mind many female readers who will find fault with Mary's "disobedience" to Robert's long-distance instructions about child-rearing and living arrangements. The woman raised SEVEN children, often alone while Robert was away on assignment, while coping with aging parents and untreatable rheumatoid arthritis that eventually put her in a wheelchair. Her contemporaries recalled her as kind and intelligent, a good cook, and a practicing Christian with a keen interest in gardening, literature, and current events (she read four newspapers).

Yes, Mary Lee was vocal and opinionated. She could be a force of nature when crossed. She wasn't sweet, and she wasn't beautiful. The couple's correspondence reveals that they engaged in little "gotchas" against each other. Friends would later recall that Mary ordered the great general around with lists of honey-dos. Robert in his turn opened packages of socks she knitted for the troops during the Civil War and delighted in finding errors in her count of how many she'd shipped.

I take Thomas's point that they probably weren't the kind of married couple who asks the band to play "You Fill Up My Senses" for their anniversary. As we get further into our research on the Lees, I hope to learn more about what drew them together. A rounded portrait of this marriage could really enrich our planned novel.

May 18, 2007: To the Ends of the Earth wins Silver in the Independent Publisher Book Awards

Wonderful news! To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis & Clark, has won a silver medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards!

For eleven years the Independent Publisher Book Awards have been conducted annually to honor the year's best titles from university, small press, and self-publishers. The "IPPY" Awards reward those who exhibit the courage, innovation, and creativity to bring about change in the world of publishing.

We're so happy about this. It's great to be recognized. And as a writing team, it's also great to share this award with each other. One of the things that drew us to Lewis and Clark was their undying friendship and partnership, and today I'm reminded of their exchange as Lewis invited Clark to become his co-commander on the Voyage of Discovery:

Lewis: "…under those circumstances in this enterprise, …it’s fatigues, it’s dangers and it’s honors, believe me there is no man on earth with whom I should feel equal pleasure in sharing them as with yourself."

Clark: "My friend I join you with hand and heart."

May 16, 2007: Return to Louisville

This is the last journal entry about the trip we took last fall retracing the campaigns of George Rogers Clark. I'll compile these into one page next week and post the link here for those who would like to read the whole thing.

If there was ever a great figure in American history who got shafted worse than George Rogers Clark, I don't know who it would be. His victories in the Revolution gave the United States possession of the "Old Northwest," 260,000 square miles of territory that included all of the modern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as the northeastern part of Minnesota. By the time he was 30, Clark was known as the "Hannibal of the West." The Indians, who feared and respected him, called him "The First Man Living."

But though he couldn't have known it at the time, Clark's life had already peaked. As was customary at the time, Clark had financed the war in the West using his own credit, signing personal vouchers for arms and supplies with the full expectation of being reimbursed by the state of Virginia (Clark was a general in the Virginia state militia, and never served in the United States army). In a series of events that almost defies credulity, he submitted the vouchers to Virginia, only to be told later that the state had lost them. Without the original documentation, he was told, he was on his own for the debts -- some $12,000 (about $137,000 in today's money).

Clark's life entered a downward spiral from which he never pulled out. Because he could not pay his debts, scores of people who had extended credit to help the Revolution went broke. Clark was hounded by debt collectors and was apparently even arrested at least once. He entered into ill-advised schemes to recover his fortune and reputation. Most notoriously, he partnered with James Wilkinson in a separatist scheme eerily reminiscent of Wilkinson's later involvement with Aaron Burr. Clark even went so far as to renounce his American citizenship before, as with Burr, Wilkinson betrayed him and left his reputation in ruins.

Worst of all, Clark became a heavy binge drinker. Observers record his horrific physical deterioration from a magnificently handsome man to a fragile old drunk, and record him lying passed out in the gutters of Louisville.

More about the final years of George Rogers Clark

Grouseland, home of William Henry Harrison

We kicked off our final day of the tour in Vincennes with a return to Grouseland. We heard an excellent talk from a local historian about William Henry Harrison and the house, though we didn't get to go inside. I was glad we'd been before. The most interesting new fact we learned was how differently the town was laid out back in Harrison's day, so that the approach from the Wabash to Grouseland would have been splendid. It turns out that Harrison didn't really build his house facing the railroad tracks!

We also got to go through the nearby reconstructions of early Indiana government buildings. These were interesting, though I admit to being spoiled in such matters by our trip to Williamsburg a few months back. It sounded like Harrison was the virtual dictator of the Indiana Territory, and Vincennes began to wither in importance after he moved away to take command of the army during the War of 1812.

