Inside the FLDS of Warren Jeffs and Samuel Bateman
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) has been at the center of numerous controversies and scandals, many of which stem from its practice of polygamy. This religious denomination, known for its strict adherence to fundamentalist beliefs, has faced intense scrutiny over the years. Annie Elise from the YouTube channel "10 to LIFE" delves into the FLDS with biased eyes.
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The Eugenics Crusade - Full Documentary
Eugenics (/juːˈdʒɛnɪks/ yoo-JEN-iks; from Ancient Greek εύ̃ (eû) 'good, well', and -γενής (genḗs) 'come into being, growing')[1] is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population.[2][3][4] Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior.[5] In recent years, the term has seen a revival in bioethical discussions on the usage of new technologies such as CRISPR and genetic screening, with heated debate around whether these technologies should be considered eugenics or not.[6]
The principles of eugenics have been in practice since ancient Greece. Plato suggested applying the principles of selective breeding to humans around 400 BCE. Nobility is also historically based on pedigree. Early advocates of eugenics in the 19th century regarded it as a way of improving groups of people. In contemporary usage, the term eugenics is closely associated with scientific racism. Modern bioethicists who advocate new eugenics characterize it as a way of enhancing individual traits, regardless of group membership.
The contemporary history of eugenics began in the late 19th century, when a popular eugenics movement emerged in the United Kingdom,[7] and then spread to many countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia,[8] and most European countries (e.g. , Sweden and Germany). In this period, people from across the political spectrum espoused eugenic ideas. Consequently, many countries adopted eugenic policies, intended to improve the quality of their populations' genetic stock. Such programs included both positive measures, such as encouraging individuals deemed particularly "fit" to reproduce, and negative measures, such as marriage prohibitions and forced sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction. Those deemed "unfit to reproduce" often included people with mental or physical disabilities, people who scored in the low ranges on different IQ tests, criminals and "sexual and social deviants", and members of disfavored minority groups.
The eugenics movement became associated with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust when the defense of many of the defendants at the Nuremberg trials of 1945 to 1946 attempted to justify their human-rights abuses by claiming there was little difference between the Nazi eugenics programs and the US eugenics programs.[9] In the decades following World War II, with more emphasis on human rights, many countries began to abandon eugenics policies, although some Western countries (the United States, Canada, and Sweden among them) continued to carry out forced sterilizations.[citation needed]
A criticism of eugenics policies is that, regardless of whether negative or positive policies are used, they are susceptible to abuse because the genetic selection criteria are determined by whichever group has political power at the time.[10] Furthermore, many criticize negative eugenics in particular as a violation of basic human rights, seen since 1968's Proclamation of Tehran,[11] as including the right to reproduce. Another criticism is that eugenics policies eventually lead to a loss of genetic diversity, thereby resulting in inbreeding depression due to a loss of genetic variation.[12] Yet another criticism of contemporary eugenics policies is that they propose to permanently and artificially disrupt millions of years of human evolution, and that attempting to create genetic lines "clean" of "disorders" can have far-reaching ancillary downstream effects in the genetic ecology, including negative effects on immunity and on species resilience.[13]
History
Main article: History of eugenics
Origin and development
Francis Galton coined the term eugenics and was an early proponent.[14][15]
Logo from the Second International Eugenics Conference, 1921, depicting eugenics as a tree which unites a variety of different fields[16]
G. K. Chesterton, an opponent of eugenics, photographed by Ernest Herbert Mills in 1909
Types of eugenic practices have existed for millennia. Some indigenous peoples of Brazil are known to have practiced infanticide against children born with physical abnormalities since precolonial times.[17] In ancient Greece, the philosopher Plato suggested selective mating to produce a "guardian" class.[18] In Sparta, every Spartan child was inspected by the council of elders, the Gerousia, who determined whether or not the child was fit to live.[19]
The geographer Strabo (c. 64 BCE - c. 24 CE) states that the Samnites would take ten virgin women and ten young men who were considered to be the best representation of their sex and mate them.[20] Following this, the best woman would be given to the best male, then the second-best woman to the second-best male. It is possible[original research?] that the "best" men and women were chosen based on athletic capabilities. This would continue until all 20 people had been assigned to one another. Any selected male dishonoring himself,[clarification needed] would be separated from his partner.
In the early years of the Roman Republic, a Roman father was obliged by law to immediately kill any "dreadfully deformed" child.[21] According to Tacitus (c. 56 - c. 120), a Roman of the Imperial Period, the Germanic tribes of his day killed any member of their community they deemed cowardly, unwarlike or "stained with abominable vices", usually by drowning them in swamps.[22][23] Modern historians, however, see Tacitus' ethnographic writing as unreliable in such details.[24][25]
The idea of a modern project for improving the human population through selective breeding was originally developed by Francis Galton (1822–1911), and was initially inspired by Darwinism and its theory of natural selection.[26][need quotation to verify] Galton had read his half-cousin Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which sought to explain the development of plant and animal species, and desired to apply it to humans. Based on his biographical studies, Galton believed that desirable human qualities were hereditary traits, although Darwin strongly disagreed with this elaboration of his theory.[27] In 1883, one year after Darwin's death, Galton gave his research a name: eugenics.[28] With the introduction of genetics, eugenics became associated with genetic determinism, the belief that human character is entirely or in the majority caused by genes, unaffected by education or living conditions. Many of the early geneticists were not Darwinians, and evolution theory was not needed for eugenics policies based on genetic determinism.[26] Throughout its recent history, eugenics has remained controversial.[29]
Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities and received funding from many sources.[30] Organizations were formed to win public support for and to sway opinion towards responsible eugenic values in parenthood, including the British Eugenics Education Society of 1907 and the American Eugenics Society of 1921. Both sought support from leading clergymen and modified their message to meet religious ideals.[31] In 1909, the Anglican clergymen William Inge and James Peile both wrote for the Eugenics Education Society. Inge was an invited speaker at the 1921 International Eugenics Conference, which was also endorsed by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York Patrick Joseph Hayes.[31] The book The Passing of the Great Race (Or, The Racial Basis of European History) by American eugenicist, lawyer, and amateur anthropologist Madison Grant was published in 1916. Although subsequently influential, the book was largely ignored when it first appeared, and it went through several revisions and editions. Nevertheless, the book was used by people who advocated restricted immigration as justification for what became known as "scientific racism".[32]
Three International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for eugenicists, with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York City. Eugenic policies in the United States were first implemented by state-level legislators in the early 1900s.[33] Eugenic policies also took root in France, Germany, and Great Britain.[34] Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, the eugenic policy of sterilizing certain mental patients was implemented in other countries including Belgium,[35] Brazil,[36] Canada,[37] Japan and Sweden. Frederick Osborn's 1937 journal article "Development of a Eugenic Philosophy" framed eugenics as a social philosophy—a philosophy with implications for social order.[38] That definition is not universally accepted. Osborn advocated for higher rates of sexual reproduction among people with desired traits ("positive eugenics") or reduced rates of sexual reproduction or sterilization of people with less-desired or undesired traits ("negative eugenics").
In addition to being practiced in a number of countries, eugenics was internationally organized through the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations.[39] Its scientific aspects were carried on through research bodies such as the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics,[40] the Cold Spring Harbor Carnegie Institution for Experimental Evolution,[41] and the Eugenics Record Office.[42] Politically, the movement advocated measures such as sterilization laws.[43] In its moral dimension, eugenics rejected the doctrine that all human beings are born equal and redefined moral worth purely in terms of genetic fitness.[44] Its racist elements included pursuit of a pure "Nordic race" or "Aryan" genetic pool and the eventual elimination of "unfit" races.[45][46] Many leading British politicians subscribed to the theories of eugenics. Winston Churchill supported the British Eugenics Society and was an honorary vice president for the organization. Churchill believed that eugenics could solve "race deterioration" and reduce crime and poverty.[47][48][49]
Early critics of the philosophy of eugenics included the American sociologist Lester Frank Ward,[50] the English writer G. K. Chesterton, the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas, who argued that advocates of eugenics greatly over-estimate the influence of biology,[51] and Scottish tuberculosis pioneer and author Halliday Sutherland. Ward's 1913 article "Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics", Chesterton's 1917 book Eugenics and Other Evils, and Boas' 1916 article "Eugenics" (published in The Scientific Monthly) were all harshly critical of the rapidly growing movement. Sutherland identified eugenicists as a major obstacle to the eradication and cure of tuberculosis in his 1917 address "Consumption: Its Cause and Cure",[52] and criticism of eugenicists and Neo-Malthusians in his 1921 book Birth Control led to a writ for libel from the eugenicist Marie Stopes. Several biologists were also antagonistic to the eugenics movement, including Lancelot Hogben.[53] Other biologists such as J. B. S. Haldane and R. A. Fisher expressed skepticism in the belief that sterilization of "defectives" would lead to the disappearance of undesirable genetic traits.[54]
Among institutions, the Catholic Church was an opponent of state-enforced sterilizations, but accepted isolating people with hereditary diseases so as not to let them reproduce.[55] Attempts by the Eugenics Education Society to persuade the British government to legalize voluntary sterilization were opposed by Catholics and by the Labour Party.[56] The American Eugenics Society initially gained some Catholic supporters, but Catholic support declined following the 1930 papal encyclical Casti connubii.[31] In this, Pope Pius XI explicitly condemned sterilization laws: "Public magistrates have no direct power over the bodies of their subjects; therefore, where no crime has taken place and there is no cause present for grave punishment, they can never directly harm, or tamper with the integrity of the body, either for the reasons of eugenics or for any other reason."[57]
As a social movement, eugenics reached its greatest popularity in the early decades of the 20th century, when it was practiced around the world and promoted by governments, institutions, and influential individuals (such as the playwright G. B. Shaw). Many countries enacted[58] various eugenics policies, including: genetic screenings, birth control, promoting differential birth rates, marriage restrictions, segregation (both racial segregation and sequestering the mentally ill), compulsory sterilization, forced abortions or forced pregnancies, ultimately culminating in genocide. By 2014, gene selection (rather than "people selection") was made possible through advances in genome editing,[59] leading to what is sometimes called new eugenics, also known as "neo-eugenics", "consumer eugenics", or "liberal eugenics"; which focuses on individual freedom and allegedly pull away from racism, sexism, heterosexism or a focus on intelligence.[60]
Eugenics in the United States
Main article: Eugenics in the United States
Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States made it a crime for individuals to wed someone categorized as belonging to a different race.[61] These laws were part of a broader policy of racial segregation in the United States to minimize contact between people of different ethnicities. Race laws and practices in the United States were explicitly used as models by the Nazi regime when it developed the Nuremberg Laws, stripping Jewish citizens of their citizenship.[62]
Nazism and the decline of eugenics
Main article: Nazi eugenics
Schloss Hartheim, a former center for Nazi Germany's Aktion T4 campaign
A Lebensborn birth house in Nazi Germany. Created with the intention of raising the birth rate of "Aryan" children from the extramarital relations of "racially pure and healthy" parents.
The scientific reputation of eugenics started to decline in the 1930s, a time when Ernst Rüdin used eugenics as a justification for the racial policies of Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler had praised and incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf in 1925 and emulated eugenic legislation for the sterilization of "defectives" that had been pioneered in the United States once he took power.[63] Some common early 20th century eugenics methods involved identifying and classifying individuals and their families, including the poor, mentally ill, blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, promiscuous women, homosexuals, and racial groups (such as the Roma and Jews in Nazi Germany) as "degenerate" or "unfit", and therefore led to segregation, institutionalization, sterilization, and even mass murder.[10] The Nazi policy of identifying German citizens deemed mentally or physically unfit and then systematically killing them with poison gas, referred to as the Aktion T4 campaign, is understood by historians to have paved the way for the Holocaust.[64][65][66]
By the end of World War II, many eugenics laws were abandoned, having become associated with Nazi Germany.[10] H. G. Wells, who had called for "the sterilization of failures" in 1904,[67] stated in his 1940 book The Rights of Man: Or What Are We Fighting For? that among the human rights, which he believed should be available to all people, was "a prohibition on mutilation, sterilization, torture, and any bodily punishment".[68] After World War II, the practice of "imposing measures intended to prevent births within [a national, ethnical, racial or religious] group" fell within the definition of the new international crime of genocide, set out in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[69] The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union also proclaims "the prohibition of eugenic practices, in particular those aiming at selection of persons".[70] In spite of the decline in discriminatory eugenics laws, some government mandated sterilizations continued into the 21st century. During the ten years President Alberto Fujimori led Peru from 1990 to 2000, 2,000 persons were allegedly involuntarily sterilized.[71] China maintained its one-child policy until 2015 as well as a suite of other eugenics-based legislation to reduce population size and manage fertility rates of different populations.[72][73][74]
Compulsory sterilization
Main article: Compulsory sterilization
While there is ostensibly less support for eugenics today, forced sterilization remains a problem around the world.[75][76] It has been used against Indigenous women in Canada as recently as 2019.[77] Until 2014, the Netherlands required sterilization of transgender people as a prerequisite for legal recognition of their genders.[78] A similar law persists in Japan and was upheld in 2019 as constitutional.[79] In the United States, most people affected by forced sterilization are under guardianship,[80] though procedures were also performed on inmates in the California prison system.[81] According to a report from The National Women's Law Center, 31 states and D.C. have laws allowing forced sterilization, and in most other states it is not clear whether it is legal or not.[82] Seventeen states allow the sterilization of children under the age of 18, and some do not even require a legal guardian to make that decision.[83]
Modern eugenics
Developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive technologies at the beginning of the 21st century have raised numerous questions regarding the ethical status of eugenics, effectively creating a resurgence of interest in the subject. Some, such as UC Berkeley sociologist Troy Duster, have argued that modern genetics is a back door to eugenics.[84] This view was shared by then-White House Assistant Director for Forensic Sciences, Tania Simoncelli, who stated in a 2003 publication by the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College that advances in pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) are moving society to a "new era of eugenics", and that, unlike the Nazi eugenics, modern eugenics is consumer driven and market based, "where children are increasingly regarded as made-to-order consumer products".[85]
In a 2006 newspaper article, Richard Dawkins said that discussion regarding eugenics was inhibited by the shadow of Nazi misuse, to the extent that some scientists would not admit that breeding humans for certain abilities is at all possible. He believes that it is not physically different from breeding domestic animals for traits such as speed or herding skill. Dawkins felt that enough time had elapsed to at least ask just what the ethical differences were between breeding for ability versus training athletes or forcing children to take music lessons, though he could think of persuasive reasons to draw the distinction.[86]
Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, promoted eugenics as late as 1983.[87] A proponent of nature over nurture, he stated that "intelligence is 80% nature and 20% nurture", and attributed the successes of his children to genetics.[88] In his speeches, Lee urged highly educated women to have more children, claiming that "social delinquents" would dominate unless their fertility rate increased.[88] In 1984, Singapore began providing financial incentives to highly educated women to encourage them to have more children. In 1985, incentives were significantly reduced after public uproar.[89][90]
In October 2015, the United Nations' International Bioethics Committee wrote that the ethical problems of human genetic engineering should not be confused with the ethical problems of the 20th century eugenics movements. However, it is still problematic because it challenges the idea of human equality and opens up new forms of discrimination and stigmatization for those who do not want, or cannot afford, the technology.[91]
The American National Human Genome Research Institute says that eugenics is "inaccurate", "scientifically erroneous and immoral".[92]
Transhumanism is often associated with eugenics, although most transhumanists holding similar views nonetheless distance themselves from the term "eugenics" (preferring "germinal choice" or "reprogenetics") to avoid having their position confused with the discredited theories and practices of early-20th-century eugenic movements.[93]
Prenatal screening has been called by some a contemporary form of eugenics because it may lead to abortions of fetuses with undesirable traits.[94]
A system was proposed by California State Senator Nancy Skinner to compensate victims of the well-documented examples of prison sterilizations resulting from California's eugenics programs, but this did not pass by the bill's 2018 deadline in the Legislature.[95]
Meanings and types
Karl Pearson in 1912
The term eugenics and its modern field of study were first formulated by Francis Galton in 1883,[96] drawing on the recent work of his half-cousin Charles Darwin.[97][98] Galton published his observations and conclusions in his book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development.
The origins of the concept began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance and the theories of August Weismann.[99] The word eugenics is derived from the Greek word eu ("good" or "well") and the suffix -genēs ("born"); Galton intended it to replace the word "stirpiculture", which he had used previously but which had come to be mocked due to its perceived sexual overtones.[100] Galton defined eugenics as "the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations".[101]
The most disputed aspect of eugenics has been the definition of "improvement" of the human gene pool, such as what is a beneficial characteristic and what is a defect. Historically, this aspect of eugenics was tainted with scientific racism and pseudoscience.[2][102][103]
Historically, the idea of eugenics has been used to argue for a broad array of practices ranging from prenatal care for mothers deemed genetically desirable to the forced sterilization and murder of those deemed unfit.[5] To population geneticists, the term has included the avoidance of inbreeding without altering allele frequencies; for example, J. B. S. Haldane wrote that "the motor bus, by breaking up inbred village communities, was a powerful eugenic agent."[104] Debate as to what exactly counts as eugenics continues today.[105]
Edwin Black, journalist, historian, and author of War Against the Weak, argues that eugenics is often deemed a pseudoscience because what is defined as a genetic improvement of a desired trait is a cultural choice rather than a matter that can be determined through objective scientific inquiry.[2] Black states the following about the pseudoscientific past of eugenics: "As American eugenic pseudoscience thoroughly infused the scientific journals of the first three decades of the twentieth century, Nazi-era eugenics placed its unmistakable stamp on the medical literature of the twenties, thirties and forties." [106] Black says that eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race, used by Adolf Hitler to "try to legitimize his anti- Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics."[107]
Early eugenicists were mostly concerned with factors of perceived intelligence that often correlated strongly with social class. These included Karl Pearson and Walter Weldon, who worked on this at the University College London.[27] In his lecture "Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics", Pearson claimed that everything concerning eugenics fell into the field of medicine.[108]
Eugenic policies have been conceptually divided into two categories.[5] Positive eugenics is aimed at encouraging reproduction among the genetically advantaged; for example, the reproduction of the intelligent, the healthy, and the successful. Possible approaches include financial and political stimuli, targeted demographic analyses, in vitro fertilization, egg transplants, and cloning.[109] Negative eugenics aimed to eliminate, through sterilization or segregation, those deemed physically, mentally, or morally "undesirable". This includes abortions, sterilization, and other methods of family planning.[109] Both positive and negative eugenics can be coercive; in Nazi Germany, for example, abortion was illegal for women deemed by the state to be fit.[110]
Controversy over scientific and moral legitimacy
Arguments for scientific validity
The heterozygote test is used for the early detection of recessive hereditary diseases, allowing for couples to determine if they are at risk of passing genetic defects to a future child.[111] The goal of the test is to estimate the likelihood of passing the hereditary disease to future descendants.[111]
There are examples of eugenic acts that managed to lower the prevalence of recessive diseases, although not influencing the prevalence of heterozygote carriers of those diseases. The elevated prevalence of certain genetically transmitted diseases among the Ashkenazi Jewish population (Tay–Sachs, cystic fibrosis, Canavan's disease, and Gaucher's disease), has been decreased in current populations by the application of genetic screening.[112]
Objections to scientific validity
The first major challenge to conventional eugenics based on genetic inheritance was made in 1915 by Thomas Hunt Morgan. He demonstrated the event of genetic mutation occurring outside of inheritance involving the discovery of the hatching of a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) with white eyes from a family with red eyes,[113] demonstrating that major genetic changes occurred outside of inheritance.[113] Additionally, Morgan criticized the view that certain traits, such as intelligence and criminality, were hereditary because these traits were subjective.[114] Despite Morgan's public rejection of eugenics, much of his genetic research was adopted by proponents of eugenics.[115][116]
Pleiotropy occurs when one gene influences multiple, seemingly unrelated phenotypic traits, an example being phenylketonuria, which is a human disease that affects multiple systems but is caused by one gene defect.[117] Andrzej Pękalski, from the University of Wroclaw, argues that eugenics can cause harmful loss of genetic diversity if a eugenics program selects a pleiotropic gene that could possibly be associated with a positive trait. Pękalski uses the example of a coercive government eugenics program that prohibits people with myopia from breeding but has the unintended consequence of also selecting against high intelligence since the two go together.[118] Further, a culturally-accepted "improvement" of the gene pool may result in extinction, due to increased vulnerability to disease, reduced ability to adapt to environmental change, and other factors that may not be anticipated in advance. This has been evidenced in numerous instances, in inbred isolated island populations. A long-term, species-wide eugenics plan might lead to such a scenario because the elimination of traits deemed undesirable would reduce genetic diversity by definition.[12]
While the science of genetics has increasingly provided means by which certain characteristics and conditions can be identified and understood, given the complexity of human genetics, culture, and psychology, at this point there is no agreed objective means of determining which traits might be ultimately desirable or undesirable. Some conditions such as sickle-cell disease and cystic fibrosis respectively confer immunity to malaria and resistance to cholera when a single copy of the recessive allele is contained within the genotype of the individual, so eliminating these genes is undesirable in places where such diseases are common.[13]
Ethical controversies
Societal and political consequences of eugenics call for a place in the discussion on the ethics behind the eugenics movement.[119] Many of the ethical concerns regarding eugenics arise from its controversial past, prompting a discussion on what place, if any, it should have in the future. Advances in science have changed eugenics. In the past, eugenics had more to do with sterilization and enforced reproduction laws.[120] Now, in the age of a progressively mapped genome, embryos can be tested for susceptibility to disease, sex, and genetic defects, and alternative methods of reproduction such as in vitro fertilization are becoming more common.[121] Therefore, eugenics is no longer ex post facto regulation of the living but instead preemptive action on the unborn.[122]
With this change, however, there are ethical concerns which some groups feel warrant more attention before this practice is commonly rolled out. Sterilized individuals, for example, could volunteer for the procedure, albeit under incentive or duress, or at least voice their opinion. The unborn fetus on which these new eugenic procedures are performed cannot speak out, as the fetus lacks the voice to consent or to express their opinion.[123] Philosophers disagree about the proper framework for reasoning about such actions, which change the very identity and existence of future persons.[124]
Opposition
In the decades after World War II, the term "eugenics" had taken on a negative connotation and as a result, the use of it became increasingly unpopular within the scientific community. Many organizations and journals that had their origins in the eugenics movement began to distance themselves from the philosophy which spawned it, as when Eugenics Quarterly was renamed Social Biology in 1969
Edwin Black has described potential "eugenics wars" as the worst-case outcome of eugenics. In his view, this scenario would mean the return of coercive state-sponsored genetic discrimination and human rights violations such as the compulsory sterilization of persons with genetic defects, the killing of the institutionalized and, specifically, the segregation and genocide of races which are considered inferior.[10] Law professors George Annas and Lori Andrews have argued that the use of these technologies could lead to such human-posthuman caste warfare.[125][126]
Environmental ethicist Bill McKibben argued against germinal choice technology and other advanced biotechnological strategies for human enhancement. He writes that it would be morally wrong for humans to tamper with fundamental aspects of themselves (or their children) in an attempt to overcome universal human limitations, such as vulnerability to aging, maximum life span and biological constraints on physical and cognitive ability. Attempts to "improve" themselves through such manipulation would remove limitations that provide a necessary context for the experience of meaningful human choice. He claims that human lives would no longer seem meaningful in a world where such limitations could be overcome with technology. Even the goal of using germinal choice technology for clearly therapeutic purposes should be relinquished, he argues, since it would inevitably produce temptations to tamper with such things as cognitive capacities. He argues that it is possible for societies to benefit from renouncing particular technologies, using Ming China, Tokugawa Japan and the contemporary Amish as examples.[127]
Amanda Caleb, Professor of Medical Humanities at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, says "Eugenic laws and policies are now understood as part of a specious devotion to a pseudoscience that actively dehumanizes to support political agendas and not true science or medicine."[128]
Endorsement
Some, for example Nathaniel C. Comfort from Johns Hopkins University, claim that the change from state-led reproductive-genetic decision-making to individual choice has moderated the worst abuses of eugenics by transferring the decision-making process from the state to patients and their families.[129] Comfort suggests that "the eugenic impulse drives us to eliminate disease, live longer and healthier, with greater intelligence, and a better adjustment to the conditions of society; and the health benefits, the intellectual thrill and the profits of genetic bio-medicine are too great for us to do otherwise."[130] Others, such as bioethicist Stephen Wilkinson of Keele University and Honorary Research Fellow Eve Garrard at the University of Manchester, claim that some aspects of modern genetics can be classified as eugenics, but that this classification does not inherently make modern genetics immoral.[131]
In their book published in 2000, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice, bioethicists Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler argued that liberal societies have an obligation to encourage as wide an adoption of eugenic enhancement technologies as possible (so long as such policies do not infringe on individuals' reproductive rights or exert undue pressures on prospective parents to use these technologies) in order to maximize public health and minimize the inequalities that may result from both natural genetic endowments and unequal access to genetic enhancements.[132]
In his book A Theory of Justice (1971), American philosopher John Rawls argued that "[o]ver time a society is to take steps to preserve the general level of natural abilities and to prevent the diffusion of serious defects".[133] The original position, a hypothetical situation developed by Rawls, has been used as an argument for negative eugenics.[134][135]
In science fiction
The novel Brave New World (1931) is a dystopian social science fiction novel by the English author Aldous Huxley, set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy.
The Star Trek franchise features a race of genetically engineered humans known as "Augments", the most notable being Khan Noonien Singh. These "supermen" were the cause of the Eugenics Wars, a dark period in Earth's fictional history, before being deposed and exiled. They appear in many of the franchise's story arcs, most often as villains.[136]
The film Gattaca (1997) provides a fictional example of a dystopian society that uses eugenics to decide what people are capable of and their place in the world. Though Gattaca was not a box office success, it was critically acclaimed and is said to have crystallized the debate over the controversial topic of human genetic engineering.[137][138] The film's dystopian depiction of "genoism" has been cited by many bioethicists and laypeople in support of their hesitancy about, or opposition to, eugenics and the societal acceptance of the genetic-determinist ideology that may frame it.[139] In a 1997 review of the film for the journal Nature Genetics, molecular biologist Lee M. Silver stated that "Gattaca is a film that all geneticists should see if for no other reason than to understand the perception of our trade held by so many of the public-at-large".[140] In his 2018 book Blueprint, behavioural geneticist Robert Plomin writes that while Gattaca warned of the dangers of genetic information being used by a totalitarian state, genetic testing could also favour better meritocracy in democratic societies which already administer psychological tests to select people for education and employment. Plomin suggests that polygenic scores might supplement testing in a manner that is free of biases.[141]
Various works by author Robert A. Heinlein mention the Howard Foundation, a group aimed at improving human longevity through selective breeding.
Eugenics is commonly seen in popular media, as highlighted by series like Resident Evil.[142]
See also
Ableism – Discrimination against disabled people
Biological determinism – Theory in behavioural genetics
Culling – Process of segregating organisms in biology
Directed evolution (transhumanism) – Term in transhumanism
Dor Yeshorim – Jewish genetic screening organization
Dysgenics – Decrease in genetic traits deemed desirable
Eugenic feminism – Areas of the women's suffrage movement which overlapped with eugenics
Eugenics in Mexico – Review of the topic
Euthenics – Study of improving living conditions to increase well-being
Genetic discrimination – Discrimination based on specific gene mutations
Genetic enhancement – Technologies to genetically improve human bodies
Human enhancement – Natural, artificial, or technological alteration of the human body
In vitro embryo selection – Assisted reproductive technology procedure (Preimplantation genetic diagnosis – Genetic profiling of embryos prior to implantation)
New eugenics – Advocates the use of reproductive and genetic technologies to enhance human characteristics
Life unworthy of life – Phrase in Nazi Germany
Mendelian traits in humans
Procreative beneficence – Australian philosopher and bioethicist Julian Savulescu coined this concept
Prevention of rare diseases – Disease affecting a small percentage of the population
Sterilization – Government policies which force people to undergo sterilization
Social Darwinism – Group of theories and societal practices
Citations
"εὐγενής". Greek Word Study Tool. Medford, Massachusetts: Tufts University. 2009. Archived from the original on 5 March 2021. Retrieved 19 October 2017. Database includes entries from A Greek–English Lexicon and other English dictionaries of Ancient Greek.
Black 2003, p. 370.
"Eugenics – African American Studies". Oxford Bibliographies. Archived from the original on 24 June 2019. Retrieved 25 July 2019. Racially targeted sterilization practices between the 1960s and the present have been perhaps the most common topic among scholars arguing for, and challenging, the ongoing power of eugenics in the United States. Indeed, unlike in the modern period, contemporary expressions of eugenics have met with widespread, thoroughgoing resistance
Galton, Francis (1904). "Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope, and Aims". The American Journal of Sociology. X (1): 82. Bibcode:1904Natur..70...82.. doi:10.1038/070082a0. Archived from the original on 1 March 2006. Retrieved 1 January 2020.
Spektorowski, Alberto; Ireni-Saban, Liza (2013). Politics of Eugenics: Productionism, Population, and National Welfare. London: Routledge. p. 24. ISBN 9780203740231. Archived from the original on 19 October 2021. Retrieved 16 January 2017. As an applied science, thus, the practice of eugenics referred to everything from prenatal care for mothers to forced sterilization and euthanasia. Galton divided the practice of eugenics into two types—positive and negative—both aimed at improving the human race through selective breeding.
Veit, Walter; Anomaly, Jonathan; Agar, Nicholas; Singer, Peter; Fleischman, Diana; Minerva, Francesca (2021). "Can 'eugenics' be defended?". Monash Bioethics Review. 39 (1): 60–67. doi:10.1007/s40592-021-00129-1. PMC 8321981. PMID 34033008.
Hansen, Randall; King, Desmond (1 January 2001). "Eugenic Ideas, Political Interests and Policy Variance Immigration and Sterilization Policy in Britain and U.S". World Politics. 53 (2): 237–263. doi:10.1353/wp.2001.0003. JSTOR 25054146. PMID 18193564. S2CID 19634871.
McGregor, Russell (2002). "'Breed out the colour' or the importance of being white". Australian Historical Studies. 33 (120): 286–302. doi:10.1080/10314610208596220. S2CID 143863018. Archived from the original on 25 February 2021. Retrieved 18 February 2021.
Bashford, Alison; Levine, Philippa (3 August 2010). The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics. Oxford University Press. p. 327. ISBN 9780199706532. Archived from the original on 15 May 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2020. Eugenics was prominent at the Nuremberg trials ... much was made of the similarity between US and German eugenics by the defense, who argued that German eugenics differed little from that practiced in the United States ... .
Black 2003.
Proclamation of Tehran, Final Act of the International Conference on Human Rights, Teheran, 22 April to 13 May 1968, U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 32/41 at 3 (1968) Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, United Nations, May 1968 – "16. The protection of the family and of the child remains the concern of the international community. Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children ...."
Galton, David (2002). Eugenics: The Future of Human Life in the 21st Century. London: Abacus. p. 48. ISBN 0349113777.
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Galton, Francis (2002) [1883]. Tredoux, Gavan (ed.). Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (PDF). pp. 17, 30. Retrieved 21 July 2023 – via Online Galton Archives. what is termed in Greek, eugenes namely, good in stock, hereditarily endowed with noble qualities. This, and the allied words, eugeneia, etc., are equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants. We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea; it is at least a neater word and a more generalized one than viriculture which I once ventured to use.... The investigation of human eugenics — that is, of the conditions under which men of a high type are produced — is at present extremely hampered by the want of full family histories, both medical and general, extending over three or four generations.
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Geographica, Strabo, Book 5, page 467. "And they say that among the Samnitae there is a law which is indeed honourable and conducive to noble qualities; for they are not permitted to give their daughters in marriage to whom they wish, but every year ten virgins and ten young men, the noblest of each sex, are selected, and, of these, the first choice of the virgins is given to the first choice of the young men, and the second to the second, and so on to the end; but if the young man who wins the meed of honour changes and turns out bad, they disgrace him and take away from him the woman given him."
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Tacitus. Germania.XII "Traitors and deserters are hanged on trees; the coward, the unwarlike, the man stained with abominable vices, is plunged into the mire of the morass, with a hurdle put over him."
Sanders, Karin (2009). Bodies in the Bog and the Archaeological Imagination. University of Chicago Press. p. 62. ISBN 9780226734040. Archived from the original on 1 August 2020. Retrieved 23 August 2018. Tacitus's Germania, read through this kind of filter, became a manual for racial and sexual eugenics
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"Whatever their disagreement on the numbers, Haldane, Fisher, and most geneticists could support Jennings's warning: To encourage the expectation that the sterilization of defectives will solve the problem of hereditary defects, close up the asylums for feebleminded and insane, do away with prisons, is only to subject society to deception". Daniel J. Kevles (1985). In the Name of Eugenics. University of California Press. ISBN 0520057635 (p. 166).
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Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such as:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
See the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
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Rawls, John (1999) [1971]. A theory of justice (revised ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 92. ISBN 0674000781. In addition, it is possible to adopt eugenic policies, more or less explicit. I shall not consider questions of eugenics, confining myself throughout to the traditional concerns of social justice. We
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Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
Swiss Family Robinson is a 1960 American adventure film starring John Mills, Dorothy McGuire, James MacArthur, Janet Munro, Tommy Kirk, and Kevin Corcoran in a tale of a shipwrecked family building an island home. It was the second feature film based on the 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, a previous adaptation having been released by RKO Pictures in 1940. Directed by Ken Annakin and shot in Tobago and Pinewood Studios outside London, it was the first widescreen Walt Disney Pictures film shot with Panavision lenses; when shooting in widescreen, Disney had almost always used a matted wide screen or filmed in CinemaScope.[2]
Upon its release, Swiss Family Robinson was a major success with both critics and audiences and remains one of Disney's most beloved live-action feature films.
Plot
A ship carrying a Swiss family from Bern—Father, Mother, and their three sons, who are relocating to a colony in New Guinea to escape the Napoleonic Wars—is attacked by pirates. Abandoned by the crew, the ship eventually grounds on rocks off an uninhabited island. The family makes their way ashore along with the captain's two Great Danes. Father, eldest son Fritz, and middle son Ernst salvage supplies and livestock from the shipwreck. The pirates locate the ship, but Father scares them off by putting up a quarantine flag, signaling Bubonic plague aboard.
The family soon discovers that the island contains a diversity of wildlife, including a dangerous tiger. To provide safety and comfort, Father, Fritz, and Ernst construct an elaborate tree house complete with a water wheel. Youngest son Francis collects various animals including a young Asian elephant, a monkey, and an ostrich. Ernst theorizes that the island may once have been part of a land bridge between Africa and Asia. As the family settles in, Father opines that, by going back to nature, they have found everything they need in life. Mother, however, worries that her sons will never marry or have families if they are not rescued, and consents to allow Fritz and Ernst to circumnavigate the island in a homemade outrigger boat and search for other settlements.
During their expedition, the brothers come across the pirates, who have captured another ship and taken its captain and cabin boy captive. They rescue the cabin boy, but the pirates spot them before they can free the captain, who insists they leave him since the pirates intend to ransom him. The brothers and the boy flee the pirates through the jungle, the brothers later learning that the "boy" is really a girl named Roberta. The captain (her grandfather) cut her hair and dressed her as a boy to disguise her gender from the pirates. They survive an attack by a green anaconda, but become lost and fight over what to do. Fritz's strong personality wins in the end, and they decide to press on. They rescue a zebra from hyenas and a quicksand trap; using it as a mount, they arrive back at the tree house just in time for Christmas.
Anticipating that the pirates will come looking for Roberta, the family scuttles their wrecked ship to hide their location. They fortify a rocky clifftop, building defenses and booby traps. Fritz and Ernst become rivals for Roberta's affections. Believing that her grandfather will return for her once ransomed, she intends to return to London; Ernst is interested in going to school there, while Fritz would rather go on to New Guinea to build a home of his own. Despite this, a romance develops between Fritz and Roberta, and the brothers come to blows over her. To relieve tension, Father declares a holiday to be held. That night, Francis manages to catch the tiger in one of the pits that they have dug.
The holiday begins with a race, the boys and Roberta riding on various animals. The pirates, sailing nearby, hear the sound of the starting pistol and come ashore. The family retreats to their fort, and the attackers fall victim to their traps and defenses. Kuala, the pirate captain, demands that they hand over Roberta, while his men sneak up the cliff side and attack from the rear. As the family is about to be overwhelmed, a ship captained by Roberta's grandfather appears, destroying the pirates and their ship with cannon fire.
The captain offers to help Ernst get into a London university, and to take the rest of the family back to Europe or on to New Guinea. Father and Mother, however, decide that they would rather stay on the island and keep Francis with them for a few more years. The captain speculates that the island will become a new colony, and that Father will be nominated to be its governor. Fritz and Roberta also decide to stay on the island, and the family waves goodbye to Ernst as he, the captain, and the ship's crew set out for England. The film ends when the elephant runs to the sea, catching Ernst, as Francis tries to bring him back.
