American Citizens Need to Know History

 American Heritage    JFK - February 1964 Volume 15 Issue 2

President Kennedy, who now so prematurely and tragically belongs to history, not only made history himself but wrote it with depth and eloquence. His heightened perceptions of it pervaded his actions and his public papers. Astonishingly in so busy a man, he could even find time in the White House to keep up his intellectual interests, to read good books, and to write prefaces and occasional pieces. Last year he was kind enough, at our request, to furnish an introduction to a sixteen-volume set of books that we created, The American Heritage New Illustrated History of the United States. It would have been easy enough to muster a few bland platitudes, and dash them off, as so many people do in such circumstances, but that was not his way. Instead he sent us this moving essay. It compresses into brief compass much of the philosophy that animates the historical profession. We are proud to reprint it here.

         —Oliver Jensen, Editor, American Heritage Magazine

There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country. Without such knowledge, he stands uncertain and defenseless before the world, knowing neither where he has come from nor where he is going. With such knowledge, he is no longer alone but draws a strength far greater than his own from the cumulative experience of the past and a cumulative vision of the future.

     Knowledge of our history is, first of all, a pleasure for its own sake. The American past is a record of stirring achievement in the face of stubborn difficulty. It is a record filled with figures larger than life, with high drama and hard decision, with valor and with tragedy, with incidents both poignant and picturesque, and with the excitement and hope involved in the conquest of a wilderness and the settlement of a continent. For the true historian—and for the true student of history—history is an end in itself. It fulfills a deep human need for understanding, and the satisfaction it provides requires no further justification.

     Yet, though no further justification is required for the study of history, it would not be correct to say that history serves no further use than the satisfaction of the historian. History, after all, is the memory of a nation. Just as memory enables the individual to learn, to choose goals and stick to them, to avoid making the same mistake twice—in short, to grow—so history is the means by which a nation establishes its sense of identity and purpose. The future arises out of the past, and a country’s history is a statement of the values and hopes which, having forged what has gone before, will now forecast what is to come.

     As means of knowledge, history becomes a means of judgment. It offers an understanding of both the variety and unity of a nation whose motto is E Pluribus Unum—out of many, one. It reminds us of the diverse abundance of our people, coming from all races and all parts of the world, of our fields and mountain ranges, deserts and great rivers, our green farmlands and the thousand voices of our cities. No revolution in communication or transportation can destroy the fact that this continent is, as Walt Whitman said, “a nation of nations.” Yet it also reminds us that, in spite of the diversity of ethnic origin, of geographic locale, of occupation, of social status, of religious creed, of political commitment, Americans are united by an ancient and encompassing faith in progress, justice, and freedom.

     Our history thus tests our policy: Our past judges our present. Of all the disciplines, the study of the folly and achievements of man is best calculated to foster the critical sense of what is permanent and meaningful amid the mass of superficial and transient questions which make up the day-to-day clamor. The history of our nation tells us that every action taken against the freedoms of conscience and expression, against equality before the law and equality of opportunity, against the ordinary men and women of the country is an action taken against the American tradition. And it tells us that every action taken for a larger freedom and a more equal and spacious society is one more step toward realization of what Herbert Croly once called “the promise of American life.”

American history is not something dead and over. It is always alive, always growing, always unfinished.

     A knowledge of history is more than a means of judgment: It is also a means of sympathy—a means of relating our own experience with the experience of other peoples and lands struggling for national fulfillment. We may sometimes forget, for example, that the United States began as an underdeveloped nation which seized its independence by carrying out a successful revolution against a colonial empire.

     We may forget that, in the first years of the new republic, George Washington laid down the principle of no “permanent alliances” and enjoined the United States to a course of neutralism in the face of the great-power conflicts then dividing the civilized world.

     We may forget that, in the first stages of our economic development, our national growth was stimulated to a considerable degree by “foreign aid”—that is, investment from abroad—and by public investment and direction on the part of our state and local as well as our national government.

