Wat moet de taal met de geschiedenis van Wilde Westennen doen?
¿Qué la lengua tiene que hacer con historia del oeste salvaje?
On a typical day, I interact with three Dutch women and three Mexican men. Thus, the constant in my life is seemingly always language, or rather, my inability to understand it. Since the women were born and bred in Holland, and since the same goes for the men in Mexico, they speak with one another in their natural and native tongues. When exchanging with me, or with one of the other group, they jump to English. The results vary from very good communication to stone age sign language.
What the heck does language have to do with Wild West history? That's the question raised above in Dutch and Spanish. Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot. As one who has done his share of research into the Nineteenth-Century, I can vouch that I have never seen a totally accurate portrayal of those times. Almost always left out in any modern depiction of the Old West is the lack of homogeneity. Watch a typical TV Western or a John Wayne movie and one comes away with the impression that everyone more or less looked alike and everyone more or less spoke alike. Only occasionally is a Swedish, Italian or Irish accent heard, and these are always just sprinkled around and always obligatory, it seems.
Fact is, America in the 1800s was a Babel of languages and strong accents. A traveler crossing the continent back then would have been hard-pressed to move ten miles and not encounter ten languages spoken. Hard as it may be for modern Americans to understand, America was a far less homogeneous place back in the 'good ol' days,' than now. Indeed, could they come back and visit us today, I think our ancestors might be as much amazed by the loss of our linguistic variety as anything.
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Strange Art of the Day
General Orders No. 11 is perhaps the most draconian act committed by the US Government against its own people in American history.
Following the Lawrence (Kansas) Massacre of August, 1863, several Missouri counties bordering Kansas were burned from the face of the earth. A sanctuary for the guerrillas ... that was the official reason given for destroying the area; revenge for years of strife along the state line was the unofficial reason. Millions of dollars in property were destroyed or stolen, scores, perhaps hundreds, of civilians were killed, and an entire people were cast from their homes, never to return.
The author and executioner of the edict was Thomas Ewing, Jr. The author and expert of a new book on General Ewing is Ronald D. Smith. Smith, a Kansas attorney, knows his subject. Although the above mentioned disaster was perhaps the singular event in Ewing's life, the book covers the gamut. A foster brother (and later a brother-in-law) of William Tecumseh Sherman, a Kansas supreme court justice, a brave and very capable Union officer in the American Civil War, a defender of the conspirators at the Lincoln assassination trial, an Ohio politician, Tom Ewing not only lived through stirring times, but played an active role in them.
Thomas Ewing, Jr.: Frontier Lawyer and Civil War General: Check it out at amazon.com, or order through your bookstore.
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Art of the Day
Judy, the lady living on the south twenty, had some trouble last week. The woman came home one afternoon and found a small snapping turtle in her kidney-shaped pool.
Judy did eventually get a net over the nasty little brute but senor snappo was so aggressive that the would-be rescuer lost her balance in the tussle. The leap from the diving board to the concrete was not a good one. Result: A badly sprained ankle.
A few weeks previous, Judy was compelled to perform the same rescue with a large armadillo. Now, a snapping turtle in a swimming pool makes much more sense than an armadillo in a swimming pool. These poor, dumb little beasties (above) seem to set new standards for stupidity. I am told that when a car approaches an armadillo on the road, the little things--instead of fleeing to the right or left--jump straight into the air. That tactic might work for some natural encounters, but not with a car. Whenever one enters the range of the armadillo, the roads and ditches are littered with the carcasses of the stupid little things.
Why did the chicken cross the road? To show the armadillo that it can be done.
Like Louisianans and their crawdads, some opportunistic Texans have apparently acquired a taste for armadillos, or "possum on the half shell", as they call them. Armadillo chili, Barbecue 'Dillo, Coon on the Rocks--which only proves that if something can be eaten, it will be eaten.
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Caricature of the Day