Cast
John Mills as Father Robinson
Dorothy McGuire as Mother Robinson
James MacArthur as Fritz Robinson
Janet Munro as Roberta
Sessue Hayakawa as Kuala, the pirate captain
Tommy Kirk as Ernst Robinson
Kevin Corcoran as Francis Robinson
Cecil Parker as Captain Moreland
Andy Ho as Auban, a pirate
Milton Reid as Big Pirate
Larry Taylor as Battoo, a pirate
Production
Development
The film is based upon Der Schweizerische Robinson (translated as The Swiss Family Robinson), a book written by Johann David Wyss.[3] RKO Pictures had previously made an adaptation in 1940, directed by Edward Ludwig.[4] After watching that movie, Walt Disney and Bill Anderson decided to produce their own version of the story.[3] Anderson talked with director Ken Annakin during filming of another live-action Disney picture, Third Man on the Mountain, near Zermatt (Switzerland).[5] Ken Annakin had also worked with Disney in the 1953 adventure film The Sword and the Rose.[6]
Annakin worked on the script with Bill Anderson and Lowell Hawley. The idea to have the brothers discover a girl dressed as a boy came from Janet Munro, who had been in Third Man in the Mountain and was then making Darby O'Gill and the Little People. She was telling stories about playing a boy when working on stage with her father and Disney had this incorporated into the film.[7]
The movie was filmed almost entirely on the island of Tobago
There were several meetings to decide filming locations. There was talk of making the film in a studio in Burbank, California or filming on location in a natural environment. Annakin wanted to film in Ceylon, and the associate producer Basil Keys, in East Africa. Bill Anderson stressed that they should examine the Caribbean.[8] They visited Jamaica and Trinidad, but it was not what they wanted. Somebody in Trinidad told them of a nearby island, Tobago. When they saw the island for the first time, they "fell instantly in love",[6] and they sent a telegram to Anderson, who traveled to Tobago and found it fitted to their needs.[8] However, one of the drawbacks of this choice was that the island had no local wildlife.[9] Once Walt Disney accepted, cast and crew got their shots and passports for a six-month stay in Tobago.[6] Filming began in August 1959 and was a wrap just before Christmas 1959. The closeups of the stars on the animals—to complete the animal race scene around the treehouse—was done in January 1960.[10]
Filming
If a scorpion doesn't bite me during the night I get into the car, and if it doesn't skid off the edge of a cliff, I reach the mangrove swamp. I walk through; and if I'm not sucked in by a quick-sand, eaten alive by land crabs, or bitten by a snake, I reach the beach. I change on the beach, trying to avoid being devoured by insects, and walk into the sea. If there are no sharks or barracudas about, we get the shot and then do the whole thing in reverse, providing, of course, we haven't died of sunstroke in the meantime.
— Actor John Mills, about the filming difficulties.[6]
Richmond Bay was featured prominently as the Robinsons' beach, while Mount Irvine Bay was used for the scene where the boys rescue Bertie from the pirates. The vine-swinging/waterfall scenes were filmed at the Craig Hall Waterfall in Moriah. The choppy waters at Quashie (Carapuse) Bay in Belle Garden was used for anchoring the shipwreck against the rocks, giving the illusion that it was out at sea. The cliffs at Bay Hill Rock, situated at the edge of John Dial Beach, Hillsborough Bay, was used for filming the canoe outrigger crashing on the rocks. Here, the boys came ashore to free Roberta (Janet Munro).[11]
The treehouse was constructed in a 200-foot tall saman in the Goldsborough Bay area.[12] Referring to the treehouse, Annakin said that "it was really solid—capable of holding twenty crew and cast and constructed in sections so that it could be taken apart and rebuilt on film by the family."[6] The tree was not an easy place to shoot, with only 3 hours of sunlight per day due to surrounding foliage.[9] Walt Disney Productions constructed a massive studio in Goodwood which housed replica indoor sets of both the shipwreck and the main room of the treehouse. All of the scenes with the family aboard the ship, and the indoor treehouse scenes were filmed at the Disney studio in Goodwood.[13]
The script required animals, which arrived from all around the world.[6] Fourteen trainers looked after the animals. Gene Holter was one of the providers of animals from California and his trainers Ray Chandler and Fez Reynolds.[14] The trainers met with the director every day around 4 PM and went over attitudes or gestures that the animals should play the next day. They spent the night learning them.[9] The animals that were brought included eight dogs, two giant tortoises, forty monkeys, two elephants, six ostriches, four zebras, one hundred flamingos, six hyenas, two anacondas, and a tiger.[6] Disney also brought some King Vultures (corbeaux) from Trinidad. After filming was completed in January 1960, the vultures were released and they all flew back to Trinidad.[15]
Annakin wrote "Moochie" Corcoran "was wonderfully coordinated and had hung around so many animal trainers and stuntmen, that he knew exactly what was called for and how much of the action he could handle. I never had to use a double with ‘Moochie'."[16]
Soon after filming began in Tobago, the British film crew became unhappy with the wages that they were being paid by Disney. They threatened to abandon filming and return home. Their National Association of Theatrical and Kine Employees (NATKE) union representative, Cyril (Cid) Thawley, negotiated a new wage agreement which included overtime pay. Cid Thawley, along with some of the Disney crew were accommodated at Dellamira Hotel in Bacolet. The rest of the crew stayed at Robinson Crusoe Hotel in Scarborough and Blue Haven Hotel in Bacolet.[17] Most evenings, the prop men relaxed at the Club La Tropical, located next to the Dellamira hotel.[18]
After filming, the local Tobagonians convinced Disney, who had intended to remove all evidence of filmmaking, to let the treehouse remain, sans interior furnishing. In 1960, the treehouse was listed for sale for $9,000, a fraction of its original cost, and later became a popular attraction among locals and tourists, before the structure was finally destroyed by Hurricane Flora in September 1963.[19] The tree still remains, and is located on the property of Roberts Auto Service and Tyre Shop, at Cow Farm Road, Goldsborough, just off the Windward Road. Tobagonian Lennox Straker says, "The tree has fallen into obscurity; only a few of the older people knew of its significance." Three Tobagonians acted as stand-ins and doubles for the stars - James MacArthur, Tommy Kirk, Janet Munro and Dorothy McGuire. Two of them still reside in Tobago and one lives in the USA. A few locals who were employed by Disney as drivers, hoteliers and office staff still live in Tobago. They are happy to share their memories of working with 'the film company' back in 1959.[20]
Music
The film features one original song, "My Heart Was an Island," written by Terry Gilkyson. Mother Robinson sings the song as she hangs new curtains in the family's treehouse. The song, however, is not heard in its entirety, as it trails off when the scene shifts to Ernst on the ground.
Reception
The film premiered in New York City on December 10, 1960 and was released for the general U.S. audience on December 21, 1960. It earned $8.1 million in domestic rentals,[21] making it the fourth highest-grossing film of 1960. Initial worldwide rentals were $12 million.[22] It received generally positive reviews by critics and remains one of the most iconic live-action Disney films.[citation needed] When re-released in 1969, the film earned an additional $6.4 million in rentals in North America.[23][24] The film's lifetime domestic box office gross stands at $40 million.[25]
Upon the film's initial release, New York Times film critic Howard Thompson lauded it by writing, "it's hard to imagine how the picture could be better as a rousing, humorous and gentle-hearted tale of family love amid primitive isolation and dangers."[26] In his Family Guide to Movies on Video, Henry Herx wrote: "Nicely directed by Ken Annakin, much of the fun for children will come from the delightful and inventive conveniences the family builds and their relationships with the island's wildlife."[27] Tommy Kirk, who played Ernst, said it was the film he was most proud of.[28] The film holds an 84% approval rating at the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes,[29] and, as of late November 2023, a 7.1 rating at IMDB, the online database of information related to films and TV programs.[30]
Issues
In 2019, Disney added a disclaimer to this and other films in their classic movie catalog, which led to some commentary asking whether the disclaimers were enough.[31] The original disclaimers were updated in 2020 to acknowledge issues regarding racial stereotypes which “were wrong then and are wrong now.”[32] Specifically, critics have objected to the film's depiction of the villainous pirates, who are either portrayed by actors of color or by actors wearing makeup to appear Asian; one called it "grossly stereotypical, insulting, and unnecessary."[33] Critics have also argued that the film endorses colonization, as the Robinsons do not appear to consider whether there are native inhabitants on the island (although none are shown in the film).[34]
Remake
On December 12, 2004, Variety announced that a remake of Swiss Family Robinson was in development at Walt Disney Pictures, with Mandeville Films co-producing the film.[35] In June 2005 it was reported that Jonathan Mostow would direct the remake, and David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman would produce.[36] The following month, it was reported that studio veteran Lindsay Lohan was being considered for a role: "Lindsay's just talk at the moment...but that's someone they want. It might depend on whether she's happy to be part of an ensemble, and not the headliner."[37]
Production on the remake never began, and the film was believed to be shelved until early 2009, when it was announced by /Film that it was still in the works, had been renamed The Robinsons, and was to star Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, and their children Trey, Jaden and Willow.[38] A movie was ultimately made based on elements of Swiss Family Robinson, titled After Earth, starring Will and Jaden Smith and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and released in 2013.[39]
In 2011, actor Bill Paxton expressed serious interest in producing and starring in a remake of the original film: "I talked to a very prominent producer/filmmaker about the idea of teaming up to do this. I just think it would be great to make a little bit more of a butch, PG-13 version of that story – and I know it's something that would appeal to an international audience."[40] In 2014 it was announced that Steve Carell would possibly star in a modern update of the film, titled Brooklyn Family Robinson.[41]
Swiss Family Robinson (1940) https://rumble.com/v4zomy9-swiss-family-robinson-1940.html
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Swiss Family Robinson (1940)
Swiss Family Robinson is a 1940 American film released by RKO Radio Pictures and directed by Edward Ludwig. It is based on the 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss and is the first feature-length film version of the story.
Plot
In London in 1813, a Swiss father, William Robinson, wishes to escape the influence of the superficial profligacy of London on his family. His eldest son, Fritz, is obsessed with Napoleon, whom he considers his hero. His middle son, Jack, is a foolish dandy who cares only about fashion and money. And his dreamy son Ernest is preoccupied with reading and writing to the exclusion of all else.
William Robinson sells his business and house, in order to move with his wife and four sons to Australia. They set out on a brig bound for the faraway country. Following a long voyage, the family is shipwrecked on a remote deserted island after the captain and crew are washed overboard during a storm.
The family members collaborate to create a home for themselves in the alien jungle environment. They gradually learn to use the unfamiliar plants and animals to create what they need to live and thrive. They have many adventures and challenges and make many discoveries. The mother, however, misses her elegant home and community in England, and wishes to somehow be rescued and return. The father slowly convinces her that living in the natural environment is better for the family and that they are meant to be there. In the end, Fritz and Jack board a ship home while the rest of the family stay on the island.
Cast
Thomas Mitchell as William Robinson
Edna Best as Elizabeth Robinson
Freddie Bartholomew as Jack Robinson
Terry Kilburn as Ernest Robinson
Tim Holt as Fritz Robinson
Bobbie Quillan as Francis Robinson (credited as Baby Bobby Quillan)
Christian Rub as Thoren
John Wray as Ramsey
Herbert Rawlinson as Captain
Orson Welles as Narrator (uncredited)
Production notes
The producers specialised in making films based on public domain texts.[2]
Tim Holt was the first star assigned.[3] Freddie Bartholomew and Terry Kilburn were borrowed from MGM.[4] This was the first feature-length film with a performance by Orson Welles, who went uncredited as the story's narrator.
A version running 108 minutes (15 minutes longer than the generally available print) is also screened occasionally.
Critical reception
Upon release
The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Special Effects (Vernon L. Walker, John O. Aalberg).[5][6]
Frank Nugent of The New York Times wrote:
When it stays with the book, which was adventure plus instruction, the film is considerably better. The storm sequences—there are three of them—are properly noisy, drenching and spectacular. The salvage trips to the reef-bound brig, the lessons in candlemaking and ostrich-taking, the recipe for Mrs. Robinson's fish stew, some of the family's minor naturalistic adventures are amusingly, and often excitingly, depicted. They and the uniformly competent performance of the cast make it a moderately entertaining, if rather somnolently paced, story-book film.[7]
Variety called it "a good adventure yarn" but suggested that the tropical storm sequences went on too long, and that Edna Best's hairdo seemed "always too perfect" for a believable castaway.[8] Film Daily called it "an appealing picture for the family trade" and "a genuine accomplishment."[9] Harrison's Reports wrote, "Pretty good entertainment ... adapted with imagination and produced with skill."[10] John Mosher of The New Yorker wrote a mixed review, criticizing the change of the character of the mother from resourceful in the book to "fretful" and "discontented" in the film, a mood that "pervades the story and saps the vigor of the adventure element." However, Mosher thought that "Some pleasant domestic animals and a pet or two add variety", and he found the tropical storm "satisfactory."[11]
The movie recorded a loss of $180,000.[1]
Contemporary critics
Leonard Maltin calls the 93-minute version an "Excellent adaptation of [the] Johann Wyss book", and writes that it "boasts impressive special effects, strong performances, and much darker elements than the Disney film Swiss Family Robinson".[12]
The film is one of Oscar-winning film director James Ivory's favorite movies. Ivory is quoted as saying that he liked the idea of the Robinsons transforming their deserted island with their London furnishings salvaged from their shipwreck, saying, "Swiss Family Robinson … appealed to my boyhood taste for disasters."
Swiss Family Robinson (1960) https://rumble.com/v4zojek-swiss-family-robinson-1960.html
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a 1938 American drama film produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Norman Taurog who had previously directed Huckleberry Finn (1931) with Jackie Coogan and Junior Durkin. The film starred Tommy Kelly in the title role, with Jackie Moran and Ann Gillis. The screenplay by John V. A. Weaver was based on the classic 1876 novel of the same name by Mark Twain. The movie was the first film version of the novel to be made in color.
Plot
The United Artists release includes most of the sequences familiar to readers of the book, including the fence-whitewashing episode; a wild raft ride down the Mississippi River; Tom and Huckleberry Finn's attendance at their own funeral, after the boys, who were enjoying an adventure on a remote island, are presumed dead; the murder trial of local drunkard Muff Potter; and Tom and Becky Thatcher's flight through a cave as they try to escape Injun Joe, who is revealed to be the real killer.
Cast
Tommy Kelly as Tom Sawyer
Jackie Moran as Huckleberry Finn
Ann Gillis as Becky Thatcher
May Robson as Aunt Polly
Walter Brennan as Muff Potter
Victor Jory as Injun Joe
David Holt as Sid Sawyer
Victor Kilian as Sheriff
Nana Bryant as Mrs. Thatcher
Olin Howland as Mr. Dobbins, school teacher
Donald Meek as Sunday School Superintendent
Charles Richman as Judge Thatcher
Margaret Hamilton as Mrs. Harper
Marcia Mae Jones as Mary Sawyer
Mickey Rentschler as Joe Harper
Cora Sue Collins as Amy Lawrence
Philip Hurlic as Little Jim
Frank McGlynn Sr. as Minister (uncredited)
Roland Drew as Dr. Robinson (uncredited)
Spring Byington as Widow Douglas (uncredited)
Production notes
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was the fourth film adaptation of the Twain novel, following versions released in 1907, 1917, and 1930, and this is the first filmed in Technicolor.
H. C. Potter originally was signed to direct but was fired and replaced by Taurog after George Cukor declined the assignment.[4] Cukor directed some scenes, but received no on-screen credit for his contributions.
Tommy Kelly, a Bronx fireman's son, was selected for the title role through a national campaign waged by producer David O. Selznick, who later would conduct a similar search for an actress to portray Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. According to a 1937 memo he sent to story editor Katharine Brown, he originally hoped to cast an orphan as Tom, feeling such a stunt would receive "tremendous attention and arouse such a warm public feeling that it would add enormously to the gross of the picture."[5] Kelly failed to achieve the star status of fellow child actor Freddie Bartholomew, and after an inconsequential career he retired and later became a school teacher.[6]
After reading the comment cards completed by an audience at a sneak preview of the film, Selznick sent director Taurog a memo expressing concern about the climactic scene in the cave, which many viewers had described as "too horrible for children." He advised Taurog "this worried me, because we certainly want the picture to be for a family audience," and as a result he was cutting a close-up of Becky, in which her hysteria was "perhaps a shade too much that of a very ill woman, rather than that of a little girl," "with regrets."[7]
On the strength of the designs for the cave sequence executed by William Cameron Menzies, Selznick hired him for Gone with the Wind.[8]
Some exterior scenes were filmed at Big Bear Lake, Lake Malibu, Paramount Ranch in Agoura, California, and RKO's Encino movie ranch. Other scenes were filmed on recycled sets left over from A Star is Born (1937), such as the Blodgett family home interior (kitchen, living room, and bedroom), and a silhouette of a wolf howling at the Moon. Mississippi River long shots from Tom Sawyer would later be reused in MGM's 1951 musical Show Boat.
Reception
The movie premiered at the Radio City Music Hall, and B. R. Crisler of The New York Times wrote that Tommy Kelly was "a miracle of casting" and called the film "one of the better pictures of the year" on the strength of the source material alone, but also criticized the film for including scenes of "cheap and obvious" slapstick involving such things as tomatoes and cake icing. Crisler told producer David O. Selznick to "get busy on 'Gone with the Wind', will you, before WE begin throwing tomatoes."[9] Variety wrote that Selznick had "pulled no financial punches" in mounting the production and that while the film was generally faithful to the book, an "excellent job" had been done on the new dialogue written for the screen.[10] Film Daily called it "a triumph for all concerned."[11] John Mosher of The New Yorker praised Kelly and Gillis as "altogether very much the Twain children" and called Weaver's screenplay "excellent".[12]
Time Out London called the film "extraordinarily handsome to look at, with exquisite Technicolor camerawork by Wong Howe and some imaginative designs . . . [it] has its longueurs, but it does capture the sense of a lazy Mississippi summer and much of the spirit of the book, with Jory making a superbly villainous Injun Joe."[13]
TV Guide described it as "a lively production featuring a quick pace, a chilling climax, and a surprising amount of wit."[14]
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W. W. Phelps - Joseph Smith's Last Dream
His dream of coming to Heaven. Two days before his martyrdom, Joseph Smith told W. W. Phelps about a prophetic dream he had a few nights prior. W. W. Phelps did not publish the account until 1862, but when he did, he titled it: "Joseph Smith's Last Dream."
Joseph Smith, the founder and leader of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his brother, Hyrum Smith, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, United States, on June 27, 1844, while awaiting trial in the town jail.
As mayor of the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, Joseph Smith had ordered the destruction of the facilities used to print the Nauvoo Expositor, a newly-established newspaper created by a group of non-Mormons and others who had seceded from Smith's church, the Church of Christ. The newspaper's first (and only) issue was highly critical of Smith and other church leaders, reporting that Smith was practicing polygamy and claiming he intended to set himself up as a theocratic king. In response, a motion to declare the newspaper a public nuisance was passed by the Nauvoo City Council, and Smith consequently ordered its press destroyed.[1]
The destruction of the press led to public outrage, and the Smith brothers and other members of the Nauvoo City Council were charged with inciting a riot. Warrants for Joseph Smith's arrest were dismissed by Nauvoo courts. Smith declared martial law in Nauvoo and called on the Nauvoo Legion to protect the city. After briefly fleeing Illinois, Smith returned and, along with Hyrum, voluntarily traveled to the county seat at Carthage to face the charges. After surrendering to authorities, the brothers were also charged with treason against Illinois for declaring martial law.
The Smith brothers were detained at Carthage Jail awaiting trial when an armed mob of 150–200 men stormed the building, their faces painted black with wet gunpowder. Hyrum was killed almost immediately when he was shot in the face, shouting as he fell, "I am a dead man!"[2] After emptying his pistol towards the attackers, Joseph tried to escape from a second-story window, but was shot several times and fell to the ground, where he was shot again by the mob.
Five men were indicted for the killings, but were acquitted at a jury trial. At the time of his death, Smith was also running for president of the United States,[3] making him the first U.S. presidential candidate to be assassinated. Smith's death marked a turning point for the Latter Day Saint movement, and since then, Latter Day Saints have generally viewed him and his brother as religious martyrs who were "murdered in cold blood".[4]
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Background
A monument to Joseph and Hyrum Smith, entitled Last Ride, is in front of the Nauvoo Illinois Temple
Followers of the Latter Day Saint movement began to move into Hancock County, Illinois, in 1839; at the time, most supported the Democratic Party. After their expulsion from the neighboring state of Missouri during the 1838 Mormon War, the Latter Day Saint movement's founder, Joseph Smith, travelled to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Martin Van Buren, seeking intervention and compensation for lost property. Van Buren said he could do nothing to help. Smith returned to Illinois and vowed to join the Whig Party. Most of his supporters switched with him, adding political tensions to the social suspicions in which Smith's followers were held by the local populace.[5]
Nauvoo Expositor
Main article: Nauvoo Expositor
Several of Smith's disaffected associates in Hancock County and in the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, where Smith was mayor, joined together to publish a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor, which put out its first and only issue on June 7, 1844.[6]: v6, p430 Based on allegations by some of these associates, the Expositor reported that Smith practiced polygamy and that he tried to marry the wives of some of his associates. The newspaper further reported that eight of Smith's wives had already been married to other men (four were Latter Day Saints in good standing, who in a few cases acted as witnesses in Smith's marriage to his first wife) at the time they married Smith. Typically, these women continued to live with their first husbands, not Smith. Some accounts say Smith may have had sexual relations with one wife, who later in her life stated that he fathered children by one or two of his wives.[7] The reliability of these sources is disputed by some Mormons.[8]
In response to public outrage generated by the Expositor, the Nauvoo City Council passed an ordinance declaring the newspaper a public nuisance which had been designed to promote violence against Smith and his followers. They reached this decision after some discussion, including citation of William Blackstone's legal canon, which defined a libelous press as a public nuisance. According to the Council's minutes, Smith said he "would rather die tomorrow and have the thing smashed, than live and have it go on, for it was exciting the spirit of mobocracy among the people, and bringing death and destruction upon us."[9]
Under the Council's new ordinance, Smith, as Nauvoo's mayor, in conjunction with the Council, ordered the city marshal to destroy the Expositor and its printing press on June 10, 1844. By the city marshal's account, the destruction of the press type was carried out orderly and peaceably. However, Charles A. Foster, a co-publisher of the Expositor, reported on June 12 that not only was the printing press destroyed, but that "several hundred minions ... injured the building very materially".[10]
Smith's critics said that the action of destroying the press violated freedom of the press. Some sought legal charges against Smith for the destruction of the press, including charges of treason and inciting a riot. Violent threats were made against Smith and the Latter Day Saints. Thomas C. Sharp, editor of the Warsaw Signal in Warsaw, Illinois, a newspaper hostile to the church, editorialized:[11]
War and extermination is inevitable! Citizens ARISE, ONE and ALL!!!—Can you stand by, and suffer such INFERNAL DEVILS! To ROB men of their property and RIGHTS, without avenging them. We have no time for comment, every man will make his own. LET IT BE MADE WITH POWDER AND BALL!!!
Incarceration at Carthage Jail
See also: Joseph Smith and the criminal justice system
An etching of the Carthage Jail, c. 1885
Warrants from outside Nauvoo were brought in against Smith and dismissed in Nauvoo courts on a writ of habeas corpus. Smith declared martial law on June 18[12] and called out the Nauvoo Legion, an organized city militia of about 5,000 men,[13] to protect Nauvoo from outside violence.[12]
In response to the crisis, Illinois Governor Thomas Ford traveled to Hancock County, and on June 21 he arrived at the county seat in Carthage. On June 22, Ford wrote to Smith and the Nauvoo City Council, proposing a trial by a non-Mormon jury in Carthage and guaranteeing Smith's safety. Smith fled the jurisdiction to avoid arrest, crossing the Mississippi River into the Iowa Territory. On June 23, a posse under Ford's command entered Nauvoo to execute an arrest warrant, but they were unable to locate Smith. After he was criticized by some followers, Smith returned and was reported to have said, "If my life is of no value to my friends it is of none to myself."[6]: v6, p549 He reluctantly submitted to arrest. He was quoted as saying, "I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer's morning; I have a conscience void of offense towards God, and towards all men. I shall die innocent, and it shall yet be said of me—he was murdered in cold blood."[14] During the trip to Carthage, Smith reportedly recounted a dream in which he and Hyrum escaped a burning ship, walked on water, and arrived at a great heavenly city.[15]
On June 25, 1844, Smith and his brother Hyrum, along with the other fifteen Council members and some friends, surrendered to Carthage constable William Bettisworth on the original charge of riot. Upon arrival in Carthage, almost immediately the Smith brothers were charged with treason against the State of Illinois for declaring martial law in Nauvoo, by a warrant founded upon the oaths of A. O. Norton and Augustine Spencer. At a preliminary hearing that afternoon, the Council members were released on $500 bonds, pending later trial. The judge ordered the Smith brothers to be held in jail until they could be tried for treason, which was a capital offense.[citation needed]
Smuggled gun used by Smith to shoot Wills, Vorhease, and Gallaher[16]
The Smith brothers were detained at Carthage Jail, and were soon joined by Willard Richards, John Taylor and John Solomon Fullmer. Six other associates accompanied the Smiths: John P. Greene, Stephen Markham, Dan Jones, John S. Fullmer, Dr. Southwick, and Lorenzo D. Wasson.[17]
Ford left for Nauvoo not long after Smith was jailed. The anti-Mormon[5] "Carthage Greys", a local militia, were assigned to protect the brothers. Jones, who was present, relayed to Ford several threats against Joseph made by members of the Greys, all of which were dismissed by Ford.[18]
On Thursday morning, June 27, church leader Cyrus Wheelock, having obtained a pass from Ford, visited Smith in jail. The day was rainy, and Wheelock used the opportunity to hide a small pepper-box pistol in his bulky overcoat,[19] which had belonged to Taylor.[20] Most visitors were rigidly searched,[21] but the guards forgot to check Wheelock's overcoat,[22] and he was able to smuggle the gun to Smith. Smith took Wheelock's gun and gave Fullmer's gun to his brother Hyrum.
Attack
The door in Carthage Jail through which the mob fired. There is a bullet hole in the door.
Hit by a ball, Smith fell from the second story window
Before a trial could be held, a mob of about 200 armed men, their faces painted black with wet gunpowder, stormed Carthage Jail in the late afternoon of June 27, 1844. As the mob was approaching, the jailer became nervous and informed Smith of the impending attack. In a letter dated July 10, 1844, one of the jailers wrote that Smith, expecting the Nauvoo Legion, said, "Don't trouble yourself ... they've come to rescue me."[23] Smith did not know that Jonathan Dunham, major general of the Nauvoo Legion, had not dispatched the unit to Carthage to protect him. Allen Joseph Stout later contended that by remaining inactive, Dunham disobeyed an official order written by Smith after he was jailed in Carthage.[24]
The Carthage Greys reportedly feigned defense of the jail by firing shots or blanks over the attackers' heads, and some of the Greys even reportedly joined the mob, who rushed up the stairs.[23] The mob first attempted to push the door open to fire into the room, though Smith and the other prisoners pushed back and prevented this. A member of the mob fired a shot through the door. Hyrum was shot in the face, just to the left of his nose, which threw him to the floor. He cried out, "I am a dead man!" and collapsed. He died instantly.[25]
Smith, Taylor, and Richards attempted to defend themselves. Taylor and Richards used a long walking stick in order to deflect the guns as they were thrust inside the room, from behind the door. Smith fired Wheelock's pistol.[26] Three of the six barrels misfired,[27] but the other three shots are believed to have wounded three of the attackers.[28][29]
Taylor was shot four or five times and was severely wounded, but survived. It has been popularly believed that his pocket watch stopped one shot. The watch is displayed in the LDS Church History Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah; the watch was broken and was used to help identify the time of the attack. In 2010, forensic research by J. Lynn Lyon of the University of Utah and Mormon historian Glen M. Leonard suggested that Taylor's watch was not struck by a ball, but rather broke against a window ledge.[30] Columbia University historian Richard Bushman, the author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, also supports this view.
Pocket watch worn by John Taylor during the killings of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.
Richards, physically the largest of Smith's party, escaped unscathed; Lyon speculates that after the door opened, Smith was in the line of sight and Richards was not targeted.[31]
After using all of the shots in his pistol, Smith made his way towards the window. As he prepared to jump down, Richards reported that he was shot twice in the back and that a third bullet, fired from a musket on the ground outside, hit him in the chest.[6]: v6, p620 Taylor and Richards' accounts both report that as Smith fell from the window, he called out, "Oh Lord, my God!" Some have alleged that the context of this statement was an attempt by Smith to use a Masonic distress signal.[32]
1851 lithograph of Smith's body being mutilated. (Library of Congress)
There are varying accounts of what happened next. Taylor and Richards' accounts state that Smith was dead when he hit the ground. Eyewitness William Daniels wrote in his 1845 account that Smith was alive when members of the mob propped his body against a nearby well, assembled a makeshift firing squad, and shot him before fleeing. Daniels' account also states that one man tried to decapitate Smith for a bounty but was prevented by divine intervention. That affirmation later was denied.[33] Additional reports said that thunder and lightning frightened off the mob.[34] Mob members fled, shouting, "The Mormons are coming," although there was no such force nearby.[35]
After the attack was over, Richards, who was trained as a medical doctor, went back to see if anyone besides himself had survived, and found Taylor lying on the floor. Richards dragged Taylor into the jail cell (they had not been held in the cell, but in the guard's room across the hallway). He dragged Taylor under some of the straw mattress to put pressure on his wounds and slow the bleeding and then went to get help. Both Richards and Taylor survived. Taylor eventually became the third president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Richards had escaped all harm except for a bullet grazing his ear.
Joseph's younger brother Samuel Harrison Smith had come to visit the same day and, after evading capture from a group of attackers, is said to have been the first Latter Day Saint to arrive and helped attend the bodies back to Nauvoo. He died thirty days later, possibly as a result of injuries sustained avoiding the mob.[36]
Side of Carthage Jail, c. 1890, showing the well
Injuries to mob members
There have been conflicting reports about injuries to members of the mob during the attack, and whether any died. Shortly after the events occurred, Taylor wrote that he heard that two of the attackers died when Smith shot them with his pistol.[6]: v7, p102
Most accounts seem to agree that at least three attackers were wounded by Smith's gunfire, but there is no other evidence that any of them died as a result. John Wills was shot in the arm, William Vorhease was shot in the shoulder, and William Gallaher was shot in the face.[37][38] Others claimed that a fourth unnamed man was also wounded.[38] Wills, Vorhease, Gallaher, and a Mr. Allen (possibly the fourth man) were all indicted for the murder of the Smith brothers. Wills, Vorhease, and Gallaher, perhaps conscious that their wounds could prove that they were involved in the mob, fled the county after being indicted and were never brought to trial.[39] Apart from Taylor's report of what he had heard, there is no evidence that Wills, Vorhease, Gallaher, or Allen died from their wounds.[40]
Interment
See also: Smith Family Cemetery
Joseph and Hyrum Smith's bodies were returned to Nauvoo the next day. The bodies were cleaned and examined, and death masks were made, preserving their facial features and structures.
A public viewing was held on June 29, 1844, after which empty coffins weighted with sandbags were used at the public burial. (This was done to prevent theft or mutilation of the bodies.) The coffins bearing the bodies of the Smith brothers were initially buried under the unfinished Nauvoo House, then disinterred and deeply reburied under an out-building on the Smith homestead.
In 1928, Frederick M. Smith, president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church) and grandson of Joseph Smith, feared that rising water from the Mississippi River would destroy the grave site. He authorized civil engineer William O. Hands to conduct an excavation to find the Smiths' bodies. Hands conducted extensive digging on the Smith homestead and located the bodies, as well as finding the remains of Joseph's wife, Emma, who was buried in the same place. The remains—which were badly decomposed—were examined and photographed, and the bodies were reinterred close by in Nauvoo.
Current gravesite of Joseph, Hyrum, and Emma Smith
Current gravesite of Joseph, Hyrum, and Emma Smith
Death Mask of Hyrum Smith. Note the bullet hole to the left of his nose.
Death Mask of Hyrum Smith. Note the bullet hole to the left of his nose.
Death Mask of Joseph Smith.
Death Mask of Joseph Smith.
Responsibility and trial
After the killings, there was speculation about who was responsible. Ford denied accusations that he knew about the plot to kill Smith beforehand, but later wrote that it was good for Smith's followers to have been driven out of the state and said that their beliefs and actions were too different to have survived in Illinois. He said Smith was "the most successful impostor in modern times,"[41] and that some people "expect more protection from the laws than the laws are able to furnish in the face of popular excitement."[42]
Ultimately, five defendants—Thomas C. Sharp, Mark Aldrich, William N. Grover, Jacob C. Davis and Levi Williams—were tried for the murders of the Smith brothers. All five defendants were acquitted by a jury, which was composed exclusively of non-Mormon members after the defense counsel convinced the judge to dismiss the initial jury, which did include Mormon members.[43] The defense was led by Orville Hickman Browning, later a United States senator and cabinet member. [44]
Consequences in the Latter Day Saint movement
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Main articles: Succession crisis (Latter Day Saints) and Apostolic succession (LDS Church)
After the killing of Smith, a succession crisis occurred in the Latter Day Saint movement. Hyrum Smith, the Assistant President of the Church, was intended to succeed Joseph as President of the Church,[45] but because he was killed alongside his brother, the proper succession procedure became unclear.
Initially, the primary contenders to succeed Smith were Sidney Rigdon, Brigham Young, and James Strang. Rigdon was the senior surviving member of the First Presidency, a body that had led the Latter Day Saint movement since 1832. At the time of Smith's death, he was estranged from Smith due to differences in doctrinal beliefs. Young, president of the Quorum of the Twelve, claimed authority was handed by Smith to the Quorum. Strang claimed that Smith designated him as the successor in a letter that was received a week before his death. Later, others came to believe that Smith's son, Joseph Smith III, was the rightful successor under the doctrine of lineal succession.
A schism resulted, with each claimant attracting followers. The majority of Latter Day Saints followed Young; these adherents later emigrated to what became Utah Territory and continued as the LDS Church. Rigdon's followers were known as Rigdonites, some of which later established The Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite). Strang's followers established the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite). In the 1860s, those who felt that Smith should have been succeeded by Joseph Smith III established the RLDS Church, which later changed its name to the Community of Christ.
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Joseph Smith - Windows at Liberty Jail
"Windows at Liberty" is a unique painting of the Prophet Joseph Smith's experience in Liberty Jail by Andrew Knaupp.
To learn more about Andrew Knaupp, please visit http://www.artbyandrewk.com
Music by Rob Gardner. http://www.spiremusic.org
"The dungeon at Liberty Jail had inner and outer walls which, combined, were four feet thick. Loose rocks were placed between the walls to thwart any attempt at burrowing through. Unjustly arrested and unjustly confined, Joseph and his companions tried twice to escape but failed. As thick as those walls and that door were, and as securely as they kept the Prophet and his fellow prisoners in, the walls were not thick enough to keep revelation out!" - Elder Neal A. Maxwell
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Hank Williams - Angel Of Death
Song called Angel of Death - Hiram King "Hank" Williams (September 17, 1923 – January 1, 1953) was an American singer-songwriter. He is regarded as one of the most significant and influential American singers and songwriters of the 20th century. Williams recorded 55 singles that reached the top 10 of the Billboard Country & Western Best Sellers chart, five of which were released posthumously, and 12 of which reached No.1.
Born and raised in Alabama, Williams learned guitar from African-American blues musician Rufus Payne. Both Payne and Roy Acuff significantly influenced his musical style. After winning an amateur talent contest, Williams began his professional career in Montgomery in the late 1930s playing on local radio stations and at area venues such as school houses, movie theaters, and bars. He formed the Drifting Cowboys backup band, which was managed by his mother, and dropped out of school to devote his time to his career. Because his alcoholism made him unreliable, he was fired and rehired several times by radio station WSFA, and had trouble replacing several of his band members who were drafted during World War II.
In 1944, Williams married Audrey Sheppard, who competed with his mother to control his career. After recording "Never Again" and "Honky Tonkin'" with Sterling Records, he signed a contract with MGM Records. He released the hit single "Move It On Over" in 1947 and joined the Louisiana Hayride radio program. The next year he released a cover of "Lovesick Blues", which quickly reached number one on Billboard's Top Country & Western singles chart and propelled him to stardom on the Grand Ole Opry. Although unable to read or notate music to any significant degree, he wrote such iconic hits as "Your Cheatin' Heart", "Hey, Good Lookin'", and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry". In 1952, Sheppard divorced him and he married Billie Jean Horton. He was dismissed by the Grand Ole Opry because of his unreliability and alcoholism.
Years of back pain, alcoholism, and prescription drug abuse severely compromised Williams' health, and at the age of 29, Williams suffered from heart failure and died unexpectedly in the back seat of a car near Oak Hill, West Virginia, en route to a concert in Canton, Ohio, on New Year's Day 1953. Despite his relatively brief career, he is one of the most celebrated and influential musicians of the 20th century, especially in country music. Many artists have covered his songs and he has influenced Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones, among others. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, the Native American Music Awards Hall of Fame in 1999, and gained a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2010, he was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for his "craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life."