     We may forget that our own process of economic change was often accompanied by the issue of wildcat paper money, by the repudiation of bonds, by disorder, fraud, and violence. If we recall the facts of our own past, we may better understand the problems and predicaments of contemporary “new nations” laboring for national development in circumstances far less favorable than our own—and we will, in consequence, become less liable to the self-righteousness which is both unworthy of our own traditions and a bane of international relations.

     A knowledge of history is, in addition, a means of strength. “In times of change and danger,” John Dos Passos wrote just before World War II, “when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a life line across the scary present.” Dos Passos called his book The Ground We Stand On — and the title concisely defines the role of the past in preparing us for the crisis of the present and the challenge of the future. When Americans fight for individual liberty, they have Thomas Jefferson and James Madison beside them; when they strive for social justice, they strive alongside Andrew Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt; when they work for peace and a world community, they work with Woodrow Wilson; when they fight and die in wars to make men free, they fight and die with Abraham Lincoln. Historic continuity with the past, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “is not a duty; it is only a necessity.”

     A knowledge of history is, above all, a means of responsibility — of responsibility to the past and of responsibility to the future...of responsibility to those who came before us and struggled and sacrificed to pass on to us our precious inheritance of freedom...and of responsibility to those who will come after us and to whom we must pass on that inheritance with what new strength and substance it is within our power to add.

     “Fellow citizens,” Abraham Lincoln said, “we cannot escape history....The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”

American history is not something dead and over. It is always alive, always growing, always unfinished — and every American today has his own contribution to make to the great fabric of tradition and hope which binds all Americans, dead and living and yet to be born, in a common faith and a common destiny.

 

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Wade and the West

   

It’s fun to let my mind’s eye watch characters and events come to life through windows opened to the past. So it was with the discovery of William Wade’s stories found hidden away on a dusty library shelf. Books play a large part of my life and were present in the home where I grew up. Many of them dealt with old west themes. For example, I believe Dad had collected most of the Zane Grey novels, in addition to many other books. He had always liked to read and said he would order a new book whenever he could put a few cents together. 

Wade’s stories let me accompany a participant of events that interested me. For instance, he told of events you can’t read about anywhere else. How about General George Custer when he brought the 7th Cavalry to Fort Rice? He was a dog lover and kept a pack of hunting dogs with him that he sometimes let roam free on the Missouri River bottom. Woodhawks worked there cutting wood to sell to steamboats to use for fuel.

The workers’ diet depended on the wild game found nearby. However, when the dogs started running through the area, they scared the game off. That wild game supplied the woodhawks with their meat supply, something the hard-working men needed. We’ll let Wade describe what happened.

“We were cutting wood above Fort Rice. Nearly every day the dogs would come into the woods, unaccompanied by men, and follow deer trails and bay and bark. Well, one day when two of our men were coming in from a fruitless hunt for meat to eat, they met two of those hounds in the woods. They each picked one, raised their rifles and squeezed them off, and two deer chasers that came into the woods that morning didn’t go out at night. When the dogs showed up missing at the fort, soldiers hunted until they found the corpus delecti and Mr. Custer was very vexed.”

Custer ordered his men to go out and arrest the wrong doers. Wade followed with this, “Needless to say, they could never find anyone who saw or heard the shooting.”

Wade was a self-professed “squatter” on his ranch holdings, but that’s what any rancher was at that time. It simply means they began their operations before township and county governments became established and instituted such things as taxes for roads and bridges. We have ridden over some of the prairie, buttes, and gullies on that land where the Cannonball River cuts its path and saw it is best suited as grazing land. The operators of the ranch ran a large herd of bison on it and fenced it with strong, four-strand barbed wire.

His daughter, Mamie Weeden, urged him in 1926 to tell the stories included in the book and got him to sit still in his old age to dictate his passages of memory. Like so many of us, she wished she would have recorded her parents. She said, “Oh, I tell you, I’m just so sorry that I didn’t carry a notebook and a pencil and follow my dad around twenty-four hours of the day because he had so many stories to tell.”

