Author Archives: caseykins

            In 1880 in Milan, Italy, the International Congress on Education for the Deaf voted to ban the use of sign language in Deaf[1] schools. [2]  Spurred by the rhetoric of Alexander Graham Bell, known to most Americans as the inventor of the telephone, American Deaf schools flocked to comply with the Milan Conference’s decision.  In return, a movement was spawned by Deaf community leaders advocating sign language instruction, fiercely hanging onto the culture they had fought so hard to create.  Still, it looked as if the Deaf were losing this fight as Alexander Graham Bell, a follower of eugenics, tried to convince everyone that the Deaf were forming their own separate race.  Even those who didn’t subscribe to eugenics “demanded the elimination of sign language, believing that it undermined English language acquisition and promoted deaf separatism.” [3]  In the end, deaf people would have to live in a hearing world, they argued, and they should have the skills to deal with that fact. Science has since proved what Deaf people knew all along, that this theory does not work in practicality.  Keeping sign language away from deaf people keeps all language away from deaf people, and can be harmful to cognitive development.[4]  Still, it looked as if sign might become extinct in the near future.

This is the climate in which the National Association of the Deaf, under President George Veditz, decided to make several films for the preservation of Sign Language.  “The N.A.D… has collected a fund of $5,000, called the Moving Picture Fund.” Veditz wrote, “…I am sorry that it is not $20,000.”[5]  With such a limited budget, Veditz and the NAD Board had to decide carefully which signers they would film and what subjects they would cover.  Ultimately, the films they chose to make tended to center on Deaf history, American patriotism, and religion[6].  Eighteen films were made in all, from the years 1913-1920, but only fourteen of these survived to the modern age.[7]  This was due in large part to their heavy use by the Deaf community, and the poorly trained film operators responsible for winding the machines.

The films were made by pointing a static camera at the signers and having them lecture to it.  Often, small amounts of scenery such as vases and curtains were placed in the background for visual effect.  Because of the black and white picture and the poor resolution of the film, signers had to make sure they produced their signs large and signed slowly so everyone could see them.  After a few mistakes, most notably the film showing Edward Minter Gallaudet’s lecture – a retelling of Lorna Doone – filmmakers were also careful to place the lecturers on plain, dark backgrounds so their hands would show up easily.[8]  These films compared favorably with other films of the time in technical skill and appearance.

Once the films were completed, they were circulated throughout the United States to local Deaf Clubs.  These clubs would often couple the film screening with live entertainment, making each screening a huge event in the local Deaf community.  Large groups of signers would congregate in the hall downtown to see the films.  Sometimes, requests were made for the NAD to send transcripts of the films that could be read for any hearing visitors in the audience.  Although Veditz’s film, featuring his impassioned plea for sign language is the best known today, it was E.M. Gallaudet’s film that was most requested when the films were released, despite the difficult background of his film.[9]  This was probably due to the popularity of E.M. Gallaudet’s father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet.  T.H. Gallaudet had been instrumental in forming the first school for the Deaf, in Hartford, Connecticut.

Although the films had a major impact on the Deaf community when they were first produced, scholarship on them has been spotty at best.  Many books cover the topic, but devote no more than a few pages to the exploration of the history of these films.  Some give no more than a brief mention to Veditz’s films as being the precursor to modern Sign Language recording and leave it at that.  This paper attempts to explore in greater detail not only the motives behind George Veditz’s creation of these films, and how these films influenced deaf culture as a whole, but also why the topic hasn’t been better covered by Deaf Historians.

Veditz’s Motives:

Carol Padden is perhaps the foremost authority on Veditz and the NAD films.  She was also the first to cover the topic in a book co-written with her husband, Tom Humphries, entitled Deaf In America: Voices From A Culture, published in 1988[10].  At 121 pages, the book itself is slim, but large chunks of it are devoted to Veditz and the importance of the films he engineered.  Padden and Humphries claim that Veditz’s film, The Preservation of the Sign Language, is a clear example of how panicked the Deaf community was at this time that their language would disappear.  Veditz’s strong rhetoric about the need for Deaf people to “love and guard our beautiful sign language”[11] and his claim that European Deaf populations “look upon us Americans as a jailed man chained at the ankles might look upon a man free to wander at will”[12] are examples of the need for activism that the whole community felt, Padden and Humphries tell us.

Around the construction of these movies arose a debate about Sign Language itself, say Padden and Humphries.  Did it have a proper structure?  How were Deaf people defining that structure?  Was the grammar of the language itself more important than making oneself understood to others?  Veditz certainly advocated that there was a correct grammar and style to Sign Language.  Together with the Deaf newspaper The Silent Worker, Veditz tried to communicate what he considered to be the ideal version of sign.  Veditz and The Silent Worker claimed that proper sign moved fluidly from one word to the next and didn’t cause eye strain for the people watching it.  Veditz also advocated for using no facial expression at all while signing, a practice that is completely contrary to current views on proper American Sign Language.  Although the language used by Veditz and other signers in these films is dated, by applying modern understanding of Sign Language grammar to Veditz’s and The Silent Worker’s claims about correct sign, we begin to see what they mean.  Grammatically incorrect sign looked choppy and was difficult to understand.  This was all the more reason Veditz felt he needed to preserve examples of “perfect” sign for generations to emulate, eliminating the “gyrations” of uneducated signers.

Padden and Humphries also focus on Veditz’s penchant for valuing hearing people over Deaf.  Veditz claims that it is from the hearing T. H. Gallaudet, the sponsor of deaf education in America, that Gallaudet’s son learned such beautiful sign, completely leaving out the influence Gallaudet’s Deaf wife must have had on the boy.  As a native signer, her language skills were undoubtedly superior to that of Gallaudet’s, who had learned to sign in his later years.[13]  Veditz seems to imply by these claims that it is through hearing advocates that sign will be able to endure, and that the contributions of hearing members of the deaf community are of a higher status than those of the deaf themselves.

In his 1988 book Hollywood Speaks,[14] John S. Schuchman agrees with Padden and Humphries that Veditz clearly saw film as the ideal medium for the recording of Sign.  By filming their work, Deaf people would no longer need to rely on inaccurate writing to represent their signs.  A regular 35mm camera would be able to record sign for subsequent generations like nothing else.  This catapulted Deaf Culture from being an “oral” society to a culture in which static written texts could be preserved accurately.  Schuchuman claims that Veditz saw the benefits of this leap forward when he spearheaded the films.

In their book 1989, A Place of Their Own[15], John Vickrey Van Cleve and Barry A. Crouch also agree with aspects of Padden’s and Humphries’ claim about Veditz’s Motives: illustrating the panic the Deaf community felt. Because the Oralist Movement was stronger in Europe than it was in America, Veditz had already seen the degradation of Deaf Schools in Europe and felt that European Sign Language had degraded as a result.  He felt that European signers were now using an impure form of their language, full of gyrations and strange facial expressions.  Veditz attributed the decline of European sign to the lack of formal schooling.  Veditz felt the NAD films would provide future generations instruction in the language if traditional classes disappeared.  That is why Veditz was so eager to help America avoid the fate Europeans had suffered.  He felt that by picking eighteen of the greatest masters of American Sign Language and preserving their dialect, he would be preserving sign in its true form.

Some historians have been less than flattering in their analysis of Veditz’s motives.  Susan Burch, in her 2002 book Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History 1900-WWII, claims that Veditz was also trying to “raise a new generation of signing elite”[16] with his films.  Veditz and the board of the NAD were trying to “legitimize their participation and their place in society”[17] by putting forth their picture of an ideal deaf citizen.  Unfortunately, this picture was comprised mostly of older, white men.  Out of all 18 films, only one features a woman, and none feature signers of non-white races.  The deaf picture of who was an ideal American deaf citizen did not extend very far, Burch argues.