Early life
Williams' family house in Georgiana, Alabama
Hank Williams was born Hiram Williams on September 17, 1923, in the rural community of Mount Olive in Butler County, Alabama.[1] He was the third child of Jessie Lillybelle "Lillie" (née Skipper; 1898–1955) and Elonzo Huble "Lon" Williams (1891–1970).[2] Williams was of English ancestry and Welsh ancestry.[3][4][5][6][7] Elonzo's family came from south and central Alabama,[8] and his father fought during the American Civil War, first on the Confederate side, and then with the Union after he was captured.[9] Elonzo was a railroad engineer for the W. T. Smith lumber company and was drafted during World War I, serving from July 1918 to June 1919. He suffered severe injuries after falling from a truck, breaking his collarbone, and receiving a severe blow to the head.[2]
The Williams' first child, Ernest Huble Williams, died two days after his birth on July 5, 1921. A daughter, Irene, was born a year later. Williams was named after Hiram I of the Book of Kings.[10] His name was misspelled as "Hiriam" on his birth certificate, which was prepared and signed when he was 10 years old.[11] Williams was born with spina bifida occulta, a birth defect of the spinal column that caused him lifelong pain and became a major factor in his later alcohol and drug abuse.[12] At the age of three, Williams sat with his mother as she played the organ at the Mount Olive Baptist Church. Lillie also joined singing the hymns that influenced the singer's later compositions. Williams received his first musical instrument, a harmonica, at the age of six.[13] As a child, he was nicknamed "Harm" by his family and "Herky" or "Skeets" by his friends.[14]
Williams' father frequently relocated for work, and as a result the family lived in several southern Alabama towns. In 1930, when Williams was seven years old, Elonzo began experiencing facial paralysis. After being evaluated at a Veterans Affairs clinic in Pensacola, Florida, doctors determined that he had a brain aneurysm, and Elonzo was sent to the VA Medical Center in Alexandria, Louisiana.[15] He remained hospitalized for eight years and was mostly absent throughout Williams' childhood. From that point on, Lillie assumed responsibility for the family.[16]
In the fall of 1933, Williams was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, Walter and Alice McNeil, in Fountain, Alabama. Their daughter, Opal, went in exchange to live with Lillie to attend school in Georgiana, Alabama. Williams learned to play basic guitar chords from his aunt and listened to music that was played at dances and in area churches.[17] The following year, the Williams family moved to Greenville, Alabama, where Lillie opened a boarding house next to the local cotton gin.[18] The family later returned with Opal McNeil to Georgiana, where Lillie took several side jobs to support the family despite the bleak economic climate of the Great Depression. She worked in a cannery and served as a night-shift nurse in the local hospital. Their first house burned down, and the family lost their possessions. They moved to Rose Street on the other side of town, into a house which Williams' mother soon turned into another boarding house. The house had a small garden in which they grew diverse crops that Williams and his sister Irene sold around Georgiana.[19] At a chance meeting in Georgiana, Williams' sister Irene met U.S. Representative J. Lister Hill while Hill was campaigning across Alabama. She told Hill that her mother was interested in talking to him about her problems. With Hill's help, the family began collecting Elonzo's disability pension.[20] Despite his medical condition, the family managed fairly well financially throughout the Great Depression.[21]
My Bucket's Got a Hole in It
Duration: 14 seconds.0:14
The popular song "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" became a hit for Hank Williams in 1949.
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There are several versions of how Williams got his first guitar. While several prominent Georgiana residents later claimed to have bought it for him, his mother said she bought it for him and that she arranged for his first lessons.[22] Williams told Ralph Gleason, who at the time was writing a weekly music column in the San Francisco Chronicle, "When I was about eight years old, I got my first git-tar. A second-hand $3.50 git-tar my mother bought me."[23] Gawky and shy, Williams attached himself to an old black man, Rufus "Tee-Tot" Payne, a street performer whom Williams followed around town. Payne gave Williams guitar lessons in exchange for money or meals prepared by Lillie.[24] Payne's basic musical style was blues; he repeatedly stressed the importance of maintaining good rhythm and time,[25] and he added the showmanship of stoops, bows, laughs and cries to his performances.[26] Later on, Williams recorded "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It", one of the songs Payne had taught him.[27] Williams was also influenced by country acts such as Roy Acuff.[28] In 1937, Williams got into a fight with his physical education teacher about exercises the coach wanted him to do. His mother subsequently demanded that the school board terminate the coach; when they refused, the family moved to Montgomery, Alabama.[29] Payne and Williams lost touch, though Payne also eventually moved to Montgomery, where he died in poverty in 1939.[30] Williams later credited him as the provider of the only musical training he ever had.[31]
Career
1930s
Williams performing in Montgomery in 1938
In July 1937, the Williams and McNeils opened a boarding house on South Perry Street in downtown Montgomery. It was at this time that Williams decided to change his name informally from Hiram to Hank.[32] During the same year, he participated in a talent show at the Empire Theater and won the first prize of US$15 (equivalent to $300 in 2023) singing his first original song "WPA Blues". Williams wrote the lyrics and used the tune of Riley Puckett's "Dissatisfied".[33]
He never learned to read music; instead he based his compositions in storytelling and personal experience.[31] After school and on weekends, Williams sang and played his Silvertone guitar on the sidewalk in front of the WSFA radio studio.[34] His recent win at the Empire Theater and the street performances caught the attention of WSFA producers who occasionally invited him to perform on air with Dad Crysel's band.[35]
In August 1938, Elonzo Williams was temporarily released from the hospital. He showed up unannounced at the family's home in Montgomery. Lillie was unwilling to let him reclaim his position as the head of the household. Elonzo stayed to celebrate his son's birthday in September before he returned to the medical center in Louisiana.[36]
Williams' successful radio show fueled his entry into a music career, and he started his own band for show dates, the Drifting Cowboys. The original members were guitarist Braxton Schuffert, fiddler Freddie Beach, and comedian Smith "Hezzy" Adair.[37] Originally billed as "Hank and Hezzy and the Drifting Cowboys", they frequently appeared as fill-ins at the local dancehall, Thigpen's Log Cabin, just out of Georgiana.[38] The band traveled throughout central and southern Alabama performing in clubs and at private gatherings. James Ellis Garner later played fiddle for him. Lillie Williams became the Drifting Cowboys' manager. Williams dropped out of school in October 1939 so that he and the Drifting Cowboys could work full-time. Lillie Williams began booking show dates, negotiating prices and driving them to some of their shows.[39] Now free to travel without deference to Williams' schooling, the band could tour as far away as western Georgia and the Florida Panhandle.[40] The band started playing in theaters before the screening of films and later they played in honky-tonks. Williams' alcohol use started to become a problem during the tours; on occasion he spent a large part of the show revenues on alcohol. Meanwhile, between tour schedules, Williams returned to Montgomery to host his radio show.[41]
1940s
Williams, Sheppard, and the Drifting Cowboys band in 1951
The American entry into World War II in 1941 marked the beginning of hard times for Williams. While he was medically disqualified from military service after falling from a bull during a rodeo in Texas and suffering a back injury, his band members were all drafted to serve. Many of their replacements quit the band due to Williams' worsening alcoholism, and in August 1942 WSFA fired him for "habitual drunkenness". Backstage during one of his concerts, Williams met Roy Acuff, who warned him of the dangers of alcohol, saying, "You've got a million-dollar voice, son, but a ten-cent brain."[42]
He started a job as a shipfitter's helper for the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company at Mobile in 1942,[43] working there off and on for about a year and a half during the war. He also worked briefly at Kaiser Shipyards in Portland, Oregon, apparently lured by the free tickets, free accommodations, free training, and good wages offered by the company.[44] In 1943, Williams met Audrey Sheppard at a medicine show in Banks, Alabama. According to Sheppard, she and Williams lived in a hotel in Mobile while they worked together at the shipyard for a short while.[45] Sheppard told Williams that she wanted to help him regain his radio show, and that they should move to Montgomery and start a band. The couple were married in 1944 at a Texaco gas station in Andalusia, Alabama, by a justice of the peace. The marriage was technically invalid, since Sheppard's divorce from her previous husband did not comply with the legally required 60-day reconciliation period.[46]
In 1945, back in Montgomery, Williams returned to WSFA radio. He attempted to expand his repertoire by writing original songs,[47] and he published his first songbook, Original Songs of Hank Williams, containing "I'm Not Coming Home Anymore" and several more original songs,[48] nine in all, including one not written by him, "A Tramp on the Street".[49] With Williams beginning to be recognized as a songwriter, Sheppard became his manager and occasionally sang and substituted on guitar when a band member did not make the show.[50]
On September 14, 1946, Williams auditioned for Nashville's Grand Ole Opry at the recommendation of Ernest Tubb, but was rejected. After the failure of his audition, Williams and Audrey attempted to interest the recently formed music publishing firm Acuff-Rose Music. They approached Fred Rose, the president of the company, during one of his daily ping-pong games at WSM radio studios. Audrey asked Rose if her husband could sing a song for him at that moment, Rose agreed, and perceived that Williams had much promise as a songwriter.[51] Rose signed Williams to a six-song contract, and leveraged this deal to sign Williams with Sterling Records. On December 11, 1946, in his first recording session, Williams recorded "Wealth Won't Save Your Soul", "Calling You", "Never Again (Will I Knock on Your Door)", and "When God Comes and Gathers His Jewels", which was misprinted as "When God Comes and Fathers His Jewels".[52] The Sterling releases of Williams' songs became successful, and Rose decided to find a larger label for future releases. The producer then approached the newly formed recording division of the Loews Corporation, MGM Records.[53]
Lovesick Blues
Duration: 14 seconds.0:14
A major hit for Hank Williams, "Lovesick Blues" moved him to the mainstream of country music and assured him a position in the Grand Ole Opry.
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Williams signed with MGM Records in 1947 and released "Move It on Over", which became a country hit.[54] In 1948, he moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, and joined the Louisiana Hayride, a radio show broadcast on KWKH that brought him into living rooms all over the Southeastern United States, appearing in weekend shows. As part of the arrangement, Williams got a program on the station and bookings through the Hayride's artist service to perform across western Louisiana and eastern Texas, always returning on Saturdays for the show's weekly broadcast.[55] After a few more moderate hits, in 1949 he released his version of the 1922 Cliff Friend and Irving Mills song "Lovesick Blues", made popular by Rex Griffin.[56] Williams' version was a hit; the song stayed at number one on the Billboard charts for four consecutive months.[57] Following the success of the releases of "Lovesick Blues" and "Wedding Bells", Williams signed a management contract with Oscar Davis. Davis then booked the singer on a Grand Ole Opry package show, and he later negotiated Williams' induction into the musical troupe.[58]
On June 11, 1949, Williams made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry, where he received six encores.[59] He brought together Bob McNett (guitar), Hillous Butrum (bass), Jerry Rivers (fiddle) and Don Helms (steel guitar) to form the most famous version of the Drifting Cowboys.[60] That year Audrey Williams gave birth to Randall Hank Williams (Hank Williams Jr.).[61] During 1949, he joined the Grand Ole Opry's first European tour, performing in military bases in Germany and Austria.[62] Williams had five songs that ranked in the top five Billboard Hot Country Singles that year including: "Wedding Bells", "Mind Your Own Business", "You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave)", "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It", and "Lovesick Blues", which reached No. 1.[63]
1950s
By 1950, Williams earned an estimated $1,000 per show (equivalent to $12,700 in 2023).[64] That year, he began recording as "Luke the Drifter" for his moral-themed songs, many of which are recitations rather than singing. Fred Rose had been concerned how it would affect the jukebox operators who serviced the machines at the honky-tonks where William's songs were most commonly played if a customer punched a "Hank Williams" selection on a jukebox and heard a sermon rather than the music expected. It was he who requested that Hank use a pseudonym for these recitations to avoid leading people astray.[65] Although the real identity of Luke the Drifter was supposed to be unknown, Williams often performed part of the recorded material on stage. Most of the material was written by Williams himself, although Fred Rose wrote at least one piece, and others, according to his son Wesley, were collaborations between Williams, Rose, and himself.[66] The songs depicted Luke the Drifter traveling around from place to place, narrating stories of different characters[67] and philosophizing about relationships gone awry, injustice in society, and death.[68] Performances of the compositions included only Williams' voice, an organ, a bass fiddle, and Helms' steel guitar.[69]
Around this time Williams released more hit songs, such as "My Son Calls Another Man Daddy", "Why Should We Try Anymore", "Long Gone Lonesome Blues", "Why Don't You Love Me", and "I Just Don't Like This Kind of Livin'".[70] In 1951, "Dear John" became a hit, but it was the B-side, "Cold, Cold Heart", that became one of his most recognized songs.[71] A pop cover version by Tony Bennett released the same year stayed on the charts for 27 weeks, peaking at number one.[72]
Beyond the Sunset
Duration: 19 seconds.0:19
One characteristic of Williams' recordings as "Luke the Drifter" is the use of narration rather than singing.
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Williams' career reached a peak in the late summer of 1951 with his Hadacol tour of the U.S. with Bob Hope and other actors. On the weekend after the tour ended, Williams was photographed backstage at the Grand Ole Opry signing a motion picture deal with MGM.[73] In October, Williams recorded a demo, "There's a Tear in My Beer" for a friend, "Big Bill Lister", who had recorded "Beer Drinking Blues", a beer drinking song that sold well, and needed another one. The session was recorded by the head of A&R for Capitol Records, Ken Nelson. Afterwards Lister stored the demo acetate, with no markings, in a box of records kept at his house, and then when he moved, in his yard under a tarp for several years. He eventually gave the acetate to Hank Williams, Jr., who had a hit with it and an accompanying video which depicted the son playing with his father in an overdubbed dream sequence.[74] The following month, MGM Records released Williams' debut album, Hank Williams Sings. On November 14, 1951, Williams drove with Bill Lister and the Drifting Cowboys to New York where he appeared on television for the first time with Perry Como on CBS's Perry Como Show.[75] There he sang "Hey Good Lookin'", and the next week Como opened the show wearing a cowboy hat and singing the same song, with apologies to Williams.[76]
On May 21, 1951, Williams was admitted to North Louisiana Sanitarium in Shreveport for treatment of his alcoholism and his back problem, and was released on May 24.[77] In November of the same year, he fell trying to leap across a gully on a squirrel hunting trip with his fiddler Jerry Rivers in Franklin, Tennessee. The fall aggravated his congenital spinal condition, [78] and on December 13, 1951, he underwent a spinal fusion at Vanderbilt University Hospital. He was discharged against medical advice on Christmas Eve wearing a back brace and consuming more painkillers, to the detriment of his already compromised health.[79]
Williams performing in 1951
In the spring of 1952, Williams flew to New York City twice with his band and a Grand Ole Opry troupe to appear on two episodes of the nationally broadcast The Kate Smith Evening Hour.[80] On March 26, he performed "Hey Good Lookin'" and joined the rest of the cast in singing "I Saw the Light."[81] On April 23, he performed "Cold, Cold Heart" and sang a truncated "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)" with Anita Carter, and later joined the cast in singing "Glory Bound Train."[82] During the same year, Williams had a brief extramarital affair with dancer Bobbie Jett, resulting in the birth of their daughter, Jett Williams.[83]
In June 1952, he recorded "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)", "Window Shopping", "Settin' the Woods on Fire", and "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive". Audrey Williams divorced him that year; the next day he recorded "You Win Again" and "I Won't Be Home No More".[84] Around this time, he met Billie Jean Jones, a girlfriend of country singer Faron Young, at the Grand Ole Opry. As a girl, Jones had lived down the street from Williams when he was with the Louisiana Hayride, and now Williams began to visit her frequently in Shreveport, causing him to miss many Grand Ole Opry appearances.[85]
On August 11, 1952, Williams was dismissed from the Grand Ole Opry for habitual drunkenness and missing shows. He returned to Shreveport to perform on KWKH and WBAM shows and in the Louisiana Hayride, for which he toured again. His performances were acclaimed when he was sober, but despite the efforts of his work associates to get him to shows sober, his abuse of alcohol resulted in occasions when he did not appear or his performances were poor.[86] In October 1952 he married Billie Jean Jones.[87]
During his last recording session on September 23, 1952, Williams recorded "Kaw-Liga", along with "Your Cheatin' Heart", "Take These Chains from My Heart", and "I Could Never Be Ashamed of You". By the end of 1952, Williams started to have heart problems.[88] He met Horace "Toby" Marshall in Oklahoma City, who said that he was a doctor. Marshall had been previously convicted for forgery, and had been paroled and released from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 1951. Among other fake titles, he said that he was a Doctor of Science. He purchased the DSC title for $25 from the Chicago School of Applied Science; in the diploma, he requested that the DSc be spelled out as "Doctor of Science and Psychology". Under the name of Dr. C. W. Lemon he prescribed Williams with amphetamines, Seconal, chloral hydrate, and morphine, which made his heart problems worse.[89] The final concert of his 1952 tour was held in Austin, Texas, at the Skyline Club on December 19.[90] Williams' last known public performance took place in Montgomery, on December 21, where he sang at a benefit held by the local chapter of the American Federation of Musicians for a radio announcer who had polio.[91][92]
Personal life
Williams and his first wife Audrey Sheppard in a publicity photo for MGM Records, c. 1952
On December 15, 1944, Williams married Audrey Sheppard. It was her second marriage and his first.[93] Their son, Randall Hank Williams (now known as Hank Williams Jr.), was born on May 26, 1949.[94] The marriage was always turbulent and rapidly disintegrated,[95] and Williams developed serious problems with alcohol, morphine, and other painkillers prescribed for him to ease the severe back pain caused by his spina bifida occulta.[96] The couple divorced on May 29, 1952.[97]
In June 1952, Williams moved into a house on the corner of Natchez Trace and Westwood Avenue in Nashville, sharing it with singer Ray Price.[98][99] Price left soon after due to Williams' alcoholism.[100] Following an unsuccessful tour of California and several stints in a sanitorium, Williams moved to his mother's boardinghouse by September.[101] A relationship with a woman named Bobbie Jett during this period resulted in a daughter, Jett Williams, who was born five days after Williams died. His mother adopted Jett, who became a ward of the state after her grandmother's death. She was adopted and raised by an unrelated couple and did not learn that she was Williams' daughter until the early 1980s.[102]
On October 18, 1952, Williams and Billie Jean Jones were married by a justice of the peace in Minden, Louisiana. The next day, two public marriage ceremonies were held at the New Orleans Civic Auditorium, where 14,000 seats were sold for each.[103] After Williams' death, a judge ruled that the wedding was not legal because Jones' divorce had not become final until 11 days after she married Williams. His first wife and his mother were the driving forces behind having the marriage declared invalid, and they pursued the matter for years.[104]
A man named Lewis Fitzgerald (born 1943) claimed to be Williams' illegitimate son; he was the son of Marie McNeil, Williams' cousin. Fitzgerald was interviewed, and he suggested that Lillie Williams operated a brothel at her boarding house in Montgomery. A friend of the family denied his claims, but singer Billy Walker remembered that Williams mentioned to him the presence of men in the house who were led upstairs.[105]
Death
Main article: Death of Hank Williams
Williams was scheduled to perform at the Municipal Auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia, on December 31, 1952. Advance ticket sales totaled $3,000.[106] That day, Williams could not fly because of a snow storm in the Montgomery area; he hired a college student, Charles Carr, to drive him to the concerts.[107] On December 30, Williams and Carr stopped at the Redmont Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama. The following morning, they continued to Fort Payne, and then to Knoxville, Tennessee. Williams and his driver then took a flight to Charleston, but the plane returned to Knoxville due to bad weather.[108] Back in Knoxville, the two arrived at the Andrew Johnson Hotel, and Carr requested a doctor for Williams, who was affected by the combination of the chloral hydrate and alcohol he had consumed on the way to Knoxville.[109] Dr. P. H. Cardwell injected Williams with two shots of vitamin B12 that also contained a quarter-grain of morphine. Carr and Williams checked out of the hotel, but the porters had to carry Williams to the car. Carr later mentioned that Williams had severe hiccups, while the porters said that he had made a coughing sound twice.[110] Carr spoke with Toby Marshall on the phone, who informed him on behalf of the tour's promoter, A.V. Bamford, that the show in Charleston was cancelled and he ordered him instead to drive Williams to Canton, Ohio, for a New Year's Day concert there.[111]
Entrance marker of the Oakwood Annex Cemetery in Montgomery, Alabama
Around midnight on January 1, 1953, the two crossed the Tennessee state line and arrived in Bristol, Virginia. Carr stopped at a small all-night restaurant and asked for a relief driver from a local taxi company, as he felt exhausted after driving for 20 hours. Driver Don Surface left the restaurant with Carr and Williams. They drove on until they stopped for fuel and coffee at a gas station in Oak Hill, West Virginia, where they realized that Williams had been dead for so long that rigor mortis had already set in. The station's owner called the local police chief.[112] Dr. Ivan Malinin performed the autopsy at the Tyree Funeral House.[113] He found hemorrhages in the heart and neck and pronounced the cause of death as "acute rt. ventricular dilation".[114] He also wrote that Williams had been severely beaten and kicked in the groin recently (during a fight in a Montgomery bar a few days earlier), and local magistrate Virgil F. Lyons ordered an inquest into Williams' death concerning a welt that was visible on his head.[113] That evening in Canton, when Williams' death was announced to the gathered crowd, a few people started laughing because they thought it was a joke. Akron deejay Cliff Rodgers assured the crowd that it was no joke and that Hank Williams was indeed dead. When Hawkshaw Hawkins and other performers started singing Williams' song "I Saw the Light" as a tribute to him, the crowd began to sing along.[115]
On January 2, Williams' body was transported to Montgomery, Alabama, where it was placed in a silver casket that was displayed at his mother's boarding house for two days. His funeral took place on January 4 at the Montgomery Auditorium, with his casket placed on the flower-covered stage. Mourners came to Montgomery from all over the South, and beyond.[116] An estimated 15,000 to 25,000 people were outside the auditorium, and inside were 2,750, with the balcony set aside for about 200 black mourners. Hundreds passed by the casket.[117] Backed by the Drifting Cowboys, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb and Red Foley performed "I Saw the Light", "Beyond the Sunset" and "Peace in the Valley".[118] Williams' remains are interred at the Oakwood Annex in Montgomery.[119]
In late January 1953, MGM Records told Billboard magazine that the label had to reduce their planned releases for the month from 12 records to 6 to satisfy the demand for Williams' music. The label estimated that the amount of back orders of his records, and those by other artists would cover the production of their Bloomfield, New Jersey, pressing plant until April 1953. Meanwhile, MGM Records received 3,000 direct requests for pictures of the singer, that combined with the requests from the distributors made the company outsource their printing and shipment. According to Acuff-Rose Music, the sales from the two Williams song folios jumped from their average of 700 per week to 5,000 in three weeks.[120]
Williams' final single, released in November 1952 while he was still alive, was titled "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive". His song "Your Cheatin' Heart" was written and recorded in September 1952, but released in late January 1953 after his death. The song, backed by "Kaw-Liga", was No. 1 on the country charts for six weeks. "Take These Chains From My Heart" was released in April 1953 and reached No. 1 on the country charts.[121][122] Released in July, "I Won't Be Home No More" went to No. 4. Meanwhile, "Weary Blues From Waitin'" reached No. 7.[123]
Legacy
Hank Williams' star at 6400 Hollywood Boulevard, on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Country Music Hall of Fame stressed that Williams "set the agenda for contemporary country songcraft" and the "standard by which success is measured in country music".[124] Encyclopædia Britannica considers him "country music's first superstar" and an "immensely talented songwriter and an impassioned vocalist".[125] The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame praised the "straightforward approach" of Williams' songs, which they deemed "brutally honest" and written in the "language of the everyman".[126] To AllMusic, Williams "established the rules for all the country performers who followed him and, in the process, much of popular music".[127]
Entertainment Weekly's TV critic, Ken Tucker, wrote: "despite being a pop-culture titan and rightly dubbed "father of country music", Hank Williams was possibly the least likable — least warm and sympathetic — figure in modern music. Reeking of self-pity, he wrote and sang some of the greatest woe-is-me music of the century [...] Brimming with an anger that regularly spilled over into misogyny, Williams was also a master of spite".[128] Hank Williams, Jr. wrote in his autobiography: "To hear the tributes, one would think that the entire city [Nashville] took turns kissing Daddy while he was still alive. [...] While he was alive, he was despised and envied; after he died, he was some kind of saint."[129]
Alabama governor Gordon Persons officially proclaimed September 21 "Hank Williams Day".[130] The first celebration, in 1954, featured the unveiling of a monument at the Cramton Bowl that was later placed at the gravesite of Williams. The ceremony featured Ferlin Husky interpreting "I Saw the Light".[131][132] Williams had 11 number one country hits in his career ("Lovesick Blues", "Long Gone Lonesome Blues", "Why Don't You Love Me", "Moanin' the Blues", "Cold, Cold Heart", "Hey, Good Lookin'", "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)", "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive", "Kaw-Liga", "Your Cheatin' Heart", and "Take These Chains from My Heart"), as well as many other top 10 hits.[133]
Many artists of the 1950s and 1960s, including Elvis Presley,[134] the Beatles,[135] Bob Dylan,[136] George Jones,[137] Tammy Wynette,[138] Jerry Lee Lewis,[139] Merle Haggard,[140] Gene Vincent,[141] and Ricky Nelson and Conway Twitty were influenced by Williams.[142]
When Downbeat magazine took a poll the year after Williams' death, he was voted the most popular country and Western performer of all time.[143] On February 8, 1960, Williams' star was placed at 6400 Hollywood Boulevard on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[144] He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961, and into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1985.[124][145]
In 1964, the biographical film Your Cheatin' Heart starring George Hamilton as Williams was released.[146] The American Truckers Benevolent Association, a national organization of CB truck drivers, voted "Your Cheatin' Heart" as their favorite record of all time in the fourth annual Truck Drivers' Country Music Awards, in 1978.[147] In 1987, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame under the category "Early Influence",[126] and he was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.[148] He was ranked second in CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music in 2003, behind only Johnny Cash who recorded the song "The Night Hank Williams Came To Town". His son, Hank Jr., was ranked on the same list.[149] Canadian singer Sneezy Waters performed as Williams in the stage play Hank Williams: The Show He Never Gave.[150] A 1980 movie adaptation also starring Waters was produced for television.[151]
In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him number 74 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[152] In 2005, the BBC documentary series Arena featured an episode on Williams.[153]
In 2010, Williams' 1949 MGM number one hit, "Lovesick Blues", was inducted into the Recording Academy Grammy Hall of Fame.[154] The same year, Hank Williams: The Complete Mother's Best Recordings ...Plus! was honored with a Grammy nomination for Best Historical Album.[155] In 1999, Williams was inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame.[156] On April 12, 2010, the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded Williams a posthumous special citation that paid tribute to his "craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life".[157]
Hank Williams, Jr.
=
Williams' grandson, Hank Williams III
Several of Williams' descendants became musicians: son Hank Williams Jr., daughter Jett Williams, grandsons Hank Williams III and Sam Williams, and granddaughters Hilary Williams and Holly Williams are also country musicians.[158][159][160] In July 2020, his granddaughter Katherine (Hank Jr.'s daughter) died in a car crash at the age of 27.[161] His great-grandson Coleman Finchum, son of Hank Williams III, released his debut single credited to IV and the Strange Band in 2021.[162] Meanwhile, Lewis Fitzgerald's son Ricky billed himself as Hank Williams IV following his father's claim of being Williams' son.[163]
According to reportage in the Los Angeles Times, on his road trips Williams carried a brown leather briefcase containing notebooks in which he wrote musings, lines and verses of song lyrics, as well as jottings on whatever had been handy. After he died, the cache of sixty-six unpublished songs in four notebooks was stored in a fireproof vault at the Nashville offices of his publishing firm, Acuff-Rose Publications. The vault was moved in 2002 to the offices of Sony ATV Music when it acquired Acuff-Rose.[164]
After the 2001 tribute album, "Hank Williams: Timeless" won a Grammy Award for country album of the year, there was heightened interest in similar projects. A&R executive Mary Martin, one of the producers of "Timeless", was consulted about other means of drawing attention to material from the Williams archive. She said that Bob Dylan was given the first opportunity to perform 12 songs for a CD compilation. Dylan approached Williams' granddaughter Holly Williams at a show where he gave her a sheaf of song lyrics he wanted her to read. She later said that although Dylan had said nothing about them at first, she recognized them immediately as her grandfather's work. He then said he had been asked to possibly cut an entire album, or that he might have other artists perform them. She heard nothing more about it for two years until Mary Martin revived the project and she got a phone call from her publishing company saying it was time for her to pick up some samples of the available material.[165]
Consequently, several other musicians got involved in the project, their main task being to create music that suited the lyrics. Dylan chose a song called "The Love That Faded" and fashioned a "honky-tonk waltz through heartache", while Holly Williams combed through the songs and songs fragments and chose one called "Blue Is My Heart", which had only eight lines. She wrote two more and added a bridge. The completed album, named The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams, included the contributions of Bob Dylan and Holly Williams, as well as recordings by Alan Jackson, Jack White, Jakob Dylan,[164] Lucinda Williams, Norah Jones, Vince Gill, Rodney Crowell, Patty Loveless, Levon Helm, Sheryl Crow, and Merle Haggard. The album was released on October 4, 2011.
Material recorded by Williams, originally intended for radio broadcasts to be played when he was on tour or for its distribution to radio stations nationwide, resurfaced over the years.[166] In 1993, a double-disc set of recordings of Williams for the Health & Happiness Show was released.[167] Broadcast in 1949, the shows were recorded for the promotion of Hadacol. The set was re-released on Hank Williams: The Legend Begins in 2011. The album included the unreleased songs "Fan It" and "Alexander's Ragtime Band", recorded by Williams at age 15; the homemade recordings of him singing "Freight Train Blues", "New San Antonio Rose", "St. Louis Blues" and "Greenback Dollar" at age 18; and a recording for the 1951 March of Dimes.[168]
In May 2014, further radio recordings by Williams were released. These were recordings of The Garden Spot Programs, 1950, a series of publicity segments for plant nursery Naughton Farms originally aired in 1950. The recordings were found by collector George Gimarc at radio station KSIB in Creston, Iowa.[169] Gimarc contacted Williams' daughter Jett, and Colin Escott, a music historian and biographer of Williams. The material was restored and remastered by Michael Graves and released by Omnivore Recordings.[170][171] The release won a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album.[172]
Williams was portrayed by English actor Tom Hiddleston in the 2016 biopic I Saw the Light, based on Colin Escott's 1994 book Hank Williams: The Biography.[173] In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Williams at No. 30 on their list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.[174] For the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Hank Williams Museum organized a three-day event in Montgomery that consisted of a series of concerts at the Davis Theater at Troy University and a wreath-laying ceremony at Williams' graveside as the closing event.[175] At the ceremony, September 17, 2023 was proclaimed Hank Williams Day.[176] Meanwhile, in Nashville, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum organized a concert featuring artists including Rodney Crowell and Williams' grandchildren Holly, Hillary, and Sam among others.[177] On the anniversary, Billboard commented that Williams was a "breakthrough songwriter" who "remains a mythological figure".[178]
Lawsuits over the estate
Williams died without leaving a will. In May 1953, Audrey Williams filed a lawsuit in Nashville against MGM Records and Acuff-Rose. The suit demanded that both of the publishing companies continue to pay her half of the royalties from Hank Williams' records. Williams had an agreement giving his first wife half of the royalties, but allegedly there was no clarification that the deal was valid after his death. Because Williams left no will, the disposition of the remaining 50 percent was considered uncertain; those involved included Williams' second wife, Billie Jean Horton and Williams' mother and sister.[179]
At the time of his death, Williams' estate was estimated to be US$13,329.25 (equivalent to $151,800 in 2023) between cash, a cashier's check and his possessions.[180] Lilly Williams considered the legality of Billie Jean's marriage to her son doubtful and she filed for the control of the estate.[181] Billie Jean's lawyer argued that although she married Williams ten days before the finalization of her divorce to Harrison Eshlimar, Louisiana law considered the union legal since she married "in good faith".[182]
Doubtful of the legality of the marriage in Tennessee and Alabama, Lilly Williams and her lawyers made several offers to settle out of court with Billie Jean that reached a final of US$30,000.[183] On August 19, 1953, Billie Jean signed an agreement accepting the money. It required that she stopped making appearances billing herself as "Mrs. Hank Williams", to reveal the location of Williams' Tennessee Walking Horse, and the return of a saddle and three suitcases that belonged to him. With the agreement, Lilly became the legal guardian of the estate on behalf of Hank Williams, Jr.[184]
Soon after giving birth, Bobbie Jett left her and Williams' daughter at Lilly's boardinghouse. Williams' mother expressed to the Montgomery County Department of Public Welfare in January 1953 her intention to adopt the child. While Irene Williams opposed the adoption, Williams' mother was granted the custody over the child she renamed "Cathy".[185] Upon Lilly's death in 1955, Irene Williams assumed control of the estate.[183] She became thus the legal guardian of Williams' son, while refused to adopt Cathy. Irene made an attempt to contact Bobbie Jett, who was at the time married and lived in California. Jett refused to take the child since her husband did not know of the existence of her daughter with Williams.[186] Cathy was then put up for adoption and granted money from the estate of Lilly Williams, to be paid at the age of 21.[187]
In 1963, Wesley Rose contacted Irene regarding the copyright renewals with Acuff-Rose: Rose offered US$25,000 (equivalent to $248,800 in 2023),[188] which Irene accepted to prevent Williams' daughter from making a claim in the future.[189] In 1966, an Alabama judge determined that the guardianship of Williams' estate belonged to Irene Williams, and he confirmed the validity of the copyright renewal deal. Cathy's adoptive parents were contacted by a lawyer, but they refused to contest the ruling of the court.[190] In 1967, Hank Williams, Jr. was declared the only heir to the estate by a second judge.[191] In 1969, the guardianship of the estate was transferred to lawyer Robert Stewart after Irene was arrested and sentenced to a jail term for possession of cocaine by a Texas court.[183] Hank Williams, Jr. reached legal adulthood in 1970.[189]
On October 22, 1975, a federal judge in Atlanta, Georgia, ruled that Billie Jean Horton was Williams' common-law wife, and that part of the copyright renewals of the songs belonged to her.[191] At the age of 21, Cathy learned that Hank Williams was her biological father. In 1981, she found her half-siblings in California, and she learned of a 1951 contract between her biological parents that recognized her as Williams' daughter. She also learned that the court decisions of the 1960s ignored her existence. After a decision by the Supreme Court of Alabama in 1989, she was recognized as an heir of the estate of Williams. She later changed her name to Jett Williams.[192]
WSM's Mother's Best Flour
In 1951, Williams hosted a 15-minute show for Mother's Best Flour on WSM radio. Due to Williams' tour schedules, some of the shows were previously recorded to be played in his absence.[193] During the mid-1960s, WSM staff photographer Les Leverett rescued acetates that were thrown away by the station.[194] At a later point, the recordings were duplicated.[195] In the 1980s, he shared the acetates with Williams' former band member Jerry Rivers. A decade later, Leverett made a deal with former Drifting Cowboy Hillous Brutum, who did not appear on the recordings, for a commercial release of the copies.[194]
The Legacy Entertainment Group, based in Brentwood, Tennessee, was sued by PolyGram and the heirs of Williams to block the release in 1997. While the original acetates of the shows made their way to the possession of Jett Williams, the lawyer of Legacy Entertainment Group claimed that they belonged to the label and he made an attempt to prevent the heirs of Williams to work on their own release of the recordings. Leverett then told The Tennessean that the original acetates did not belong to Butrum, and that the two of them made a deal to share the profits of the planned Legacy Entertainment Group release.[194] The Universal Music Group, the parent company of Polygram, then claimed ownership of the shows.[195]
In January 2006, the Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling stating that Williams' heirs—son, Hank Williams Jr, and daughter, Jett Williams—have the sole rights to sell his recordings.[196] In 2008, Time-Life released Unreleased Recordings, a selection of numbers pertaining to the Mother's Best Flour shows. In 2010, the company released a 15-CD box-set containing all of the recordings remastered by sound engineer Joe Palmaccio entitled The Complete Mothers' Best Recordings... Plus!.[197]
Tributes
Main article: List of tributes to Hank Williams
Awards
Year Award Awards Notes References
1987 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award 29th Annual Grammy Awards Posthumously [148]
1989 Grammy for Best Country Vocal Collaboration ("There's a Tear in My Beer") Grammy with Hank Williams Jr. [198]
1989 Music Video of the Year ("There's a Tear in My Beer") CMA with Hank Williams Jr. [199]
1989 Vocal Event of the Year ("There's a Tear in My Beer") CMA with Hank Williams Jr.
1990 Video of the Year ("There's a Tear in My Beer") Academy of Country Music with Hank Williams Jr. [200]
1990 Vocal Collaboration of the Year ("There's a Tear in My Beer") TNN/Music City News with Hank Williams Jr. [201]
1990 Video of the Year ("There's a Tear in My Beer") TNN/Music City News with Hank Williams Jr.
2010 Special Awards and Citation for his pivotal role in transforming country music The Pulitzer Prize Posthumously [157]
Discography
Main article: Hank Williams discography
See also: List of songs written by Hank Williams
Footnotes
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 6.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 4–6.
"Cowtown Birthplace of Western Swing - Hank Williams".
Breverton, Terry (2009). Wales: A Historical Companion. Amberley Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-4456-0990-4.
"Luke the Drifter and the Secrets of Country | ABCtales".
"Cowtown Birthplace of Western Swing - Hank Williams".
Ribowsky, Mark (2016). Hank: The Short Life and Long Country Road of Hank Williams. Liveright Publishing. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-63149-158-0.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 5.
Ribowsky, Mark 2016, p. 15.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 3.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 6–7.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 10.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 11.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 7.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 9.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, pp. 8–10.
