Jul. 13th, 2008 at 2:25 PM
Many, many years ago, when I was a wee tyke (officially the World's Worst Opening to a Book Review, I know), I had been impressed enough by a description of an eastern woodlands native American trading vessel to ask the evidently silly question, "Hey, how come they never went across the Atlantic in it?"
I don't remember where I was when I asked the question - probably in a museum of some sort - but I do remember the response, and it bothered me ever since. Basically, the response was something to the effect that it took great nautical and technological skill and courage to build a seaworthy vessel and then to venture across something as vast and dangerous and unknown as the Atlantic ocean in it.
The underlying message in the museum guide's response couldn't have been more clear: unlike her glorious European immigrant ancestors, Native Americans were too inept and backward, and lacked the necessary courage and adventurous spirit to paddle their tiny, leaking, badly-constructed canoes in anything more dangerous than a calm lake. In fact, now that I think about it, you rarely see any sketches or paintings depicting American Indians in sailing vessels OTHER than 2-man canoes on calm lakes. (Think about it.)
Ah, to have had Jack D. Forbes' wonderful book in hand at the time and to have responded intelligently to her (completely erroneous and condescending) answer: "Nyah, nyah, I'm right and you're wrong, ha ha HA!"
(Hey, I said I was a wee tyke at the time - emotional maturity took a while).
It turns out that they did, and Jack Forbes, professor emeritus of Native American studies and anthropology at the University of California, Davis, lays out his argument with impeccably researched sources - including Christopher Columbus' own journal, details of Danish church interiors, original French, Spanish and British documents, drawing upon anthropologists, archeologists, linguists, art historians, oceanographers, boat builders, mariners, cartographers, natural historians and numerous other sources to build his case.
I couldn't possibly lay out his case here, but some of the more memorable highlights were so striking in their logic and simplicity, my first reaction was an impulse to slap my own forehead like Homer Simpson and yelp, "D'oh!"
Example: pull out a map of the North Atlantic Ocean currents. Trace the direction of the currents, paying close attention to the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic drifts. Then ask yourself the question, if you don't have a sail, and get caught in an ocean current, which direction are you inevitably going to go? East to west? Or west to east?
The obvious answer (west to east) is borne out by the numerous examples of "strangers on rafts" or "strangers in huge hollowed-out logs lashed together" who arrived on the shores of Ireland and Wales among other places - two of whom were living in Galway in the 15th century and were visited by Christopher Columbus before he set sail.
The obvious point: Columbus wasn't quite as courageous and "faith-filled" as we were led to believe - he already knew there was land to the west of England.
He quotes Europeans from that time period describing solid, sea-worthy vessels that held forty people or more, and were used to conduct trade along the eastern shore and in the Gulf of Mexico. A far cry from the small two-man canoes most Americans envision when they think of Native Americans on water.
It is further borne out by examples of flora and fauna native to the Americas that found its way to the shores of Europe; far more frequently in one direction than in the other.
Another memorable example is his devastating (and very funny) response to Marshall McKusick of Yale, who tried to argue that native Americans adopted the use of sails from Europeans, based on the testimony of one Spanish friar, who swore he was released from captivity by teaching the Caribbean locals how to make a sail.
Aside from the fact that the Friar knew not a word of the native tongue and spoke only Spanish, the idea that the locals, who lived on a Caribbean island and knew quite well how to make sails since their livelihood and trade with other islands depended on it, might have been entertaining themselves at his expense, never occurred to the poor Friar - or to a later historian at Yale, for that matter.
This is one of those watershed books that ought to be standard reading material for the American history school curriculum - but won't be - mainly because the "Manifest Destiny gang" still has a stranglehold on the public school system, and the realization that the "pagan savages" might have actually beat the so-called "civilized Christians" at their own game is unthinkable.
All the more reason to applaud this marvelous work.
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