Padden again touched on the issue of Veditz’s film in her 2005 article Translating Veditz.[18]  In this article, she focuses more on the language Veditz used to create a spirit of activism.  Using strong rhetoric to create opposing sides between those who are actively trying to eradicate Sign with malicious intent and the Deaf people trying desperately to protect it, Veditz is not mincing words.  As strong a picture as Veditz paints in his sign version of this speech, Padden compares it to a written translation Veditz made about a year after the film was circulated.  In this written version, Veditz pumps up the rhetoric even more, making the position of “us against them” extra inflammatory.  Comparing Oralists to the “Pharaohs who knew not Joseph”[19] in the signed version of his speech, Veditz adds into the written version that Deaf children “were being sacrificed by ‘the oral Moloch that destroys the mind and soul of the deaf.’”[20]   Perhaps this change in rhetoric is because he felt opinion toward sign in America had deteriorated even further.

Later, in Padden’s and Humphries’ 2005 book Inside Deaf Culture, they expand upon Veditz’s relationship with English and print.  Veditz had a long history of employment in the printing industry, ultimately owning his own magazine.  After his death, colleagues of Veditz’ remembered his “vitriolic pen,” often employed in championing sign language and deaf culture.  Veditz’s familiarity with English can also be seen in his film.  He fingerspells many words and is very clear about his meaning.  Padden and Humphries show how most translations of the film differ only slightly from each other, further illustrating Veditz’s command of the English language as well as his mastery of sign.

Influence on Deaf Culture:

Historians claim that these films have had a wide influence on Deaf culture in general.  In the 2002 book, Signing the Body Poetic[21], a collection of essays on Deaf Literature, H. Dirksen, L. Bauman, Jennifer L. Nelson, and Heidi M. Rose tell us that the invention of film acted like a printing press for Deaf people.  Much like moveable type did for Hearing people, the invention of film allowed Deaf people to enjoy entertainment from inside their homes.  Dirksen et al tells us that the Veditz films were the precursor to this, setting up the cultural tendency to adapt new technology.  These films essentially opened the floodgates to other films in Sign Language by showing Deaf people how wonderful a medium it was for their language.  Today, American Sign Language DVDs comprise the highest number of products sold by Deaf publishing companies.

Dirksen et al also claim that the wide variety of Sign entertainment that became available spelled the downfall for Deaf Clubs.  They argue that the need for people to meet and interact socially in an environment outside their home has ended.  Instead, they can experience this kind of entertainment in the privacy of their own homes, just by turning on the Television.  Dirksen et al argue that it was Veditz’s films that ultimately sped up the decay of the strong Deaf community in America.

In a 2005 article in the PMLA Journal[22], Padden explores the ineffectiveness of Veditz’s crusade.  He was unable to stop, or even hinder, the Oralist spirit sweeping across America.  This may be because of his argument style, claims Padden.  She compares Veditz’s highly religious and emotional argument to the reasoned scientific arguments that were taking place in hearing America at the same time.  Appearing only in Sign Language and using an outdated argumentation style, Padden claims that Veditz’s argument was brushed aside by the few hearing people who were paying attention as old fashioned and uneducated.  Padden claims that this is partially the reason for its ineffectiveness in stemming the tide of Oral-only education sweeping through Deaf schools.  If the purpose of these films was to preserve sign language and Deaf culture, they did not seem to be working.

In another book written this same year,[23] Padden and Humphries again explore the NAD films, building on the above idea by exploring the issue of Deaf “Voice”.  Padden and Humphries claim that these films were an attempt to create a place where Deaf people could be heard on their own terms, setting the standard for similar efforts in the future.  In addition to this, the deaf voice present in the NAD films is one that still resonates with Deaf audiences today.  Padden and Humphries show how Veditz’s rallying cry has transcended generations, as deaf people today try to explain the importance of sign language and Deaf culture in a world where rapid scientific advancement may be eradicating deafness.

Lastly, American Sign Language linguist Ted Supalla has used these films for an entirely different reason than others before him: to chart the evolution of ASL from its origins in French Sign Language to the present day.  Supalla shows in his 2010 article in Deaf Studies Digital Journal[24] how ASL linguists can break through the “folk etymology” of where signs originally came from, and chart their true origins.  Studying films such as the NAD films, he argues, can provide valuable clues to where and how these signs originated.   For instance, many Deaf people will explain that the sign language word for “no good” (made with the hand in an L shape, flipping away from the body) derives from the fact that when something is no good, you throw it away.  By studying the NAD films, however, we can see that signers in the early 1900’s make the sign by fingerspelling the letters N and G.  We can then surmise that the origin of the modern sign is not the action of throwing something, but of fingerspelling that has changed over time.   Because there is such a large body of work that survives in this collection, the NAD films have been invaluable to ASL linguists such as himself, claims Supalla.

Lack of Scholarship:

The study of Deaf History is a relatively new field.  Van Cleve and Crouch, in the book A Place of Their Own, speak to this issue in the preface, although they do not speculate as to why.  Instead, they relate their own experiences at Gallaudet University, the premier institute for the Deaf, during the 1980s.  Gallaudet University was interested in offering a deaf history class to their students, but could not find a textbook to use. It seemed as if none existed.  A Place of Their Own was written to fill that gap, they relate.

Martin Atherton, Dave Russell, and Graham Turner take up the issue in depth of why there has not been more study of Deaf history in their article Looking To The Past: The Roll of Oral History Research in Recording the Visual History of Britain’s Deaf Community.[25]  Although these men are ultimately looking at British Deaf History, they use much American scholarship to prove their thesis, such as Harlan Lane’s When The Mind Hears.  Also, many of the statements they make about Deaf language acquisition are not exclusive to a particular country.

Atherton, Russell, and Turner cite Harlan Lane’s 1980 work When the Mind Hears, as being the first real work on Deaf history.  Covering the ordinary Deaf experience in the eighteenth century and before, and showing the road to the establishment of the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut,[26] this was the first time that the deaf experience itself had been central to the main arguments of the book. Before this, deaf history focused solely on those who worked with the deaf or were leaders of deaf advocacy groups.  Even when ordinary deaf people are represented in older works, they receive much less attention than the hearing people working with them.  Essentially, Deaf history was being written by hearing people for hearing people.

English proficiency is another huge problem for historians of the Deaf, Atherton, Russell, and Turner claim.  “English – both spoken and written – can pose many difficulties for profoundly deaf people, as for many it is not their first or preferred language.”[27]  This means that primary source material is hard to obtain.  The main body of primary source material that does exist is often from Deaf print media which almost always relies on voluntary contributions and does not employ staff writers.  The articles presented in these publications deal almost exclusively with topics of religion, education, and sport.  What little primary source material about daily life there is has often been poorly preserved.  Atherton, Russell, and Turner cite film as being the ideal medium to preserve deaf history in the future, as it can transcend the barrier of poor English skills and inaccurate systems of writing for sign language.

Padden and Humphries also note in their 2005 book Inside Deaf Culture that the NAD films did not resurface until the 1970’s, when they were remembered and unearthed from the Gallaudet University archives.[28]  Even if creating Deaf history was common, scholarship would not have existed on these particular films until this time.

In Conclusion:

“The window into the history of American Sign Language through these films is, fortunately for us, a wide one”[29] says Padden.  Still, the scholarship that exists on this issue barely begins to explore the impact NAD films have had on American history in general.  Putting the evidence together, the things others have said about the films, I believe that the NAD was filling an important cultural need, and providing a basis for Deaf empowerment that did not exist before.  In the struggle for the community to make its voice heard and define its own destiny in the Oralist vs Manualist fight, the community had always relied on sympathetic hearing people to make their case for them.  The Motion Picture Committee films mark an effort, not just to preserve Sign Language, but also to make Deaf people feel proud of their culture and their heritage.  By empowering Deaf people, these films also encouraged them to find their own voice and try to actively control their own destiny by standing up for the language at the heart of their community.

 

On the 11^th of September, 2001, two planes piloted by Islamic extremists slammed into the World Trade Center buildings in New York.  Suddenly Americans cared about Islam, looking to Oriental scholars to explain what had happened to them.  Two of these scholars, Edward Said and Bernard Lewis, have been debating the subject of “Occident vs. Orient”[1] for decades and their opinions have shaped the post-9/11 debate in America.  Said’s and Lewis’ opinions of this matter differ greatly, however.  This paper will look at the fundamental differences in Said’s and Lewis’ arguments about Orientalism and their heated debates on the subject, while attempting to determine who is the more credible authority.