Hemphill, Paul 2005, pp. 18–21.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 13–14.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, pp. 10–14.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 27.
Hemphill, Paul 2005, pp. 16–17.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 20.
Betts, Stephen L. 2019.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, pp. 20–26.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 12.
Hemphill, Paul 2005, p. 23.
Brackett, David 2000, p. 98.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 21–23.
Masino, Susan 2011, p. 11.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 229.
Rankin, Allen 1951, p. 3C.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 19–21.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 16.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 28.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 16–17.
Hemphill, Paul 2005, p. 30.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 20–21.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 37.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 16–18.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 24.
Hemphill, Paul 2005, pp. 34–37.
Hemphill, Paul 2005, pp. 39–40.
Lipsitz 1994, p. 26.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 33.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 34–35, 38–39.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 23–24.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 42.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 41–42.
Williams, Hank 1945.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, pp. 56–57.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, pp. 58–60.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 59–60.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 64–65.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, pp. 66–67.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, pp. 69–71.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 98–99.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 100.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 109, 113, 116.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 41–42.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 46–50.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 43.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 131.
Young, William H. & Young, Nancy K. 2010, p. 235.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 50.
Hemphill, Paul 2005, pp. 117–118.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 129.
Hurd, Mary G. 2015, p. 12.
Wilmeth 2014, p. 250.
Hemphill, Paul 2005, pp. 118.
Billboard staff 1951, p. 19.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 155–159.
Whitburn, Joel 1991, p. 26.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 190.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 180-181.
Ribowsky, Mark 2016, p. 191.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 191–193.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 153, 154.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 63.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 63, 153–154.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 209, 211.
CMHoF 2023a.
CMHoF 2023b.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 209, 226–227.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 213–216.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 201-204.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, pp. 197–199.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 70.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 67.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 74.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 255–256.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 75, 154.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 212.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 22–24.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 40.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 26, 36–38.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 9–10.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 96.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 202.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 193.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 195.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 65–67.
Williams, Hilary & Roberts, Mary Beth 2010, p. 127.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 68–70.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, pp. 233–236.
Ribowsky, Mark 2016, p. 43.
Lilly, John 2002, pp. 64–65.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 213.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 265–266.
Olson, Ted 2004, p. 295.
Olson, Ted 2004, pp. 296–298.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 267.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 268–270.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 271.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 78.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 275–276.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, pp. 223–224.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 276–280.
Hemphill, Paul 2005, p. 190.
Peterson, Richard A. 1997, p. 182.
Billboard staff 1953a, p. 15.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 199.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 288–289.
Whitburn, Joel 2002, p. 391.
CMHoF 2023c.
Wallenfeldt, Jeff 2023.
RockHall 2023.
Erlewine, Stephen Thomas 2013.
Tucker, Ken 1998.
Williams & Bane 1979, p. 64.
Outlook staff 1954, p. 1.
Andersen, Fred 1954, pp. 1-2.
Ribowsky, Mark 2016, p. 292.
George-Warren, Holly et al. 2001, p. 1066.
Guralnick, Peter 1999, p. 224.
Schneider, M. 2008, p. 30.
Dylan, Bob 2004, p. 96.
Isenhour, Jack 2011, p. 134.
McDonough, Jimmy 2010, pp. 35–36.
Bragg, Rick 2014, pp. 92–93.
Haggard, Merle & Carter, Tom 1999, p. 74.
Hagarty, Britt 1983, p. 22.
Selvin, Joel 1990, p. 165.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 140.
Walk of Fame staff 2013.
AlamHof 2003.
Hemphill, Paul 2005, pp. 192–193.
Vanderslice, Paula 1978, p. 7A.
Oermann, Robert K. 1987, p. 5E.
CMT staff 2004.
McPherson, David 2017, pp. 94–95.
Mulholland, Dave 1981, p. 4C.
Rolling Stone staff 2014.
BBC staff 2005.
Cooper, Peter 2010, p. 3A.
Hughes, Mike 2011, p. 5C.
Herald-Journal staff 1999, p. A2.
Keiper, Nicole 2010, p. 3A.
Chiu, David 2010.
AP staff 2008.
Betts, Stephen L. 2018.
Pasquini, Maria 2020.
Harmon, Bryce 2021.
Savingcountrymusic.com 2021.
Lewis, Randy 2011.
Talbott, Chris 2011.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 153–154.
Hinckley, David 1993, p. 58.
Flippo, Chet 2011b.
Mansfield, Brian 2014.
Vigeland, Tess 2014.
Elliot, Gwendolyn 2014.
Stefano, Angela 2015.
Michaels, Sean 2014.
Rolling Stone staff 2023.
WSFA 2023.
Avant, Julia 2023.
Sauter, Danica 2023.
Roland, Tom 2023.
Billboard staff 1953b, p. 15.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 233.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 234.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, pp. 234–235.
Williams, Roger M. 1981, p. 235.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 288.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, pp. 285–286.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 289.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 290.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 85.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 293.
Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2009, p. 294.
Koon, George William 2001, p. 87.
Koon, George William 2001, pp. 89–90.
Hilbourn, Robert 2008.
Underwood, Ryan 2006, p. 2A.
Ragogna, Mike 2010.
AP staff 2006.
Hyperbolium 2010.
Kot, Greg 1990, p. 28 (section 1).
Oermann, Robert K. & Goldsmith, Thomas 1989, p. 6D.
Wilson, Jeff 1990, p. 6D.
Goldsmith, Thomas & Oermann, Robert K. 1990, p. 3D.
References
AlamHof (2003). "1985 Inductee: Lifework Award for Performing Achievement". The Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on February 13, 2003. Retrieved October 4, 2011.
Andersen, Fred (September 22, 1954). "Crowds Pack Cramton Bowl To Close Hank Williams Days". The Montgomery Advertiser. Vol. 126, no. 227. Retrieved May 17, 2023 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
AP staff (January 24, 2006). "Hank Williams' heirs own rights to recordings". Associated Press. Retrieved June 27, 2023.
AP staff (April 17, 2008). "New exhibit explores Hank Williams' family legacy". Yahoo!. Associated Press. Archived from the original on March 18, 2013. Retrieved March 14, 2011.
Avant, Julia (September 18, 2023). "'Hank Williams Day' declared on his 100th birthday". Gray Media Group, Inc. Retrieved September 25, 2023.
BBC staff (February 5, 2005). "Hank Williams - Honky Tonk Blues". BBC. Retrieved February 10, 2021.
Betts, Stephen L. (September 18, 2018). "Hilary Williams on Triumphant New Album 'My Lucky Scars,' Family Legacy". Rolling Stone. Retrieved February 8, 2020.
Betts, Stephen L. (September 17, 2019). "Flashback: Hear Hank Williams' Recorded Debut With 'Fan It' and 'Alexander's Ragtime Band'". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on September 20, 2019. Retrieved June 18, 2023.
Billboard staff (January 13, 1951). "The Year's Top Country & Western Artists/The Year's Top Country & Western Records". The Billboard. Vol. 63, no. 2. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved April 10, 2023 – via Google Books. Open access icon
Billboard staff (January 31, 1953a). "In-Pouring of Tributes to Williams Continues". Billboard. Vol. 65, no. 5. Retrieved April 17, 2023 – via Google Books. Open access icon
Billboard staff (May 23, 1953b). "File Action to Untangle Hank Williams Estate". Billboard. Vol. 65, no. 21. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved March 13, 2011 – via Google Books. Open access icon
Brackett, David (2000). Interpreting popular music. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-22541-1.
Bragg, Rick (2014). Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story. Canongate Books. ISBN 978-0-857-86160-3. Retrieved July 12, 2023 – via Archive.org.
Chiu, David (November 2, 2010). "Hilary Williams Details Her Brush with Death in 'Sign of Life'". theboot.com. Retrieved July 8, 2020.
CMHoF (2023a). "The Kate Smith Evening Hour w/ Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, The Carter Family, The Duke of Paducah, June Carter and Ethel and Albert. [video recording]". Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum Digital Collections. Retrieved June 12, 2023.
CMHoF (2023b). "The Kate Smith Evening Hour, 4/23/1952. [video recording]". Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum Digital Collections. Retrieved June 12, 2023.
CMHoF (2023c). "Hank Williams". The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Retrieved March 15, 2023.
CMT staff (2004). "The Greatest: 40 Greatest Men of Country Music". Country Music Television. Archived from the original on April 14, 2009. Retrieved March 23, 2023.
Cooper, Peter (December 10, 2010). "Country titles enter Grammy Hall of Fame". The Tennessean. Retrieved March 23, 2023 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
Dylan, Bob (2004). Chronicles: Volume One. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-743-22815-2.
Elliot, Gwendolyn (May 24, 2014). "Newly Discovered Hank! 'The Garden Spot Programs' 1950". American Standard Time. Archived from the original on July 1, 2014.
Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (2013). "Hank Williams Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved May 12, 2023.
Escott, Colin; Merritt, George; MacEwen, William (2009). Hank Williams: The Biography. Hachette UK. ISBN 978-0-316-07463-6.
Flippo, Chet (September 15, 2011b). "Nashville Skyline: Johnny Cash and Hank Williams: Got Some More Music Here". Country Music Television. Archived from the original on May 28, 2014. Retrieved March 20, 2023.
George-Warren, Holly; Romanowski, Patricia; Romanowski Bashe, Patricia; Pareles, Jon (2001). The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. Fireside. ISBN 978-0-7432-0120-9.
Goldsmith, Thomas; Oermann, Robert K. (June 6, 1990). "Rick Van Shelton Tops TNN Awards". New York: Press and Sun-Bulletin. Gannett News Service. Retrieved February 8, 2021 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
Guralnick, Peter (1999). Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-33222-4.
Hagarty, Britt (1983). The Day the World Turned Blue. Talon Books. ISBN 0-88922-214-2. Retrieved July 12, 2023 – via Archive.org.
Haggard, Merle; Carter, Tom (1999). My House of Memories. Cliff Street Books. ISBN 0-06-019308-5. Retrieved July 12, 2023 – via Archive.org.
Harmon, Bryce (August 4, 2021). "IV & The Strange Band Set for Muddy Roots in September as Coleman Carries on Country Legacy". The Murfreesboro Pulse. Archived from the original on August 12, 2021.
Hemphill, Paul (2005). Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams. New York: Penguin Group. ISBN 0-670-03414-2.
Herald-Journal staff (November 9, 1999). "Hank Williams: Native American group Inducts Him". Herald-Journal. Vol. 154, no. 313. Retrieved June 25, 2010 – via Google News Archive. Open access icon
Hilbourn, Robert (October 28, 2008). "There's Plenty Cookin'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 14, 2011.
Hinckley, David (April 9, 1993). "Saving Brown's Soul". New York Daily News. Retrieved April 3, 2023 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
Hughes, Mike (February 13, 2011). "Grammys cover their tracks". Lansing State Journal. Retrieved March 23, 2023 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
Hurd, Mary G. (2015). Kris Kristofferson: Country Highwayman. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8108-8821-0.
Hyperbolium (October 7, 2010). "Review: Hank Williams – The Complete Mothers' Best Recordings... Plus! (Time Life, 2010)". No Depression. Retrieved June 27, 2023.
Isenhour, Jack (2011). He Stopped Loving Her Today: George Jones, Billy Sherrill, and the Pretty-much Totally True Story of the Making of the Greatest Country Record of All Time. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-617-03102-1.
Keiper, Nicole (May 30, 2010). "Jett Williams Accepts Hank's Pulitzer". The Tennessean. Retrieved April 3, 2023 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
Koon, George William (2001) [1983]. Hank Williams, So Lonesome. University of Mississippi press. ISBN 978-1-57806-283-6.
Kot, Greg (February 22, 1990). "Raitt's revival is confirmed by 4 Grammys". Chicago Tribune. Vol. 143, no. 53. Retrieved April 3, 2023 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
Lewis, Randy (October 2, 2011). "'Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams' finds good company in Bob Dylan". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on April 3, 2023. Retrieved April 3, 2023.
Lilly, John (2002). "Hank's Lost Charleston Show". Goldenseal. West Virginia Division of Culture and History. Archived from the original on June 28, 2011. Retrieved March 14, 2023.
Lipsitz, George (1994). Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-06394-7.
Mansfield, Brian (March 28, 2014). "Hear a newly discov
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Sister Wives - Mariah Brown
Apostate and former Fundamentalist Mormon, Mariah Brown, daughter of Kody Brown comes out as a depraved homosexual. She thinks that she is a "They" now but is only one person and now calls herself "Leo" as if changing your name makes you any less of a female. God will judge you for your depravity more harshly because you know the Truth but reject it.
6
views
Warren Jeffs - Rock Music
Prophet and Leader of the FLDS speaks of the rock music and immorality that leads from following the ways of the negro and his music.
Negro
This article is about the historical term. For the outdated race concept, see Negroid. For other uses, see Negro (disambiguation) and Negress (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with nigger.
In the English language, the word negro (or sometimes negress for a female) is a term historically used to denote people considered to be of Black African heritage. The word negro means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese (from Latin niger), where English took it from.[1] The term can be construed as offensive, inoffensive, or completely neutral, largely depending on the region or country where it is used, as well as the time period and context in which it is applied. It has various equivalents in other languages of Europe.
In English
A European map of West Africa, 1736. Included is the archaic mapping designation of Negroland.
Around 1442, the Portuguese first arrived in Southern Africa while trying to find a sea route to India.[2][3] The term negro, literally meaning 'black', was used by the Spanish and Portuguese as a simple description to refer to the Bantu peoples that they encountered. Negro denotes 'black' in Spanish and Portuguese, derived from the Latin word niger, meaning 'black', which itself is probably from a Proto-Indo-European root *nekw-, "to be dark", akin to *nokw-, 'night'.[4][5] Negro was also used for the peoples of West Africa in old maps labelled Negroland, an area stretching along the Niger River.
From the 18th century to the late 1960s, negro (later capitalized) was considered to be the proper English-language term for people of black African origin. According to Oxford Dictionaries, use of the word "now seems out of date or even offensive in both British and US English".[1]
A specifically female form of the word, negress (sometimes capitalized), was occasionally used. However, like Jewess, it has completely fallen out of use.
Negroid was used within physical anthropology to denote one of the three purported races of humankind, alongside Caucasoid and Mongoloid. The suffix "-oid" means "similar to". Negroid as a noun was used to designate a wider or more generalized category than Negro; as an adjective, it qualified a noun as in, for example, "negroid features".[6]
United States
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Find sources: "racial labels" colored Negro Black United States – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
"If on no other issue than this one [the capitalization of the word Negro], Du Bois and Washington were in total agreement; each of them consistently urged the adoption of upper-case treatment by mainstream publications. Du Bois's Suppression and Philadelphia Negro monographs had been among the first to have the noun placed in capitals, and Washington's success in getting Doubleday, Page and Company to capitalize the word in Up From Slavery represented a significant breakthrough."
W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 by David Levering Lewis[7]
Negro superseded colored as the most polite word for African Americans at a time when black was considered more offensive.[8][better source needed][failed verification] In 17th-century colonial America, the term Negro had been also, according to one historian, used to describe Native Americans.[9] John Belton O'Neall's The Negro Law of South Carolina (1848) stipulated that "the term negro is confined to slave Africans, (the ancient Berbers) and their descendants. It does not embrace the free inhabitants of Africa, such as the Egyptians, Moors, or the negro Asiatics, such as the Lascars."[10] The American Negro Academy was founded in 1897, to support liberal arts education. Marcus Garvey used the word in the names of black nationalist and pan-Africanist organizations such as the Universal Negro Improvement Association (founded 1914), the Negro World (1918), the Negro Factories Corporation (1919), and the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World (1920). W. E. B. Du Bois and Dr. Carter G. Woodson used it in the titles of their non-fiction books, The Negro (1915) and The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933) respectively. Du Bois also used in the titles of his books The Study of the Negro Problems (1898) and The Philadelphia Negro (1899). Negro was accepted as normal, both as exonym and endonym, until the late 1960s, after the later Civil Rights Movement. One example is Martin Luther King Jr. self-identification as Negro in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech of 1963.
Prevalence of negro as a demonym has varied in American English. All-Negro Comics was a 1947 comic anthology written by African-American writers and featuring black characters.
However, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, the word Negro began to be criticized as having been imposed by white people, and having connotations of racial subservience and Uncle Tomism. The term Black, in contrast, denoted pride, power, and a rejection of the past. It took root first in more militant groups such as the Black Muslims and Black Panthers, and by 1967, SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael pushed for the abandonment of Negro. After the Newark riots in the summer of 1967, one third to one half of young Black males polled in Newark self-identified as Black. The term coexisted for a while with Negro, with the newer term initially referring only to progressive or radical Blacks, while Negro was used more for the Black establishment.[11]: 499 Malcolm X preferred Black to Negro, but also started using the term Afro-American after leaving the Nation of Islam.[12]
Since the late 1960s, various other terms have been more widespread in popular usage. These include Black, Black African, Afro-American (in use from the late 1960s to 1990) and African American.[13] The word Negro fell out of favor by the early 1970s and major media including Associated Press and The New York Times stopped using it that decade.[14] However, many older African Americans initially found the term black more offensive than Negro.
The term Negro is still used in some historical contexts, such as the songs known as Negro spirituals, the Negro leagues of baseball in the early and mid-20th century, and organizations such as the United Negro College Fund.[15][16] The academic journal published by Howard University since 1932 still bears the title Journal of Negro Education, but others have changed: e.g. the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (founded 1915) became the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History in 1973, and is now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History; its publication The Journal of Negro History became The Journal of African American History in 2001. Margo Jefferson titled her 2015 book Negroland: A Memoir to evoke growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in the African-American upper class.
African-American linguist John McWhorter has bemoaned attacks on the use of Negro in "utterances or written reproductions of the word when referring to older texts and titles". He cites reports that performances or publishing of certain works (William L. Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony, and an anthology of Norman Mailer's works) have been avoided, "out of wariness of the word 'Negro'” used in titles; and of "two cases" between 2020-2021 "of white college professors having complaints filed against them by students for using the word 'Negro' in class when quoting older texts."[17]
The United States Census Bureau included Negro on the 2010 Census, alongside Black and African-American, because some older black Americans still self-identify with the term.[18][19][20] The U.S. Census used the grouping "Black, African-American, or Negro". Negro was used in an effort to include older African Americans who more closely associate with the term.[21] In 2013, the census removed the term from its forms and questionnaires.[22] The term has also been censored by some newspaper archives.[23]
Liberia
The constitution of Liberia limits Liberian nationality to Negro people (see also Liberian nationality law).[24] People of other racial origins, even if they have lived for many years in Liberia, are thus precluded from becoming citizens of the Republic.[25]
In other languages
Spanish language
In Spanish, negro (feminine negra) is most commonly used for the color black, but it can also be used to describe people with dark-colored skin. In Spain, Mexico, and almost all of Latin America, negro (lower-cased, as ethnonyms are generally not capitalized in Romance languages) means just 'black colour' and does not refer by itself to any ethnic or race unless further context is provided. As in English, this Spanish word is often used figuratively and negatively, to mean 'irregular' or 'undesirable', as in mercado negro ('black market'). However, in most Spanish-speaking countries, negro and negra are commonly as a form of endearment, when used to refer to partners or close friends.[26]
Spanish East Indies
"Negritos o Aetas" illustration in Bosquejo Geográfico e Histórico-natural del Archipielago Filipino (Ramón Jordana y Morera, 1885)
In the Philippines, which historically had almost no contact with the Atlantic slave trade, the Spanish-derived term negro (feminine negra) is still commonly used to refer to black people, as well as to people with dark-colored skin (both native and foreign). Like in Spanish usage, it has no negative connotations when referring to black people. However, it can be mildly pejorative when referring to the skin color of other native Filipinos due to traditional beauty standards. The use of the term for the color black is restricted to Spanish phrases or nouns.[27][28]
Negrito (feminine negrita) is also a term used in the Philippines to refer to the various darker-skinned native ethnic groups that partially descended from early Australo-Melanesian migrations. These groups include the Aeta, Ati, Mamanwa, and the Batak, among others. Despite physical appearances, they all speak Austronesian languages and are genetically related to other Austronesian Filipinos. The island of Negros is named after them.[29] The term Negrito has entered scientific usage in the English language based on the original Spanish/Filipino usage to refer to similar populations in South and Southeast Asia.[30] However, the appropriateness of using the word to bundle people of similar physical appearances has been questioned as genetic evidence show they do not have close shared ancestry.[31][32]
Other Romance languages
Italian
In Italian, negro was the archaic form of the adjective nero; as such, the previous form can still be found in literary texts or in surnames (cfr. the English-language surname Black), while the latter form is the only one currently used today. However, the word could also be used as a noun and at a certain point it was commonly used as term equivalent to English negro, but without its offensive connotation. However, under influence from English-speaking cultures, by the 1970s it had been replaced with nero and di colore. Nero was considered a better translation of the English word black, while di colore is a loan translation of the English word colored.[33]
The noun is considered offensive today,[34][35][36] but some attestations of the previous use can still be found.[37]
In Italian law, Act No. 654 of 13 October 1975 (known as the "Reale Act"), as amended by Act No. 205 of 25 June 1993 (known as the "Mancino Act") and Act No. 85 of 24 February 2006, criminalizes incitement to and racial discrimination itself, incitement to and racial violence itself, the promotion of ideas based on racial superiority or ethnic or racist hatred and the setting up or running of, participation in or support to any organisation, association, movement or group whose purpose is the instigation of racial discrimination or violence.[38][39] As the Council of Europe noted in its 2016 report, "the wording of the Reale Act does not include language as ground of discrimination, nor is [skin] color included as a ground of discrimination."[39] However, the Supreme Court, in affirming a lower-court decision, declared that the use of the term negro by itself, if it has a clearly offensive intention, may be punishable by law,[40] and is considered an aggravating factor in a criminal prosecution.[41]
French
Street plate in Medina of Tunis showing, in Arabic and French, Negroes street
In the French language, the existential concept of negritude ('blackness') was developed by the Senegalese politician Léopold Sédar Senghor. The word can still be used as a synonym of sweetheart in some traditional Louisiana French creole songs.[42] The word nègre as a racial term fell out of favor around the same time as its English equivalent negro. Its usage in French today (nègre littéraire) has shifted completely, to refer to a ghostwriter (écrivain fantôme), i.e. one who writes a book on behalf of its nominal author, usually a non-literary celebrity. However, French Ministry of Culture guidelines (as well as other official entities of Francophone regions[43]) recommend the usage of alternative terms.
Haitian Creole
In Haitian Creole, the word nèg (derived from the French nègre referring to a dark-skinned man), can also be used for any man, regardless of skin color, roughly like the terms guy or dude in American English.
Romanian
In the Romanian language, negru can refer to either the color or a black person (as a neutral term).
Germanic languages
The Dutch word neger was considered to be a neutral term, but since the start of the 21st century it is increasingly considered to be hurtful, condescending and/or discriminatory. The consensus among language advice services of the Flemish Government and Dutch Language Union is to use zwarte persoon/man/vrouw ('black person/man/woman') to denote race instead.[44][45][46][47]
In German, Neger was considered to be a neutral term for black people, but gradually fell out of fashion since the 1970s. Neger is now mostly thought to be derogatory or racist.
In Denmark, usage of neger is up for debate. Linguists and others argue that the word has a historical racist legacy that makes it unsuitable for use today. Mainly older people use the word neger with the notion that it is a neutral word paralleling negro. Relatively few young people use it, other than for provocative purposes in recognition that the word's acceptability has declined.[48]
In Swedish and Norwegian, neger used to be considered a neutral equivalent to negro. However, the term gradually fell out of favor between the late 1960s and 1990s. [citation needed]
In West Frisian, the word neger is largely considered to be a neutral term for black people with African roots.[49][50] The word nikker (evil water spirit) is considered to be offensive and derogatory, but not necessarily racist due to the term's historic definition.[50]
Elsewhere
In the Finnish language the word neekeri (cognate with negro) was long considered a neutral equivalent for negro.[51] In 2002, neekeri's usage notes in the Kielitoimiston sanakirja shifted from "perceived as derogatory by some" to "generally derogatory".[51] The name of a popular Finnish brand of chocolate-coated marshmallow treats was changed by the manufacturers from Neekerinsuukko (lit. 'negro's kiss', like the German version) to Brunbergin suukko ('Brunberg's kiss') in 2001.[51] A study conducted among native Finns found that 90% of research subjects considered the terms neekeri and ryssä among the most derogatory epithets for ethnic minorities.[52]
In Turkish, zenci is the closest equivalent to negro. The appellation was derived from the Arabic zanj for Bantu peoples. It is usually used without any negative connotation.
In Russia, the term негр (negr) was commonly used in the Soviet period without any negative connotation, and its use continues in this neutral sense. In modern Russian media, negr is used somewhat less frequently. Чёрный (chyorny, 'black') as an adjective is also used in a neutral sense, and conveys the same meaning as negr, as in чёрные американцы (chyornye amerikantsy, 'black Americans'). Other alternatives to negr are темнокожий (temnokozhy, 'dark-skinned'), чернокожий (chernokozhy, 'black-skinned'). The latter two words are used as both nouns and adjectives. See also Afro-Russian.
See also
Free Negro
Kaffir (racial term)
Nigger
Negrito
Colored
Blackfella
Nigga
Magical Negro, a trope in fiction
The Book of Negroes, a historical document
References
"Negro: definition of Negro in Oxford dictionary (British & World English)". Oxforddictionaries.com. Archived from the original on 9 August 2012. Retrieved 11 May 2014. The word Negro was adopted from Spanish and Portuguese
Thatcher, Oliver. "Vasco da Gama: Round Africa to India, 1497–1498 CE". Modern History Sourcebook. Milwaukee: University Research Extension Co. Retrieved 19 February 2018.
"Vasco da Gama's Voyage of 'Discovery' 1497". South African History Online. Retrieved 19 February 2018.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 2000. p. 2039. ISBN 0-395-82517-2.
Mann, Stuart E. (1984). An Indo-European Comparative Dictionary. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. p. 858. ISBN 3-87118-550-7.
"Queen Charlotte of Britain". pbs.org. Retrieved 19 May 2013.
Lewis, David Levering (1993). W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919. Henry Holt. p. 385. ISBN 0-8050-2621-5.
Nguyen, Elizabeth. "Origins of Black History Month", Spartan Daily, Campus News. San Jose State University. 24 February 2004. Accessed 12 April 2008. Archived 2 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine
"6 Shocking Facts About Slavery, Natives and African Americans". Indian Country Today Media Network. 9 October 2013. Archived from the original on 9 October 2013. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
O'Neall, John Belton. "The Negro Law of South Carolina". Internet Archive. Printed by J.G. Bowman. Retrieved 1 June 2018. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
Smith, Tom W (1992), "Changing Racial Labels: From 'Colored' to 'Negro' to 'Black' to 'African American'.", The Public Opinion Quarterly, 56 (4), OUP, AAPOR: 496–514, doi:10.1086/269339, JSTOR 2749204
Liz Mazucci, "Going Back to Our Own: Interpreting Malcolm X's Transition From 'Black Asiatic' to 'Afro-American'", Souls 7(1), 2005, pp. 66–83.
Christopher H. Foreman, The African-American predicament, Brookings Institution Press, 1999, p. 99.
"When Did the Word Negro Become Socially Unacceptable? - 2010 - Question of the Month - Jim Crow Museum". jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu. Retrieved 17 April 2024.
"UNCF New Brand". Uncf.org. Retrieved 19 May 2013.
Quenqua, Douglas (17 January 2008). "Revising a Name, but Not a Familiar Slogan". The New York Times.
McWhorter, John (7 January 2022). "I Can't Brook the Idea of Banning 'Negro'". The New York Times.
U.S. Census Bureau interactive form, Question 9. Accessed 7 January 2010. Archived 8 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine
CBS New York Local News. Accessed 7 January 2010. Archived 9 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine
"Census Bureau defends 'negro' addition". UPI. 6 January 2010. Retrieved 7 January 2010.
Mcfadden, Katie; Mcshane, Larry (6 January 2010). "Use of word Negro on 2010 census forms raises memories of Jim Crow". Daily News. New York.
Brown, Tanya Ballard (25 February 2013). "No More 'Negro' For Census Bureau Forms And Surveys". NPR. Retrieved 26 June 2021.
"Segregation on buses ruled unconstitutional in 1956". NY Daily News. Retrieved 15 August 2017. Negroes" (http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.2428061.1447081601!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_1200/segregation7a-1-web.jpg) replaced by "[African Americans] {{cite news}}: External link in |quote= (help)
Tannenbaum, Jessie; Valcke, Anthony; McPherson, Andrew (1 May 2009). "Analysis of the Aliens and Nationality Law of the Republic of Liberia". Rochester, NY. doi:10.2139/ssrn.1795122. SSRN 1795122. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
American Bar Association (May 2009). "ANALYSIS OF THE ALIENS AND NATIONALITY LAW OF THE REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA" (PDF). ABA Rule of Law Initiative.
"negro" in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española
Rondilla, Joanne Laxamana (2012). Colonial Faces: Beauty and Skin Color Hierarchy in the Philippines and the U.S. (PhD). University of California, Berkeley.
Manalansan IV, Martin F. (2003). Global Divas. Duke University Press. p. 57. ISBN 9780822385172.
del Castillo, Clem (22 October 2015). "A closer look at our indigenous people". SunStar Philippines. Archived from the original on 11 May 2021. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
Snow, Philip. The Star Raft: China's Encounter With Africa. Cornell Univ. Press, 1989 (ISBN 0801495830)
Catherine Hill; Pedro Soares; Maru Mormina; Vincent Macaulay; William Meehan; James Blackburn; Douglas Clarke; Joseph Maripa Raja; Patimah Ismail; David Bulbeck; Stephen Oppenheimer; Martin Richards (2006), "Phylogeography and Ethnogenesis of Aboriginal Southeast Asians" (PDF), Molecular Biology and Evolution, 23 (12), Oxford University Press: 2480–91, doi:10.1093/molbev/msl124, PMID 16982817, archived from the original (PDF) on 9 April 2008
Chaubey, Gyaneshwer; Endicott, Phillip (1 February 2013). "The Andaman Islanders in a regional genetic context: reexamining the evidence for an early peopling of the archipelago from South Asia". Human Biology. 85 (1–3): 153–172. doi:10.3378/027.085.0307. ISSN 1534-6617. PMID 24297224. S2CID 7774927.
Accademia della Crusca, Nero, negro e di colore, 12 ottobre 2012 [IT]
"'Negro'? Per noi è dispregiativo" ("'Negro'? For us it is a derogatory term") by Beppe Severgnini, Corriere Della Sera, 13 May 2013 (in Italian)
"...the most banned word in the politically correct dictionary..." : From "La Kyenge sdogana la parola tabù - Da oggi si può dire 'negro'" ("Kyenge clears the taboo word - From today we can say 'negro'") by Franco Bechis, Libero Quotidiano, 28 May 2014 (in Italian)
See also Racism in Italy
For example, famed 1960s pop singer Fausto Leali was nicknamed il negro bianco ("the white negro") in Italian media on account of his naturally hoarse style of singing. Compare: "Fausto Leali, il 'negro-bianco' compie 70 anni" ("Fausto Leali, the 'white negro', is 70 years old"), Corriere Brescia, 25 October 2014; "Auguri a Fausto Leali, il 'Negro Bianco' compie 70 anni" ("Felicitations to Fausto Leali, the 'White Negro' is 70 years old"), ANSA, 25 October 2014"; Fausto Leali, i 70 anni del Negro Bianco Archived 21 January 2018 at the Wayback Machine" ("Fausto Leali, the 70 years of the White Negro"), Brescia Oggi, 25 October 2014.
Criminal Code of Italy (excerpts), Legislation online
"ECRI Rerport on Italy" by the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance, Council of Europe, 7 June 2016
"Dare del 'negro' è reato : lo dice la Cassazione" ("Calling out 'negro' is a crime : so says the Supreme Court") by Ivan Francese, Il Giornale, 7 October 2014 (in Italian)
"Razzismo, la Cassazione: 'Insulti, sempre aggravante di discriminazione'" ("Racism, the Supreme Court: 'Insults are always an aggravating factor'"), Quotidiano.net, 15 July 2013
Radio Canada, 1971, "Le Son des Français d'Amérique #3 Les Créoles, interview with Revon Reed
E.g. "prête-plume", Office Québécois de la Langue Française (Quebec Office for the French Language), 2012 (in French)
"Het n-woord". Ninsee
"Standard Dictionary of the Dutch Language: neger". Van Dale (in Dutch). Retrieved 11 August 2020.
"zwarte / neger / negerin". www.taaltelefoon.be (in Dutch). Retrieved 11 August 2020.
"neger". VRT Taal (in Flemish). Retrieved 11 August 2020.
Anne Ringgaard, Journalist. "Hvorfor må man ikke sige neger?". videnskab.dk. Retrieved on 2 January 2016.
"Neger". Taalweb Frysk. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
"Nikker". de Moanne. 9 March 2016. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
Rastas, Anna (2007). Neutraalisti rasistinen? Erään sanan politiikkaa (in Finnish). Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-951-44-6946-6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 February 2020. Retrieved 8 February 2009.
Raittila, Pentti (2002). Etnisyys ja rasismi journalismissa (PDF) (in Finnish). Tampere: Tampere University Press. pp. 25–26. ISBN 951-44-5486-3. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 March 2012. Retrieved 24 May 2010.
External links
Look up negro in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Negro (archaic term).
"Negro" . Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with Negro, Niger, or Niger State. For the colloquial slang term, see Nigga.
Not related to the word "Niggardly".
"N-word" redirects here. For other uses, see N-word (disambiguation) and Nigger (disambiguation).
In the English language, nigger is a racial slur directed at black people. Starting in the 1990s,[1] references to nigger have been increasingly replaced by the euphemism "the N-word", notably in cases where nigger is mentioned but not directly used.[2] In an instance of linguistic reappropriation, the term nigger is also used casually and fraternally among African Americans, most commonly in the form of nigga, whose spelling reflects the phonology of African-American English.[2][3]
The origin of the word lies with the Latin adjective niger ([ˈnɪɡɛr]), meaning "black".[2][3] It was initially seen as a relatively neutral term, essentially synonymous with the English word negro. Early attested uses during the Atlantic slave trade (16th–19th century) often conveyed a merely patronizing attitude. The word took on a derogatory connotation from the mid-18th century onward, and "degenerated into an overt slur" by the middle of the 19th century. Some authors still used the term in a neutral sense up until the later part of the 20th century, at which point the use of nigger became increasingly controversial regardless of its context or intent.[2][3][4]
Because the word nigger has historically "wreaked symbolic violence, often accompanied by physical violence", it began to disappear from general popular culture from the second part of the 20th century onward, with the exception of cases derived from intra-group usage such as hip hop culture.[3] The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary describes the term as "perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory racial slur in English".[3] The Oxford English Dictionary writes that "this word is one of the most controversial in English, and is liable to be considered offensive or taboo in almost all contexts (even when used as a self-description)".[2] Intra-group usage has been criticized by some contemporary Black American authors, a group of them (the eradicationists) calling for the total abandonment of its usage (even under the variant nigga), which they see as contributing to the "construction of an identity founded on self-hate".[3][5][6][7] In wider society, the inclusion of the word nigger in classic works of literature (as in Mark Twain's 1884 book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and in more recent cultural productions (such as Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction and 2012 film Django Unchained) has sparked controversy and ongoing debate.[5][7]
The word nigger has also been historically used to designate "any person considered to be of low social status" (as in the expression white nigger) or "any person whose behavior is regarded as reprehensible". In some cases, with awareness of the word's offensive connotation, but without intention to cause offense, it can refer to a "a victim of prejudice likened to that endured by African Americans" (as in John Lennon's 1972 song "Woman Is the Nigger of the World").[2]
Etymology and history
Main article: Negro
Early use
The variants neger and negar derive from various Romance words for 'black', including the Spanish and Portuguese word negro ('black') and the now-pejorative French nègre. Etymologically, negro, noir, nègre, and nigger ultimately derive from nigrum, the stem of the Latin niger ('black').