Believe it or not, Harrison was quite fascinating. I highly recommend Pierre Berton's The Invasion of Canada as the place to start.

Good website on William Henry Harrison

Bugged out for Louisville through the rolling hills of southern Indiana. We ate lunch at a place called Sam's in New Albany, Indiana.

The afternoon back in Louisville was a blast. We started off at Locust Grove, probably the best of all the Clark sites. This was the genteel home of Lucy Clark Croghan and her husband William, and the last home of George Rogers Clark. At George's urging, the Clark family moved to Louisville from Virginia in 1784 at the end of the Revolution. William Croghan, a long-time friend of the Clark family, and Lucy built a fine home in 1790 on the proceeds of Croghan's success in business, and Locust Grove became a hub for the family and almost a hotel for traveling friends, including Meriwether Lewis.

We got a great tour of the place from Nancy, one of our fellow History America travelers who happened to be a docent at Locust Grove. The house is both beautiful and cozy, and it is easy to imagine the large, loving Clark/Croghan clan living, eating, talking, and sleeping here.

In 1809, George Rogers Clark came to live here with Lucy and her family after losing his leg in a terrible household accident. It's touching to see the downstairs bedroom fixed up for him and the porch where he spent most of his days. By this time, George was a bitter, tragic figure, but I felt glad to know that at least he was loved, cared for, and surrounded by family at the end of his days. We checked out the family cemetery, which we had missed on our previous visit, and visited the excellent gift shop.

Clark family gravesites at Mulberry Hill

We proceeded on to George Rogers Clark Park, the site of Mulberry Hill. John and Ann Clark, the parents of George, William, and eight other outstanding children, made their home here, and Mulberry Hill became the center of Clark family life for decades. Because he could not afford a home of his own, George lived here much of his life and helped his father direct the farm and mill. When John Clark died, however, the farm was left to William, the youngest son, not to George. In fact, John was forced to disinherit George to prevent any money or property he received from being seized by debt collectors.

Sadly, Mulberry Hill was razed to make room for a National Guard encampment during World War I. You can visit the family cemetery, and we paid our respects to the kindly John and Ann and several other relations. Today there's a lively park here with tennis courts and a playground. I'm sorry the house no longer stands, but I wonder if John and Ann Clark might not have preferred the park full of kids to a museum anyway.

George Rogers Clark's cabin at the Falls of the Ohio

Our last big stop was Point of Rocks at the Falls of the Ohio, where you can visit a recreation of the cabin where Clark lived from 1803-1809. William Clark had taken on the role of George's caretaker and lived with him at Mulberry Hill and here until the Lewis & Clark Expedition departed from Point of Rocks in October, 1803.

This is truly the simple log cabin of a penniless man, and stands in great contrast to Locust Grove and the life George might have had. But Clark did achieve richness of the mind in spite of his troubles. He immersed himself in the study of the incredible Devonian fossil beds at the falls as well as other fossil sites in Kentucky, corresponded with Thomas Jefferson about natural history, constructed globes, and collected (and read!) one of the first libraries in the western United States.

On the day we visited, the river was high and turbulent, and it was easy to imagine that Clark found some peace and freedom here for his troubled soul.

Back to the Galt House for a farewell dinner with Jim Holmberg and all our good History America friends. It was a very full week. There is nothing more educational than seeing in person the vivid reality of the greatness of America and what it cost. God Bless George Rogers Clark!

May 10, 2007: Battle of San Carlos, Old Cahokia, and the March to Vincennes

There's no sleeping in with History America. After a quick breakfast, we all assembled just outside the Drury Inn for a lecture about the Battle of San Carlos. George Rogers Clark had formed a close alliance with the Spanish lieutenant governor, Fernando de Leyba, who naturally wanted to see the British expelled from the western territories. The two men became personal friends, and tradition has it that Clark and de Leyba's sister, Teresa, were in love and wanted to marry.

On an international level, Spain entered the war against the British as an ally of France. Spanish troops attacked British posts on the lower Mississippi. De Leyba was convinced that St. Louis would be attacked in retaliation and spent a great deal of time and money constructing fortifications, including a stone tower called Fort San Carlos. In May 1780, he was proved right when a combined force of at least 1300 British and Indian troops attacked St. Louis and Cahokia (at that time a larger settlement than St. Louis).

In St. Louis, close to 100 settlers and slaves were killed before De Leyba skillfully managed a repulse of the attack from his just-completed entrenchments. On the Illinois side, Clark and his men drove off the attackers from Cahokia.