He hired on to help cut logs and build Fort Yates. That tale reminded me of something I had seen in relation to it. They were to be on the lookout for the sacred relic stone shaped like an Indian woman with a child on her back that was highly revered by the Indians. Here’s my possible connection: in the early 1980s our family visited the little town of Shields, North Dakota, which is in the neighborhood of these thoughts. A lady named Carrie Weinhandl lived there and maintained an informal museum of artifacts common to the area.

She pointed to an upright rock, maybe three feet high, standing in the corner. “Don’t you think that looks like a woman with a baby?” she asked. It did. Had the rock for which the Standing Rock Reservation ended up there, I’ve wondered. It’s a moot question since we can’t go back to study it. A huge prairie fire in July, 2002, completely destroyed the town, including Carrie Weinhandl’s house/museum. Did the fire get so hot as to shatter the rock, or when cleaning up, buried in the rubble and pushed into a hole? A couple years ago, while in Fort Yates, I saw the rock they claim for Standing Rock, and to me it does not look like a woman with a baby.

Another story Wade told must be included in this context. It has to do with woodchoppers again. Two of them had been working and stacking wood north of Bismarck and found themselves surprised and trapped in a dense snowfall that stopped any travel. Their horses had run off and they were 50 miles from any community. They holed up in a shack that was not weather proof. The roof leaked and dripped onto their gunpowder. Now they could not hunt for food and sat languishing in their hut. Days passed and desperation started setting in. 

The quick wits of one of them saved them when he saw a mouse run across the table where they were playing cards. He grabbed and caught it. His partner said, “Don’t tell me you are going to eat that mouse.” No, he needed it to bait their hook and line. He caught a large catfish in the Missouri River. I’ve enjoyed reading Wade’s book.

Spiked Malt

This is a memory from over 60 years ago. 

Spiked Malt

When I turned twenty-one, Dad 

said I should try the strong drink  

that he drank in the old days 

when they would skirt the dry laws

and beat them at their own game.

In the bar he ordered two 

spiked malts. Herb grinned while lifting

two chilled bottles of near beer 

from his cooler, poured an inch 

from each neck, hoisted a jug 

of one-hundred and ninety proof

alcohol and poured a stream 

of spirit into each neck.

Shrewd old-timers learned to mix

alcohol-free near beer with

 homemade whisky cooked in their 

illicit stills to fulfill 

their want for pleasurable

drink and drive revenuers

crazy.

          Now these bolstered drinks 

stood before us on the bar

ready to drink and soften 

our hard world and bring us sweet

sensation. Giddy feelings

swept through my body, my legs 

grew weak, my eyes

crossed, and distorted double 

vision split the horizon.  

And then Dad ordered two more.

Finding Myself

In the crowded, elbow bumping aisles at Scheel’s Arena during the Pride of Dakota show, a booth for  Dacotah Trails Books from Bismarck stopped me. Several large bookcases, filled to overflowing, stood in the allotted space and begged me to stop and look. This proprietor probably doesn’t have every North Dakota community’s history or school yearbook, but it’s not for lack of trying. Yes, he had centennial books for Sheldon and Enderlin.

His business card says he specializes in ND history, old west, and special interest books. One of those books looked very familiar. Sure enough, it was the first book I published 13 years ago, Paha Sapa Tawoyake: Wade’s Stories. Of course, that was a conversation starter, and I was even handed a pen to autograph it. His wife said she was going to keep it for herself. 

A bit of background as to how this book came about might interest. While looking around in Wahpeton’s School of Science library, 45 years or so ago, I found an edition of it on the shelves. It looked interesting enough to check out and take home to read. Not finding any copyright date, I presumed it was in the public domain and made a copy of it for my own library.

The stories in it fascinated me. In his early working days William Wade had been a seafaring man and later found work as a wagoner driving yoked teams across the prairie. He worked in the employ of Don Stevenson whose large wagon trains crossed Ransom County on their way west. But Wade wanted a life as an independent operator and set up a ranching operation on the west side of the Missouri River. Reminiscent of his days at sea, he named it the Anchor Ranch. 