Said’s understanding of Islamic cultures is illustrated in his 1978 book Orientalism.  Although Said looks at Muslim attempts to Westernize just as Lewis does, his book is mostly focused on those who study Islamic countries.  Said believes that Western studies of Islam always show these communities from the lens of colonial bias, ultimately siding with imperialism.  Citing the myth of the “Mystic Orient”, Said shows how these stereotypes are used to subjugate the people in these countries by painting them as inferior.   “An assumption had been made,” Said writes, “that the Orient and everything in it was, if not patently inferior to, then in need of constructive study by the West.” [2]          

Lewis was one of the many to review Said’s book, and he was not complimentary.  Lewis argued against Said’s interpretation of the Arabic words “Tawhid” and “Thawra”, claimed that Said only used obscure scholarship to prove his point, and suggests that Said may have socialist sympathies.  Responses to each other’s arguments, full of vitriol, started to appear in The New York Review of Books.

In 2002, Lewis’ ultimate argument appeared in the press: his book What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Modern World.  As the title of the book implies, Lewis believes that Islam and Modernity do not mix.  In addition, Lewis claims that the reason Muslim countries are so far behind the West is because of their inherent inability to separate politics and religion.  Religion, he claims, has blinded Muslims into ignoring anything that is not bound to their faith, including Western advancements in science and technology.  Lewis claims that “it is precisely the lack of freedom…that underlies so many of the troubles of the Muslim world”.[3]

Perhaps this fundamental difference in belief is what makes the argument between these two scholars particularly venomous.  Essentially, Lewis is everything Said disdains: a Western-born scholar claiming Western superiority over Middle Eastern countries.  Still, Said goes too far when he writes “Lewis’ carelessness in reading English disqualifies him from argument well before we get to Arabic”[4] and “to Lewis, what he writes about ‘Islam’ is all so self-evident that it allows him to bypass normal conventions of intellectual discourse, including proof.”[5] Although Lewis certainly attacks Said’s theories, he wisely leaves the personal jibes at home, leaving him appearing on the surface like the more reasoned individual.

Although Lewis may look reasoned, his book does not hold water very well, especially his claim that freedom is necessary to achieve modernity.  For much of America’s rise to power, Americans enslaved or horribly repressed large populations of their people and were still able to join the global economy.  China is also a country that Westerners would never consider free, yet some estimate that China’s Gross Domestic Product may already be higher than that of the United States.[6]  Obviously, freedom is not a necessary to achieve prosperity.   Also, Lewis’ almost complete reliance on Turkish sources, applying them to the whole Middle East, is problematic.  Still, Lewis backs his claims, staunchly asserting that his theories are always right.  In addition to this, Lewis’ convictions have led him to advise former President Bush about Middle East foreign policy after the 9/11 attacks.  He is so sure his opinion is correct that he is willing to put whole countries on the line.

As a longtime advocate for Palestinian rights, Said is not unbiased himself and may be painting too harsh a picture of Oriental scholars.  In addition to this, Said’s theories have holes as well.  The most glaring of these is how he completely left out the opinions of German scholars in his efforts to examine European study of Islamic cultures, which he freely admits.   This penchant for admitting that his theories have holes is his most redeeming quality, however.  Unlike Lewis’ inability to admit that he may be wrong, Said has declined invitations to advise government officials, wondering “why indeed was there this extraordinary assumption that from my university office I had some special insight into the smoldering twin towers?”[7]  For this attitude, Said is to be applauded.  Ultimately it is Said’s willingness to entertain the criticism of others that makes him the more reliable authority.   In addition, Said has studied his topic more deeply than Lewis, not picking and choosing his data as it fit his thesis but honestly incorporating scholarship from a myriad of sources to support his claims. In Said’s introduction alone, he mentions the opinions of Disraeli, Stevens, Panikkar, Renan, Jones, Nerval, Flaubert, Gobineau, and Marcus, clearly showing his deep knowledge of the field of Orientalism in general.[8]

It is to be expected that this debate will go on.  As long as America is inconvenienced by her bad relationship with the Middle East, scholars will attempt to make sense of it and the Saids and Lewises will continue to disagree.   Although there are flaws to both of their arguments, ultimately Said is the more rational authority because of his wider coverage of the topic and his willingness to admit the imperfections of his work.  Hopefully, more attention will be paid to Said’s theories in the future.

In the year 1620, a band of separatists packed themselves onto a tiny ship and traversed the ocean in hopes of attaining religious freedom.  These pilgrims were not the first Europeans to settle on the coast of the Americas, yet we celebrate their accomplishments much more than those of Jamestown, or other areas of Virginia.  Although the childhood story we learn of Pilgrims and Indians cooperating in peace was not as simple as we were told, the real story is just as interesting and perhaps even more inspiring.

A host of political reasons drove the colony from England, and finally to the new world.  They were not the first to traverse the wide sea, nor were they the first settlers on the continent.  Still, they were the first to create a permanent settlement in New England, and the first Englishmen to have friendly relationships with a native tribe.  They also pioneered a model religious community that was immensely important to the development of America as a whole.  Their very human mistakes along the way do nothing to detract from their ultimate successes.

Most of the Saints, as they called themselves, who settled Plymouth Colony were originally from the county around Scrooby, England.  Although Scrooby was not as small as many historians have claimed it was, the county was still a farming community with an agrarian way of life.  Many in this area were Puritans, believing that the church of England needed to be purified of its sinful catholic trappings.  Puritanism, although frowned upon, was tolerated in England.  As long as members were paying lip-service to the church and attending services every Sunday, they were largely left alone.  It was the Separatist sect of Puritanism, the sect that believed that the Church of England could never be purified and advocated separating from the church to form a new, that was considered toxic in English society.  When a small group of people, led by the minister John Robinson, stopped attending Sunday church services, they were instantly persecuted.  With its members constantly jailed, fined, and the community refusing to give them work, the group felt they needed to leave England.

The most logical place for them seemed to be Holland, a country known for its religious tolerance.  Slowly and secretly, the group began to sell their farms and immigrate to Holland.  Caling themselves the Saints, they eventually settled in the town of Leyden.  Leyden was nothing like the home they had left in England.  It was a highly industrialized city, famous for the manufacture of a fashionable lightweight wool called Say.  The Saints immediately sought jobs in the textile factories, but were never able to attain economic security.  They often worked incredibly long hours for little pay, and many of their children also worked long days in the factories alongside their parents.  Most families lived in hastily constructed, tiny tenements that were put up by the Dutch government. And then, the Spanish occupation of Leyden happened.  Not only was the specter of popish religion looming over their adopted country, but so was the threat of war.  It became clear that Holland was not the place for the Saints.

At first, the group looked into traveling to the new world on a charter from the Dutch government.  This was not their ideal situation.  Most of them still considered themselves Englishmen, and did not want to officially become a colony of a foreign government.  When it looked possible to attain a charter from England, the Saints jumped at the chance.  They would be able to keep their English heritage and still practice their religion.

In reality, the Saints never actually received an official charter to settle their colony.  They applied to the King with a settlement site in northern Virginia, and heard nothing.  Eventually, they assumed that no news was good news and proceeded with their plans, receiving funding from the newly formed Virginia Company.  This may seem like a significant jump in reasoning, but in reality it was not.  Separatism had been punished to the full extent of the law in England for decades.  When investors of the colony were not bothered, and members of the community who had been jailed were allowed to return to England for provisions, it looked as if the King was giving tactic permission while still saving face.  Their leader, John Robinson, declined to go with them, intending to join them later.  When the Saints set out, it was without a leader.

The deal these Saints made with the Virginia Company was quite simple, and did not favor the colonists at all.  Robert Cushman, the main negotiator for the saints, was too eager to make a deal.  He agreed to harsh provisions and signed all the papers before the rest of the group could weigh in.  The company would fund the Saint’s trip to the new world and pay for all the supplies they would need.  The Saints would pay back their debt by loading supply ships with saleable goods. Profit from all seven days of the week would belong to the Virginia Company.  Once the debt was paid, the Plymouth colony would be free to trade as they wished.  Until the debt was paid, everything they owned, including the houses they lived in, belonged to the Virginia Company and its investors.  Other colonies had been able to negotiate deals where the settlers owned their houses and property, and were able to work a few days of the week for their own personal profit.  Because of Cushman’s eagerness, this type of deal had not been possible for the Saints.