In its original English-language usage, nigger (also spelled niger) was a word for a dark-skinned individual. The earliest known published use of the term dates from 1574, in a work alluding to "the Nigers of Aethiop, bearing witnes".[8] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first derogatory usage of the term nigger was recorded two centuries later, in 1775.[9]
In the colonial America of 1619, John Rolfe used negars in describing the African slaves shipped to the Virginia colony.[10] Later American English spellings, neger and neggar, prevailed in New York under the Dutch and in metropolitan Philadelphia's Moravian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities; the African Burial Ground in New York City originally was known by the Dutch name Begraafplaats van de Neger (Cemetery of the Negro). An early occurrence of neger in American English dates from 1625 in Rhode Island.[11] Lexicographer Noah Webster suggested the neger spelling in place of negro in his 1806 dictionary.[12]
18th- and 19th-century United States
Lyrics for the song "Run, Nigger, Run", about a fugitive slave escaping from a slave patrol, printed in 1851
During the late 18th and early 19th century, the word "nigger" also described an actual labor category, which African American laborers adopted for themselves as a social identity, and thus white people used the descriptor word as a distancing or derogatory epithet, as if "quoting black people" and their non-standard language.[13] During the early 1800s to the late 1840s fur trade in the Western United States, the word was spelled "niggur", and is often recorded in the literature of the time. George Fredrick Ruxton used it in his "mountain man" lexicon, without pejorative connotation. "Niggur" was evidently similar to the modern use of "dude" or "guy". This passage from Ruxton's Life in the Far West illustrates the word in spoken form—the speaker here referring to himself: "Travler, marm, this niggur's no travler; I ar' a trapper, marm, a mountain-man, wagh!"[14] It was not used as a term exclusively for blacks among mountain men during this period, as Indians, Mexicans, and Frenchmen and Anglos alike could be a "niggur".[15] "The noun slipped back and forth from derogatory to endearing."[16]
By 1859 the term was clearly used to offend, in an attack on abolitionist John Brown.[17]
The term "colored" or "negro" became a respectful alternative. In 1851, the Boston Vigilance Committee, an abolitionist organization, posted warnings to the Colored People of Boston and vicinity. Writing in 1904, journalist Clifton Johnson documented the "opprobrious" character of the word nigger, emphasizing that it was chosen in the South precisely because it was more offensive than "colored" or "negro".[18] By the turn of the century, "colored" had become sufficiently mainstream that it was chosen as the racial self-identifier for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 2008 Carla Sims, its communications director, said "the term 'colored' is not derogatory, [the NAACP] chose the word 'colored' because it was the most positive description commonly used [in 1909, when the association was founded]. It's outdated and antiquated but not offensive."[19]
Mark Twain, in the autobiographic book Life on the Mississippi (1883), used the term within quotes, indicating reported speech, but used the term "negro" when writing in his own narrative persona.[20] Joseph Conrad published a novella in Britain with the title The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897); in the United States, it was released as The Children of the Sea: A Tale of the Forecastle; the original had been called "the ugliest conceivable title" in a British review[21] and American reviewers understood the change as reflecting American "refinement" and "prudery."[22]
The US edition of Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the "Narcissus" was called The Children of the Sea.
20th-century United States
A style guide to British English usage, H.W. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, states in the first edition (1926) that applying the word nigger to "others than full or partial negroes" is "felt as an insult by the person described, & betrays in the speaker, if not deliberate insolence, at least a very arrogant inhumanity"; but the second edition (1965) states "N. has been described as 'the term that carries with it all the obloquy and contempt and rejection which whites have inflicted on blacks'".[23] The quoted formula goes back to the writings of the American journalist Harold R. Isaacs, who used it in several writings between 1963 and 1975.[24] Black characters in Nella Larsen's 1929 novel Passing view its use as offensive; one says "I'm really not such an idiot that I don't realize that if a man calls me a nigger, it's his fault the first time, but mine if he has the opportunity to do it again."[25]
By the late 1960s, the social change brought about by the civil rights movement had legitimized the racial identity word black as mainstream American English usage to denote black-skinned Americans of African ancestry. President Thomas Jefferson had used this word of his slaves in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), but "black" had not been widely used until the later 20th century. (See black pride, and, in the context of worldwide anti-colonialism initiatives, Négritude.)
In the 1980s, the term "African American" was advanced analogously to such terms as "German American" and "Irish American", and was adopted by major media outlets. Moreover, as a compound word, African American resembles the vogue word Afro-American, an early-1970s popular usage. Some Black Americans continue to use the word nigger, often spelled as nigga and niggah, without irony, either to neutralize the word's impact or as a sign of solidarity.[26]
Usage
Surveys from 2006 showed that the American public widely perceived usage of the term to be wrong or unacceptable, but that nearly half of whites and two-thirds of blacks knew someone personally who referred to blacks by the term.[27] Nearly one-third of whites and two-thirds of blacks said they had personally used the term within the last five years.[27]
In names of people, places and things
Main article: Use of nigger in proper names
Political use
Historical American cartoon titled "Why the nigger is not fit to vote", by Thomas Nast, arguing the reason Democrats objected to African-Americans having the vote was that, in the 1868 US presidential election, African-Americans voted for the Republican candidates Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax. "Seymour friends meet here" in the background is a reference to the Democratic Party candidate: Horatio Seymour.
"Niggers in the White House"[28] was written in reaction to an October 1901 White House dinner hosted by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, who had invited Booker T. Washington—an African-American presidential advisor—as a guest. The poem reappeared in 1929 after First Lady Lou Hoover, wife of President Herbert Hoover, invited Jessie De Priest, the wife of African-American congressman Oscar De Priest, to a tea for congressmen's wives at the White House.[29] The identity of the author—who used the byline "unchained poet"—remains unknown.
In explaining his refusal to be conscripted to fight the Vietnam War (1955–75), professional boxer Muhammad Ali said, "No Vietcong ever called me nigger."[30] Later, his modified answer was the title of a documentary, No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger (1968), about the front-line lot of the U.S. Army black soldier in combat in Vietnam.[31] An Ali biographer reports that, when interviewed by Robert Lipsyte in 1966, the boxer actually said, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong."[32]
On February 28, 2007, the New York City Council symbolically banned the use of the word nigger; however, there is no penalty for using it. This formal resolution also requests excluding from Grammy Award consideration every song whose lyrics contain the word; however, Ron Roecker, vice president of communication for the Recording Academy, doubted it will have any effect on actual nominations.[33][34]
The word can be invoked politically for effect. When Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick came under intense scrutiny for his conduct in 2008, he deviated from an address to the city council, saying, "In the past 30 days, I've been called a nigger more than any time in my entire life." Opponents accused him of "playing the race card" to save his political life.[35]
Cultural use
Main article: Use of nigger in the arts
The implicit racism of the word nigger has generally rendered its use taboo. Magazines and newspapers typically do not use this word but instead print censored versions such as "n*gg*r", "n**ger", "n——" or "the N-word";[36] see below.
1885 illustration from Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, captioned "Misto Bradish's nigger"
The use of nigger in older literature has become controversial because of the word's modern meaning as a racist insult. One of the most enduring controversies has been the word's use in Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). Huckleberry Finn was the fifth most challenged book during the 1990s, according to the American Library Association.[37] The novel is written from the point of view, and largely in the language, of an uneducated white boy, who is drifting down the Mississippi River on a raft with an adult escaped slave, Jim. The word "nigger" is used (mostly about Jim) over 200 times.[38][39] Twain's advocates note that the novel is composed in then-contemporary vernacular usage, not racist stereotype, because Jim, the black man, is a sympathetic character.
In 2011, a new edition published by NewSouth Books replaced the word "nigger" with "slave" and also removed the word "injun". The change was spearheaded by Twain scholar Alan Gribben in the hope of "countering the 'pre-emptive censorship'" that results from the book's being removed from school curricula over language concerns.[40][41] The changes sparked outrage from critics Elon James, Alexandra Petri and Chris Meadows.[42]
In his 1999 memoir All Souls, Irish-American Michael Patrick MacDonald describes how many white residents of the Old Colony Housing Project in South Boston used this meaning to degrade the people considered to be of lower status, whether white or black.[43]
Of course, no one considered himself a nigger. It was always something you called someone who could be considered anything less than you. I soon found out there were a few black families living in Old Colony. They'd lived there for years and everyone said that they were okay, that they weren't niggers but just black. It felt good to all of us to not be as bad as the hopeless people in D Street or, God forbid, the ones in Columbia Point, who were both black and niggers. But now I was jealous of the kids in Old Harbor Project down the road, which seemed like a step up from Old Colony ...
In an academic setting
The word's usage in literature has led to it being a point of discussion in university lectures as well. In 2008, Arizona State University English professor Neal A. Lester created what has been called "the first ever college-level class designed to explore the word 'nigger'".[44] Starting in the following decade, colleges struggled with attempts to teach material about the slur in a sensitive manner. In 2012, a sixth grade Chicago teacher Lincoln Brown was suspended after repeating the contents of a racially charged note being passed around in class. Brown later filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the headmaster and the Chicago public schools.[45] A New Orleans high school also experienced controversy in 2017.[46] Such increased attention prompted Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, the daughter of Richard Pryor and a professor at Smith College, to give a talk opining that the word was leading to a "social crisis" in higher education.[47]
In addition to Smith College, Emory University, Augsburg University, Southern Connecticut State University, and Simpson College all suspended professors in 2019 over referring to the word "nigger" by name in classroom settings.[48][49][50] In two other cases, a professor at Princeton decided to stop teaching a course on hate speech after students protested his utterance of "nigger" and a professor at DePaul had his law course cancelled after 80% of the enrolled students transferred out.[51][52] Instead of pursuing disciplinary action, a student at the College of the Desert challenged his professor in a viral class presentation which argued that her use of the word in a lecture was not justified.[53]
In the workplace
In 2018, the head of the media company Netflix, Reed Hastings, fired his chief communications officer, Jonathan Friedland, for using the word twice during internal discussions about sensitive words.[54] In explaining why, Hastings wrote:
[The word's use] in popular media like music and film have created some confusion as to whether or not there is ever a time when the use of the N-word is acceptable. For non-Black people, the word should not be spoken as there is almost no context in which it is appropriate or constructive (even when singing a song or reading a script). There is not a way to neutralize the emotion and history behind the word in any context. The use of the phrase 'N-word' was created as a euphemism, and the norm, with the intention of providing an acceptable replacement and moving people away from using the specific word. When a person violates this norm, it creates resentment, intense frustration, and great offense for many.[55]
The following year, screenwriter Walter Mosley turned down a job after his human resources department took issue with him using the word to describe racism that he experienced as a black man.[56]
While defending Laurie Sheck, a professor who was cleared of ethical violations for quoting I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin, John McWhorter wrote that efforts to condemn racist language by white Americans had undergone mission creep.[57] Similar controversies outside the United States have occurred at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and the Madrid campus of Syracuse University.[58][59] In June 2020, Canadian news host Wendy Mesley was suspended and replaced with a guest host after she attended a meeting on racial justice and, in the process of quoting a journalist, used "a word that no-one like me should ever use".[60] In August 2020, BBC news, with the agreement of victim and family, mentioned the slur when reporting on a physical and verbal assault on the black NHS worker and musician K-Dogg. Within the week the BBC received over 18,600 complaints, the black radio host David Whitely resigned in protest, and the BBC apologized.[61]
In 2021, in Tampa, Florida, a 27-year-old black employee at a Dunkin' Donuts punched a 77-year-old white customer after the customer had repeatedly called the employee a nigger.[62] The customer fell to the floor and hit his head. Three days later, he died, having suffered a skull fracture and brain contusions. The employee was arrested, and charged with manslaughter. In a plea bargain, the employee pled guilty to felony battery, and was sentenced to two years of house arrest. In 2022, in explaining why the employee did not receive any jail time, Grayson Kamm, a spokesman for Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren, said "Two of the primary factors were the aggressive approach the victim took toward the defendant and everyone working with the defendant, and that the victim repeatedly used possibly the most aggressive and offensive term in the English language."[63]
Intra-group versus intergroup usage
Main article: Nigga
See also: Ingroups and outgroups
Black listeners often react to the term differently, depending on whether it is used by white speakers or by black speakers. In the former case, it is regularly understood as insensitive or insulting; in the latter, it may carry notes of in-group disparagement, or it may be understood as neutral or affectionate, a possible instance of reappropriation.[64]
In the black community, nigger is often rendered as nigga. This usage has been popularized by the rap and hip-hop music cultures and is used as part of an in-group lexicon and speech. It is not necessarily derogatory and is often used to mean homie or friend.[65]
Acceptance of intra-group usage of the word nigga is still debated,[65] although it has established a foothold amongst younger generations. The NAACP denounces the use of both nigga and nigger. Usage of nigga by mixed-race individuals is still largely considered taboo,[a] albeit not as inflammatory as nigger. As of 2001, trends indicated that usage of the term in intragroup settings is increasing even amongst white youth, due to the popularity of rap and hip hop culture.[66] Linguist Keith Allan rejects the view that nigger is always a slur, arguing that it is also used as a marker of camaraderie and friendship, comparable to the British and Australian term "mate" or the American "buddy".[67]
According to Arthur K. Spears in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, 2006:
In many African-American neighborhoods, nigga is simply the most common term used to refer to any male, of any race or ethnicity. Increasingly, the term has been applied to any person, male or female. "Where y'all niggas goin?" is said with no self-consciousness or animosity to a group of women, for the routine purpose of obtaining information. The point: nigga is evaluatively neutral in terms of its inherent meaning; it may express positive, neutral, or negative attitudes;[68]
Kevin Cato, meanwhile, observes:
For instance, a show on Black Entertainment Television, a cable network aimed at a Black audience, described the word nigger as a "term of endearment". "In the African American community, the word nigga. (not nigger) brings out feelings of pride." (Davis 1). Here the word evokes a sense of community and oneness among Black people. Many teens I interviewed felt the word had no power when used amongst friends, but when used among white people the word took on a completely different meaning. In fact, comedian Alex Thomas on BET stated, "I still better not hear no white boy say that to me ... I hear a white boy say that to me, it means 'White boy, you gonna get your ass beat.'"[69]
Addressing the use of nigger by black people, philosopher and public intellectual Cornel West said in 2007:
There's a certain rhythmic seduction to the word. If you speak in a sentence, and you have to say cat, companion, or friend, as opposed to nigger, then the rhythmic presentation is off. That rhythmic language is a form of historical memory for Black people ... When Richard Pryor came back from Africa, and decided to stop using the word onstage, he would sometimes start to slip up, because he was so used to speaking that way. It was the right word at the moment to keep the rhythm together in his sentence making.[70]
2010s: increase in use and controversy
In the 2010s, "nigger" in its various forms saw use with increasing frequency by African Americans amongst themselves or in self-expression, the most common swear word in hip hop music lyrics.[71][72] Ta-Nehisi Coates suggested that it continues to be unacceptable for non-blacks to utter while singing or rapping along to hip-hop, and that by being so restrained it gives white Americans (specifically) an impression of what it is like to not be entitled to "do anything they please, anywhere". A concern often raised is whether frequent exposure will inevitably lead to a dilution of the extremely negative perception of the word among the majority of non-black Americans who currently consider its use unacceptable and shocking.[73]
Related words
Derivatives
Anti-abolitionist cartoon from the 1860 presidential campaign illustrating colloquial usage of "Nigger in the woodpile"
In several English-speaking countries, "Niggerhead" or "nigger head" was used as a name for many sorts of things, including commercial products, places, plants and animals, as a descriptive term (lit. 'black person's head'). It also is or was a colloquial technical term in industry, mining, and seafaring. Nigger as "defect" (a hidden problem), derives from "nigger in the woodpile", a US slave-era phrase denoting escaped slaves hiding in train-transported woodpiles.[74] In the 1840s, the Morning Chronicle newspaper report series London Labour and the London Poor, by Henry Mayhew, records the usages of both "nigger" and the similar-sounding word "niggard" denoting a false bottom for a grate.[75]
In American English, "nigger lover" initially applied to abolitionists, then to white people sympathetic towards black Americans.[76] The portmanteau word wigger ('White' + 'nigger') denotes a white person emulating "street Black behavior", hoping to gain acceptance to the hip hop, thug, and gangsta sub-cultures. Norman Mailer wrote of the antecedents of this phenomenon in 1957 in his essay The White Negro.
The N-word euphemism
Notable usage[77]
The prosecutor [Christopher Darden], his voice trembling, added that the "N-word" was so vile he would not utter it. "It's the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language."
— Kenneth B. Noble, January 14, 1995 The New York Times[78]
One of the first uses of the N-word euphemism by a major public figure came during the racially contentious O. J. Simpson murder case in 1995. Key prosecution witness Detective Mark Fuhrman, of the Los Angeles Police Department—who denied using racist language on duty—impeached himself with his prolific use of nigger in tape recordings about his police work. Co-prosecutor Christopher Darden refused to say the actual word, calling it "the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language". Media personnel who reported on Fuhrman's testimony substituted the N-word for nigger.[79][80]
Similar-sounding words
Niger (Latin for "black") occurs in Latinate scientific nomenclature and is the root word for some homophones of nigger; sellers of niger seed (used as bird feed), sometimes use the spelling Nyjer seed. The classical Latin pronunciation /ˈniɡeɾ/ sounds similar to the English /ˈnɪɡər/, occurring in biologic and anatomic names, such as Hyoscyamus niger (black henbane), and even for animals that are in fact not black, such as Sciurus niger (fox squirrel).
Nigra is the Latin feminine form of niger (black), used in biologic and anatomic names such as substantia nigra (black substance).
The word niggardly (miserly) is etymologically unrelated to nigger, derived from the Old Norse word nig (stingy) and the Middle English word nigon. In the US, this word has been misinterpreted as related to nigger and taken as offensive. In January 1999, David Howard, a white Washington, D.C., city employee, was compelled to resign after using niggardly—in a financial context—while speaking with black colleagues, who took umbrage. After reviewing the misunderstanding, Mayor Anthony A. Williams offered to reinstate Howard to his former position. Howard refused reinstatement but took a job elsewhere in the mayor's government.[81]
Spanish: Negro [ˈne.ɣ̞ɾo] is the Spanish word for black, and is commonly a part of place names and proper names, particularly in the Southwest of the United States.
Denotational extension
Graffiti in Palestine referring to Arabs as "sand-niggers"
The denotations of nigger also include non-black/non-white and other disadvantaged people. Some of these terms are self-chosen, to identify with the oppression and resistance of black Americans; others are ethnic slurs used by outsiders.
Jerry Farber's 1967 essay collection, The Student as Nigger, used the word as a metaphor for what he saw as the role forced on students. Farber had been, at the time, frequently arrested as a civil rights activist while beginning his career as a literature professor.
In his 1968 autobiography White Niggers of America: The Precocious Autobiography of a Quebec "Terrorist", Pierre Vallières, a Front de libération du Québec leader, refers to the oppression of the Québécois people in North America.
In 1969, in the course of being interviewed by the British magazine Nova, artist Yoko Ono said "woman is the nigger of the world;" three years later, her husband, John Lennon, published the song of the same name—about the worldwide phenomenon of discrimination against women—which was socially and politically controversial to US sensibilities.
Sand nigger, an ethnic slur against Arabs, and timber nigger and prairie nigger, ethnic slurs against Native Americans, are examples of the racist extension of nigger upon other non-white peoples.[82]
In 1978, singer Patti Smith used the word in "Rock N Roll Nigger". One year later in 1979, English singer Elvis Costello used the phrase "white nigger" in his song "Oliver's Army". The slur usually remains uncensored on radio stations, but Costello's usage of the word came under scrutiny, particularly after he used racial slurs during a drunken argument with Stephen Stills and Bonnie Bramlett in 1979. In the same year, Costello's father published a letter in Rolling Stone defending his son against accusations of racism, stating "Nothing could be further from the truth. My own background has meant that I am passionately opposed to any form of prejudice based on religion or race... His mother comes from the tough multiracial area of Liverpool, and I think she would still beat the tar out of him if his orthodoxy were in doubt".[83]
Historian Eugene Genovese, noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class, and relations between planters and slaves in the South, uses the word pointedly in The World the Slaveholders Made (1988).
For reasons common to the slave condition all slave classes displayed a lack of industrial initiative and produced the famous Lazy Nigger, who under Russian serfdom and elsewhere was white. Just as not all Blacks, even under the most degrading forms of slavery, consented to become niggers, so by no means all or even most of the niggers in history have been Black.
The editor of Green Egg, a magazine described in The Encyclopedia of American Religions as a significant periodical, published an essay entitled "Niggers of the New Age". This argued that Neo-Pagans were treated badly by other parts of the New Age movement.[84]
Other languages
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Other languages, particularly Romance languages, have words that sound similar to or share etymological roots with nigger but do not necessarily mean the same. In some of these languages, the words refer to the color black in general and are not specifically used to refer to black people. When used to refer to black people, these words have acquired varying degrees of offensiveness, ranging from completely neutral (as in Spanish negro) to highly racist (as in Finnish Neekeri). Examples of related words in other languages include:
Dutch: Neger ('negro') used to be neutral, but many now consider it to be avoided in favor of zwarte ('black').[85][86][87][88] Zwartje ('little black one') can be amicably or offensively used. Nikker is always pejorative.[89]
Finnish: Neekeri ('negro/nigger'), as a loan word ('Neger') from the Swedish language appeared for the first time in a book published in 1771.[90] The use of the Finnish equivalent ('neekeri') began in the late 19th century. Until the 1980s, it was commonly used and generally not yet considered derogatory, although a few instances of it being considered to be so have been documented since the 1950s; by the mid-1990s the word was considered racist, especially in the metropolitan area and among the younger population.[91] It has since then usually been replaced by the metonym 'musta' ('black [person]').[92] In a survey conducted in 2000, Finnish respondents considered the term 'Neekeri' to be among the most offensive of minority designations.[93]
French: Nègre is now considered derogatory. Although Nègre littéraire was the standard term for a ghostwriter, it has largely been supplanted by prête-plume. Some white Frenchmen have the surname Nègre. The word can still be used as a synonym of "sweetheart" in some traditional Louisiana French creole songs.
German: Neger is dated and now considered offensive. Schwarze/-r ('black [person]') or Farbige/-r ("colored [person]") is more neutral.
Haitian Creole: nèg is used for any man in general, regardless of skin color (like dude in American English). Haitian Creole derives predominantly from French.
Italian has three variants: negro, nero and di colore. The first one is the most historically attested and was the most commonly used until the 1960s as an equivalent of the English word "negro". It was gradually felt as offensive during the 1970s and replaced with nero and di colore. Nero was considered a better translation of the English word black, while di colore is a loan translation of the English word colored.[94]
Portuguese: Negro (as well as preto) is neutral;[95] nevertheless preto can be offensive or at least "politically incorrect" and is almost never proudly used by Afro-Brazilians. Crioulo and macaco are always extremely pejorative.[96]
Romanian: Negrotei is derogatory;[97]
Russian: the word негр (negr) has been commonly used as neutral word to describe black people until recent years. It can also be used as a synonym for underpaid worker, "литературный негр" (literaturny negr) means ghostwriter.[98][99][100] Nowadays, a black person would often be described neutrally as "чернокожий" (chernokozhij, 'black-skinned'), though the organization Help Needed instead recommends "темнокожий" (temnokozhij, 'dark-skinned').[101]
Spanish: Negro is the word for "black" and is the only way to refer to that color.[102]
Turkish: Zenci is a word for "black" but it is being used in a derogatory manner in a similar way as the word nigger.
Bulgarian: Негър (negar), loaned from French nègre, is considered a neutral word for black people in Bulgaria. Some publications and institutions use чернокож or тъмнокож, but the use of негър is more widespread.
See also
List of ethnic slurs
List of ethnic group names used as insults
Kaffir (ethnic slur)
Blackfella
Guilty or Innocent of Using the N Word, a 2006 documentary
List of topics related to the African diaspora
"With Apologies to Jesse Jackson", an episode of South Park with a plot revolving around the word's extreme offensiveness
Golliwog
Notes
Whether this usage is considered acceptable may depend on a sense of the speaker's in-group belonging, as judged by the speaker him- or herself, the listener(s), or others.
References
"Google Ngram". Google Ngram. Retrieved January 18, 2024.
Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. nigger, n. and adj.; neger, n. and adj.; N-word, n.
Rahman, Jacquelyn (2012). "The N Word: Its History and Use in the African American Community". Journal of English Linguistics. 40 (2): 137–171. doi:10.1177/0075424211414807. ISSN 0075-4242. S2CID 144164210.
McWhorter, John (April 30, 2021). "Opinion | How the N-Word Became Unsayable". The New York Times – via NYTimes.com.
Kennedy, Randall (2002). Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. Pantheon Books. pp. 36–37, 91–111. ISBN 978-0-9650397-7-2.
Asim, Jabari (2008). The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why. HMH. ISBN 978-0-547-52494-8.
Allan, Keith (2015). "When is a Slur Not a Slur? The Use of Nigger in 'Pulp Fiction'". Language Sciences. 52: 187–199. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2015.03.001.
Patricia T. O'Conner; Stewart Kellerman (2010). Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. Random House Publishing Group. p. 134. ISBN 978-0-8129-7810-0. Retrieved August 18, 2017.
Peterson, Christopher (2013). Bestial Traces:Race, Sexuality, Animality: Race, Sexuality, Animality. Fordham Univ Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-8232-4520-8. Retrieved August 18, 2017.
Kennedy, Randall (January 11, 2001). "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 17, 2007. (Book review)
Hutchinson, Earl Ofari (1996). The Assassination of the Black Male Image. Simon and Schuster. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-684-83100-8.
Mencken, H. L. (1921). "Chapter 8. American Spelling > 2. The Influence of Webster". The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (2nd rev. and enl. ed.). New York: A.A. Knopf.
Stordeur Pryor, Elizabeth (Summer 2016). "The Etymology of Nigger: Resistance, Language, and the Politics of Freedom in the Antebellum North". Journal of the Early Republic. 36 (2): 203–245. doi:10.1353/jer.2016.0028. S2CID 148122937. Retrieved February 26, 2021. = Stordeur Pryor, Elizabeth (Summer 2016). "The Etymology of Nigger: Resistance, Language, and the Politics of Freedom in the Antebellum North". Smith ScholarWorks. Northampton, Massachusetts: Smith College: 203–245, especially 206 f. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
Ruxton, George Frederick (1846). Life In the Far West. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-1534-4.
"Language of the Rendezvous". Archived from the original on November 19, 2012. Retrieved September 6, 2012.
Coleman, Jon (2012). Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation. Macmillan. p. 272. Retrieved November 21, 2016.[permanent dead link]
"A new version of an old song. Illustrating the growth of Public Sentiment [Old John Brown, he had a little nigger]". The National Era (Washington, D.C.). November 10, 1859. p. 3 – via newspapers.com.
Johnson, Clifton (October 14, 1904). "They Are Only "Niggers" in the South". The Seattle Republ
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The Men Who Built America: Frontiersmen
S01E01 - Daniel Boone (November 2 [O.S. October 22], 1734 – September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer and frontiersman whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He became famous for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of the Thirteen Colonies. In 1775, Boone blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky, in the face of resistance from American Indians, for whom the area was a traditional hunting ground. He founded Boonesborough, one of the first English-speaking settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. By the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 people had entered Kentucky by following the route marked by Boone.[3]
Boone served as a militia officer during the Revolutionary War (1775–1783), which was fought in Kentucky primarily between American settlers and British-allied Indians. Boone was taken in by Shawnees in 1778 and adopted into the tribe, but he resigned and continued to help protect the Kentucky settlements. He also left due to the Shawnee Indians torturing and killing one of his sons. He was elected to the first of his three terms in the Virginia General Assembly during the war and fought in the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782, one of the last battles of the American Revolution. He worked as a surveyor and merchant after the war, but went deep into debt as a Kentucky land speculator. He resettled in Missouri in 1799, where he spent most of the last two decades of his life, frustrated with legal problems resulting from his land claims.
Boone remains an iconic, if imperfectly remembered, figure in American history. He was a legend in his own lifetime, especially after an account of his adventures was published in 1784, making him famous in America and Europe. After his death, he became the subject of many heroic tall tales and works of fiction. His adventures—real and legendary—helped create the archetypal frontier hero of American folklore. In American popular culture, Boone is remembered as one of the foremost early frontiersmen, even though mythology often overshadows the historical details of his life.[4]
Early life
Boone was born on October 22, 1734 ("New Style" November 2), the sixth of eleven children in a family of Quakers.[5][note 1] His father, Squire Boone (1696–1765), immigrated to colonial Pennsylvania from the small town of Bradninch, England, sometime around 1712.[7] Squire, a weaver and blacksmith, married Sarah Morgan (1700–1777), whose family were Quakers from Wales. In 1731, the Boones built a one-room log cabin in the Oley Valley in what is now Berks County, Pennsylvania, near present Reading, where Daniel was born.[8]
Boone spent his early years on the Pennsylvania frontier, often interacting with American Indians.[9] Boone learned to hunt from local settlers and Indians; by the age of fifteen, he had a reputation as one of the region's best hunters.[10] Many stories about Boone emphasize his hunting skills. In one tale, the young Boone was hunting in the woods with some other boys when the howl of a panther scattered all but Boone. He calmly cocked his rifle and shot the panther through the heart just as it leaped at him. The story may be a folktale, one of many that became part of Boone's popular image.[10]
In Boone's youth, his family became a source of controversy in the local Quaker community. In 1742, Boone's parents were compelled to publicly apologize after their eldest child Sarah married a "worldling", or non-Quaker, while she was visibly pregnant. When Boone's oldest brother Israel also married a "worldling" in 1747, Squire Boone stood by his son and was therefore expelled from the Quakers, although his wife continued to attend monthly meetings with her children. Perhaps as a result of this controversy, in 1750 Squire sold his land and moved the family to North Carolina. Daniel Boone did not attend church again, although he always considered himself a Christian and had all of his children baptized.[11] The Boones eventually settled on the Yadkin River, in what is now Davie County, North Carolina, about two miles (3 km) west of Mocksville.[12][13]
Boone received little formal education, since he preferred to spend his time hunting, apparently with his parents' blessing. According to a family tradition, when a schoolteacher expressed concern over Boone's education, Boone's father said, "Let the girls do the spelling and Dan will do the shooting."[14] Boone was tutored by family members, though his spelling remained unorthodox. Historian John Mack Faragher cautions that the folk image of Boone as semiliterate is misleading, arguing that Boone "acquired a level of literacy that was the equal of most men of his times."[14] Boone regularly took reading material with him on his hunting expeditions—the Bible and Gulliver's Travels were favorites.[15] He was often the only literate person in groups of frontiersmen, and would sometimes entertain his hunting companions by reading to them around the campfire.[16][17]
Boone was a Freemason.[18][19]
Hunter, husband, and soldier
I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
—Daniel Boone[20]
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) broke out between the French and the British, along with their respective Indian allies, and Boone joined a North Carolina militia company as a teamster and blacksmith.[21] In 1755, his unit accompanied General Edward Braddock's attempt to drive the French out of the Ohio Country, which ended in disaster at the Battle of the Monongahela. Boone, in the rear with the wagons, took no part in the battle, and fled with the retreating soldiers.[22] He returned home after the defeat, and married Rebecca Bryan, a neighbor in the Yadkin Valley, on August 14, 1756.[23] The couple initially lived in a cabin on his father's farm, and eventually had ten children, in addition to raising eight children of deceased relatives.[24]
In 1758, conflict erupted between British colonists and the Cherokees, their former allies in the French and Indian War. After the Yadkin Valley was raided by Cherokees, the Boones and many other families fled north to Culpeper County, Virginia.[25] Boone saw action as a member of the North Carolina militia during this "Cherokee Uprising," periodically serving under Captain Hugh Waddell on the North Carolina frontier until 1760.[26]
Boone supported his growing family in these years as a market hunter and trapper, collecting pelts for the fur trade. Almost every autumn, despite the unrest on the frontier, he would go on "long hunts", extended expeditions into the wilderness lasting weeks or months. Boone went alone or with a small group of men, accumulating hundreds of deer skins in the autumn, and trapping beaver and otter over the winter. When the long hunters returned in the spring, they sold their take to commercial fur traders.[27] On their journeys, frontiersmen often carved messages on trees or wrote their names on cave walls, and Boone's name or initials have been found in many places. A tree in Washington County, Tennessee reads "D. Boon Cilled a. Bar on tree in the year 1760". A similar carving is preserved in the museum of the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky which reads "D. Boon Kilt a Bar, 1803." The inscriptions may be genuine, or part of a long tradition of phony Boone relics.[28][29][30]
According to a popular story, Boone returned home after a long absence to find that Rebecca had given birth to a daughter. Rebecca confessed that she had thought that Daniel was dead, and that his brother had fathered the child. Boone did not blame Rebecca, and raised the girl as his own child. Boone's early biographers knew the story but did not publish it.[31] Modern biographers regard the tale as possibly folklore, since the identity of the brother and the daughter vary in different versions of the tale.[32][33][34]
In the mid-1760s, Boone began to look for a new place to settle. The population was growing in the Yadkin Valley, which reduced the amount of game available for hunting. He had difficulty making ends meet, and was often taken to court for nonpayment of debts. He sold what land he owned to pay off creditors. After his father's death in 1765, Boone traveled with a group of men to Florida, which had become British territory after the end of the war, to look into the possibility of settling there. According to a family story, he purchased land in Pensacola, but Rebecca refused to move so far away from friends and family. The Boones instead moved to a more remote area of the Yadkin Valley, and he began to hunt westward into the Blue Ridge Mountains.[35]
Into Kentucky
It was the first of May, in the year 1769, that I resigned my domestic happiness for a time, and left my family ... to wander through the wilderness of America, in quest of the country of Kentucky.
— Daniel Boone[36]
Boone's First View of Kentucky, William Tylee Ranney (1849)
George Caleb Bingham's Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap (1851–52) is a famous depiction of Boone.