The consequences were anything but minor. Because of the Spanish and American victory at San Carlos, along with other Spanish triumphs at Mobile and Pensacola, the United States and Spain retained control of the West, and the Spanish retained possession of the Mississippi. If this battle had gone the other way, the effect on American history could have been incalculable.

Good account of the Battle of San Carlos

Unfortunately, De Leyba never got to enjoy any laurels. He died just one month after the Battle of San Carlos. Historians still dispute whether there was really an affair between George and Teresa de Leyba, but one thing is for certain: Clark never got married, to Teresa or anyone else.

Mary at the old Cahokia Courthouse

We bugged out of St. Louis and went across the river for a very interesting visit to Old Cahokia. We're particularly fond of this place as the opening scene of To the Ends of the Earth takes place here. It was great to finally see it in person! The Old Courthouse (of "post on sill" construction) was a private home back in the day of George Rogers Clark. In Lewis & Clark's time, it was a post office that Lewis used heavily while the Corps of Discovery was training at nearby Camp River Dubois.

We also visited the Old Church, where the church historian gave a neat talk and showed us the chalice brought by French missionaries in the early 1700s. Even the chalice case was over 200 years old. This early period of western history holds so many mysteries for me. I look forward to learning more.

A Tour of Old Cahokia

That St. Louis and Cahokia were still in the hands of the good guys at all was due to Clark's most famous feat. In early 1779, George Rogers Clark and his band of 172 intrepid volunteers set off for a surprise winter attack against British forces who controlled Fort Sackville on the Wabash River near the French village of Vincennes. Acting on the time-honored underdog principle that the best defense is a good offense, Clark aimed to destroy the forces of British General Henry Hamilton (despised on the American frontier as the "Hair Buyer" for his practice of encouraging Indian scalping raids) before Hamilton could bring his superior forces out in the spring and destroy Clark's.

Whereas Clark and his men suffered in the desolate frozen swamps, we followed in their footsteps through cultivated fields and many little Illinois towns of varying degrees of prosperity. Lunch was Taco Bell in Salem, Illinois. As we drew closer to Vincennes, we left the main highways and took tiny backroads that closely followed the trail of Clark and his men. This was a great example of the kind of experience that History America Tours does best.

Fortunately, we could cross ravines on old railroad bridges with names like Wabash Cannonball and Baby Bear. Clark and his men weren't so lucky. They encountered a completely flooded landscape. The account of their courageous approach to Vincennes is the centerpiece of James Alexander Thom's Long Knife. Many of these men would never be the same after the physical suffering they underwent here.

George Rogers Clark Memorial, Vincennes, Indiana

This was a really interesting and educational way to approach the site of old Fort Sackville, where the magnificent George Rogers Clark Memorial now stands. We had been here two years ago, but still enjoyed the excellent orientation film, the gigantic monument, and the great statue of George inside with his famous quotations and the murals by Ezra Winter.

Here Clark pulled off one of the great bloodless victories of all time, a colossal, audacious bluff in which he convinced Hamilton that he was camped on his doorstep with five times the forces he actually had. The befuddled general surrendered to Clark without firing a shot. Imagine Hamilton's surprise when Clark's array of starving frontiersmen trooped into Fort Sackville to take possession, and he realized he'd been had by a 26-year-old Virginian who just happened to be a military genius.

Much more on the fall of Fort Sackville

Frankly, I was pretty pooped, but we had a special event on deck for the evening. We traveled the short distance to Grouseland, the home of William Henry Harrison, who governed this territory from 1800-1812. There Jim helped dedicate a new historical marker that commemorated Harrison's hosting of Lewis & Clark here on their return from the Pacific in 1806. Harrison is a character in our novel-in-progress, and we kept chuckling during the ceremony thinking of our scenes where Harrison, Lewis, and Clark don't get along so well.

Lastly we all got to attend a lovely dinner at Vincennes University hosted by the Vincennes Historical and Antiquarian Society. We got to sit with two really nice fellows who work at the Clark Memorial and their wives. The highlight was getting to see a neat 1812 portrait of Clark from life of which we'd been previously unaware. At age 60, Clark looked weary, sad, and bitter. More on that in the next journal entry, which will cover our return to Louisville and the scenes of Clark's later years.

Crashed at the Comfort Suites. Long day!

May 7, 2007: To the Ends of the Earth named semi-finalist in the Independent Publisher Book Awards

Great news! We just found out that To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis & Clark was named a semi-finalist in the 11th annual Independent Publisher Book Awards (known in the industry as the IPPY Awards).

The IPPY Awards are a broad-based, unaffiliated awards program open to all members of the independent publishing industry. The awards were established to bring increased recognition to exemplary titles produced by independent publishers, university presses, and self-publishers, and reward courage, innovation, and creativity in bringing about change in the world of publishing.