His story drew me in, especially after my wife said that this spread was immediately adjacent to the place where she grew up near Raleigh, North Dakota. The Voigt family owned it then and she would occasionally babysit for Duaine and Alma Voigt. Not so many years ago, we drove to the place to meet with Duaine who had a great story to tell about being displaced by the Garrison Dam and trail driving their herd to this new ground. In addition, he took us on a tour of the large ranch that Wade established and four-wheeled to the top of a tall butte where his family had placed a stone marker engraved “Wade Ranch.”

I was hooked and knew I needed to pursue the Wade story. First, I searched out descendants of William Wade and found a great-granddaughter closest to the source. She endorsed my effort, and we agreed I would reprint the Wade book as well as adding pertinent information that we had found. 

Another consideration was to translate the Lakota terminology of “Paha Sapa Tawoyake” that Wade used on his original book. The “Paha Sapa” part was easy because I knew it was Lakota for Black Hills. Try as I might, I couldn’t find any reference to Tawoyake. Remembering the United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, I drove in there one day and began looking for someone who could interpret the word. School was not in session then, so finding an indigenous person who could help took a search.

Eventually, I found two men in an office to ask. They looked puzzled and couldn’t come up with a translation. One of them picked up the phone and called to ask an elderly relative, but he couldn’t provide a quick answer. A phone conversation ensued with give and take on  both ends. Finally, they agreed on a solution. It meant something akin to “finder.” So there it was, “Finder of the Black Hills.”

A bit of knowledge of Indian humor explains it. Wade knew and liked his Indian neighbors there on the west side of the Missouri River, and they in turn reciprocated. He was asked to accompany a group of them traveling south to meet with the U. S. government officials to discuss treaty problems. As the group rode along, Wade spotted the outline of the Black Hills on the horizon and shouted out, “There they are.” Wade became a victim of his companions wry humor when they named him the “Finder of the Black Hills.” They knew where they were and had a good laugh about it. He could take a joke and related so many more rich anecdotes in his writing that I’ll need to save until next time.

We walked a little way down the aisle and were greeted by a couple of friendly faces who were representing the “North Dakota Magazine.” I hadn’t seen a copy of that publication in awhile and had heard it was closing up shop. Here they were and when I asked, they said, “Yes, we were on the brink of closing down, but then we found support to continue, so here we are.” They were more than happy to sign us up for a year to receive six new issues. With our payment, they reached back and gave us their last two issues for samples. They contain interesting articles along with beautiful color pictures. North Dakota is well represented in its pages.

Travels

We recently returned from Branson, Missouri, where we attended some of the entertainment  that city offers. We have been there several times now,  all being on organized bus tours. By doing so we turn the planning for tickets, rooms, and meals over to experienced travel companies. All we need to do is write a check.

So it was that we saw Daniel O’Donnell’s show again, I believe for the fourth time. His is a show where people come away feeling good about themselves, and such a gentleman he is to boot. After the show he stood for a long line of mostly ladies wanting to have their picture taken with him. Another great show, a biblical one,  took place at the Sight and Sound Theater. The title this year was “David.” Previously, we’ve seen “The Temptation of Christ,” and “Noah.” To describe the staging for these productions is beyond my descriptive powers since you have to see it in person to appreciate it.

All the other shows made for worthwhile viewing, too. The Haygoods, The Presleys, Dolly Parton’s horse show, an in-the-round show called “Where Jesus Walked,” and a gospel quartet show. How many more times we’ll go is unknown. The average age of the riders on our bus was 77 years, and we’re well beyond that now. We will have our memories, though.

We usually write some thoughts on paper for major events like these bus tours and came across one I wrote twenty years ago. It documents a trip titled “Northeast Fall Foliage Tour - 2005.” It was enjoyable to sit and read through and reminisce about the sights and feelings we encountered on this tour. Here is that somewhat edited piece.