Years before entering Kentucky, Boone had heard about the region's fertile land and abundant game. In 1767, Boone and his brother Squire first crossed into what would become the state of Kentucky, but they failed to reach the rich hunting grounds.[37][38] In May 1769, Boone set out again with a party of five others—including John Findley, who first told Boone of the Cumberland Gap—on a two-year hunting and trapping expedition.[39] His first sighting of the Bluegrass region from atop Pilot Knob became "an icon of American history," and was the frequent subject of paintings.[40]
On December 22, 1769, Boone and fellow hunter John Stuart were captured by a party of Shawnee, who confiscated all of their skins and told them to leave and never return.[41] The Shawnee had not signed the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, in which the Iroquois had ceded their claim to Kentucky to the British. The Shawnee regarded Kentucky as their hunting ground; they considered American hunters there to be poachers.[42][43] Boone, undeterred, continued hunting and exploring in Kentucky. On one occasion, he shot a man to avoid capture, which historian John Mack Faragher says "was one of the few Indians that Boone acknowledged killing."[44] Boone returned to North Carolina in 1771, but came back to hunt in Kentucky in the autumn of 1772.[45]
In 1773, Boone packed up his family and, with his brother Squire and a group of about 50 others, began the first attempt by British colonists to establish a settlement. Boone was still an obscure figure at the time; the most prominent member of the expedition was William Russell, a well-known Virginian and future brother-in-law of Patrick Henry.[46] Another member of this expedition was Boone's friend and fellow long-hunter, Michael Stoner.[47]
Included in this group were an unknown number of enslaved Blacks, including Charles and Adam. On October 9, Boone's oldest son, James, several Whites and Charles and Adam left the main party to seek provisions in a nearby settlement. They were attacked by a band of Delawares, Shawnee, and Cherokees. Following the Fort Stanwix treaty, American Indians in the region had been debating what do to about the influx of settlers. This group had decided, in the words of Faragher, "to send a message of their opposition to settlement".[48] James Boone and William Russell's son, Henry, were tortured and killed. Charles was captured. Adam witnessed the horror concealed in riverbank driftwood. After wandering in the woods for 11 days, Adam located the group and informed Boone of the circumstances of their deaths. Charles's body was found by the pioneers 40 miles from the abduction site, dead from a blow to the head.[49][50] The brutality of the killings sent shockwaves along the frontier, and Boone's party abandoned their expedition.[51]
The attack was one of the first events in what became known as Dunmore's War, a struggle between Virginia and American Indians for control of what is now West Virginia and Kentucky. In the summer of 1774, Boone traveled with a companion to Kentucky to notify surveyors there of the outbreak of war. They journeyed more than 800 miles (1,300 km) in two months to warn those who had not already fled the region. Upon his return to Virginia, Boone helped defend colonial settlements along the Clinch River, earning a promotion to captain in the militia, as well as acclaim from fellow citizens. After the brief war, which ended soon after Virginia's victory in the Battle of Point Pleasant in October 1774, the Shawnee relinquished their claims to Kentucky.[52][53]
Following Dunmore's War, Richard Henderson, a prominent judge from North Carolina, hired Boone to help establish a colony to be called Transylvania.[note 2] Boone traveled to several Cherokee towns and invited them to a meeting, held at Sycamore Shoals in March 1775, where Henderson purchased the Cherokee claim to Kentucky.[55]
Boone then blazed "Boone's Trace," later known as the Wilderness Road, through the Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky. Sam, an enslaved Black "body servant," and other enslaved laborers were among this group of settlers. When this group camped near the location of present-day Richmond, Kentucky, Indians attacked, killing Sam and his owner. After driving off the attackers, the party buried the two men side by side.[50]
He founded Boonesborough along the Kentucky River; other settlements, notably Harrodsburg, were also established at this time. Despite occasional Indian attacks, Boone brought his family and other settlers to Boonesborough on September 8, 1775.[56]
American Revolution
Abduction of Boone's Daughter, painting by Karl Ferdinand Wimar, 1855, Amon Carter Museum of American Art
American Indians who were unhappy about the loss of Kentucky by treaties, saw the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) as a chance to drive out the colonists. Isolated settlers and hunters became the frequent target of attacks, convincing many to abandon Kentucky. By late spring of 1776, Boone and his family were among the fewer than 200 colonists who remained, primarily at the fortified settlements of Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, and Logan's Station.[57]
On July 14, 1776, Boone's daughter Jemima and two other girls were captured outside Boonesborough by an Indian war party, who carried the girls north toward the Shawnee towns in the Ohio country. Boone and a group of men from Boonesborough set out in pursuit, finally catching up with them two days later. Boone and his men ambushed the Indians, rescuing the girls and driving off their captors. The incident became the most celebrated event of Boone's life. James Fenimore Cooper created a version of this episode in his classic novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826).[58][59]
In 1777, Henry Hamilton, British Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, began to recruit American Indian war parties to raid the Kentucky settlements. That same year in March, the newly formed militia of Kentucky County, Virginia, mustered in Boonesborough, whose population included ten to 15 enslaved people.[49] On April 24, 1778, the British-allied Shawnee led by Chief Blackfish mounted the siege of Boonesborough. Armed enslaved men fought alongside their owners at the fort's walls. After going beyond the fort walls to engage the attackers, London, one of the enslaved, was killed.[50]
Boone was shot in the ankle while outside the fort. Amid a flurry of bullets, he was carried back inside by Simon Kenton, a recent arrival at Boonesborough. Kenton became Boone's close friend, as well as a legendary frontiersman in his own right.[60][61]
Capture and court-martial
While Boone recovered, the Shawnee kept up their attacks outside Boonesborough, killing cattle and destroying crops. With food running low, the settlers needed salt to preserve what meat they had, so in January 1778, Boone led a party of 30 men to the salt springs on the Licking River. On February 7, when Boone was hunting for meat for the expedition, he was captured by Blackfish's warriors. Because Boone's party was greatly outnumbered, Boone returned to camp the next day with Blackfish and persuaded his men to surrender rather than put up a fight.[62]
Blackfish intended to move on to Boonesborough and capture it, but Boone argued the women and children would not survive a winter trek as prisoners back to the Shawnee villages. Instead, Boone promised that Boonesborough would surrender willingly the following spring. Boone did not have an opportunity to tell his men that he was bluffing to prevent an immediate attack on Boonesborough. Boone pursued this strategy so convincingly some of his men concluded he had switched sides, an impression that led to his court-martial (see below).[63][64] Many of the Shawnee wanted to execute the prisoners in retaliation for the recent murder of Shawnee Chief Cornstalk by Virginia militiamen. Because Shawnee chiefs led by seeking consensus, Blackfish held a council. After an impassioned speech by Boone, the warriors voted to spare the prisoners.[65][66] Although Boone had saved his men, Blackfish pointed out that Boone had not included himself in the agreement, so Boone was forced to run the gauntlet through the warriors, which he survived with minor injuries.[67][68]
External videos
video icon Presentation by Robert Morgan on Boone: A Biography, October 15, 2007, C-SPAN
Illustration of Boone's ritual adoption by the Shawnee, from Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone, by Cecil B. Hartley (1859)
Boone and his men were taken to Blackfish's town of Chillicothe. As was their custom, the Shawnee adopted some of the prisoners to replace fallen warriors. Boone was adopted into a Shawnee family at Chillicothe, perhaps into Blackfish's family, and given the name Sheltowee (Big Turtle).[69][note 3] In March 1778, the Shawnee took the unadopted prisoners to Governor Hamilton in Detroit. Blackfish brought Boone along, though he refused Hamilton's offers to release Boone to the British. Hamilton gave Boone gifts, attempting to win his loyalty, while Boone continued to pretend that he intended to surrender Boonesborough.[71] Boone returned with Blackfish to Chillicothe. On June 16, 1778, when he learned Blackfish was about to return to Boonesborough with a large force, Boone eluded his captors and raced home, covering the 160 miles (260 km) to Boonesborough in five days on horseback and, after his horse gave out, the majority on foot. Biographer Robert Morgan calls Boone's escape and return "one of the great legends of frontier history."[72]
Upon Boone's return to Boonesborough, some of the men expressed doubts about Boone's loyalty, since he had apparently lived happily among the Shawnee for months. Boone responded by leading a preemptive raid against the Shawnee across the Ohio River, and then by helping to successfully defend Boonesborough against a 10-day siege led by Blackfish, which began on September 7, 1778.[73] After the siege, Captain Benjamin Logan and Colonel Richard Callaway—both of whom had nephews who were still captives surrendered by Boone—brought charges against Boone for his recent activities. In the court-martial that followed, Boone was found "not guilty," and was even promoted after the court heard his testimony. Despite this vindication, Boone was humiliated by the court-martial, and he rarely spoke of it.[74][75]
Final years of the Revolution
After the trial, Boone returned to North Carolina to take his family back to Kentucky. In the autumn of 1779, a large party of emigrants came with him, including the family of Captain Abraham Lincoln, grandfather of the future president.[76][77] Rather than remain in Boonesborough, Boone founded the nearby settlement of Boone's Station. He began earning money by locating good land for other settlers. Transylvania land claims had been invalidated after Virginia created Kentucky County, so settlers needed to file new land claims with Virginia. In 1780, Boone collected about $20,000 in cash from various settlers and traveled to Williamsburg to purchase their land warrants. While he was sleeping in a tavern during the trip, the cash was stolen from his room. Some of the settlers forgave Boone the loss; others insisted he repay the stolen money, which took him several years to do.[78]
In contrast to the later folk image of Boone as a backwoodsman who had little affinity for "civilized" society, Boone was a leading citizen of Kentucky at this time.[79] When Kentucky was divided into three Virginia counties in November 1780, Boone was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the Fayette County militia. In April 1781, he was elected as a representative to the Virginia General Assembly, which was held in Richmond. In 1782, he was elected sheriff of Fayette County.[80]
Meanwhile, the American Revolutionary War continued. Boone joined General George Rogers Clark's invasion of the Ohio country in 1780, fighting in the Battle of Piqua against the Shawnee on August 7.[81] On the way home from the campaign, Boone was hunting with his brother Ned when Shawnee shot and killed Ned, who resembled Daniel. The Shawnee beheaded Ned, believing him to be Daniel, and took the head as evidence that Daniel Boone had finally been slain.[82][note 4]
In 1781, Boone traveled to Richmond to take his seat in the legislature, but British dragoons under Banastre Tarleton captured Boone and several other legislators near Charlottesville. The British released Boone on parole several days later.[84] [85] During Boone's term, Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in October 1781, but the fighting continued in Kentucky. Boone returned to Kentucky and in August 1782 fought in the Battle of Blue Licks, a disastrous defeat for the Kentuckians in which Boone's son Israel was killed. In November 1782, Boone took part in another Clark-led expedition into Ohio, the last major campaign of the war.[86][87]
Businessman and politician
After the Revolutionary War ended, Boone resettled in Limestone (later renamed Maysville, Kentucky), then a booming Ohio River port. He kept a tavern and worked as a surveyor, horse trader, and land speculator. In 1784, on Boone's 50th birthday, frontier historian John Filson published The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke. The popular book included a chronicle of Boone's adventures, which made Boone a celebrity.[88][89]
As settlers poured into Kentucky, the border war with American Indians north of the Ohio River resumed. In September 1786, Boone took part in a military expedition into the Ohio Country led by Benjamin Logan. Returning to Limestone, Boone housed and fed Shawnee who had been captured during the raid, and helped to negotiate a truce and prisoner exchange. Although the war would not end until the American victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers eight years later, the 1786 expedition was the last time Boone saw military action.[90][note 5]
Boone was initially prosperous in Limestone, owning seven slaves, a relatively large number for Kentucky at the time.[92] In 1786, he purchased a Pennsylvania enslaved woman, age of about 20, for “Ninety poundes Current Lawfull (sic) money.”.[50] A leader, he served as militia colonel, sheriff, and county coroner.[93] In 1787, he was again elected to the Virginia state assembly, this time from Bourbon County.[94] He began to have financial troubles after engaging in land speculation, buying and selling claims to tens of thousands of acres. These ventures ultimately failed because of the chaotic nature of land speculation in frontier Kentucky and Boone's poor business instincts.[95] Frustrated with the legal hassles that went with land speculation, in 1789 Boone moved upriver to Point Pleasant, Virginia (now West Virginia). There he operated a trading post and occasionally worked as a surveyor's assistant. That same year, when Virginia created Kanawha County, Boone became the lieutenant colonel of the county militia.[96] In 1791, he was elected to the Virginia legislature for the third time. He contracted to provide supplies for the Kanawha militia, but his debts prevented him from buying goods on credit, so he closed his store and returned to hunting and trapping,[97] though he was often hampered by rheumatism.[98]
In 1795, Boone and his wife moved back to Kentucky, living on land owned by their son Daniel Morgan Boone in what became Nicholas County. The next year, Boone applied to Isaac Shelby, the first governor of the new state of Kentucky, for a contract to widen the Wilderness Road into a wagon route, but the contract was awarded to someone else.[99][100] Meanwhile, lawsuits over conflicting land claims continued to make their way through the Kentucky courts. Boone's remaining land claims were sold off to pay legal fees and taxes, but he no longer paid attention to the process. In 1798, a warrant was issued for Boone's arrest after he ignored a summons to testify in a court case, although the sheriff never found him.[101] That same year, the Kentucky assembly named Boone County in his honor.[102]
Into Missouri
Boone's cabin in Missouri
Having endured legal and financial setbacks, Boone sought to make a fresh start by leaving the United States.[102] In 1799, he moved his extended family to what is now St. Charles County, Missouri, but was then part of Spanish Louisiana.[103] The Spanish, eager to promote settlement in the sparsely populated region, did not enforce the official requirement that all immigrants be Catholic. The Spanish governor appointed Boone "syndic" (judge and jury) and commandant (military leader) of the Femme Osage district.[104] Anecdotes of Boone's tenure as syndic suggest he sought to render fair judgments rather than strictly observe the letter of the law.[105][106]
Boone served as syndic and commandant until 1804, when Missouri became part of the United States following the Louisiana Purchase. He was appointed captain of the local militia.[107] Because Boone's land grants from the Spanish government had been largely based on oral agreements, he again lost his land claims. In 1809, he petitioned Congress to restore his Spanish land claims, which was finally done in 1814. Boone sold most of this land to repay old Kentucky debts. When the War of 1812 came to Missouri, Boone's sons Daniel Morgan Boone and Nathan Boone took part, but by that time Boone was much too old for militia duty.[108]
Although Boone reportedly vowed never to return to Kentucky after moving to Missouri, stories (possibly folk tales) were told of him making one last visit to Kentucky to pay off his creditors.[109] American painter John James Audubon claimed to have gone hunting with Boone in Kentucky around 1810. Years later, Audubon painted a portrait of Boone, supposedly from memory, although skeptics noted the similarity of his painting to the well-known portraits by Chester Harding.[110][111] Some historians believe Boone visited his brother Squire near Kentucky in 1810 and have accepted the veracity of Audubon's account.[112][113][note 6]
This engraving by Alonzo Chappel (circa 1861) depicts an elderly Boone hunting in Missouri.
Boone spent his final years in Missouri, often in the company of children and grandchildren. He continued to hunt and trap as much as his health and energy levels permitted, intruding upon the territory of the Osage tribe, who once captured him and confiscated his furs.[115] In 1810, at the age of 76, he went with a group on a six-month hunt up the Missouri River, reportedly as far as the Yellowstone River, a round trip of more than 2,000 miles.[116][117] He began one of his final trapping expeditions in 1815, in the company of a Shawnee and Derry Coburn, a slave who was frequently with Boone in his final years.[118] They reached Fort Osage in 1816, where an officer wrote, "We have been honored by a visit from Col. Boone... He has taken part in all the wars of America, from Braddock's war to the present hour," but "he prefers the woods, where you see him in the dress of the roughest, poorest hunter."[119]
Death and burial
Boone died on September 26, 1820, at his son Nathan Boone's home on Femme Osage Creek, Missouri. He died while hunting and was found the following day.[120] He was buried next to Rebecca, who had died on March 18, 1813. The graves, which were unmarked until the mid-1830s, were near Jemima (Boone) Callaway's home on Tuque Creek, about two miles (3 km) from present-day Marthasville, Missouri.
In 1845, the Boones' remains were disinterred and reburied in a new cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky. Resentment in Missouri about the disinterment grew over the years, and a legend arose that Boone's remains never left Missouri. According to this story, Boone's tombstone in Missouri had been inadvertently placed over the wrong grave, but no one had corrected the error. Boone's Missouri relatives, displeased with the Kentuckians who came to exhume Boone, kept quiet about the mistake and allowed the Kentuckians to dig up the wrong remains. No contemporary evidence indicates this actually happened, but in 1983, a forensic anthropologist examined a crude plaster cast of Boone's skull made before the Kentucky reburial and announced it might be the skull of an African American. Black slaves were also buried at Tuque Creek, so it is possible that the wrong remains were mistakenly removed from the crowded graveyard. Both the Frankfort Cemetery in Kentucky and the Old Bryan Farm graveyard in Missouri claim to have Boone's remains.[121][122]
Legacy
Portrait of Boone, John James Audubon, after 1810
Many heroic actions and chivalrous adventures are related of me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man.
— Daniel Boone[123]
Daniel Boone remains an iconic figure in American history, although his status as an early American folk hero and later as a subject of fiction has tended to obscure the actual details of his life. He emerged as a legend in large part because of John Filson's "The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon", part of his book The Discovery, Settlement and present State of Kentucke. First published in 1784, Filson's book was primarily intended to popularize Kentucky to immigrants.[124] It was translated into French and German, and made Boone famous in America and Europe. Based on interviews with Boone, Filson's book contained a mostly factual account of Boone's adventures from the exploration of Kentucky through the American Revolution, although many have doubted if the florid, philosophical dialogue attributed to Boone was authentic.[note 7] Often reprinted, Filson's book established Boone as one of the first popular heroes of the United States.[126][127]
Timothy Flint also interviewed Boone, and his Biographical Memoir of Daniel Boone, the First Settler of Kentucky (1833) became one of the best-selling biographies of the 19th century. Flint embellished Boone's adventures, doing for Boone what Parson Weems did for George Washington. In Flint's book, Boone fought with a bear, escaped from Indians by swinging on vines (as Tarzan would later do), and so on. Although Boone's family thought the book was absurd, Flint greatly influenced the popular conception of Boone, since these tall tales were recycled in countless dime novels and books aimed at young boys.[128]
Symbol and stereotype
"Daniel Boone Protects His Family", based on The Rescue, a controversial statue that once stood outside the United States Capitol building
Thanks to Filson's book, Boone became a symbol of the "natural man" who lives a virtuous, uncomplicated existence in the wilderness. This was famously expressed in Lord Byron's epic poem Don Juan (1822), which devoted a number of stanzas to Boone, including this one:
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere;
For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoyed the lonely vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.[129]
Byron's poem celebrates Boone as someone who found happiness by turning his back on civilization. In a similar vein, many folk tales depicted Boone as a man who migrated to more remote areas whenever civilization crowded in on him. In a typical anecdote, when asked why he was moving to Missouri, Boone supposedly replied, "I want more elbow room!" Boone rejected this interpretation. "Nothing embitters my old age," he said late in life, like "the circulation of absurd stories that I retire as civilization advances."[130]
Existing simultaneously with the image of Boone as a refugee from society was, paradoxically, the popular portrayal of him as civilization's trailblazer. Boone was celebrated as an agent of Manifest Destiny, a pathfinder who tamed the wilderness, paving the way for the extension of American civilization. In 1852, critic Henry Tuckerman dubbed Boone "the Columbus of the woods," comparing Boone's passage through the Cumberland Gap to Christopher Columbus's voyage to the New World. In popular mythology, Boone became the first to explore and settle Kentucky, opening the way for countless others to follow.[131] In fact, other Americans had explored Kentucky before Boone, as debunkers in the 20th century often pointed out, but Boone came to symbolize them all, making him what historian Michael Lofaro called "the founding father of westward expansion."[132]
In the 19th century, when Native Americans were being displaced from their lands and confined on reservations, Boone's image was often reshaped into the stereotype of the belligerent, Indian-hating frontiersman which was then popular. In John A. McClung's Sketches of Western Adventure (1832), for example, Boone was portrayed as longing for the "thrilling excitement of savage warfare." Boone was transformed in the popular imagination into someone who regarded Indians with contempt and had killed scores of the "savages." The real Boone disliked bloodshed. According to historian John Bakeless, there is no record that Boone ever scalped Indians, unlike other frontiersmen of the era.[133] Boone once told his son Nathan that he was certain of having killed only one Indian, during the battle at Blue Licks,[134] although on another occasion he said, "I never killed but three."[135] He expressed regret over the killings, saying the Indians "have always been kinder to me than the whites."[136] Even though Boone had lost two sons and a brother in wars with Indians, he respected Indians and was respected by them. In Missouri, Boone went hunting with the Shawnees who had captured and adopted him decades earlier.[137][138] Some 19th-century writers regarded Boone's sympathy for Indians as a character flaw and altered his words to conform to contemporary attitudes.[139]
Commemoration and portrayals
1968 Boone commemorative stamp
Obverse of the United States Daniel Boone Bicentennial half dollar, designed by Henry Augustus Lukeman and minted from 1934 to 1938.
Many places in the United States are named for Boone, including the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky and the Sheltowee Trace Trail in Tennessee. His name has long been synonymous with the American outdoors. The Boone and Crockett Club is a conservationist organization founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887, and the Sons of Daniel Boone was the precursor of the Boy Scouts of America. A half-dollar coin was minted in 1934 to mark the bicentennial of Boone's birth; a commemorative stamp was issued in 1968.[140] In 1961, the US Navy ordered ten James Madison-class ballistic missile submarines to be made at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. One would be named the USS Daniel Boone (SSBN-629), commissioning on 23 April 1964 and remaining in service until decommissioning in 1994. The submarine's motto "New Trails to Blaze" was an homage to Boone's life and his great legacy of exploration on the frontier.
Boone's adventures, real and mythical, formed the basis of the archetypal hero of the American West, popular in 19th-century novels and 20th-century films. The main character of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, the first of which was published in 1823, bore striking similarities to Boone; even his name, Nathaniel Bumppo, echoed Daniel Boone's name. As mentioned above, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), Cooper's second Leatherstocking novel, featured a fictionalized version of Boone's rescue of his daughter. After Cooper, other writers developed the Western hero, an iconic figure which began as a variation of Daniel Boone.[141]
In the 20th century, Boone was featured in numerous comic strips, radio programs, novels, and films, such as the 1936 film Daniel Boone.[142] Boone was the subject of a TV series that ran from 1964 to 1970. In the theme song for the series, Boone was described as a "big man" in a "coonskin cap," and the "rippin'est, roarin'est, fightin'est man the frontier ever knew!"[note 8] This did not describe the real Boone, who was not a big man and did not wear a coonskin cap, which he thought uncouth and uncomfortable.[143] Boone was portrayed this way in the TV series because Fess Parker, the tall actor who played him, was essentially reprising his role as Davy Crockett from an earlier TV series. That Boone could be portrayed the same way as Crockett, another American frontiersman with a very different personality, was another example of how Boone's image was reshaped to suit popular tastes.[127][144] He was also the subject matter for the song sung by Ed Ames called "Daniel Boone". It was released in 1966.
Arthur Guiterman in a four stanza poem recounts the life of Boone, ending with his ghost happily tracking animals, both ancient and mythical, across the Milky Way.[145]
In Blood and Treasure, released in 2021, authors Tom Clavin and Bob Drury painted a much broader historical portrait of Boone than has been commonly described.[146]
The Taking of Jemima Boone by Matthew Pearl, published in 2021, is an account of the abduction of the daughter of Daniel Boone and, after her rescue by Boone, then shifts to the conflicts between Boone, his political rival Richard Callaway, and Shawnee leader Blackfish, with resulting impacts to the Western theater of the American Revolutionary War.[147]
Boone was the basis and inspiration for the 2022 independent film Boone: The Vengeance Trail, written, directed by, and starring Jake C. Young. The film follows Daniel, a widowed conservation officer, who sets out to find his daughter when she is abducted by his wife's murderer. The film was also produced by frequent Young collaborators, Rajiim A. Gross and Kenny Scott Guffey.
Siblings
Sarah Boone
Israel Boone (1726–1756)
Samuel Boone (1728–1808)
Jonathan Boone (1730–1808)
Elizabeth Boone (1732–1825)
Mary Boone (1736–1819)
George Boone (1739–1820)
Edward Boone (1740–1780)
Squire Boone (1744–1815)
Hannah Boone (1746–1828)
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Lewis & Clark - Captains of Discovery
"Lewis and Clark" redirects here. For the leaders of the expedition, see Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
For other uses, see Lewis and Clark (disambiguation).
Lewis and Clark Expedition
Portraits of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
Route of expedition with modern borders
Date May 14, 1804 – September 23, 1806
Duration 862 days
Motive Explore the 1803 Louisiana Purchase
Organized by U.S. President Thomas Jefferson
Participants Corps of Discovery, i.e. Lewis, Clark, and 40 men
Deaths 1 – Charles Floyd, August 1804 near Sioux City, Iowa
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. The Corps of Discovery was a select group of U.S. Army and civilian volunteers under the command of Captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend Second Lieutenant William Clark. Clark, along with 30 others, set out from Camp Dubois (Camp Wood), Illinois, on May 14, 1804, met Lewis and ten other members of the group in St. Charles, Missouri, then went up the Missouri River. The expedition crossed the Continental Divide of the Americas near the Lemhi Pass, eventually coming to the Columbia River, and the Pacific Ocean in 1805. The return voyage began on March 23, 1806, at Fort Clatsop, Oregon, ending six months later on September 23 of that year.
President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the expedition, shortly after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, to explore and detail as much of the new territory as possible. Furthermore, he wished to find a practical travel route across the western half of the continent—directly avoiding the hot and desolate desert southwest—and to establish an American presence in the new lands before European powers attempted to establish claims of their own. The campaign's secondary objectives were scientific, economical and humanitarian, i.e., to document the West's biodiversity, topography and geography and to establish positive trade relations with (potentially unknown) Native American tribes. The expedition returned to St. Louis to report their findings to President Jefferson via maps, sketches, and various journals.[1][2]
Motivations
One of Thomas Jefferson's goals was to find "the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce." He also placed special importance on declaring US sovereignty over the land occupied by the many different Native American tribes along the Missouri River, and getting an accurate sense of the resources in the recently completed Louisiana Purchase.[3][4][5][6] The expedition made notable contributions to science,[7] but scientific research was not the main goal of the mission.[8]
Preparations
For years, Thomas Jefferson read accounts about the adventures of various explorers on the western frontier, and, consequently, maintained a long-held interest in further exploring this mostly-unknown region of the continent. In the 1780s, while Minister to France, Jefferson met John Ledyard in Paris, where they discussed a possible trip to the Pacific Northwest.[9][10] Jefferson had also read Captain James Cook's A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (London, 1784), an account of Cook's third voyage, and Le Page du Pratz's The History of Louisiana (London, 1763), all of which greatly influenced his decision to send an expedition. Like Captain Cook, he wished to discover a practical route through the Northwest to the Pacific coast. Alexander Mackenzie had already charted a route in his quest for the Pacific, following Canada's Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean in 1789. Mackenzie and his party were the first non-indigenous people to cross mainland North America, north of Mexico, reaching the Pacific coast of British Columbia in 1793–twelve years earlier than Lewis and Clark. Mackenzie's accounts in Voyages from Montreal (1801) informed Jefferson of Britain's intent to establish control over the lucrative fur trade of the Columbia River, convincing him of the importance of securing the territory posthaste.[11][12] In Philadelphia, Israel Whelen, purveyor of public supplies, purchased necessities for the expedition with a list provided by Lewis; among the items were found 193 pounds of portable soup, 130 rolls of pigtail tobacco, 30 gallons of strong spirit of wine, a wide assortment of Native American presents, medical and surgical supplies, mosquito netting and oilskin bags.[13]
Two years into his presidency, Jefferson asked Congress to fund an expedition through the Louisiana territory to the Pacific Ocean. He did not attempt to make a secret of the Lewis and Clark expedition from Spanish, French, and British officials, but rather claimed different reasons for the venture; he used a secret message to ask for funding, due to poor relations with the opposition Federalist Party in Congress.[14][15][16][17] Congress subsequently appropriated $2,324 for supplies and food, the appropriation of which was left in Lewis's charge.[18]
In 1803, Jefferson commissioned the Corps of Discovery and named Army Captain Meriwether Lewis its leader, who then invited William Clark to co-lead the expedition with him.[19] Lewis demonstrated remarkable skills and potential as a frontiersman, and Jefferson made efforts to prepare him for the long journey ahead as the expedition was gaining approval and funding.[20][21] Jefferson explained his choice of Lewis:
It was impossible to find a character who to a complete science in botany, natural history, mineralogy & astronomy, joined the firmness of constitution & character, prudence, habits adapted to the woods & a familiarity with the Indian manners and character, requisite for this undertaking. All the latter qualifications Capt. Lewis has.[22]
In 1803, Jefferson sent Lewis to Philadelphia to study medicinal cures under Benjamin Rush, a physician and former leader in the American Revolution. He also arranged for Lewis to be further educated by Andrew Ellicott, an astronomer who instructed him in the use of a sextant, among other navigational instruments.[23][24] From Benjamin Smith Barton, Lewis learned how to describe and preserve plant and animal specimens; from Robert Patterson, refinements in computing latitude and longitude, and Caspar Wistar covered fossils, and the search for possible living remnants.[25][26] Lewis, however, was not ignorant of science, having demonstrated a marked capacity to learn, especially with Jefferson as his teacher. At Monticello, Jefferson possessed an enormous library on the subject of North American geography, to which Lewis had full access. He spent time consulting maps and books, as well as conferring with Jefferson.[27]
The keelboat used for the first year of the journey was built near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1803, to Lewis's specifications, and was completed on August 31. The vessel was immediately loaded with equipment and provisions. While in Pittsburgh, Lewis bought a Newfoundland dog, Seaman, to accompany them. Newfoundlands are amicable, large working dogs and good swimmers, lovers of water and commonly found on fishing boats, as they can assist in water rescues. Seaman proved a valuable member of the party, aiding with hunting and protection from bears and other potential predators. He was the only animal to complete the entire trip.
Lewis and his crew set-sail that afternoon, traveling down the Ohio River to meet up with Clark near Louisville, Kentucky, in October 1803, at the Falls of the Ohio.[28][29] Their goals were to explore the vast territory acquired by the Louisiana Purchase and to establish trade and US sovereignty over the Native Americans along the Missouri River. Jefferson also wanted to establish a US claim of "discovery" to the Pacific Northwest and Oregon territory by documenting an American presence there before European nations could claim the land.[5][30][31][32] According to some historians, Jefferson understood that he would have a better claim of ownership to the Pacific Northwest if the team gathered scientific data on animals and plants.[33][34] However, his main objectives were centered around finding an all-water route to the Pacific coast and commerce. His instructions to the expedition stated:
The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River, & such principle stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purpose of commerce.[35]
Camp Dubois (Camp Wood) reconstruction, where the Corps of Discovery mustered on the east side of the Mississippi River, through the winter of 1803–1804, to await the transfer of the Louisiana Purchase to the United States
The US mint prepared special silver medals with a portrait of Jefferson and inscribed with a message of friendship and peace, called Indian Peace Medals. The soldiers were to distribute them to the tribes that they met. The expedition also prepared advanced weapons to display their military firepower. Among these was an Austrian-made .46 caliber Girandoni air rifle, a repeating rifle with a 20-round tubular magazine that was powerful enough to kill a deer.[36][37][38] The expedition was prepared with flintlock firearms, knives, blacksmithing supplies, and cartography equipment. They also carried flags, gift bundles, medicine, and other items that they would need for their journey.[36][37] The route of Lewis and Clark's expedition took them up the Missouri River to its headwaters, then on to the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia River, and it may have been influenced by the purported transcontinental journey of Moncacht-Apé by the same route about a century before. Jefferson had a copy of Le Page's book in his library detailing Moncacht-Apé's itinerary, and Lewis carried a copy with him during the expedition. Le Page's description of Moncacht-Apé's route across the continent neglects to mention the need to cross the Rocky Mountains, and it might be the source of Lewis and Clark's mistaken belief that they could easily carry boats from the Missouri's headwaters to the westward-flowing Columbia.[39]
Journey
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Departure
Corps of Discovery meet Chinooks on the Lower Columbia, October 1805 (Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia painted by Charles Marion Russel, c. 1905)
The Corps of Discovery departed from Camp Dubois (Camp Wood) at 4 pm on May 14, 1804. Under Clark's command, they traveled up the Missouri River in their keelboat and two pirogues to St. Charles, Missouri where Lewis joined them six days later. The expedition set out the next afternoon, May 21.[40] While accounts vary, it is believed the Corps had as many as 45 members, including the officers, enlisted military personnel, civilian volunteers, and York, an African-American man enslaved by Clark.[41]
From St. Charles, the expedition followed the Missouri through what is now Kansas City, Missouri, and Omaha, Nebraska. On August 20, 1804, Sergeant Charles Floyd died, apparently from acute appendicitis. He had been among the first to sign up with the Corps of Discovery and was the only member to die during the expedition. He was buried at a bluff by the river, now named after him,[42] in what is now Sioux City, Iowa. His burial site was marked with a cedar post on which was inscribed his name and day of death. 1 mile (2 km) up the river, the expedition camped at a small river which they named Floyd's River.[43][44][45] During the final week of August, Lewis and Clark reached the edge of the Great Plains, a place abounding with elk, deer, bison, pronghorn and beavers.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition established relations with two dozen Native American nations, without whose help the group would have risked starvation during the harsh winters and/or become hopelessly lost in the vast ranges of the Rocky Mountains.[46]
The Americans and the Lakota nation (whom the Americans called Sioux or "Teton-wan Sioux") had problems when they met, and there was a concern the two sides might clash. According to Harry W. Fritz, "All earlier Missouri River travelers had warned of this powerful and aggressive tribe, determined to block free trade on the river. ... The Sioux were also expecting a retaliatory raid from the Omaha tribe, to the south. A recent Sioux raid had killed 75 Omaha men, burned 40 lodges, and taken four dozen prisoners."[47] The expedition held talks with the Lakota near the confluence of the Missouri and Bad Rivers in what is now Fort Pierre, South Dakota.[48]
Reconstruction of Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark Memorial Park, North Dakota
One of their horses disappeared, and they believed the Sioux were responsible. Afterward, the two sides met and there was a disagreement, and the Sioux asked the men to stay or to give more gifts instead, before being allowed to pass through their territory. Clark wrote they were "warlike" and were the "vilest miscreants of the savage race".[49][50][51][52] They came close to blows several times, until both sides finally backed down and the expedition continued on to Arikara territory.
In the winter of 1804–05, the party built Fort Mandan, near present-day Washburn, North Dakota. Just before departing on April 7, 1805, the expedition sent the keelboat back to St. Louis with a sample of specimens, some never-before-seen east of the Mississippi.[53] One chief asked Lewis and Clark to provide a boat for passage through their national territory. As tensions increased, Lewis and Clark prepared to fight, but the two sides fell-back in the end. The Americans quickly continued westward (upriver), and camped for the winter in the Mandan nation's territory.
After the expedition had set-up camp, nearby tribal members came to visit in fair numbers, some staying all night. For several days, Lewis and Clark met in council with Mandan chiefs. Here they met a French-Canadian fur trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau, and his young Shoshone wife, Sacagawea. Charbonneau, at this time, began to serve as the expedition's translator. Peace was established between the expedition and the Mandan chiefs with the sharing of a Mandan ceremonial pipe.[54] By April 25, Captain Lewis wrote his progress report of the expedition's activities and observations of the Native American nations they had encountered to-date in A Statistical view of the Indian nations inhabiting the Territory of Louisiana, which outlined the names of various tribes, their locations, trading practices and water routes used, among other points. President Jefferson would later present this report to Congress.[55]
Lewis and Clark meeting the Salish at Ross Hole, September 4, 1805.
They followed the Missouri to its headwaters, and over the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass, then north to Traveler's Rest, and crossed the Bitteroots at Lolo Pass. They descended on foot, then proceeded in canoes down the Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia rivers, past Celilo Falls and present-day Portland, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers. Lewis and Clark used William Robert Broughton's 1792 notes and maps to orient themselves once they reached the lower Columbia River. The sighting of Mount Hood and other stratovolcanos confirmed that the expedition had almost reached the Pacific Ocean.[56]
Pacific Ocean
Fort Clatsop reconstruction on the Columbia River near the Pacific Ocean
The expedition sighted the Pacific Ocean for the first time on November 7, 1805, arriving two weeks later.[57][58] The expedition faced its second bitter winter camped on the north side of the Columbia River, in a storm-wracked area.[57] Lack of food was a major factor. The elk, the party's main source of food, had retreated from their usual haunts into the mountains, and the party was now too poor to purchase enough food from neighboring tribes.[59] On November 24, 1805, the majority of the party voted to move their camp to the south side of the Columbia River near modern Astoria, Oregon. Both Sacagawea and the enslaved York participated in the vote.[60]
On the south side of the Columbia River, 2 miles (3 km) upstream on the west side of the Netul River (now Lewis and Clark River), they constructed Fort Clatsop.[57] They did this not just for shelter and protection, but also to officially establish the American presence there, with the American flag flying over the fort.[50][61] During the winter at Fort Clatsop, Lewis committed himself to writing. He filled many pages of his journals with valuable knowledge, mostly about botany, because of the abundant growth and forests that covered that part of the continent.[62] The health of the men also became a problem, with many suffering from colds and influenza.[59]
Knowing that maritime fur traders sometimes visited the lower Columbia River, Lewis and Clark repeatedly asked the local Chinooks about trading ships. They learned that Captain Samuel Hill had been there in early 1805. Miscommunication caused Clark to record the name as "Haley". Captain Hill returned in November 1805, and anchored about 10 miles (16 km) from Fort Clatsop. The Chinook told Hill about Lewis and Clark, but no direct contact was made.[63]
A Russian maritime expedition under statesman Nikolai Rezanov arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River while Lewis and Clark were still there. Neither Rezanov nor Lewis and Clark knew about each other. Rezanov had come from Novo-Arkhangelsk (today Sitka, Alaska), intending to establish a Russian agricultural colony to help with the perennial food shortages in Russian America, and made plans for a relocation of the capital of Russian America from Sitka to the lower Columbia River. But his ship, Juno, was unable to cross the Columbia Bar. So Rezanov went to California instead, setting in motion a process that eventually led to the founding of Fort Ross, California.[64]
Return trip
Lewis was determined to remain at the fort until April 1, but was still anxious to move out at the earliest opportunity. By March 22, the stormy weather had subsided and the following morning, on March 23, 1806, the journey home began. The Corps began their journey homeward using canoes to ascend the Columbia River, and later by trekking over land.[65][66]
Before leaving, Clark gave the Chinook a letter to give to the next ship captain to visit, which was the same Captain Hill who had been nearby during the winter. Hill took the letter to Canton and had it forwarded to Thomas Jefferson, who thus received it before Lewis and Clark returned.[63]
They made their way to Camp Chopunnish[note 1] in Idaho, along the north bank of the Clearwater River, where the members of the expedition collected 65 horses in preparation to cross the Bitterroot Mountains, lying between modern-day Idaho and western Montana. However, the range was still covered in snow, which prevented the expedition from making the crossing. On April 11, while the Corps was waiting for the snow to diminish, Lewis's dog, Seaman, was stolen by Native Americans, but was retrieved shortly. Worried that other such acts might follow, Lewis warned the chief that any other wrongdoing or mischievous acts would result in instant death.
On July 3, before crossing the Continental Divide, the Corps split into two teams so Lewis could explore the Marias River. Lewis's group of four met some men from the Blackfeet nation. During the night, the Blackfeet tried to steal their weapons. In the struggle, the soldiers killed two Blackfeet men. Lewis, George Drouillard, and the Field brothers fled over 100 miles (160 kilometres) in a day before they camped again.
Meanwhile, Clark had entered the Crow tribe's territory. In the night, half of Clark's horses disappeared, but not a single Crow had been seen. Lewis and Clark stayed separated until they reached the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers on August 11. As the groups reunited, one of Clark's hunters, Pierre Cruzatte, mistook Lewis for an elk and fired, injuring Lewis in the thigh.[67] Once together, the Corps was able to return home quickly via the Missouri River. They reached St. Louis on September 23, 1806.[68]
Spanish interference
In March 1804, before the expedition began in May, the Spanish in New Mexico learned from General James Wilkinson[note 2] that the Americans were encroaching on territory claimed by Spain. After the Lewis and Clark expedition set off in May, the Spanish sent four armed expeditions of 52 soldiers, mercenaries [further explanation needed], and Native Americans on August 1, 1804, from Santa Fe, New Mexico northward under Pedro Vial and José Jarvet to intercept Lewis and Clark and imprison the entire expedition. They reached the Pawnee settlement on the Platte River in central Nebraska and learned that the expedition had been there many days before. The expedition was covering 70 to 80 miles (110 to 130 km) a day and Vial's attempt to intercept them was unsuccessful.[69][70]
Geography and science
Further information: List of species described by the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Map of Lewis and Clark's expedition: It changed mapping of northwest America by providing the first accurate depiction of the relationship of the sources of the Columbia and Missouri Rivers, and the Rocky Mountains around 1814
The Lewis and Clark Expedition gained an understanding of the geography of the Northwest and produced the first accurate maps of the area. During the journey, Lewis and Clark drew about 140 maps. Stephen Ambrose says the expedition "filled in the main outlines" of the area.[71]
The expedition documented natural resources and plants that had been previously unknown to Euro-Americans, though not to the indigenous peoples.[72] Lewis and Clark were the first Americans to cross the Continental Divide, and the first Americans to see Yellowstone, enter into Montana, and produce an official description of these different regions.[73][74] Their visit to the Pacific Northwest, maps, and proclamations of sovereignty with medals and flags were legal steps needed to claim title to each indigenous nation's lands under the Doctrine of Discovery.[75]
The expedition was sponsored by the American Philosophical Society (APS).[76] Lewis and Clark received some instruction in astronomy, botany, climatology, ethnology, geography, meteorology, mineralogy, ornithology, and zoology.[77] During the expedition, they made contact with over 70 Native American tribes and described more than 200 new plant and animal species.[78]
Jefferson had the expedition declare "sovereignty" and demonstrate their military strength to ensure native tribes would be subordinate to the U.S., as European colonizers did elsewhere. After the expedition, the maps that were produced allowed the further discovery and settlement of this vast territory in the years that followed.[79][80]
In 1807, Patrick Gass, a private in the U.S. Army, published an account of the journey. He was promoted to sergeant during the course of the expedition.[81] Paul Allen edited a two-volume history of the Lewis and Clark expedition that was published in 1814, in Philadelphia, but without mention of the actual author, banker Nicholas Biddle.[82] Even then, the complete report was not made public until more recently.[83] The earliest authorized edition of the Lewis and Clark journals resides in the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library at the University of Montana.