Edward Winslow, Robert Cushman, and Thomas Moore, the leader of the Virginia Company, were in charge of making all the preparations for the voyage.  They purchased a medium sized 3-masted ship called the Speedwell to take them to the new world from Holland, and hired a small 2-masted ship called the Mayflower to bring families from England who hadn’t been able to make their way to Leyden yet.  Along with these few Separatist families, the investors found several other non-separatists with useful skills to accompany the group on the Mayflower.  Some, like Miles Standish, had extensive military training.  Others had building or farming skills that would be useful to the colony, and still others were seeking to relocate their whole families.  The Saints referred to these people as “Strangers”.   The Saints planned to keep the Speedwell with them in the new world so they could travel up and down the coast and trade with others, reducing their debt faster, while the Mayflower would return to England.

In early July of 1620, both the Speedwell and the Mayflower set out from their individual ports, planning to rendezvous in Southampton, England before continuing together to the new world.  Unfortunately, the Speedwell began to leak badly, and the group waited 2 weeks for the ship to be repaired before setting off again.  Within a few hours of resuming their journey, the Speedwell was leaking again, and they had to pull into port for repairs a second time, and then a third.  It finally seemed as if the Speedwell was fixed when they left from Plymouth, England, in late August.  300 yards out to sea, it again started to take on water badly.  The demoralized group had no other choice but to turn around and land in Plymouth again.  They left Speedwell in Plymouth, and packed everyone they could into the Mayflower.  As the Mayflower was so much smaller than the Speedwell, they packed it well over capacity before several families, convinced that the voyage was cursed, decided to just go home.

Because the Mayflower had left so much later than originally planned, winter storms buffeted the small ship the entire way to the new world.  A voyage that could take as little as thirteen days took the pilgrims almost two months to complete.  At one point, storms were so violent as to crack the central support beam of the ship.  If the group had not been able to stabilize the beam with a winch they had brought to aid in building houses, they may never have seen the new world at all.  When the pilgrims reached the new world, they were not in northern Virginia, where they had told the King they would be settling, but in an entirely new landscape far north of their original destination.

The group did not know what to do.  At first, they tried to sail south, but they quickly ran into dangerous rapids.  In the snowy and icy landscapes they encountered, winter was obviously arriving quickly.  The group began to divide into factions.  The Saints were worried that by settling here, they would be accused of misleading the King, and that they would be accused of secession and sedition.  The Strangers didn’t care about this.  They had already made a failed attempt to sail south, and they felt the need to establish some kind of permanent settlement before the ground froze solid and it was impossible to build anything.  At first, it looked as if there would be a complete schism within the community.

This is where the Mayflower Compact comes in.  The Mayflower Compact is often cited as being the first democratic document of the new world, a tiny precursor to the government Americans live under today.  It is also notable as a governing document because it makes no reference to religion at all.  Leaders of both groups knew that they would not be able to survive without the other members of the group.  This document, still proclaiming their sovereignty to King James, asserts that decisions will be made democratically and adhered to by the entire population.  At this meeting, when the compact was adopted, they decided to settle in their current location, but send back information to the King on where they had settled and the cause of it.  They proclaimed John Carver their governor, a Puritan, but not a Separatist and not officially a “Saint”.  He seemed the ideal choice because he could bridge the gap between both groups.

The group explored their immediate area and found an excellent site for a settlement.  It was on a small hill, and the land had already been cleared around it.  Later, the pilgrims found out that an epidemic, probably of Small Pox, had wiped out the native village that had been built on that very spot.  To the pilgrims, it seemed providential.  They immediately built a fort on the top of the hill, and started some construction on 3 small houses.   Men took turns sleeping in and defending the fort through the winter.  The women and children were still living on the Mayflower, moored in the harbor until better weather made it easier to oust its passengers and sail back to England.

Even before the fort was completed, massive disease set in.  Fully one half of the group died in the first six months of the landing.  The sick were taken off the Mayflower and housed in the Fort in an attempt to keep the sickness from spreading, but no family was immune from it.  Even John Carver, the newly elected governor, and his wife passed away that first winter.  His wife was one of the first to die, but Carver hung on until a heart attack finished him in late March.  As soon as it was able, the Mayflower left for England with what was left of its crew.

In Carver’s place, William Bradford, was elected as the second governor of the colony.  Bradford was one of the original members of the congregation at Scrooby.  He had attended a year of college before dropping out to take over his father’s farming business and was eventually jailed for Separatist sympathies.  When the Separatists immigrated to Leyden, he followed them and was one of the few to achieve economic independence in Leyden.  He apprenticed himself out to a printer, and set up a shop himself as soon as he was trained, where he printed many pamphlets and books about Separatism that were eventually smuggled back into Britain.

By the time Bradford left for the Americas, he had been able to purchase a small house in a lower middle class neighborhood in Leyden.  Bradford had left a lot back in Holland, but his vision of a model religious community spurred him to make the trip across the ocean.  When John Robinson died in Holland only five years after the pilgrims had sailed, Bradford also became the spiritual leader of his community. He remained the governor for over thirty years.

As winter receded, so did the sickness.  As soon as they were able, survivors continued building houses.  A pen and ink diagram of the colony was drawn up, showing two parallel streets with nineteen lots straddling either side.  The fort had been built on the top of the hill, and the houses gradually sloped down and away from the fort.  The pilgrims also created a small fence to surround the village, which was beefed up two years later to fend off possible Indian attacks.

Outside the fence was farmland.  The first year the group planted several fields of Oats, Barley and other English crops they had brought over, and practiced collective farming.  The pilgrims’ main objective was not to expend any more resources than they absolutely had to.  Anything they could send back to England to pay their debt would be sent. In this spirit, single members of the community did not receive their own homes, but were portioned out to live with a family.  In addition, the houses themselves were of extremely simple construction.  The houses were all constructed under the same layout.  The inside of the houses were comprised of Wattle and Daub, where small sticks were woven together to create walls and then covered over with a mixture of mud and pig dung to make a plaster. The floors were left as dirt, and the chimneys were wooden.  Even by 1600’s standards, these homes were crude and basic.  As the houses did not technically belong to the pilgrims, but to the Virginia Company, colonists felt little desire to improve them.

The fort at the top of the hill immediately became the cultural center of the community.  It was not only used as a defensive structure, but also as the colony’s meeting house and church.  Puritan services, even for non-saints, were compulsory.  Those who declined to attend could face fines, and radical religious opinions were not tolerated.  Later, religious dissenters such as Roger Williams were even turned out of the community completely.

The group did not have much early contact with native tribes in their first six months.  Their experiences had been limited to only a few incidents:  one in which several women ran from them as they approached a beach while searching for a settlement location, another conflict in which they were shot at on a beach, and their continuous finds of native graves dotting the area.

Six months after their landing, a native man walked into the village and announced, “Welcome Englishmen!” in perfect English.  The pilgrims were shocked.  This Indian’s name was Samoset, or Somerset, and he had been sent from the Wampanoag leader, Massasoit, to see if the pilgrims would make an alliance with their tribe.  Samoset also told the group about an Indian who spoke even better English than he did, named Tisquantum.  This name was immediately shortened by the English to Squanto.  Later, they learned that the reason these men spoke such excellent English was because they had both been taken by English ships, trolling the coasts for natives to take back to England as slaves.  Squanto had spent several years in England before escaping back to his tribe.  Samoset had escaped somewhere near Canada, before the English ship that seized him had reached its final destination. He had perfected his English by trading with ships pulling into the harbors.

The pilgrims immediately understood that they would need to have peaceful relations with the native tribes in order for their settlement to survive.  They put together a small delegation and traveled to the Wampanoag village.  The delegation was treated well, staying several days with the Wampanoags while their alliance was solidified.  The deal they hammered out was basic: the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims agreed to peaceful relations between groups.  In addition, the Pilgrims would provide military support to the Wampanoags if they were ever attacked by other tribes, and the Wampanoags would do the same for the Pilgrims.  This alliance, although shaky at times, survived for over 50 years.