We arrived home from an 18 day bus tour to the northeast on Thursday, October 13, 2005, after traveling through twenty states, the District of Columbia, and one Canadian province, riding 5,020 miles, and burning 800 gallons of diesel fuel. The itinerary let us visit many sites we had never visited before and can now be satisfied for doing so.

Our experienced driver drove through traffic in major cities with a confident air and took us to such places as New York City, Washington, D. C., Boston, and Philadelphia.  As I look back on  meaningful highlights and impressions, the history found in them mattered most to me. How many times in a person’s life has he heard of Monticello, Williamsburg, Mount Vernon, Washington, D. C., the Smithsonian Institute, the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Fanueil Hall, Ellis Island, Plymouth Rock, Old Ironsides, the Old North Church, Ford’s Theater, the White House, the U. S, Capitol, and Arlington National Cemetery? We walked in those places.

If we have read once, we have read many times the names of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. We walked in their footsteps.

Hundreds of thousands of lives have been taken on battlefields of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the World Wars, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. We had the opportunity to contemplate their sacrifice at the face of their memorials.

The most profound experience for me was the tour of the Gettysburg Battlefield. I remembered studying how men had slaughtered each other on that plain in Pennsylvania for a cause we named the Civil War. At the heavily contested summit of Little Round Top, I gathered three acorns fallen from their mothering tree. Somehow it seemed significant for me to pick them up and bring home. That tree might’ve been a “witness tree” from which its roots found nourishment through the blood spilled there and soaked into the ground.

In the vicinity of the battlefield could be seen a contemporary site of some importance. President Eisenhower’s retirement farm was adjacent to the battlefield. And we saw other places of this ilk: President Coolidge’s birthplace and museum in Vermont, President Kennedy’s library in Boston, and a stepping stone on the shore called Plymouth Rock.

Mild excitement occurred while I stood high in the Washington Monument looking toward the adjacent White House. The reason for men with rifles standing on the roofs of nearby buildings soon became evident. A flight of three helicopters appeared headed toward the landing pad on the lawn, then two lifted away while the third one set down. A man and a woman stepped from the craft and started walking toward the building where a small crowd welcomed them. It was President and Mrs. Bush.

We walked on the campus of Harvard University and saw among other buildings its library, the third largest in the country with 3.5 million volumes. Only the Library of Congress and New York City’s are larger. I regretted not being able to step inside.

We observed re-enactors  in period costume on the board the Mayflower, in Plymouth Village, and in Colonial Williamsburg. There in Williamsburg we watched men using an old style printing press while making pamphlets. They told us there was freedom of the press at the time and you could print what you wanted to.

The governor in Williamsburg, representing the king of England, hung an implicit threat consisting of hundreds of muskets and swords on the ceiling and walls of the entry in his mansion. Our history now illustrates that this mere threat of arms could not prevail against the written word.

That concluded my thoughts of 20 years ago. We’ve seen all the states now, mostly by bus tour,  except for Delaware, and I don’t think I make it there. Sometimes we run into folks we’ve traveled with before. On this trip, Bob and Mary Gruman from Lucca traveled, too. The last we’d seen them was on a Texas trip. We stood together for a picture of us standing on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico.

Random Thoughts - Dec 3, 2925

 Random Thoughts - 

Getting old is like a roll of toilet paper - the more you use, the faster it spins … I called for a heart screen and was told I’m too old (no joke) … A favorite song is Glory Days, because we sit around telling “boring stories of glory days” … Age is an issue of mind over matter - if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter … today in 1967 was the first heart transplant, the recipient lived for 18 days … The Flying Dutchman came to Venlo, returned to Venlo, and  promises to return … So much to do that I don’t get anything done … General Grant died 140 years ago - Sheldon Progress wrote  “Weep America! Your greatest, noblest truest heart is silent forever” … A wintry picture of our old mailbox.

Thanksgiving, 2025

                                     My boys have outgrown me!