Encounters with Native Americans
One of the expedition's primary objectives as directed by President Jefferson was to be a surveillance mission that would report back the whereabouts, military strength, lives, activities, and cultures of the various Native American tribes that inhabited the territory newly acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase and the northwest in general. The expedition was to make native people understand that their lands now belonged to the United States and that "their great father" in Washington was now their sovereign.[84] The expedition encountered many different native nations and tribes along the way, many of whom offered their assistance, providing the expedition with their knowledge of the wilderness and with the acquisition of food. The expedition had blank leather-bound journals and ink for the purpose of recording such encounters, as well as for scientific and geological information. They were also provided with various gifts of medals, ribbons, needles, mirrors, and other articles which were intended to ease any tensions when negotiating their passage with the various Native American chiefs whom they would encounter along their way.[85][86][87][88]
Many of the tribes had friendly experiences with British and French fur traders in various isolated encounters along the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, and for the most part the expedition did not encounter hostilities. However, there was a tense confrontation on September 25, 1804, with the Teton-Sioux tribe (also known as the Lakota people, one of the three tribes that comprise the Great Sioux Nation), under chiefs that included Black Buffalo and the Partisan. These chiefs confronted the expedition and demanded tribute from the expedition for their passage over the river.[85][86][87][88] The seven native tribes that comprised the Lakota people controlled a vast inland empire and expected gifts from strangers who wished to navigate their rivers or to pass through their lands.[89] According to Harry W. Fritz, "All earlier Missouri River travelers had warned of this powerful and aggressive tribe, determined to block free trade on the river. ... The Sioux were also expecting a retaliatory raid from the Omaha tribe, to the south. A recent Sioux raid had killed 75 Omaha men, burned 40 lodges, and taken four dozen prisoners."[90]
Captain Lewis made his first mistake by offering the Sioux chief gifts first, which insulted and angered the Partisan chief. Communication was difficult, since the expedition's only Sioux language interpreter was Pierre Dorion who had stayed behind with the other party and was also involved with diplomatic affairs with another tribe. Consequently, both chiefs were offered a few gifts, but neither was satisfied and they wanted some gifts for their warriors and tribe. At that point, some of the warriors from the Partisan tribe took hold of their boat and one of the oars. Lewis took a firm stand, ordering a display of force and presenting arms; Captain Clark brandished his sword and threatened violent reprisal. Just before the situation erupted into a violent confrontation, Black Buffalo ordered his warriors to back off.[85][86][87][88]
The captains were able to negotiate their passage without further incident with the aid of better gifts and a bottle of whiskey. During the next two days, the expedition made camp not far from Black Buffalo's tribe. Similar incidents occurred when they tried to leave, but trouble was averted with gifts of tobacco.[85][86][87][88]
Observations
As the expedition encountered the various Native American tribes during the course of their journey, they observed and recorded information regarding their lifestyles, customs and the social codes they lived by, as directed by President Jefferson. By European standards, the Native American way of life seemed harsh and unforgiving as witnessed by members of the expedition. After many encounters and camping in close proximity to the Native American nations for extended periods of time during the winter months, they soon learned first hand of their customs and social orders.
One of the primary customs that distinguished Native American cultures from those of the West was that it was customary for the men to take on two or more wives if they were able to provide for them and often took on a wife or wives who were members of the immediate family circle, e.g. men in the Minnetaree [note 3] and Mandan tribes would often take on a sister for a wife. Chastity among women was not held in high regard. Infant daughters were often sold by the father to men who were grown, usually for horses or mules.[citation needed] Women in Sioux nations were often bartered away for horses or other supplies; yet this was not practiced among the Shoshone nation, who held their women in higher regard.[91]
They witnessed that many of the Native American nations were constantly at war with other tribes, especially the Sioux, who, while remaining generally friendly to the white fur traders, had proudly boasted of and justified the almost complete destruction of the once great Cahokia nation, along with the Missouris, Illinois, Kaskaskia, and Piorias tribes that lived about the countryside adjacent to the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers.[92]
Sacagawea
Main article: Sacagawea
Statue of Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Sacagawea, sometimes spelled Sakajawea or Sakagawea (c. 1788 – December 20, 1812), was a Shoshone Native American woman who arrived with her husband and owner Toussaint Charbonneau on the expedition to the Pacific Ocean.
On February 11, 1805, a few weeks after her first contact with the expedition, Sacagawea went into labor which was slow and painful, so the Frenchman Charbonneau suggested she be given a potion of rattlesnake's rattle to aid in her delivery. Lewis happened to have some snake's rattle with him. A short time after administering the potion, she delivered a healthy boy who was given the name Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.[93][94]
When the expedition reached Marias River, on June 16, 1805, Sacagawea became dangerously ill. She was able to find some relief by drinking mineral water from the sulphur spring that fed into the river.[95]
Though she has been discussed in literature frequently, much of the information is exaggeration or fiction. Scholars say she did notice some geographical features, but "Sacagawea ... was not the guide for the Expedition, she was important to them as an interpreter and in other ways."[96] The sight of a woman and her infant son would have been reassuring to some indigenous nations, and she played an important role in diplomatic relations by talking to chiefs, easing tensions, and giving the impression of a peaceful mission.[97][98]
In his writings, Meriwether Lewis presented a somewhat negative view of her, though Clark had a higher regard for her, and provided some support for her children in subsequent years. In the journals, they used the terms "squar" (squaw) and "savages" to refer to Sacagawea and other indigenous peoples.[99]
York
Main article: York (explorer)
An enslaved Black man known only as York took part in the expedition as personal servant to William Clark, his enslaver. York did much to help the expedition succeed. He proved popular with the Native Americans, who had never seen a Black man. He also helped with hunting and the heavy labor of pulling boats upstream. Despite his contributions to the Corps of Discovery, Clark refused to release York from bondage upon returning east.[100] While all the other explorers enjoyed rewards of double pay and hundreds of acres of land, York received nothing.[101] After the end of the expedition, Clark allowed York only a brief visit to Kentucky to see his wife before forcing him to return to Missouri.[101] It is unlikely that he ever saw his wife again: "ten years after the expedition's end, York was still enslaved, working as a wagoner for the Clark family".[101][100] The last years of York's life are disputed. In the 1830s, a Black man who said he had first come with Lewis and Clark was living as a chief with Native Americans they met on the expedition, in modern Wyoming.[101]
Accomplishments
The Corps met their objective of reaching the Pacific, mapping and establishing their presence for a legal claim to the land. They established diplomatic relations and trade with at least two dozen indigenous nations. They did not find a continuous waterway to the Pacific Ocean[102] but located a Native American trail that led from the upper end of the Missouri River to the Columbia River which ran to the Pacific Ocean.[103] They gained information about the natural habitat, flora and fauna, bringing back various plant, seed and mineral specimens. They mapped the topography of the land, designating the location of mountain ranges, rivers and the many Native American tribes during the course of their journey. They also learned and recorded much about the language and customs of the Native American tribes they encountered, and brought back many of their artifacts, including bows, clothing and ceremonial robes.[104]
Aftermath
Painting of Mandan Chief Big White, who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their return from the expedition
Two months passed after the expedition's end before Jefferson made his first public statement to Congress and others, giving a one-sentence summary about the success of the expedition before getting into the justification for the expenses involved. In the course of their journey, they acquired a knowledge of numerous tribes of Native Americans hitherto unknown; they informed themselves of the trade which may be carried on with them, the best channels and positions for it, and they are enabled to give with accuracy the geography of the line they pursued. Back east, the botanical and zoological discoveries drew the intense interest of the American Philosophical Society who requested specimens, various artifacts traded with the Native Americans, and reports on plants and wildlife along with various seeds obtained. Jefferson used seeds from "Missouri hominy corn" along with a number of other unidentified seeds to plant at Monticello which he cultivated and studied. He later reported on the "Indian corn" he had grown as being an "excellent" food source.[105] The expedition helped establish the U.S. presence in the newly acquired territory and beyond and opened the door to further exploration, trade and scientific discoveries.[106]
Lewis and Clark returned from their expedition, bringing with them the Mandan Native American Chief Shehaka from the Upper Missouri to visit the "Great Father" in Washington. After Chief Shehaka's visit, it required multiple attempts and multiple military expeditions to safely return Shehaka to his nation.[citation needed]
Upon the return from their expedition, Lewis and Clark struggled to prepare their manuscripts for publication. Clark managed to persuade Nicholas Biddle to edit the journals, which were then published in 1814 as the History of the Expedition Under the Commands of Captains Lewis and Clark. However, Biddle's narrative account omitted much of the material related to their discoveries in flora and fauna. Since Biddle's account was the only printed account of the original journals for the next 90 years, many of Lewis and Clark's discoveries were later unknowingly rediscovered and given new names. It wasn't until 1904–1905, through the publication of Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by Reuben Gold Thwaites, that the general public became aware of the full extent of the scientific discoveries made by the expedition.[107]: 381
During the 19th century, references to Lewis and Clark "scarcely appeared" in history books, even during the United States Centennial in 1876, and the expedition was largely forgotten.[108][109] Lewis and Clark began to gain attention around the start of the 20th century. Both the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis and the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Oregon, showcased them as American pioneers. However, the story remained relatively shallow until mid-century as a celebration of US conquest and personal adventures, but more recently the expedition has been more thoroughly researched.[108]
As of 1984, no US exploration party was more famous, and no American expedition leaders are more recognizable by name.[108]
In 2004, a complete and reliable set of the expedition's journals was compiled by Gary E. Moulton.[110][111][112] Circa 2004, the bicentennial of the expedition further elevated popular interest in Lewis and Clark.[109]
Legacy and honors
In the 1970s, the federal government memorialized the winter assembly encampment, Camp Dubois, as the start of the Lewis and Clark voyage of discovery and in 2019 it recognized Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as the start of the expedition.[113]
Since the expedition, Lewis and Clark have been commemorated and honored over the years on various coins, currency, and commemorative postage stamps, as well as in a number of other capacities. In 2004, the American elm cultivar Ulmus americana 'Lewis & Clark' (selling name Prairie Expedition) was released by North Dakota State University Research Foundation in commemoration of the expedition's bicentenary;[114] the tree has a resistance to Dutch elm disease.
The Lewis and Clark Public School District in North Dakota is named after the pair.
Campsite Lewis and Clark in Camp Sandy Beach at Yawgoog Scout Reservation in Rockville, Rhode Island also honors both explorers.
Lewis and Clark Expedition 150th anniversary issue, 1954
Lewis and Clark Expedition
150th anniversary issue, 1954
Lewis and Clark were honored (along with the American bison) on the Series of 1901 $10 Legal Tender
Lewis and Clark were honored (along with the American bison) on the Series of 1901 $10 Legal Tender
Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Cape Disappointment State Park
Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Cape Disappointment State Park
Lewis and Clark statue (with Seaman (dog)) in St. Charles, Missouri
Lewis and Clark statue (with Seaman (dog)) in St. Charles, Missouri
Lewis and Clark Mosaic image in Missouri
Lewis and Clark Mosaic image in Missouri
Sergeant Floyd Monument in Sioux City, Iowa is the first of 2,600 National Historic Landmarks in the United States
Sergeant Floyd Monument in Sioux City, Iowa is the first of 2,600 National Historic Landmarks in the United States
Prior discoveries
See also: Timeline of European exploration and Exploration of North America
In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle traveled down the Mississippi from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. The French then established a chain of posts along the Mississippi from New Orleans to the Great Lakes. There followed a number of French explorers including Pedro Vial and Pierre Antoine and Paul Mallet, among others. Vial may have preceded Lewis and Clark to Montana. In 1787, he gave a map of the upper Missouri River and locations of "territories transited by Pedro Vial" to Spanish authorities.[115]
Early in 1792, the American explorer Robert Gray, sailing in the Columbia Rediviva, discovered the yet to be named Columbia River, named it after his ship and claimed it for the United States. Later in 1792, the Vancouver Expedition had learned of Gray's discovery and used his maps. Vancouver's expedition explored over 100 miles (160 km) up the Columbia, into the Columbia River Gorge. Lewis and Clark used the maps produced by these expeditions when they descended the lower Columbia to the Pacific coast.[116][117]
From 1792 to 1793, Alexander Mackenzie had crossed North America from Quebec to the Pacific.[118]
See also
icon Geography portal
icon Modern history portal
icon Science portal
flag United States portal
The Far Horizons, a 1955 film about the expedition
Gateway Arch National Park
Lewis and Clark Pass (Montana) – the only non-motorized pass on the expedition's route
Lewis and Clark's Keelboat
The Red River Expedition (1806) and the Pike Expedition were also commissioned by Jefferson
James Kendall Hosmer, American history professor and librarian who edited and published Nicholas Biddle's account of Lewis and Clark's journal
Timeline of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Notes
'Chopunnish' was the Captain's term for the Nez Perce Pass
After Wilkinson died in 1825, it was discovered that he was a spy for the Spanish crown.
aka the Hidatsa
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—— (1902). History of the expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol II. Toranto, George N. Morang & Co. Ltd.
—— (1902). History of the expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol III. Toranto, George N. Morang & Co. Ltd.
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—— (1998). The Course of Empire. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 647. ISBN 9780395924983.
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Primary sources
Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William (2004). The Journals Of Lewis And Clark. Kessinger Publishing. p. 312. ISBN 9781419167997. E'books, Full view [full citation needed]
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Lewis, Meriwether (1811). The Travels of Captains Lewis and Clarke, from St. Louis, by way of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, to the Pacific Ocean; performed in the Years 1804, 1805, and 1806. By Order of the Government of the United States; containing Delineations of the Manners, Customs, Religion, &c. of the Indians; compiled from various authentic Sources and original Documents; and a summary of the Statistical View of the Indian Nations, from the official communication of Meriwether Lewis. In 8vo. illustrated with a Map of the Country inhabited by the Tribes of Western Indians. ("This is an interesting volume, and exhibits not only some valuable geographical notices, but very copious and amusing details respecting the manners, habits, and divisions of the India North America Tribes.") Modern Publications, and New Editions of Valuable Standard Works. In: The Quarterly Review, February 1811, p. 2.
Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William (1815). Travels to the source of the Missouri river and across the American continent to the Pacific ocean. Performed by order of the government of the United States, in the years 1804, 1805, and 1806. By Captains Lewis and Clarke. Published from the official report, and illustrated by a map of the route, and other maps. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown.
"Review of Travels to the Source of the Missouri River ... ". The Quarterly Review. 12: 317–368. January 1815.
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——; Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William; Jefferson, Thomas (1893). History of the expedition under the command of Lewis and Clark: Volume 2. Francis P. Harper, New York. p. 1364.
——; Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William; Jefferson, Thomas (1893). History of the expedition under the command of Lewis and Clark: Volume 3. Francis P. Harper, New York. p. 1298.
——; Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William; Jefferson, Thomas (1893). History of the expedition under the command of Lewis and Clark: Volume 4. Francis P. Harper, New York. p. 1298.
Jackson, Donald Dean (1962). Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: with related documents, 1783–1854. University of Illinois Press (Original from the University of Virginia). p. 728.
Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William (2004). Moulton, Gary E. (ed.). The Definitive Journals of Lewis & Clark. University of Nebraska Press. p. 357. ISBN 9780803280328.
Further reading
Main article: Bibliography of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Steven E. Ambrose (1996). Undaunted Courage, Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. Simon and Schuster Paperbacks. ISBN 9780684826974.
Bassman, John H. (2009). A Navigation Companion for the Lewis & Clark Trail. Volume 1, History, camp locations and daily summaries of expedition activities. John H. Bassman.
Betts, Robert B. (2002). In Search of York: The Slave Who Went to the Pacific With Lewis and Clark. University Press of Colorado. ISBN 0-87081-714-0.
Clark, William; Lewis, Meriwether. The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804–1806.
Burns, Ken (1997). Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-45450-0.
Fenster, Julie M. (2016). Jefferson's America: The President, the Purchase, and the Explorers Who Transformed a Nation. Crown/Archetype. ISBN 978-0-3079-5654-5.
Hayes, Derek (1999). Historical Atlas of the Pacific Northwest: Maps of Exploration and Discovery: British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Yukon. Sasquatch Books. p. 208. ISBN 978-1570612152.
Gen. Thomas James (February 11, 2018). Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1985208711.
Gilman, Carolyn (2003). Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books. ISBN 978-1588340993.
Schmidt, Thomas (2002). National Geographic Guide to the Lewis & Clark Trail. National Geographic. ISBN 0-7922-6471-1.
Tubbs, Stephenie Ambrose (2008). Why Sacagawea Deserves the Day Off and Other Lessons from the Lewis and Clark Trail. University of Nebraska Press.
Wheeler, Olin Dunbar (1904). The Trail of Lewis and Clark, 1804–1904: A Story of the Great Exploration Across the Continent in 1804–6. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. p. 377.
External links
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Media from Commons
News from Wikinews
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Textbooks from Wikibooks
Resources from Wikiversity
Travel information from Wikivoyage
Data from Wikidata
Full text of the Lewis and Clark journals online – edited by Gary E. Moulton, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
"National Archives photos dating from the 1860s–1890s of the Native cultures the expedition encountered". Archived from the original on February 12, 2008.
Travel the Lewis and Clark Expedition, a National Park Service Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary
"History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark: To the Sources of the Missouri, thence Across the Rocky Mountains and down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean" published in 1814; from the World Digital Library
Lewis & Clark Fort Mandan Foundation: Discover Lewis & Clark
Corps of Discovery Online Atlas, created by Watzek Library, Lewis & Clark College
Lewis and Clark Expedition Maps and Receipt. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
William Clark Field Notes. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Louis Starr Collection Concerning the Field Notes of William Clark. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
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Lewis & Clark: Explorers of the New Frontier
"Lewis and Clark" redirects here. For the leaders of the expedition, see Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
For other uses, see Lewis and Clark (disambiguation).
Lewis and Clark Expedition
Portraits of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
Route of expedition with modern borders
Date May 14, 1804 – September 23, 1806
Duration 862 days
Motive Explore the 1803 Louisiana Purchase
Organized by U.S. President Thomas Jefferson
Participants Corps of Discovery, i.e. Lewis, Clark, and 40 men
Deaths 1 – Charles Floyd, August 1804 near Sioux City, Iowa
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. The Corps of Discovery was a select group of U.S. Army and civilian volunteers under the command of Captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend Second Lieutenant William Clark. Clark, along with 30 others, set out from Camp Dubois (Camp Wood), Illinois, on May 14, 1804, met Lewis and ten other members of the group in St. Charles, Missouri, then went up the Missouri River. The expedition crossed the Continental Divide of the Americas near the Lemhi Pass, eventually coming to the Columbia River, and the Pacific Ocean in 1805. The return voyage began on March 23, 1806, at Fort Clatsop, Oregon, ending six months later on September 23 of that year.
President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the expedition, shortly after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, to explore and detail as much of the new territory as possible. Furthermore, he wished to find a practical travel route across the western half of the continent—directly avoiding the hot and desolate desert southwest—and to establish an American presence in the new lands before European powers attempted to establish claims of their own. The campaign's secondary objectives were scientific, economical and humanitarian, i.e., to document the West's biodiversity, topography and geography and to establish positive trade relations with (potentially unknown) Native American tribes. The expedition returned to St. Louis to report their findings to President Jefferson via maps, sketches, and various journals.[1][2]
Motivations
One of Thomas Jefferson's goals was to find "the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce." He also placed special importance on declaring US sovereignty over the land occupied by the many different Native American tribes along the Missouri River, and getting an accurate sense of the resources in the recently completed Louisiana Purchase.[3][4][5][6] The expedition made notable contributions to science,[7] but scientific research was not the main goal of the mission.[8]
Preparations
For years, Thomas Jefferson read accounts about the adventures of various explorers on the western frontier, and, consequently, maintained a long-held interest in further exploring this mostly-unknown region of the continent. In the 1780s, while Minister to France, Jefferson met John Ledyard in Paris, where they discussed a possible trip to the Pacific Northwest.[9][10] Jefferson had also read Captain James Cook's A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (London, 1784), an account of Cook's third voyage, and Le Page du Pratz's The History of Louisiana (London, 1763), all of which greatly influenced his decision to send an expedition. Like Captain Cook, he wished to discover a practical route through the Northwest to the Pacific coast. Alexander Mackenzie had already charted a route in his quest for the Pacific, following Canada's Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean in 1789. Mackenzie and his party were the first non-indigenous people to cross mainland North America, north of Mexico, reaching the Pacific coast of British Columbia in 1793–twelve years earlier than Lewis and Clark. Mackenzie's accounts in Voyages from Montreal (1801) informed Jefferson of Britain's intent to establish control over the lucrative fur trade of the Columbia River, convincing him of the importance of securing the territory posthaste.[11][12] In Philadelphia, Israel Whelen, purveyor of public supplies, purchased necessities for the expedition with a list provided by Lewis; among the items were found 193 pounds of portable soup, 130 rolls of pigtail tobacco, 30 gallons of strong spirit of wine, a wide assortment of Native American presents, medical and surgical supplies, mosquito netting and oilskin bags.[13]
Two years into his presidency, Jefferson asked Congress to fund an expedition through the Louisiana territory to the Pacific Ocean. He did not attempt to make a secret of the Lewis and Clark expedition from Spanish, French, and British officials, but rather claimed different reasons for the venture; he used a secret message to ask for funding, due to poor relations with the opposition Federalist Party in Congress.[14][15][16][17] Congress subsequently appropriated $2,324 for supplies and food, the appropriation of which was left in Lewis's charge.[18]
In 1803, Jefferson commissioned the Corps of Discovery and named Army Captain Meriwether Lewis its leader, who then invited William Clark to co-lead the expedition with him.[19] Lewis demonstrated remarkable skills and potential as a frontiersman, and Jefferson made efforts to prepare him for the long journey ahead as the expedition was gaining approval and funding.[20][21] Jefferson explained his choice of Lewis:
It was impossible to find a character who to a complete science in botany, natural history, mineralogy & astronomy, joined the firmness of constitution & character, prudence, habits adapted to the woods & a familiarity with the Indian manners and character, requisite for this undertaking. All the latter qualifications Capt. Lewis has.[22]
In 1803, Jefferson sent Lewis to Philadelphia to study medicinal cures under Benjamin Rush, a physician and former leader in the American Revolution. He also arranged for Lewis to be further educated by Andrew Ellicott, an astronomer who instructed him in the use of a sextant, among other navigational instruments.[23][24] From Benjamin Smith Barton, Lewis learned how to describe and preserve plant and animal specimens; from Robert Patterson, refinements in computing latitude and longitude, and Caspar Wistar covered fossils, and the search for possible living remnants.[25][26] Lewis, however, was not ignorant of science, having demonstrated a marked capacity to learn, especially with Jefferson as his teacher. At Monticello, Jefferson possessed an enormous library on the subject of North American geography, to which Lewis had full access. He spent time consulting maps and books, as well as conferring with Jefferson.[27]
The keelboat used for the first year of the journey was built near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1803, to Lewis's specifications, and was completed on August 31. The vessel was immediately loaded with equipment and provisions. While in Pittsburgh, Lewis bought a Newfoundland dog, Seaman, to accompany them. Newfoundlands are amicable, large working dogs and good swimmers, lovers of water and commonly found on fishing boats, as they can assist in water rescues. Seaman proved a valuable member of the party, aiding with hunting and protection from bears and other potential predators. He was the only animal to complete the entire trip.
Lewis and his crew set-sail that afternoon, traveling down the Ohio River to meet up with Clark near Louisville, Kentucky, in October 1803, at the Falls of the Ohio.[28][29] Their goals were to explore the vast territory acquired by the Louisiana Purchase and to establish trade and US sovereignty over the Native Americans along the Missouri River. Jefferson also wanted to establish a US claim of "discovery" to the Pacific Northwest and Oregon territory by documenting an American presence there before European nations could claim the land.[5][30][31][32] According to some historians, Jefferson understood that he would have a better claim of ownership to the Pacific Northwest if the team gathered scientific data on animals and plants.[33][34] However, his main objectives were centered around finding an all-water route to the Pacific coast and commerce. His instructions to the expedition stated:
The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River, & such principle stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purpose of commerce.[35]
Camp Dubois (Camp Wood) reconstruction, where the Corps of Discovery mustered on the east side of the Mississippi River, through the winter of 1803–1804, to await the transfer of the Louisiana Purchase to the United States
The US mint prepared special silver medals with a portrait of Jefferson and inscribed with a message of friendship and peace, called Indian Peace Medals. The soldiers were to distribute them to the tribes that they met. The expedition also prepared advanced weapons to display their military firepower. Among these was an Austrian-made .46 caliber Girandoni air rifle, a repeating rifle with a 20-round tubular magazine that was powerful enough to kill a deer.[36][37][38] The expedition was prepared with flintlock firearms, knives, blacksmithing supplies, and cartography equipment. They also carried flags, gift bundles, medicine, and other items that they would need for their journey.[36][37] The route of Lewis and Clark's expedition took them up the Missouri River to its headwaters, then on to the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia River, and it may have been influenced by the purported transcontinental journey of Moncacht-Apé by the same route about a century before. Jefferson had a copy of Le Page's book in his library detailing Moncacht-Apé's itinerary, and Lewis carried a copy with him during the expedition. Le Page's description of Moncacht-Apé's route across the continent neglects to mention the need to cross the Rocky Mountains, and it might be the source of Lewis and Clark's mistaken belief that they could easily carry boats from the Missouri's headwaters to the westward-flowing Columbia.[39]
Journey
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Departure
Corps of Discovery meet Chinooks on the Lower Columbia, October 1805 (Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia painted by Charles Marion Russel, c. 1905)
The Corps of Discovery departed from Camp Dubois (Camp Wood) at 4 pm on May 14, 1804. Under Clark's command, they traveled up the Missouri River in their keelboat and two pirogues to St. Charles, Missouri where Lewis joined them six days later. The expedition set out the next afternoon, May 21.[40] While accounts vary, it is believed the Corps had as many as 45 members, including the officers, enlisted military personnel, civilian volunteers, and York, an African-American man enslaved by Clark.[41]
From St. Charles, the expedition followed the Missouri through what is now Kansas City, Missouri, and Omaha, Nebraska. On August 20, 1804, Sergeant Charles Floyd died, apparently from acute appendicitis. He had been among the first to sign up with the Corps of Discovery and was the only member to die during the expedition. He was buried at a bluff by the river, now named after him,[42] in what is now Sioux City, Iowa. His burial site was marked with a cedar post on which was inscribed his name and day of death. 1 mile (2 km) up the river, the expedition camped at a small river which they named Floyd's River.[43][44][45] During the final week of August, Lewis and Clark reached the edge of the Great Plains, a place abounding with elk, deer, bison, pronghorn and beavers.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition established relations with two dozen Native American nations, without whose help the group would have risked starvation during the harsh winters and/or become hopelessly lost in the vast ranges of the Rocky Mountains.[46]
The Americans and the Lakota nation (whom the Americans called Sioux or "Teton-wan Sioux") had problems when they met, and there was a concern the two sides might clash. According to Harry W. Fritz, "All earlier Missouri River travelers had warned of this powerful and aggressive tribe, determined to block free trade on the river. ... The Sioux were also expecting a retaliatory raid from the Omaha tribe, to the south. A recent Sioux raid had killed 75 Omaha men, burned 40 lodges, and taken four dozen prisoners."[47] The expedition held talks with the Lakota near the confluence of the Missouri and Bad Rivers in what is now Fort Pierre, South Dakota.[48]
Reconstruction of Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark Memorial Park, North Dakota
One of their horses disappeared, and they believed the Sioux were responsible. Afterward, the two sides met and there was a disagreement, and the Sioux asked the men to stay or to give more gifts instead, before being allowed to pass through their territory. Clark wrote they were "warlike" and were the "vilest miscreants of the savage race".[49][50][51][52] They came close to blows several times, until both sides finally backed down and the expedition continued on to Arikara territory.
In the winter of 1804–05, the party built Fort Mandan, near present-day Washburn, North Dakota. Just before departing on April 7, 1805, the expedition sent the keelboat back to St. Louis with a sample of specimens, some never-before-seen east of the Mississippi.[53] One chief asked Lewis and Clark to provide a boat for passage through their national territory. As tensions increased, Lewis and Clark prepared to fight, but the two sides fell-back in the end. The Americans quickly continued westward (upriver), and camped for the winter in the Mandan nation's territory.
After the expedition had set-up camp, nearby tribal members came to visit in fair numbers, some staying all night. For several days, Lewis and Clark met in council with Mandan chiefs. Here they met a French-Canadian fur trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau, and his young Shoshone wife, Sacagawea. Charbonneau, at this time, began to serve as the expedition's translator. Peace was established between the expedition and the Mandan chiefs with the sharing of a Mandan ceremonial pipe.[54] By April 25, Captain Lewis wrote his progress report of the expedition's activities and observations of the Native American nations they had encountered to-date in A Statistical view of the Indian nations inhabiting the Territory of Louisiana, which outlined the names of various tribes, their locations, trading practices and water routes used, among other points. President Jefferson would later present this report to Congress.[55]
Lewis and Clark meeting the Salish at Ross Hole, September 4, 1805.
They followed the Missouri to its headwaters, and over the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass, then north to Traveler's Rest, and crossed the Bitteroots at Lolo Pass. They descended on foot, then proceeded in canoes down the Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia rivers, past Celilo Falls and present-day Portland, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers. Lewis and Clark used William Robert Broughton's 1792 notes and maps to orient themselves once they reached the lower Columbia River. The sighting of Mount Hood and other stratovolcanos confirmed that the expedition had almost reached the Pacific Ocean.[56]
Pacific Ocean
Fort Clatsop reconstruction on the Columbia River near the Pacific Ocean
The expedition sighted the Pacific Ocean for the first time on November 7, 1805, arriving two weeks later.[57][58] The expedition faced its second bitter winter camped on the north side of the Columbia River, in a storm-wracked area.[57] Lack of food was a major factor. The elk, the party's main source of food, had retreated from their usual haunts into the mountains, and the party was now too poor to purchase enough food from neighboring tribes.[59] On November 24, 1805, the majority of the party voted to move their camp to the south side of the Columbia River near modern Astoria, Oregon. Both Sacagawea and the enslaved York participated in the vote.[60]
On the south side of the Columbia River, 2 miles (3 km) upstream on the west side of the Netul River (now Lewis and Clark River), they constructed Fort Clatsop.[57] They did this not just for shelter and protection, but also to officially establish the American presence there, with the American flag flying over the fort.[50][61] During the winter at Fort Clatsop, Lewis committed himself to writing. He filled many pages of his journals with valuable knowledge, mostly about botany, because of the abundant growth and forests that covered that part of the continent.[62] The health of the men also became a problem, with many suffering from colds and influenza.[59]
Knowing that maritime fur traders sometimes visited the lower Columbia River, Lewis and Clark repeatedly asked the local Chinooks about trading ships. They learned that Captain Samuel Hill had been there in early 1805. Miscommunication caused Clark to record the name as "Haley". Captain Hill returned in November 1805, and anchored about 10 miles (16 km) from Fort Clatsop. The Chinook told Hill about Lewis and Clark, but no direct contact was made.[63]
A Russian maritime expedition under statesman Nikolai Rezanov arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River while Lewis and Clark were still there. Neither Rezanov nor Lewis and Clark knew about each other. Rezanov had come from Novo-Arkhangelsk (today Sitka, Alaska), intending to establish a Russian agricultural colony to help with the perennial food shortages in Russian America, and made plans for a relocation of the capital of Russian America from Sitka to the lower Columbia River. But his ship, Juno, was unable to cross the Columbia Bar. So Rezanov went to California instead, setting in motion a process that eventually led to the founding of Fort Ross, California.[64]
Return trip
Lewis was determined to remain at the fort until April 1, but was still anxious to move out at the earliest opportunity. By March 22, the stormy weather had subsided and the following morning, on March 23, 1806, the journey home began. The Corps began their journey homeward using canoes to ascend the Columbia River, and later by trekking over land.[65][66]
Before leaving, Clark gave the Chinook a letter to give to the next ship captain to visit, which was the same Captain Hill who had been nearby during the winter. Hill took the letter to Canton and had it forwarded to Thomas Jefferson, who thus received it before Lewis and Clark returned.[63]
They made their way to Camp Chopunnish[note 1] in Idaho, along the north bank of the Clearwater River, where the members of the expedition collected 65 horses in preparation to cross the Bitterroot Mountains, lying between modern-day Idaho and western Montana. However, the range was still covered in snow, which prevented the expedition from making the crossing. On April 11, while the Corps was waiting for the snow to diminish, Lewis's dog, Seaman, was stolen by Native Americans, but was retrieved shortly. Worried that other such acts might follow, Lewis warned the chief that any other wrongdoing or mischievous acts would result in instant death.
On July 3, before crossing the Continental Divide, the Corps split into two teams so Lewis could explore the Marias River. Lewis's group of four met some men from the Blackfeet nation. During the night, the Blackfeet tried to steal their weapons. In the struggle, the soldiers killed two Blackfeet men. Lewis, George Drouillard, and the Field brothers fled over 100 miles (160 kilometres) in a day before they camped again.
Meanwhile, Clark had entered the Crow tribe's territory. In the night, half of Clark's horses disappeared, but not a single Crow had been seen. Lewis and Clark stayed separated until they reached the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers on August 11. As the groups reunited, one of Clark's hunters, Pierre Cruzatte, mistook Lewis for an elk and fired, injuring Lewis in the thigh.[67] Once together, the Corps was able to return home quickly via the Missouri River. They reached St. Louis on September 23, 1806.[68]
Spanish interference
In March 1804, before the expedition began in May, the Spanish in New Mexico learned from General James Wilkinson[note 2] that the Americans were encroaching on territory claimed by Spain. After the Lewis and Clark expedition set off in May, the Spanish sent four armed expeditions of 52 soldiers, mercenaries [further explanation needed], and Native Americans on August 1, 1804, from Santa Fe, New Mexico northward under Pedro Vial and José Jarvet to intercept Lewis and Clark and imprison the entire expedition. They reached the Pawnee settlement on the Platte River in central Nebraska and learned that the expedition had been there many days before. The expedition was covering 70 to 80 miles (110 to 130 km) a day and Vial's attempt to intercept them was unsuccessful.[69][70]
Geography and science
Further information: List of species described by the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Map of Lewis and Clark's expedition: It changed mapping of northwest America by providing the first accurate depiction of the relationship of the sources of the Columbia and Missouri Rivers, and the Rocky Mountains around 1814
The Lewis and Clark Expedition gained an understanding of the geography of the Northwest and produced the first accurate maps of the area. During the journey, Lewis and Clark drew about 140 maps. Stephen Ambrose says the expedition "filled in the main outlines" of the area.[71]
The expedition documented natural resources and plants that had been previously unknown to Euro-Americans, though not to the indigenous peoples.[72] Lewis and Clark were the first Americans to cross the Continental Divide, and the first Americans to see Yellowstone, enter into Montana, and produce an official description of these different regions.[73][74] Their visit to the Pacific Northwest, maps, and proclamations of sovereignty with medals and flags were legal steps needed to claim title to each indigenous nation's lands under the Doctrine of Discovery.[75]
The expedition was sponsored by the American Philosophical Society (APS).[76] Lewis and Clark received some instruction in astronomy, botany, climatology, ethnology, geography, meteorology, mineralogy, ornithology, and zoology.[77] During the expedition, they made contact with over 70 Native American tribes and described more than 200 new plant and animal species.[78]
Jefferson had the expedition declare "sovereignty" and demonstrate their military strength to ensure native tribes would be subordinate to the U.S., as European colonizers did elsewhere. After the expedition, the maps that were produced allowed the further discovery and settlement of this vast territory in the years that followed.[79][80]
In 1807, Patrick Gass, a private in the U.S. Army, published an account of the journey. He was promoted to sergeant during the course of the expedition.[81] Paul Allen edited a two-volume history of the Lewis and Clark expedition that was published in 1814, in Philadelphia, but without mention of the actual author, banker Nicholas Biddle.[82] Even then, the complete report was not made public until more recently.[83] The earliest authorized edition of the Lewis and Clark journals resides in the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library at the University of Montana.