Samoset and Squanto both started spending large amounts of time in the colony.  They taught the group how to plant native corn crops, how to catch eels in the nearby river, and how to catch beaver.  These efforts completely saved the colony from extinction, as their early years were extremely difficult.

The first year, many of the English crops the group planted didn’t grow, or didn’t produce.  The only truly successful crop was the corn Samoset and Squanto taught them to plant, and they had only devoted a small segment of their land to it.  In addition, arguments arose around their collective farming system.  Some men complained that their wives should not have to labor to feed other men, and others refused to work the fields at all.  Collective farming wasn’t working.  Labor was extra difficult because so many of the group had died during the winter, and many who had survived were still weakened by the disease.  When the supply ship pulled into the harbor, the group only had a few barrels of eels to send back to pay their debt.  To add insult to injury, that Fall a different ship wrecked on the coast.  The colony had no choice but to take in dozens more.  Rations were extremely slim throughout the winter, and everyone starved together.

In the years following, conditions improved significantly.  Still, it took a full three years before the colony was able to feed itself.  It took eight more before it was able to pay for itself.

By 1628, other settlements were arising in the area, most comprised of separatists like the pilgrims.  Plymouth investors, under the difficult terms of the deal the group had signed, insisted that everyone living in the town be responsible for the debt.  Because of this, other colonies settled nearby.  This way, they could benefit from Plymouth experience without being burdened by Plymouth debt.  Most of these new settlements also had official charters from the English King.  Thus, they were able to command more resources and funding than the original Plymouth colony had been able to.  With supply ships more common, the colony was also no longer as dependent on their own crops to subsist year after year.

Beaver fur had been a mark of royalty and status in England since the middle ages, but had eventually become extinct due to over hunting.  When beaver were discovered in huge numbers populating the New England wilderness, the fad for beaver-fur hats arose again in full force.  With Plymouth Colony prospering, its members were able to expend more resources in the capturing and exporting of these furs.  Plymouth was able to pay its debts and offer an excellent return on investment in relatively short order.  The colony was able to purchase a ship and travel up the coast, eventually building a fort in modern-day Castine, Maine.  They held this outpost for almost ten years, sending massive amounts of beaver pellets back to the colony, and then to England.

As soon as their debt was paid off, colonists began to build sturdy, English-style homes for themselves.  These homes usually featured four rooms downstairs with a small entryway and another four upstairs, all built around a large central chimney for warmth.  The central chimney often opened up into several fireplaces throughout the house.  Walls were still made of crude plaster, but chimneys were made of brick, while the floors were made of wood.  Wealthier colonists could send to England for glass panes to put in their small windows.  These houses were constructed well and many still stand today.  As these dwellings no longer belonged to the Virginia Company, the colonists felt they could invest in nicer houses.

With all the new colonists settling the area and attempting to set up farms, pressures increased on tribes such as the Wampanoags to sell more and more land to the colonists.   By 1675, both Bradford and Massasoit had died and the alliance between the two groups came to a boiling conclusion.  King Philip, also known by his Wampanoag name Metacomet, had taken over leadership of the Wampanoag tribe after his brother’s death.

Metacomet was the youngest son of Massasoit, and originally had excellent relations with the English tribe.  His brother ruled under the name King Alexander, and Metacomet also took an English name, Philip.  He took a great interest in English trade, especially beaver, and spearheaded much trading between the Wampanoag and the English.  Philip was also known for buying many of his clothes in Boston.  Unfortunately, he was a weak king, and was eventually pressured into ceding much of the Wampanoag land to Plymouth Colony.

Upset that the colonists were taking so much land away from him, and facing political pressure from his people, Philip led his tribe to attack several outlying settlements that were part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  The tribe then retreated into the marshes, hoping to blend in with the Narragansetts and escape reprisals.  This tactic did not work well.  Instead, colonists led by Plymouth colony attacked Narragansett settlements.  Then, the Narragansett tribe rose up and attacked Plymouth colony itself.  The colony was able to withstand the attack, and a few months afterward they tracked down Philip with the help of the local Mohawk tribe.  When the Mohawks declined to join Philip, citing their neutrality, Philip made the mistake of attacking them and trying to blame it on the English.  This decision ultimately cost him his life.  Philip’s severed head could be seen in the colony for several decades following the conflict.  Known as King Philip’s War, it is tragic that the grand alliance of the original colonists ended with such violence.

Shortly after King Philip’s War ended, so did Plymouth colony as an individual entity.  The British government was paying more attention to the colonies and how they were organized, and the colony without a charter did not fit the model Britain wanted.  Seventy years after Plymouth Colony sent back word with the battered Mayflower that they had not settled in their originally intended location, their requested charter came.  Unfortunately, it folded the colony in with the Massachusetts Bay Colony, New Hampshire, and parts of modern-day Maine.  The new colony, entitled Dominion, eventually failed because the massive territory it encompassed was just too difficult for a single governor to manage.  Still, the forming of this new colony marked the end of Plymouth as a solitary identity.

Although this marked the end of Plymouth itself, the experiences of the people living there quickly became part of American legend.  A hundred years after the settlement was established, the legend of Plymouth Rock began to circulate.  In reality, there is no evidence that the pilgrims landed their boat on anything but the sand.  Still, a pavilion housing a deceptively tiny rock carved with the date 1620, stands on the beach in Plymouth to this day.  Much of the rock is said to have been chipped off for souvenirs before the pavilion was built, and more than two-thirds of the rock is buried in the sand.

The Pilgrim Myth gained greater steam when, in 1863, Lincoln first declared a National day of Thanksgiving, citing a harvest dinner held by the Plymouth Colony as the precursor.  This, too, has very little basis in fact.  If the ceremony was religious, as we think of it today, it was likely not accompanied by a feast with games and native guests.  Days of Thanksgiving were common in the Puritan faith, but they were nearly always comprised of a full day of attending church services and praying.  If a feast like the one we think of did take place, it was certainly a secular entertainment and not for the purpose of thanking God for getting them through the first winter.

Despite the many misconceptions modern society harbors about the pilgrims and their famous first year, the true story is still compelling.  They were a very human, very uncertain band of people determined to achieve religious autonomy.  The alliances they made with the local Wampanoag tribe are unprecedented.  Perhaps this is the reason why the Plymouth colony is remembered as being the founders of America.  They represent everything Americans wish to be: peaceful, determined, and courageous in the face of adversity.  Although the pilgrims did not always live up to these standards, they still provide us with an inspiring story of their quest to make a home in the new world, and their story will be part of the American mythos for centuries to come.

Bibliography:

Bradford, William, Of Plimoth Plantation, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1908),             http://mith.umd.edu//eada/html/display.php?docs=bradford_history.xml (accessed 23        April 2012)

Bunker, Nick, Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New     History, (Knopf, 2010 )

Miller, Perry, The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry, (:Columbia University Press ,         1982)

Philbrick, Nathaniel, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War, (New York Penguin   Books, 2007)

Winslow, Edward, Good Newes from New England, (London: William Bladen and John   Bellamie, 1624)

 

 

 

            This is the story of a traitor.  Not me, no.  I was loyal to my oaths.  But I stood by and watched the day my Lord made the decision to betray his oaths of fealty.  I stood by and watched the French inundate our country.  I did nothing to the men that shot the king in the eye like he was a perjurer.  This is the day, an ordinary day, that I chose my destiny, to say nothing in the face of adversity.  To stand by my Lord no matter what he is.

            I woke that morning and watched the thin beam of sunlight creep from my window across the stone floor of my chamber.   As I pulled my blankets tighter around me, I could see the dust motes floating in the patch of yellow sun.  The minstrels in the great hall last night had been excellent, but such a late night made too early a morning.  My body ached as I fought to open my eyes.  I pushed back the wool covers from my bed and put my feet on the cold stone floor.  It was time to relieve the other Knights on duty, the ones who had been manning the walls all night under the cold, starlit sky.