We're thrilled to have made the final round in the historical/military fiction category! The final results will be announced on May 18!

May 3, 2007: Fort Massac, Kaskaskia, and Fort de Chartres

A fascinating day on the trail of George Rogers Clark!

Fort Massac. Foundations of original fort in foreground; reconstruction in back

We headed out early to Fort Massac, a reconstruction of a fort that was a major control point on the Ohio for decades. (It's near Metropolis, Illinois, home of Superman.) A fort was originally constructed here by the French in 1757, though the Spanish may have been here even before that date. The fort was burned down by the Chickasaws after the French and Indian War, and the British never rebuilt here. It was at this spot that George Rogers Clark and the Americans beached their canoes and began their overland march into Illinois in 1778.

During the Indian Wars of the 1790s, the fort was rebuilt, and it remained a prime American fort in Lewis & Clark's day. It was at Fort Massac that they recruited George Drouillard, the half-breed hunter who became a critical member of the Expedition, John Newman, and Joseph Whitehouse. It was interesting to realize that Daniel Bissell, the commander of the fort in 1803, was not too thrilled to have Lewis & Clark sweep through and recruit his best men. Three years later, Aaron Burr and James Wilkinson met here while hatching their ill-fated treasonous plot.

The fort itself has been recently reconstructed and consists of a four-sided wooden fort surrounded by trenches and palisades. Inside were wooden buildings and barracks. The design and construction of Fort Massac would have been typical of other frontier forts such as Fort Jefferson, the site of which we saw yesterday, and Fort Washington, the Cincinnati-area fort where Lewis & Clark first met in the 1790s. Lewis & Clark's Expedition forts, Fort Mandan and Fort Clatsop, would have followed the same model.

Clark overlooking the Ohio, by Leon Hermant

There's a good introductory film at the visitor's center. Jim gave us a talk by a quaint 1930s statue of George Rogers Clark and allowed us to spend some time exploring the outline of the original fort.

Our next stop was Grand Tower or Tower Rock, one of the great landmarks of the Mississippi. As at Cave-In-Rock, river pirates sometimes used this spot, hiding in the turbulent waters around the rock and then attacking travelers. Lewis & Clark camped here on their way to St. Louis, and the meticulous Lewis climbed and measured the castle-like formation (92 feet). Lewis also noted:

This seems to be a place of the tropics or equinoxial line, those who are unfamiliar with it are always compelled to stop for a drink.

We proceeded on to the site of Old Kaskaskia. Today, most of the town has been undermined and consumed by the river. In George's day, Kaskaskia was a thriving French village and one of the key towns on the Mississippi. Hence, it became Clark's first target in the Illinois campaign, seized in a surprise raid on July 4, 1778.

We took a look around at a few historic buildings. The most interesting sight is the "Liberty Bell of the West," rung by the French villagers in celebration when tbey realized Clark and his terrifying Virginians weren't going to slaughter them. We listened to a good talk by Jim and played with a beagle puppy who was overjoyed to have so many visitors.

We had lunch at a smorgasbord in nearby Chester, Illinois (home of Popeye -- our second comic book stop of the day), then headed for Fort Kaskaskia State Park. This beautiful manicured park, replete with enormous walnuts, was the site of the town's fort. This was a very important stop for Lewis & Clark in 1803. They recruited about a dozen more men here, including John Ordway and Patrick Gass, along with the French boatman Francois Labiche. The white pirogue was probably acquired here. Once again, the fort's commander probably wasn't too happy to have Lewis & Clark run off with his best men and best boat.

Nearby we took a quick look at the Pierre Menard House before heading on to our last big stop of the day, the very impressive Fort de Chartres, a fantastic restored fort originally built by the French in the 1720s. A classic stone fort was in place by the 1750s, only to be abandoned after the French and Indian War. The British and the Americans did little with the fort, which was vulnerable to flooding. It gradually fell into ruin until restoration began in the 20th century.

Fort de Chartres. The building with the pointy roof is the powder magazine.

A park volunteer gave us a musket demonstration and a good history of the fort and showed us pictures of the spectacular flooding of 1993. We got to spend a nice amount of time exploring the stone buildings and powder magazine, which has the distinction of being the oldest building in Illinois.

We headed for St. Louis; overnight at our old haunt, the Drury Plaza. We got a decent supper at Max and Erma's nearby, then crossed the street for a look at the river and the delightful sight of the moon hanging inside the Gateway Arch.

Older journal entries

Copyright © Frances Hunter | Design by brampamp