Encounters with Native Americans
One of the expedition's primary objectives as directed by President Jefferson was to be a surveillance mission that would report back the whereabouts, military strength, lives, activities, and cultures of the various Native American tribes that inhabited the territory newly acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase and the northwest in general. The expedition was to make native people understand that their lands now belonged to the United States and that "their great father" in Washington was now their sovereign.[84] The expedition encountered many different native nations and tribes along the way, many of whom offered their assistance, providing the expedition with their knowledge of the wilderness and with the acquisition of food. The expedition had blank leather-bound journals and ink for the purpose of recording such encounters, as well as for scientific and geological information. They were also provided with various gifts of medals, ribbons, needles, mirrors, and other articles which were intended to ease any tensions when negotiating their passage with the various Native American chiefs whom they would encounter along their way.[85][86][87][88]
Many of the tribes had friendly experiences with British and French fur traders in various isolated encounters along the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, and for the most part the expedition did not encounter hostilities. However, there was a tense confrontation on September 25, 1804, with the Teton-Sioux tribe (also known as the Lakota people, one of the three tribes that comprise the Great Sioux Nation), under chiefs that included Black Buffalo and the Partisan. These chiefs confronted the expedition and demanded tribute from the expedition for their passage over the river.[85][86][87][88] The seven native tribes that comprised the Lakota people controlled a vast inland empire and expected gifts from strangers who wished to navigate their rivers or to pass through their lands.[89] According to Harry W. Fritz, "All earlier Missouri River travelers had warned of this powerful and aggressive tribe, determined to block free trade on the river. ... The Sioux were also expecting a retaliatory raid from the Omaha tribe, to the south. A recent Sioux raid had killed 75 Omaha men, burned 40 lodges, and taken four dozen prisoners."[90]
Captain Lewis made his first mistake by offering the Sioux chief gifts first, which insulted and angered the Partisan chief. Communication was difficult, since the expedition's only Sioux language interpreter was Pierre Dorion who had stayed behind with the other party and was also involved with diplomatic affairs with another tribe. Consequently, both chiefs were offered a few gifts, but neither was satisfied and they wanted some gifts for their warriors and tribe. At that point, some of the warriors from the Partisan tribe took hold of their boat and one of the oars. Lewis took a firm stand, ordering a display of force and presenting arms; Captain Clark brandished his sword and threatened violent reprisal. Just before the situation erupted into a violent confrontation, Black Buffalo ordered his warriors to back off.[85][86][87][88]
The captains were able to negotiate their passage without further incident with the aid of better gifts and a bottle of whiskey. During the next two days, the expedition made camp not far from Black Buffalo's tribe. Similar incidents occurred when they tried to leave, but trouble was averted with gifts of tobacco.[85][86][87][88]
Observations
As the expedition encountered the various Native American tribes during the course of their journey, they observed and recorded information regarding their lifestyles, customs and the social codes they lived by, as directed by President Jefferson. By European standards, the Native American way of life seemed harsh and unforgiving as witnessed by members of the expedition. After many encounters and camping in close proximity to the Native American nations for extended periods of time during the winter months, they soon learned first hand of their customs and social orders.
One of the primary customs that distinguished Native American cultures from those of the West was that it was customary for the men to take on two or more wives if they were able to provide for them and often took on a wife or wives who were members of the immediate family circle, e.g. men in the Minnetaree [note 3] and Mandan tribes would often take on a sister for a wife. Chastity among women was not held in high regard. Infant daughters were often sold by the father to men who were grown, usually for horses or mules.[citation needed] Women in Sioux nations were often bartered away for horses or other supplies; yet this was not practiced among the Shoshone nation, who held their women in higher regard.[91]
They witnessed that many of the Native American nations were constantly at war with other tribes, especially the Sioux, who, while remaining generally friendly to the white fur traders, had proudly boasted of and justified the almost complete destruction of the once great Cahokia nation, along with the Missouris, Illinois, Kaskaskia, and Piorias tribes that lived about the countryside adjacent to the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers.[92]
Sacagawea
Main article: Sacagawea
Statue of Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Sacagawea, sometimes spelled Sakajawea or Sakagawea (c. 1788 – December 20, 1812), was a Shoshone Native American woman who arrived with her husband and owner Toussaint Charbonneau on the expedition to the Pacific Ocean.
On February 11, 1805, a few weeks after her first contact with the expedition, Sacagawea went into labor which was slow and painful, so the Frenchman Charbonneau suggested she be given a potion of rattlesnake's rattle to aid in her delivery. Lewis happened to have some snake's rattle with him. A short time after administering the potion, she delivered a healthy boy who was given the name Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.[93][94]
When the expedition reached Marias River, on June 16, 1805, Sacagawea became dangerously ill. She was able to find some relief by drinking mineral water from the sulphur spring that fed into the river.[95]
Though she has been discussed in literature frequently, much of the information is exaggeration or fiction. Scholars say she did notice some geographical features, but "Sacagawea ... was not the guide for the Expedition, she was important to them as an interpreter and in other ways."[96] The sight of a woman and her infant son would have been reassuring to some indigenous nations, and she played an important role in diplomatic relations by talking to chiefs, easing tensions, and giving the impression of a peaceful mission.[97][98]
In his writings, Meriwether Lewis presented a somewhat negative view of her, though Clark had a higher regard for her, and provided some support for her children in subsequent years. In the journals, they used the terms "squar" (squaw) and "savages" to refer to Sacagawea and other indigenous peoples.[99]
York
Main article: York (explorer)
An enslaved Black man known only as York took part in the expedition as personal servant to William Clark, his enslaver. York did much to help the expedition succeed. He proved popular with the Native Americans, who had never seen a Black man. He also helped with hunting and the heavy labor of pulling boats upstream. Despite his contributions to the Corps of Discovery, Clark refused to release York from bondage upon returning east.[100] While all the other explorers enjoyed rewards of double pay and hundreds of acres of land, York received nothing.[101] After the end of the expedition, Clark allowed York only a brief visit to Kentucky to see his wife before forcing him to return to Missouri.[101] It is unlikely that he ever saw his wife again: "ten years after the expedition's end, York was still enslaved, working as a wagoner for the Clark family".[101][100] The last years of York's life are disputed. In the 1830s, a Black man who said he had first come with Lewis and Clark was living as a chief with Native Americans they met on the expedition, in modern Wyoming.[101]
Accomplishments
The Corps met their objective of reaching the Pacific, mapping and establishing their presence for a legal claim to the land. They established diplomatic relations and trade with at least two dozen indigenous nations. They did not find a continuous waterway to the Pacific Ocean[102] but located a Native American trail that led from the upper end of the Missouri River to the Columbia River which ran to the Pacific Ocean.[103] They gained information about the natural habitat, flora and fauna, bringing back various plant, seed and mineral specimens. They mapped the topography of the land, designating the location of mountain ranges, rivers and the many Native American tribes during the course of their journey. They also learned and recorded much about the language and customs of the Native American tribes they encountered, and brought back many of their artifacts, including bows, clothing and ceremonial robes.[104]
Aftermath
Painting of Mandan Chief Big White, who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their return from the expedition
Two months passed after the expedition's end before Jefferson made his first public statement to Congress and others, giving a one-sentence summary about the success of the expedition before getting into the justification for the expenses involved. In the course of their journey, they acquired a knowledge of numerous tribes of Native Americans hitherto unknown; they informed themselves of the trade which may be carried on with them, the best channels and positions for it, and they are enabled to give with accuracy the geography of the line they pursued. Back east, the botanical and zoological discoveries drew the intense interest of the American Philosophical Society who requested specimens, various artifacts traded with the Native Americans, and reports on plants and wildlife along with various seeds obtained. Jefferson used seeds from "Missouri hominy corn" along with a number of other unidentified seeds to plant at Monticello which he cultivated and studied. He later reported on the "Indian corn" he had grown as being an "excellent" food source.[105] The expedition helped establish the U.S. presence in the newly acquired territory and beyond and opened the door to further exploration, trade and scientific discoveries.[106]
Lewis and Clark returned from their expedition, bringing with them the Mandan Native American Chief Shehaka from the Upper Missouri to visit the "Great Father" in Washington. After Chief Shehaka's visit, it required multiple attempts and multiple military expeditions to safely return Shehaka to his nation.[citation needed]
Upon the return from their expedition, Lewis and Clark struggled to prepare their manuscripts for publication. Clark managed to persuade Nicholas Biddle to edit the journals, which were then published in 1814 as the History of the Expedition Under the Commands of Captains Lewis and Clark. However, Biddle's narrative account omitted much of the material related to their discoveries in flora and fauna. Since Biddle's account was the only printed account of the original journals for the next 90 years, many of Lewis and Clark's discoveries were later unknowingly rediscovered and given new names. It wasn't until 1904–1905, through the publication of Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by Reuben Gold Thwaites, that the general public became aware of the full extent of the scientific discoveries made by the expedition.[107]: 381
During the 19th century, references to Lewis and Clark "scarcely appeared" in history books, even during the United States Centennial in 1876, and the expedition was largely forgotten.[108][109] Lewis and Clark began to gain attention around the start of the 20th century. Both the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis and the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Oregon, showcased them as American pioneers. However, the story remained relatively shallow until mid-century as a celebration of US conquest and personal adventures, but more recently the expedition has been more thoroughly researched.[108]
As of 1984, no US exploration party was more famous, and no American expedition leaders are more recognizable by name.[108]
In 2004, a complete and reliable set of the expedition's journals was compiled by Gary E. Moulton.[110][111][112] Circa 2004, the bicentennial of the expedition further elevated popular interest in Lewis and Clark.[109]
Legacy and honors
In the 1970s, the federal government memorialized the winter assembly encampment, Camp Dubois, as the start of the Lewis and Clark voyage of discovery and in 2019 it recognized Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as the start of the expedition.[113]
Since the expedition, Lewis and Clark have been commemorated and honored over the years on various coins, currency, and commemorative postage stamps, as well as in a number of other capacities. In 2004, the American elm cultivar Ulmus americana 'Lewis & Clark' (selling name Prairie Expedition) was released by North Dakota State University Research Foundation in commemoration of the expedition's bicentenary;[114] the tree has a resistance to Dutch elm disease.
The Lewis and Clark Public School District in North Dakota is named after the pair.
Campsite Lewis and Clark in Camp Sandy Beach at Yawgoog Scout Reservation in Rockville, Rhode Island also honors both explorers.
Lewis and Clark Expedition 150th anniversary issue, 1954
Lewis and Clark Expedition
150th anniversary issue, 1954
Lewis and Clark were honored (along with the American bison) on the Series of 1901 $10 Legal Tender
Lewis and Clark were honored (along with the American bison) on the Series of 1901 $10 Legal Tender
Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Cape Disappointment State Park
Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Cape Disappointment State Park
Lewis and Clark statue (with Seaman (dog)) in St. Charles, Missouri
Lewis and Clark statue (with Seaman (dog)) in St. Charles, Missouri
Lewis and Clark Mosaic image in Missouri
Lewis and Clark Mosaic image in Missouri
Sergeant Floyd Monument in Sioux City, Iowa is the first of 2,600 National Historic Landmarks in the United States
Sergeant Floyd Monument in Sioux City, Iowa is the first of 2,600 National Historic Landmarks in the United States
Prior discoveries
See also: Timeline of European exploration and Exploration of North America
In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle traveled down the Mississippi from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. The French then established a chain of posts along the Mississippi from New Orleans to the Great Lakes. There followed a number of French explorers including Pedro Vial and Pierre Antoine and Paul Mallet, among others. Vial may have preceded Lewis and Clark to Montana. In 1787, he gave a map of the upper Missouri River and locations of "territories transited by Pedro Vial" to Spanish authorities.[115]
Early in 1792, the American explorer Robert Gray, sailing in the Columbia Rediviva, discovered the yet to be named Columbia River, named it after his ship and claimed it for the United States. Later in 1792, the Vancouver Expedition had learned of Gray's discovery and used his maps. Vancouver's expedition explored over 100 miles (160 km) up the Columbia, into the Columbia River Gorge. Lewis and Clark used the maps produced by these expeditions when they descended the lower Columbia to the Pacific coast.[116][117]
From 1792 to 1793, Alexander Mackenzie had crossed North America from Quebec to the Pacific.[118]
See also
icon Geography portal
icon Modern history portal
icon Science portal
flag United States portal
The Far Horizons, a 1955 film about the expedition
Gateway Arch National Park
Lewis and Clark Pass (Montana) – the only non-motorized pass on the expedition's route
Lewis and Clark's Keelboat
The Red River Expedition (1806) and the Pike Expedition were also commissioned by Jefferson
James Kendall Hosmer, American history professor and librarian who edited and published Nicholas Biddle's account of Lewis and Clark's journal
Timeline of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Notes
'Chopunnish' was the Captain's term for the Nez Perce Pass
After Wilkinson died in 1825, it was discovered that he was a spy for the Spanish crown.
aka the Hidatsa
References
Woodger, Toropov, 2009 p. 150
Ambrose, 1996, Chap. VI
Miller, 2006 p. 108
Fenelon & Wilson, 2006 pp. 90–91
Lavender, 2001 pp.32, 90
Ronda, 1984 pp. 82, 192
Fritz, 2004 p. 113
Ronda, 1984 p. 9
Ambrose, 1996 p. 69
Gray, 2004 p. 358
DeVoto, 1997 p. xxix
Schwantes, 1996 pp. 54–55
Cutright 1969, p. 27.
Rodriguez, 2002 p. xxiv
Furtwangler, 1993 p. 19
Ambrose, 1996 p. 83
Bergon, 2003, p. xiv
Jackson, 1993, pp. 136–137
Ambrose, pp. 98–99
Woodger & Toropov, 2009 p. 270
"Lewis and Clark Expedition". Archived from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved November 30, 2015.
"Founders Online: From Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Smith Barton, 27 February 1803". founders.archives.gov. Archived from the original on April 12, 2019. Retrieved April 12, 2019.
Gass & MacGregor, 1807 p. 7
Ambrose, 1996 pp. 79, 89
Duncan, Dayton; Burns, Ken (1997). Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. pp. 9–10. ISBN 9780679454502.
Ambrose, Stephen (1996). Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 81, 87–91. ISBN 9780684826974.
Jackson, 1993, pp.86–87
Ambrose, 1996 p. 13
Homser, James Kendall, 1903 p. 1
Kleber, 2001 pp. 509–10
Fritz, 2004 pp. 1–5
Ronda, 1984 p. 32
Miller, 2006 pp. 99–100, 111
Bennett, 2002 p. 4
Ambrose, 1996 p. 94
Saindon, 2003 pp. 551–52
Miller, 2006 p. 106
Woodger, Toropov, 2009 pp. 104, 265, 271
Lavender, 2001 pp. 30–31
Ambrose, 1996 pp. 137–139
"May 14, 1804 | Discovering Lewis & Clark ®". lewis-clark.org. May 14, 1804. Archived from the original on March 20, 2020. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
Peters 1996, p. 16.
Allen, Lewis & Clark, Vol. 1, 1916 pp. 26–27
Woodger & Toropov, 2009 p. 142
Coues, Lewis, Clark, Jefferson 1893, Vol. 1 p. 79
Fritz, 2004 p. 13
Fritz, 2004 p. 14
"Bad River Encounter Site (U.S. National Park Service)". nps.gov. Archived from the original on August 3, 2020. Retrieved May 18, 2020.
Fritz, 2004 pp. 14–15
Ambrose, 1996 p. 170
Ronda, 1984 pp. 27, 40
Lavender, 2001 p. 181
Peters 1996, pp. 20–22.
Clark & Edmonds, 1983 p. 12
Allen, Lewis & Clark, Vol. 1, 1916 pp. 81–82
Elin Woodger; Brandon Toropov (2009). Encyclopedia of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Infobase Publishing. pp. 244–45. ISBN 978-1-4381-1023-3. Retrieved August 28, 2013.
"History & Culture – Lewis and Clark National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)". nps.gov. Archived from the original on February 22, 2015. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
"Lewis and Clark, Journey Leg 13, 'Ocian in View!', October 8 – December 7, 1805". National Geographic Society. 1996. Archived from the original on September 27, 2016. Retrieved October 22, 2016.
Ambrose, 1996 p. 326
Clark & Edmonds, 1983 pp. 51–52
Harris, Buckley, 2012, p. 109
Ambrose, 1996 p. 330
Malloy, Mary (2006). Devil on the deep blue sea: The notorious career of Captain Samuel Hill of Boston. Bullbrier Press. pp. 7, 46–49, 56, 63–64. ISBN 978-0-9722854-1-4.
Matthews, Owens (2013). Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. pp. 254–257. ISBN 978-1620402412.
Ambrose, 1996 p. 334
Coues, Lewis, Clark, Jefferson 1893 pp. 902–04
"Meriwether Lewis is shot in the leg". History. A&E Television Networks. Archived from the original on October 15, 2018. Retrieved October 14, 2018.
Peters 1996, p. 30.
Uldrich, 2004 p. 82
Ambrose, 1996 p. 402
Ambrose, 1996 p. 483
Fritz, 2004 p. 60
Ambrose, 1996 p. 409
Woodger & Toropov, 2009 p. 99
DeVoto, 1997 p. 552
Woodger, Toropov, 2012 p. 29
Fritz, 2004 p. 59
Uldrich, 2004 p. 37
Fresonke & Spence, 2004 p. 70
Fritz, 2004 p. 88
Gass & MacGregor, 1807 pp. iv, 3
Ambrose, 1996 pp. 479–80
"Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition". University of Nebraska Lincoln. Archived from the original on May 30, 2023. Retrieved January 28, 2024.
Pekka Hamalainen, "Lakota America, a New History of Indigenous Power," (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), pp. 129–131
Josephy, 2006 p. vi
Allen, Lewis & Clark, Vol. 1, 1916 p. 52
Ambrose, 1996 p. 169
Woodger & Toropov, 2009 pp. 8, 337–38
Pekka Hamalainen, "Lakota America, a New History of Indigenous Power," (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), pp. 130–136
Harry W. Fritz (2004). "The Lewis and Clark Expedition Archived January 28, 2024, at the Wayback Machine". Greenwood Publishing Group. p.14. ISBN 0313316619
Coues, Lewis, Clark, Jefferson 1893, Vol. 2 pp. 557–58
Lewis, Clark Floyd, Whitehouse, 1905 p. 93
Coues, Lewis, Clark, Jefferson 1893, Vol. 1 p. 229
Clark & Edmonds, 1983 p. 15
Coues, Lewis, Clark, Jefferson 1893, Vol. 1 p. 377
Clark & Edmonds, 1983 p. 16
Fritz, 2004 p. 19
Clark & Edmonds, 1983 pp. 16, 27
Ronda, 1984 pp. 258–59
Parks, Shoshi (March 8, 2018). "York Explored the West With Lewis and Clark, But His Freedom Wouldn't Come Until Decades Later". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on May 20, 2020. Retrieved September 24, 2023.
"York". U.S. National Park Service. September 11, 2018. Archived from the original on August 5, 2023. Retrieved September 24, 2023.
Fritz, 2004 pp. 33–35
Ambrose, 1996 pp. 352, 407
Ambrose, 1996 p. 204
Ambrose, 1996, p. 418
Ambrose, 1996, p. 144
Wood, Gordon S. (2011). Kennedy, David M. (ed.). Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815. The Oxford History of the United States. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-983246-0.
Ronda, 1984 pp. 327–28
Fresonke & Spence, 2004 pp. 159–62
Moulton, 2004
Ambrose, 1996 p. 480
Saindon, 2003 pp. vi, 1040
Bauder, Bob (March 10, 2019). "Pittsburgh recognized as starting point for Lewis and Clark expedition". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Archived from the original on January 28, 2024. Retrieved March 10, 2019.
"Ulmus americana 'Lewis & Clark' PRAIRIE EXPEDITION". Plant Finder. Archived from the original on August 15, 2021. Retrieved August 15, 2021.
Loomis & Nasatir 1967 pp. 382–86, map: p. 290
Ambrose, 1996 p. 70, 91
Woodger, Toropov, 2009 pp. 191, 351
"Sir Alexander Mackenzie | Scottish explorer". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on June 15, 2020. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
Bibliography
Allen, Paul (1902). History of the expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol I. Toranto, George N. Morang & Co. Ltd.
—— (1902). History of the expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol II. Toranto, George N. Morang & Co. Ltd.
—— (1902). History of the expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol III. Toranto, George N. Morang & Co. Ltd.
Ambrose, Stephen E. (1996). Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. Simon and Schuster, New York. p. 511. ISBN 9780684811079.
Bennett, George D. (2002). The United States Army: Issues, Background and Bibliography. Nova Publishers. p. 229. ISBN 9781590333006.
Bergon, Frank (1989). The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Penguin Classics, New York. ISBN 0142437360.
Clark, Ella E.; Edmonds, Margot (1983). Sacagawea of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. University of California Press. p. 184. ISBN 9780520050600.
Cutright, Paul Russel (1969). Lewis and Clark: Pioneering Naturalists. University of Nebraska Press.
Cutright, Paul Russell (2000). Contributions of Philadelphia to Lewis and Clark History. Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation. p. 47. ISBN 9780967888705.
DeVoto, Bernard Augustine (1997) [1953]. The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 504. ISBN 0-395-08380-X.
—— (1998). The Course of Empire. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 647. ISBN 9780395924983.
Fenelon, James; Defender-Wilson, Mary Louise (1985). "Voyage of Domination, "Purchase" as Conquest, Sakakawea for Savagery: Distorted Icons from Misrepresentations of the Lewis and Clark Expedition". Wíčazo Ša Review. 19 (1). University of Minnesota Press: Wíčazo Ša Review, 85–104. doi:10.1353/wic.2004.0006. JSTOR 1409488. S2CID 147041160.
Fresonke, Kris; Spence, Mark (2004). Lewis and Clark. University of California Press. p. 290. ISBN 9780520228399.
Fritz, Harry W. (2004). The Lewis and Clark Expedition. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-313-31661-6.
Furtwangler, Albert (1993). Acts of discovery: visions of America in the Lewis and Clark journals. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-06306-0.
Gass, Patrick; MacGregor, Carol Lynn (1807). The Journals of Patrick Gass: Member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Mountain Press Publishing. p. 447. ISBN 9780878423514.
Gray, Edward (2004). "Visions of Another Empire: John Ledyard, an American Traveler across the Russian Empire, 1787–1788". Journal of the Early Republic. 24 (3). University of Pennsylvania Press: 347–380. JSTOR 4141438.
Harris, Matthew L.; Buckley, Jay H. (2012). Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. University of Oklahoma Press, 256 pages. ISBN 9780806188317.
Josephy, Alvin M. Jr.; Marc, Jaffe, eds. (2006). Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes. Random House Digital, Inc. p. 196. ISBN 9781400042678.
Jackson, Donald (1993) [1981]. Thomas Jefferson & the Stony Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-2504-6.
Kleber, John (2001). The Encyclopedia of Louisville. University Press of Kentucky. p. 509. ISBN 978-0-8131-2100-0.
Lavender, David Sievert (2001). The Way to the Western Sea: Lewis and Clark Across the Continent. University of Nebraska Press. p. 444. ISBN 9780803280038.
Loomis, Noel M; Nasatir, Abraham P (1967). Pedro Vial and the Roads to Santa Fe. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 9780806111100.
Miller, Robert J. Miller (2006). Native America, Discovered And Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, And Manifest Destiny. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 240. ISBN 9780275990114.
Peters, Arthur K. (1996). Seven trail west. Abbeville Press. ISBN 1-55859-782-4.
Saindon, Robert A. (2003). Explorations Into the World of Lewis and Clark, Volume 3. Digital Scanning Inc. p. 528. ISBN 9781582187655.
Schwantes, Carlos (1996). The Pacific Northwest: an interpretive history. University of Nebraska Press. p. 568. ISBN 978-0-8032-9228-4.
Rodriguez, Junius (2002). The Louisiana Purchase: a historical and geographical encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, California. p. 513. ISBN 978-1-57607-188-5.
Ronda, James P. (1984). Lewis & Clark among the Indians. University of Nebraska Press. p. 310. ISBN 9780803289901.
Uldrich, Jack (2004). Into the unknown: leadership lessons from Lewis & Clark's daring westward adventure. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. p. 245. ISBN 0-8144-0816-8.
Woodger, Elin; Toropov, Brandon (2009). Encyclopedia of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Infobase Publishing. p. 438. ISBN 978-0-8160-4781-9.
Primary sources
Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William (2004). The Journals Of Lewis And Clark. Kessinger Publishing. p. 312. ISBN 9781419167997. E'books, Full view [full citation needed]
Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William; Floyd, Charles; Whitehouse, Joseph (1905). Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1806, V.6. Dodd, Mead & Company, New York. p. 280.
Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William (2003). Bergon, Frank (ed.). The Journals of Lewis & Clark. Penguin. p. 560. ISBN 9780142437360.
Lewis, Meriwether (1811). The Travels of Captains Lewis and Clarke, from St. Louis, by way of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, to the Pacific Ocean; performed in the Years 1804, 1805, and 1806. By Order of the Government of the United States; containing Delineations of the Manners, Customs, Religion, &c. of the Indians; compiled from various authentic Sources and original Documents; and a summary of the Statistical View of the Indian Nations, from the official communication of Meriwether Lewis. In 8vo. illustrated with a Map of the Country inhabited by the Tribes of Western Indians. ("This is an interesting volume, and exhibits not only some valuable geographical notices, but very copious and amusing details respecting the manners, habits, and divisions of the India North America Tribes.") Modern Publications, and New Editions of Valuable Standard Works. In: The Quarterly Review, February 1811, p. 2.
Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William (1815). Travels to the source of the Missouri river and across the American continent to the Pacific ocean. Performed by order of the government of the United States, in the years 1804, 1805, and 1806. By Captains Lewis and Clarke. Published from the official report, and illustrated by a map of the route, and other maps. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown.
"Review of Travels to the Source of the Missouri River ... ". The Quarterly Review. 12: 317–368. January 1815.
Lewis, William; Clark, Clark (1903). Hosmer, James Kendall (ed.). History of the Expedition of Captain Lewis and Clark, 1804-5-6, Volume 1. A. C. McClurg & Company, Chicago. p. 500.
Coues, Elliott; Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William; Jefferson, Thomas (1893). History of the expedition under the command of Lewis and Clark: Volume 1. Francis P. Harper, New York. p. 1364. ISBN 9780665562136.
——; Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William; Jefferson, Thomas (1893). History of the expedition under the command of Lewis and Clark: Volume 2. Francis P. Harper, New York. p. 1364.
——; Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William; Jefferson, Thomas (1893). History of the expedition under the command of Lewis and Clark: Volume 3. Francis P. Harper, New York. p. 1298.
——; Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William; Jefferson, Thomas (1893). History of the expedition under the command of Lewis and Clark: Volume 4. Francis P. Harper, New York. p. 1298.
Jackson, Donald Dean (1962). Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: with related documents, 1783–1854. University of Illinois Press (Original from the University of Virginia). p. 728.
Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William (2004). Moulton, Gary E. (ed.). The Definitive Journals of Lewis & Clark. University of Nebraska Press. p. 357. ISBN 9780803280328.
Further reading
Main article: Bibliography of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Steven E. Ambrose (1996). Undaunted Courage, Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. Simon and Schuster Paperbacks. ISBN 9780684826974.
Bassman, John H. (2009). A Navigation Companion for the Lewis & Clark Trail. Volume 1, History, camp locations and daily summaries of expedition activities. John H. Bassman.
Betts, Robert B. (2002). In Search of York: The Slave Who Went to the Pacific With Lewis and Clark. University Press of Colorado. ISBN 0-87081-714-0.
Clark, William; Lewis, Meriwether. The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804–1806.
Burns, Ken (1997). Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-45450-0.
Fenster, Julie M. (2016). Jefferson's America: The President, the Purchase, and the Explorers Who Transformed a Nation. Crown/Archetype. ISBN 978-0-3079-5654-5.
Hayes, Derek (1999). Historical Atlas of the Pacific Northwest: Maps of Exploration and Discovery: British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Yukon. Sasquatch Books. p. 208. ISBN 978-1570612152.
Gen. Thomas James (February 11, 2018). Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1985208711.
Gilman, Carolyn (2003). Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books. ISBN 978-1588340993.
Schmidt, Thomas (2002). National Geographic Guide to the Lewis & Clark Trail. National Geographic. ISBN 0-7922-6471-1.
Tubbs, Stephenie Ambrose (2008). Why Sacagawea Deserves the Day Off and Other Lessons from the Lewis and Clark Trail. University of Nebraska Press.
Wheeler, Olin Dunbar (1904). The Trail of Lewis and Clark, 1804–1904: A Story of the Great Exploration Across the Continent in 1804–6. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. p. 377.
External links
Lewis and Clark Expedition
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Media from Commons
News from Wikinews
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Textbooks from Wikibooks
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Travel information from Wikivoyage
Data from Wikidata
Full text of the Lewis and Clark journals online – edited by Gary E. Moulton, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
"National Archives photos dating from the 1860s–1890s of the Native cultures the expedition encountered". Archived from the original on February 12, 2008.
Travel the Lewis and Clark Expedition, a National Park Service Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary
"History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark: To the Sources of the Missouri, thence Across the Rocky Mountains and down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean" published in 1814; from the World Digital Library
Lewis & Clark Fort Mandan Foundation: Discover Lewis & Clark
Corps of Discovery Online Atlas, created by Watzek Library, Lewis & Clark College
Lewis and Clark Expedition Maps and Receipt. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
William Clark Field Notes. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Louis Starr Collection Concerning the Field Notes of William Clark. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
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Sister Wives - Episode Three
s01e03 - Sister Wives is an American reality television series broadcast on TLC. It documents the life of a polygamist family living in Lehi, Utah, which includes patriarch Kody Brown, his four wives and their 18 children. Consisting of nine episodes, the first season premiered with a one-hour debut on September 26, 2010[1] and ran until November 21, 2010.[2][3] The series was renewed for a second season, which began in March 2011.[4] The second season continued after a brief hiatus on September 25, 2011.[5] The third season debuted on May 13, 2012,[6] with the fourth-season premiere on July 21, 2013.[7]
As of September 24, 2023, 209 episodes of Sister Wives have aired, currently in its eighteenth season.
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LDS & FLDS - Similarities and Differences
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the Fundamentalist.
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Ram Jam - Black Betty
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Original Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_2D8Eo15wE
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Gid Tanner & The Skillet Lickers - Run, Nigger, Run
"Run, Nigger, Run" is a folk song first documented in 1851. It is known from numerous versions. Responding to the rise of slave patrols in the slave-owning southern United States, the song is about an unnamed black man who attempts to run from a slave patrol and avoid capture. The song was released as a commercial recording several times, beginning in the 1920s, and it was included in the 2013 film 12 Years a Slave.
History and documentation
In the mid-nineteenth century, black slaves were not allowed off their masters' plantations without a pass, for fear that they would rise against their white owners; such uprisings had occurred before, such as the one led by Nat Turner in 1831. However, it remained common for slaves to slip away from the plantations to visit friends elsewhere. If caught, running from the slave patrols was considered better than attempting to explain oneself and facing the whip. This social phenomenon led the slaves to create a variety of songs regarding the patrols and slaves' attempts to escape them. One such song is "Run, Nigger, Run", which was sung on plantations in much of the Southern United States.
It is not certain when the song originated, although John A. Wyeth describes it as one of the oldest of the plantation songs, songs sung by slaves working on Southern plantations. Larry Birnbaum notes lyrical parallels in some versions to earlier songs, such as "Whar You Cum From", first published by J. B. Harper in 1846.[3] According to Newman Ivey White, the earliest written documentation of "Run, Nigger, Run" dates to 1851, when a version was included in blackface minstrel Charlie White's White's Serenaders' Song Book.[1]
After the American Civil War, the song was documented more extensively. Joel Chandler Harris included a version of it in his Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), and in 1915, E. C. Perrow included a version with his article "Songs and Rhymes from the South" in The Journal of American Folklore. Dorothy Scarborough and Ola Lee Gulledge, in their book On the Trail of Negro Folk-songs, included two versions, collected from two different states, and in his book American Negro Folk-Songs (1928), Newman Ivey White includes four different variations.[4] Folklorist Alan Lomax recorded folk versions from at least two different sources, one in 1933 from a black prisoner named Moses Platt, and another in 1937 from a white fiddler named W. H. Stepp.[3]
Commercial recordings of the song began in the 1920s, many by white singers. In 1924, Fiddlin' John Carson recorded his version of the song. By the end of the decade at least another three recordings had been produced, by Uncle Dave Macon (1925), Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers (1927), and Dr. Humphrey Bate and His Possum Hunters (1928).[3]
In 2013 the song was used in 12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen's film adaptation of the memoir by Solomon Northup. In the film, a white carpenter named John Tibeats (portrayed by Paul Dano) leads a group of slaves in a rendition of the song. Hermione Hoby of The Guardian described the scene as "nauseating",[5] and Dana Stevens of Slate found it to be "hideous".[6] Kristian Lin of the Fort Worth Weekly wrote that, though the song had initially been used by black slaves to encourage escapees and warn them of the dangers involved, when performed by the character of Tibeats it became a taunt, "like a prison guard who jingles the keys for the prisoners to hear, reminding them of what they don't have".[7]
Contents and versions
Version recorded in Slave Songs of the United States (1867)
Various versions of the song exist, though all focus on a (usually unnamed) black person running away from, or to avoid, slave patrols (referred to as a "patter-rollers" or "patty-rollers" in the song).[8] The White's Serenaders' Song Book version is presented as a narrative, with both sung and spoken parts. In this version, the evader is caught temporarily, but escapes at great speed after he "left my heel tied round de tree".[9]
Scarborough and Gulledge record a later version as follows:
Run, nigger, run; de patter-roller catch you
Run, nigger, run, it's almost day
Run, nigger, run, de patter-roller catch you
Run, nigger, run, and try to get away
Dis nigger run, he run his best
Stuck his head in a hornet's nest
Jumped de fence and run fru the paster
White man run, but nigger run faster[10]
Some versions of this song include events which occur to the slave during his escape. A version recorded in Louisiana, for instance, has the escapee losing his Sunday shoe while running, while another version has the black man lose his wedding shoe. In other versions, the runner is described as tearing his shirt in half. Still others have the runner point out another slave, one who is hiding behind a tree, in an effort to distract his pursuer.[11] E. C. Perrow records the following verses, found in Virginia:
Es I was runnin' through de fiel',
A black snake caught me by de heel.
Run, nigger, run, de paterrol ketch yuh!
Run, nigger, run! It's almos' day!
Run, nigger, run! I run my bes'
Run my head in a hornet's nes'.
Run, nigger, run![12]
Themes
White finds parallels between "Run, Nigger, Run" and African-American spiritual songs, in which themes of a hunted person running, seeking a place of safety and asylum, were common. These themes, he writes, may be derived from the sermons of slavemasters and campfire songs sung by groups of slaves. White records one song from North Carolina with the refrain "Run, sinner, run, an' hunt you a hidin' place", repeated as in "Run, Nigger, Run".[13] He likewise finds a "psychological connection" between this song and a spiritual often called "City of Refuge", which features the refrain
They had to run, they had to run
They had to run to the City of Refuge
They had to run.[1]
The act of running itself is a common theme in slave literature and folklore, taking both literal and metaphorical forms. The ability for blacks to run faster than whites was considered of such importance that a common proverb of the time went "What you don' hab in yo' haid, yuh got ter' hab in yo' feet".[14] Slave folksongs praised blacks for their running capabilities, comparing them to "a greasy streak o' lightning" or stating that one "ought to see that preacher [nigger, man] run".[15] The black runner's ability to escape white pursuers is rarely in doubt, and consequentially the escape is ultimately successful. These conventions carried over, through the slave narrative genre, into written African-American literature.[14]
See also
Use of nigger in the arts
References
White 1928, p. 168.
Scarborough & Gulledge 1925, p. 23.
Birnbaum 2013, p. 84.
White 1928, pp. 168–69.
Hoby 2014, Paul Dano.
Stevens 2014, Entry 13.
Lin 2013, Further Thoughts.
Scarborough & Gulledge 1925, p. 24.
LOC, Run, nigger, run!.
Scarborough & Gulledge 1925, p. 25.
Scarborough & Gulledge 1925, p. 24–25.
Perrow 1915, p. 138.
White 1928, p. 78.
Dance 1987, p. 4.
Dance 1987, p. 3.
Works cited
Birnbaum, Larry (2013). Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock 'n' Roll. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-8638-4.
Dance, Daryl Cumber (1987). Long Gone: The Mecklenburg Six and the Theme of Escape in Black Folklore. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 978-0-87049-512-0.
Hoby, Hermione (4 January 2014). "Paul Dano: there's light at the end of his journeys into darkness". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 March 2014. Retrieved 12 March 2014.
Lin, Kristian (31 October 2013). "Further Thoughts on '12 Years a Slave'". Fort Worth Weekly. Archived from the original on 22 December 2013. Retrieved 12 March 2014.
Perrow, E.C. (1915). "Songs and Rhymes from the South". The Journal of American Folklore. 28 (108): 129–90. doi:10.2307/534506. JSTOR 534506.
"Run, nigger, run! or the M. P. 'll catch you". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 9 January 2023. Retrieved 12 March 2014.
Scarborough, Dorothy; Gulledge, Ola Lee (1925). On the Trail of Negro Folk-songs. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. OCLC 1022728.
Stevens, Dana (17 January 2014). "Entry 13: My problem with 12 Years a Slave". Slate. Archived from the original on 13 March 2014. Retrieved 12 March 2014.
White, Newman Ivey (1928). American Negro Folk-Songs. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674012592. OCLC 411447.
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