A chair stood in the far corner of the room, simple and wooden with a rope seat.  Flung across the back were piles of blue, brown, and cream.  I pulled my linen shirt over my head and tied the waist of my braies tight.  Next I reached for my brown tunic, the wool rough between my fingers, as I pulled it on, followed my blue supertunic, whose weight settled on my shoulders like the heft of duty.   I slung the quiver of arrows, reposing at the foot of my bed,  over my back, grabbed my bow and leather breastplate, and pushed open the wooden door.

My first stop was the ganderrobe for a piss break.  The small room was undecorated, and boards lined the walls, holes cut into them, leading to darkness down below.  The smell was an eye-opener in the morning.

When I was finished, I thought I’d see if I could sneak into the buttery without anyone noticing.  There is nothing better on a cold morning than swig of ale, especially when it’s contraband.  I peeked into the kitchen, and there were people everywhere.   Men and women in crude wool chopped vegetables, turned spits over the fire, and carried buckets of water back and forth.  The butler was nowhere to be seen, which meant he was probably inventorying the ale.  The small room would be filled to the ceiling with stacked barrels, a spigot stuck in one or two.  I thought about trying to sneak in anyway, but when I looked at the people everywhere, I decided to forget the idea.   Previous exploits like the one in which the butler chased me out of the pantry with a very hard, empty, metal flagon, had taught me when to try and when to leave it.  Instead, my mouth still wishing for the acrid, watery taste of ale, I walked through the empty great hall.  Red and gold banners flew overhead from the brown beamed ceiling; the coffered paneling on the walls caught the morning sunlight.  There was no trace of the raucous minstrels who performed the night before, nor the feast that accompanied it.  It was wide and vast, and my heels echoed as I walked across the stone floor.

I pushed open the door to the barbican, moving past the walls of the Chemise before my feet reached the vast field of barbican grass.  To my left, the keep rose high in the morning sun, a beam of light making the white tower appear in black relief over the bright morning sky.  I strode across the grass, entered the guard tower, and began to climb the stairs.

When I opened the door to the barbican gatehouse, the bright light of morning greeted my eyes again, and a slight breeze tickled my face.  Giles and Hobart were already there.  Giles was stretched across the floor of the guard house, his back supported on the crenellation wall, its stone teeth, merlons, rising above his head.  Hobart looked out on the village.  He leaned on his elbows, propped between two merlons.  Both turned to look at me as I opened the door, the hinges squeaking as I stepped through.

“Well, there he finally is.”  Giles said, “Last one here, as usual.  What kept you this morning?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” I winked.  Both of them grinned back at me.

“Don’t get too cozy with that serving maid,” said Hobart.  “Word is, we might be moving out soon.”

“What?” I leaned my bow against a merlon and sat down next to Giles.

“Yeah, Saul was in the Solar when the message came,” said Hobart.

“What was Saul doing in the family’s private quarters?” I asked.

“It’s his turn for Guard Duty.  But what’s important is, it looks like King Harold got a demand from William of Normandy to pay homage to him.  I don’t think that’s happening any time soon, and apparently neither does Harold.  He’s amassing an army, and we’ve been called to go.”

Giles and I looked at each other.

“Don’t you care that we’re finally going to be seeing some real action?”  said Hobart.

“I, for one, am thrilled,” Giles interjected.  “It’s been too long since I’ve felt that bone-crunching, teeth chattering high of battle.”  He gave a satisfied sigh.

I was looking forward to it too.  I could see the whole thing in my mind’s eye.  The troops mounted on horseback, gathering on the green grass of the bailey, great seas of red and yellow banners streaming in the wind.  The men bobbing slightly as their horses shifted positions, their metal armor glistening in the sun, surrounded by the white walls of the enceinte.  The king would give the order, and then we would all be off, wending our way through the gatehouse, the pointed ends of the portcullis looking down on us like spears.  We would ride down the drawbridge to glory.  It was a breathtaking idea.

“You said Saul overheard it, right?” I asked. “That means it’s not real information yet.  The Lord hasn’t called us to mount up.”

“What of it,” said Hobart.  “It happened, we’re being called.”

“I believe you.”  I told him.  “I’m just saying, don’t depend on it until it’s happened.  I’ll be excited about it when we ride.”

Giles slapped me on the back.  “By God, you are a realist” he told me.  “I’m with Hobie there.  I’m itching for anything that isn’t eat, sleep, and sit, all day every day.”

Hobart turned, “don’t go spreading it around.  I told Saul I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Giles winked at me.  “Don’t worry, you’re secret’s safe with us.”

I stood up and placed my hand over my heart.  “On my honor, Good Sir.”

Hobart rolled his eyes and went back to watching the road.

We sat in the barbican gatehouse all morning, until the sun had risen high over the treetops, to the middle of the sky.  The view was beautiful.  Around us, the glistening blue moat paralleled the white walls of the castle.  The village stretched below us to the left.  To the right, there was nothing but treetops, waving in the breeze.  The cold breeze didn’t penetrate through the wool of my tunics, and the light of the sun was pleasant.  It baked the stone under my body like bread, newly removed from the oven.  It almost made a morning without ale worth it.

“Hey!  Look alive, you two.”  Hobart finally called.  “There’s a group coming up the road.”

Giles and I both stood up and peered through the crenellations. Four men were riding up the road, their massive black horses standing out in stark contrast to the green of the countryside.  None of the men wore livery.

“Pull the Portcullis down” I told Giles. “We don’t know who they are.”

Giles reached for the lever and lowered the iron grate across the opening of the gatehouse.  The men rode slowly closer, and as they approached, we could see the golden lions on their red collars.  They weren’t completely without livery, it seemed.  Still, the heraldry was unknown to me.  Neither Giles nor Hobart had seen it either.

As soon as the men were within shouting distance, Hobart let out a yell.  “What Ho!” He shouted.

“What Ho!”  The men shouted in return.  “We come en Paix.”

“Don’t raise the portcullis yet.”  Hobart said.  Giles nodded.

“That was not English.”  I said.  “Well, maybe it was English, but it wasn’t Englishmen’s English.”

“I think they’re French.”  Giles said.  “It sounds like the accent.”

I grabbed my bow and notched an arrow onto the string, although I didn’t draw.

When they rode closer, we could see that Giles was right. They stopped just outside the range of the Meutrieres.  They must have known they were in no danger of boiling oil.  After all, they were not an attacking army.  Still, they stood clear, just out of the range of my arrow.

“Bonjour,” the man at the head of the group called to us.  His supertunic was read, and his tunic yellow to match the colors of the lions on his collar.  A pointed beard reached down his chest and a sword lopped over the right side of his saddle.  He held up his black gloved hands as he spoke, dropping his reins and letting his gigantic horse to its own devices.  “There are only four of us poor travelers.  Would you give us lodging for the night?”  He asked in a heavy accent.

“You are not on a pilgrimage.” Hobart told him.  “We know from your accent that you are French.  What brings you to our island?”

“I am willing to explain everything to your Lord,” the man said. “We are but poor travelers seeking hospitality.  Is it not the nature of your country to welcome strangers?”

Hobart looked at the four of them for a moment.  “With whom am I speaking?” He asked.

“Christophe of Normandy,” he answered, “and these men are Bruno, Alaric, and Roche, also of Normandy.”

“Giles,” Hobart said quietly, “go ask for hospitality for them.”

Giles quickly swung the door to the tower open and then slammed it shut again.  The tapping sound of his boots on the wooden stairs faded into the distance.  Soon, we could see him running across the green grass of the ward and into the hall.

Hobart and I looked at each other, the unspoken word hanging in the air between us: Normandy.

“We must be sure we have room for you all.”  Hobart called down to them.  “It will be just a moment.”

“We will wait.”  Christophe said.  “We do not wish to inconvenience you.  Still, I believe you will find it to your advantage to give us bed and sup tonight.”

“We are only the poor gatemen.”  I said.  “Our Lord decides what is to his advantage, we only guard the door.”

Christophe bowed.  The four men below us began to talk amongst themselves, but we couldn’t hear them from our perch on the wall.

When Giles came back, he didn’t even bother to climb the tower stairs.  “Let them in!” he called.  “The Lord says to let them in.”  He was out of breath.

