The wrong side of history

 

When we talk today about people on the wrong side of history, we generally mean those alt-right types who would take us back to the nineteenth century when misogyny and slavery flourished, men could do no wrong, and the rich got rich while the poor suffered. But it occurred to me recently that I, who always consider myself liberal and progressive, am also on the wrong side of history.

I got back edits on a manuscript in which my language had been dramatically changed. My Indians became Native Americans, my settlers were Euro-Americans, and my slaves became “enslaved persons.” I objected, partly because of what the changes did to the flow of the language but more because they changed the story I thought I was telling.

My rather long writing career has focused on the experiences of women in the American West—Anglo women, those women who followed their men west, raised their families, saw too many babies die young, endured the terror of Indian raids, prairie fires, drought, and famine. And brought civilization to the West, settled towns, built schools and churches. They were strong women, and I admire them.

But since the 1980s the “new West” historians have told us how wrong these women (and their men) were. They didn’t “civilize” the West—they exploited it, conquered the natives, destroyed one civilization (yes, the native tribes had highly complex civilizations) to build another. And that, we are now told, is wrong.

It’s time to play “What if?” What if settlers had never come west? There be an unbelievable population jam on the East Coast. Time to go back a step, “What if Puritans had never landed on Plymouth Rock?” Well, yes, natives in North America might live in an undisturbed paradise, but what would have happened to the rest of the world? And if Columbus had never discovered America? (Okay, I know he really didn’t, but I used him figuratively as the symbol.) You see where I’m going? Maybe history just rolls along, one civilization replacing another. We’re too close to see it today, but our technological civilization has replaced that of the Industrial Revolution. Is that cause for rewriting history?

Two of the heroes of my life were C. L. “Doc” Sonnichsen, who called himself a “below the salt” historian, and Texas novelist, the late Elmer Kelton. Doc, a Harvard-educated native of Iowa, took on the job of teaching English at the Texas College of Metallurgy and Mines (now University of Texas, El Paso). Elmer was the author of probably over sixty novels, many award-winners, that chronicled the settlement of Texas and the American West from the early 1800s until the end of the twentieth century. One of lessons I learned from both men was the importance of text, fiction and nonfiction, being appropriate to time and place. You couldn’t, they both believed, blame Grandpa for plowing up the prairie and making possible the great dust storms of the Depression, because Grandpa was doing what in that time and place, he believed was right.

I like to apply that theory to my writing about the nineteenth century. Back then, an Indian was an Indian. That doesn’t diminish my respect for today’s descendants of the Kiowa or the Comanche or the Apache. But it speaks honestly about history.  What happened, happened, and changing the language or tearing down statues won’t change the past. The Monroe Doctrine, which called for extending American dominance over the land from coast to coast? Sure, it seems wrong and insensitive today, but in that time and place the American West was considered a bounteous wonderland just waiting for men to settle it and make their fortunes. We can’t rewrite history.

I admire the women I’ve written about, and I’ll keep telling their stories in my own way. Though there’s a caveat—several of them were married to men who were failures. George Armstrong Custer led his men into a trap and lost his golden curls; John Charles Frémont was a failure at almost everything he tried, from the conquering of California (he returned east in chains and disgrace) to his unsuccessful run for the presidency. But that’s another story.

Rant over.

PS: It’s now why I wrote this blog, but my historical novels, Libbie (Elizabeth Bacon Custer) and Jessie (Jessie Benton Frémont), will be available in reprint this May. And no, the language in them was not changed. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