American Myths and Truths

Ever since reading James Loewen’s controversial bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, I’ve become convinced that

basically the only legitimate way to teach history — especially to children — is through primary source documents.  It was a pleasure to read Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower for that reason: as in his gripping In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, Philbrick allows the original voices tell the story through their letters and diaries and through the documents of the time — even those parts of the story which don’t suit the cleaned-up Pilgrims and Indians mythology taught in schools, such as this moment when the colonists discover evidence of this Native settlement:

“…we found a place like a grave. We decided to dig it up. We found first a mat, and under that a fine bow … We also found bowls, trays, dishes, and things like that. We took several of the prettiest things to carry away with us, and covered the body again.”

As one commentator on this passage put it, what do you mean “like” a grave?

Puritan graverobbing strikes modern readers as repellent at best, but what I was left with after reading this is the sense of the “whitewashing” of history that James Loewen points out so vividly in his book. Though some conservatives may carp that this episode constitutes “revisionist history,” there can be no argument that Philbrick is a reviser: this episode comes straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were — validating Loewen’s point that primary source documents are where the “truth” of history (or at least something like it) can be found.

~ by adsoofmelk on December 1, 2007.