I turned to the group and cupped my hands over my mouth.  “Sir Christophe!  We welcome you to Warwick Castle.”

The four black horses rode up the drawbridge as Hobart and I pulled the portcullis back into its usual position above the gatehouse.  The hooves of the horses clicked and echoed as they trotted through the gate and into the ward beyond.  By the time they had trotted to the stables, Giles had made it up the stairs.  The three of us watched as they dismounted and strode inside the hall.

Within a few hours, the four strange men were saddling up again.  They waved their hands to us as they galloped past the Curtain Walls, and disappeared into the trees like black streaks.

Hobart smiled for the first time in hours. “They were out of here quick, dirty Frenchmen.  Just you watch, Lord Thorkell will announce it at dinner.  We’ll be saddling up by the end of the week.”

I wasn’t so sure, but I didn’t want to argue.  The afternoon sun made the shadows long across the ward.  It was too nice a day for a fight.

We were relieved of our duty a few hours before dusk.  I went back to my room to wash my face and hands before dinner.  The room was filled with the soft, warm light of afternoon.  I threw my leather armor to the foot of my bed, and propped my bow and quiver on the wall beside it.  On a small table next to the bed, a pitcher of water stood next to a brown ceramic bowl.  The water was cold as I splashed it over my face and quickly washed the dirt out of my fingernails. When I was finished, I made my way back to the great hall.

I could hear the noise before I entered the room: a general hum of people talking, a laugh breaking out over the din.  When I stepped through the door, the scene was completely different from this morning. Torches lined the wall, throwing their flickering light across the golden coffers of the walls.  Tables lined the room, forming a square around the perimeter.  At the top end of the hall stood a raised platform.  The table was festooned with lavish tablecloths, and cushioned chairs.  Gold and glass gleamed at each place setting.  Banners draped the walls behind it.  In each red banner, a muzzled bear stood next to a sapling, and yellow crosses lined the sides.  The center seat was empty; the Lord had not arrived.

At the lower end of the hall, the tables were of crude, rough wood.  A single wooden truncheon appeared at each place setting.  Each servant sitting at that end had provided their own wooden mug to drink out of.  Behind them, carved wooden screens hid the opening to the kitchen, pantry, and buttery beyond.

I took my place on the right side of the hall, about half way down the benches.  I stepped over the long, sturdy, wooden bench to sit down next to Saul and Hobart.

Just then, Lord Thorkell entered the room.  He walked to the front of the Dais and held his hands up to speak.  The embroidered sleeves of his orange supertunic swayed.

Lord Thorkell’s voice boomed through the hall, echoing across the diners.  “As some of you may have heard, there are rumors that King Harold is amassing an army to repel a Normand invasion.  I am here to tell you that there is no threat.  There will be no French invasion.”

Beside me, Saul made an angry movement.  “What?!” he whispered.

“That is right.”  Thorkell continued. “I have privileged information.  I say it again.  There will be no French invasion.  You all will not worry, and you all will continue about your normal routine.”  He lowered his hands.  “The meal may now begin.”

Servers began pouring out from behind the embroidered screens, each carrying a dish of steaming food.  Platters of meats drowned in heavy sauces made their way to the top of the dais first, and then boiled vegetables.  Next, a roast was placed in front of me.  The last servers brought out pots of porridge for the lower table as I cut a hunk off the roast and began to eat.

Beside me, Saul did not reach for the meat.  Instead, he sat staring through the hall.

When dinner was finished, I made my way back to my room.  I opened the door and gave a start.  Saul sat on my bed, staring out the window in the darkness.  His hands were folded across his lap.  A traveling pack and his bow were propped next to him.  He turned as I entered.

“Good God, man! You scared the daylights out of me.” I told him.

He stood up.  “You are an upstanding man, are you not?”  He asked me earnestly, as if he had not heard me.

“I like to think of myself that way.”  I said.

“I need to confide in someone.” Saul said, “Someone who will keep a secret.  I know Hobart told you about what I overheard yesterday.”

“Be calm, man.” I said.

He looked me straight in the eyes, his face full of seriousness.  “I cannot be calm, and nor will you when you hear what I have to say.  I was on Solar duty again today.  I heard what those Frenchmen said.  They promised Thorkell lands if he did not go to King Harold’s aid and let them invade. Our Lord is a faithless liar.”

I stared back at him in horror.

“I cannot stay here,” he said.  “I cannot stand by an oath of fealty to a man who does not value fealty.  I am leaving to offer King Harold my allegiance instead.  I am here because I wish you would come with me.”

I did not know what to say.  “Saul,” I began, “I… I don’t know what to tell you.  I understand your feelings, I wish you well.”

“You will not join me?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“We must leave tonight.  We can’t risk anyone finding out that we are leaving.”

“I… Can I think about it?” I finally asked him.

“Think fast.  I hope to sneak out the postern gate at midnight, and travel until dawn.   If you decide to come, meet me there.  I hope you will decide to come.  If more men are like Thorkell, Harold will need all the help he can get.  You are a good fighter.  If we travel together, we will be safe on the roads.”

“Thank you for your offer, Saul.”  I told him gently.  “I will think of it.  If I decide to come, I will meet you at the Postern.”

Saul nodded his assent, picked up his belongings, and walked out of my room.  I flopped down on the bed.

What do I do, I asked myself.  Saul was right, Thorkell did not value his oath to me as I valued mine to him.  I thought about this for a long time, until the moon rose high through the frames of my window.  And then I decided.  I did value my oaths.  I valued them enough to stand by a faithless liar, as Saul had called him.  I valued my oaths enough to thrust the visions of banners and glory from my mind and sit in the gatehouse for another boring day.

As I drifted off to sleep, I heard the hinge of a gate squeak, and the soft whinny of a horse.  I wished Saul well.

Bibliography:

Gies, Joseph and Frances. Life in a Medieval Castle. New York: Harper Collins, 1974. Print.

 

Mortimer, Ian. The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print.

 

“Venture through the Ages.” History and Interesting Facts about Warwick Castle. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.warwick-castle.com/plan-your-day/history.aspx&gt;.

 

“Warwick Castle Facts and Timeline.” Warwick Castle Facts and Timeline. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.castles.me.uk/warwick-castle-facts-timeline.htm&gt;.

 

“Welcome.” Battle of Hastings. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.britishbattles.com/norman-conquest/battle-hastings.htm&gt;.

 

* I just wanted to include a quick disclaimer – I don’t really believe the argument that I put forth in this paper.  My teacher asked us to take all the evidence we had seen from 100 years of history, the stuff we had been studying in class, and put it all into one central paper with one argument.  This argument seemed the easiest to prove to me.  I often find that the stuff that’s easiest to prove is the stuff that isn’t always true, however.  I will be the first to admit that this paper takes an overly simplistic view of history, and that Americans are not, in fact, obsessed with supremacy.

***

          America is obsessed with supremacy.  From 1870 to 1970, America’s quest to be the best pervaded every aspect of the country’s growth. A small segment of the population insisted that the United States be the world leader technologically, morally and even militarily. Tragically, national supremacy for a few of America’s citizens was only achieved at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of thousands of others.  Supremacy came at high cost to the regular people living in the United States, a cost that was ultimately not worth the price.

            The quest for supremacy started during the American Industrial Revolution. Companies mechanized everything to achieve maximum productivity.  Upton Sinclair provides a clear picture of the supreme mechanization of industry in the second chapter of his book, The Jungle.  His characters take a tour of the Chicago stockyards, where men and machines labor together to can meat for the populace.  As the characters watch, hogs walk themselves up a ramp, but chutes and wheels eventually take over, propelling the pigs through a marvelous, shiny death trap. Efficiency is so great that “they use everything about the hog except the squeal.”[1] To many, this was a mark of progress, of the wonderful things American engineering could achieve.

The productivity of the Industrial Revolution fed directly into the lavishness of the Gilded Age.  Diamond Jim Brady was just one of the products of this era.  He used his knowledge of industry needs to become a millionaire, and then used his money for complete frivolity.  He had a diamond ascot pin and ring that, combined, contained over fifty carats.  In addition, Jim Brady was known for his eating habits.  He would push the table back exactly four inches from his stomach, and when his stomach touched the table, he was finished.  His estimated caloric intake was over 28,000 calories a day.[2]  The mechanization of American society allowed for the lavishness of American society and for men like Jim Brady to continue their luxurious lifestyle.

Unfortunately, not all Americans were able to participate in this opulence.  Instead, most were running the machines.  For example, the immigrant family depicted in The Jungle seeks to earn their living by joining in the great age of progress. They are defeated in every way: by injury, death of disease and exposure, and corrupt officials, until the few that are left alive are forced to live off money gained from prostitution.  Real life examples of the plight of the workers exist as well, such as the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Over 140 workers died of asphyxiation when a fire started, and they could not get out of the locked and crowded sweatshop they were working in.[3]  As depicted in the movie Modern Times, starring Charley Chaplin, the worker can slip into the machine and become, not a person anymore, but a giant cog in the works of progress. The number of human lives that were fed to the industrial age in the name of advancement is a tragedy.  Although industry is important to the modern age we enjoy today, slower and more regulated growth of industry would have saved lives, provided humane working conditions, and given us a healthier future.

The quest for American Supremacy continued in the rise of cities.  In the early part of the nineteenth century, America spent time and resources making its infrastructure into the best in the world.  Roads, housing, and public transportation such as subways and trolley lines grew up around the city so rapidly that within ten years cities were almost unrecognizable.  Corporations tried to outdo each other by building the biggest and most lavish buildings America had ever seen.  The Chrysler Corporation seemed to achieve the paragon of excellence when its 1046 foot tall building was completed in 1930.  Only eleven months later, the Empire State building opened its doors at 1250 feet tall, eclipsing everything that came before.[4]  The struggle for supremacy continued.

Unfortunately, this also came at a huge cost to the poor.  Cities were growing so rapidly that government services could not keep up.  Social services were few and far between, and there was no one to help poor families.  Sickness in a family, a run in with the law, or even a funeral could wipe out a whole family’s savings and find them living on the streets.  To ease the comfort of their difficult lives, they turned to men like politician George Washington Plunkitt of the corrupt New York Tammany Hall political machine.  These men would offer a type of social network for the people in their district in exchange for votes.  In the movie The Last Hurrah, we see politician Frank Skeffington, played by Spencer Tracy, provide mourners and food at a funeral, in addition to strong arming the funeral director into charging a lower price.  Skeffington also hires a mentally retarded man when no one else will, and sends food and support to sick immigrant families in his district.[5]

Although in some ways, these politicians helped ease the plight of the working poor, they were also horribly corrupt.  Men like Plunkitt, mentioned above, would hire unqualified people for city jobs, engaged in mass amounts of graft, extortion and corruption.  Although they claimed to represent the poor they were really common crooks, stealing even from the needy people they pretended to represent.  Without these corrupt “Bosses” running the city, more of the poor might have taken advantage of the charity houses that were springing up across the city and attempting to offer help and education to immigrants in these communities.  These institutions, run by women’s groups and churches, offered help to the poor without the extortion and graft practiced by the politicians.

America did not only desire to be superior technologically, but also morally.  In 1919, the Volstead Act, prohibiting the sale of alcohol, was written into the U.S. constitution.  It was thought that this “noble experiment” would change American society for the better.  Institutions such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union made it seem like a moral imperative for Americans to support the movement toward Prohibition.  The powerful Anti-Saloon league made it politically unwise for anyone to oppose it.

Unfortunately, Prohibition was completely unsuccessful.  Instead, Americans tried for supremacy in the other direction: to be the best at debauchery.  By the time the 1920’s ended, New York had the most opulent clubs and the wildest nightlife.  Again, we can see Americans trying hard to outdo each other in the lavishness of the clubs.  “The Park Avenue Club, one of the city’s grandest nightclubs,… featured an octagonal bar and floor to ceiling mirrors.”[6]  Contrast this to the Country Club, which “featured a miniature golf course”[7], or the Marlborough House which “sported a pearl entry buzzer, silver leather banquettes, and a hammered brass ceiling,”[8] and it is easy to chart the one-upmanship happening all over New York.

This also came at a cost.  Prohibition did nothing to curtail the drinking of liquor, and instead allowed organized crime to run riot.  Underfunded, undertrained and underpaid Prohibition agents commonly took bribes to leave clubs alone.  On more than one occasion, when forced to act, they would shoot into crowds to stop criminals from escaping.  This usually killed innocent bystanders instead of their intended target.  In addition to corrupt officials, gangsters such as Al Capone gained huge amounts of cash and influence by smuggling bootlegged liquor throughout America.  Enforcement of the laws was also disproportionate, with poor people and immigrants facing the majority of the burden when they could not pay the bribes required by Prohibition Agents. “It is on the poor people [Prohibition] drives the hardest… Those that are rich can have what they want with no one to interfere with them.”[9]

The American quest for supremacy continued in the 1940s with the desire for military superiority.  After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, America had a vested interest in declaring war and proving to the world that they were more powerful than the Japanese military.  One of the most well-known battles of the war in the Pacific was the battle for Iwo Jima.  The decision to take this island was also motivated by the desire to show up others.  General George MacArthur had been kicked out of the Philippines years before and had declaired “I will return.”[10] Iwo Jima allowed him to fulfill this promise.  The Americans ultimately subdued Iwo Jima completely.  In addition, the battle became the defining moment for the valor of American Marines.  The photo of Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi circulated all over the country, cementing the future of the Marines as a branch of military service for the future, and adhering the knowledge of American bravery into the consciousness of the world.[11]

Although America eventually won this battle and also the war, this too was on the backs of regular Americans.  Full of jagged rocks, caves, and the horrible smell of sulfur, Iwo Jima was a veritable hell on earth.  It took the Marines more than a month of intense battle to clear the island completely.  They suffered a 95% Casualty rate. [12]  Iwo Jima was of doubtful strategic importance to the war and was never used as it was originally intended.  To justify the extreme casualty rate, the United States military came up with a secondary purpose for the war, claiming that having a landing base on Iwo Jima saved thousands of lives by allowing planes to make emergency landings.  Robert Burrell has been able to prove in his book Ghosts of Iwo Jima that these claims are completely false, and that the loss of life on Iwo Jima was completely unnecessary.[13]

The Cold War is another era of American History marked by America’s desire to be the best.  The United States had to prove its superiority to Russia, China, and any other country falling under communist regime.  Thus the great arms race started, with America desperately worried that a missile gap was growing between Russia and America, and that we would fall behind, losing our position as the best.[14] This can be seen in Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove.  The whole scenario of the movie takes place because the President has signed an order allowing others to order a nuclear attack in case a Russian nuclear first strike obliterated Washington.  The reason the order is given by Brigadier General Jack Ripper is because he wishes to demonstrate American superiority to the Russians in the first place.[15]  It is because of the American desire for omnipotence that the plot of the movie can take place at all.  Americans were far ahead of the Soviets technologically, the myth that the United States may be falling behind was clearly not true.

Although Dr. Strangelove paints a silly picture of the Cold War, the reality was much more serious.  This desire for military superiority created a state of fear for the entire American populace.  By placing Americans against Communists, fears such as those portrayed in the movie The Rack, that society had not prepared Americans to fight communist mind games, pervaded society.[16] In addition, rumors that a Soviet “doomsday bomb” seeded with cobalt would detonate and rid the world of all life were commonplace.[17]  Americans were living with the fear of death on a daily basis, and for reasons that were not very clear.

The history of America has been one of a struggle for supremacy.  America was ultimately able to achieve the ultimate authority she desired, but the costs were huge and disproportionate to the gains for society as a whole.  Any progress that depends on the lives and wellbeing of a huge swath of the population is not truly progress at all, but merely exploitation.  The history of the 1870s to the 1970s was characterized by such growth; national supremacy at the expense of individual subjugation.  As we can see from the examples presented above, America was eventually able to achieve technological, moral, and military superiority.  Hopefully in the future, leaders in America will see the damage this quest for power has done to those at the bottom, and take measures to protect its people in the future.