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The Hastings Cutoff

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The Beginning of the Hastings Cutoff in Wyoming

One of the greatest villains of the Old West was not a robber or a cutthroat. He was the author of a book entitled The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California, published in 1845. In it, the author. one Lansford Hastings, recommended an improved route for wagon trains headed to California:

The most direct route, for the California emigrants, would be to leave the Oregon route, about two hundred miles east from Fort Hall; thence bearing West Southwest, to the Salt Lake; and thence continuing down to the bay of St. Francisco, by the route just described.

The only problem was that the author did not know what he was talking about. According to Wikipedia,

The cutoff left the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger in Wyoming, passed through the Wasatch Range, across the Great Salt Lake Desert, an 80-mile nearly water-less drive, looped around the Ruby Mountains, and rejoined the California Trail about seven miles west of modern Elko (also Emigrant Pass).

Unfortunately, the Donner Party followed Hastings’s advice as published, although he himself never took that route through the Great Salt Lake Desert. What is more, he passed on to emigrants the fake news that Mexican authorities would stop them if they took the safer route through what is now Southern Idaho.

The result: The Donner party did not reach the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California until winter had set in. They were snowbound near Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) at an altitude of 7,088 feet (2,160 meters). A number of the party died in the savage winter of 1846, and there was some cannibalism before rescue parties reached the survivors.

Below is a picture of Lansford Hastings around the time his guide was published:

In-Betweening

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The Byzantine Emperor Justinian and His Court

If you pick up a world history textbook, you will find that history begins with the pharaohs of Egypt, moves on to Classical Greece, followed hard by the Roman Republic and Empire. Then we have the various barbarian invasions, particularly the Attila and his Huns. Things slow to a crawl with Muhammad, the Middle Ages, then speed up with the Renaissance, the Reformation, the French Revolution, Communism, and the two World Wars.

All along, the assumption is made that only the history of Western Europe really counts. Latin America? Zilch. Asia? Other than a blip for Islam, nada. Africa? After the pyramids, nothing. Russia before Lenin? Nope, didn’t exist.

One of the periods of world history that is missing from the textbooks are the Hellenistic kingdoms after the death of Alexander the Great. I am currently reading Philip Matyszak’s The Rise of the Hellenistic Kingdoms 336-250 BC. It covers a two hundred year period about which most people know nothing. It’s as if, immediately upon the untimely death of Alexander, the Greeks just said to themselves, “Oh, well, let’s go back home to Greece and drink some retsina.”

That didn’t happen. I guess that Alexander’s conquests were too far east and south to interest the Western European history crowd.

Equally puzzling is to them is the Byzantine Empire. The Roman Empire did not end abruptly on September 4, AD 476. It struggled on in Byzantium (later Constantinople) for another thousand years. Only in AD 1453 did Mehmet II and his Turkish army conquer Constantinople.

Probably more serious is the almost total silence on China and India, the Abbasid and Umayyad Caliphates, Al-Andalus in Spain, the Ottoman Empire, and Russia under the Czars.

My approach to world history is a process I refer to as “in-betweening.” The term comes from animated cartoons: It is the process of getting from one point to another in a logical sequence. I have often found the periods that have been skipped altogether shed an interesting light on the Western European mainstream.

By the Skin of Our Teeth

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Political Cartoon about the South Carolina Nullification Crisis

As I read more about Andrew Jackson’s presidency, I begin to realize that what the United States is experiencing now with Donald Trump is not atypical in a democracy. Although the Southern states remain restive over a hundred fifty years after their defeat in the Civil War, and there is talk by a few morons about a new Civil War, it does not seem as threatening as what Jackson faced with the threat of South Carolina to secede in 1832.

At that time, muskets were being collected in South Carolina under instructions from the secession-oriented governor of the state. Fortunately, Jackson, himself a Southerner, was ready to counter the secessionists by appointing a Unionist Southerner to command the U.S. armed forces in the state.

I tended to think of American history (at least up to the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861—in South Carolina, no less) as a well-ordered pageant. It wasn’t. Powdered wigs and all, the early days of my country were pretty ragged. And, of course, they still are.

Although I avoid discussions about politics, I firmly believe in exercising my right to vote. It’s just that in politics, as with religion, everyone has his own views. Although I am fairly liberal in my views, I have friends on the Democratic side who are within an ace of believing that our next president should be a black transsexual.

Jackson

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1903 U.S. Stamp Honoring Andrew Jackson

On the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I decided to return to reading books on American history. The fact that I refrained for so long was due to my contempt for Donald Trump and the voters who elected him to office in 2024.

Consequently I am halfway through a biography of Andrew Jackson (Jon Meacham’s American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House). Recently, I thought of “Old Hickory” as a precursor of the Trump madness. Now I begin to think that, although Jackson was highly conflicted, a slaveholder, and responsible for gross injustices toward the American Indian population of the Southern states, he was by and large an honorable man of his time and place.

For one thing, he was an excellent general, responsible for inflicting a humiliating defeat on the English during the Battle of New Orleans. He served two terms as President of the United States, and did not attempt to loot the country for his personal benefit.

He was probably one of the unhappiest of our nation’s leaders. His beloved wife Rachel died before he was sworn in as president. He had a close relationship with his Andrew and Emily Donelson, who served as his personal assistants. But then a vicious petticoat war between the Donelsons and the wife of his Secretary of War, who was a personal friend, poisoned much of his first term.

Somehow he maintained his popularity among the voters. That was because he firmly believed in following the will of the majority, even if meant stepping on the toes of men like John C. Calhoun, his vice president, or Henry Clay—both of whom craved the presidency for themselves.

I am only halfway through the biography, but have decided to continue reading one or two American histories or biographies a month for the foreseeable future. Since I am rapidly on the road to recovery after my broken shoulder, I shall look for a copy of Bernard DeVoto’s 1846: The Year of Decision for my next read in this series.

A Messed-Up History

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Ruins of a Jesuit Mission in Paraguay

Today, as Paraguay sent Germany packing by its World Cup victory, I mused about poor Paraguay, one of only two landlocked countries in South America (the other one is Bolivia). Most of this post is from a March 22, 2022 post entitled “At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig,”

Definitely on my travel bucket list is one of South America’s two landlocked countries (the other one is Bolivia, which had a seaport on the Pacific until they lost it in an 1870s war with Chile). I am speaking, of course, of Paraguay, which is surrounded by Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia. I personally know no one who has been to Paraguay, yet I am yearning to visit it.

What piqued my interest was John Gimlette’s At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig, which captures the insane history of this little known country, which is known for:

  • The Paraguayan War (1864-1870) against, simultaneously, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, in which 50% of the population lost their lives.
  • The Chaco War (1930s) against Bolivia, in which two armies confronted each other in a waterless desert and which, surprisingly, Paraguay won despite horrendous casualty rates.
  • The dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989) in which the country welcomes fleeing Nazis.

While it is theoretically possible to fly into the capital, Asunción, I would rather enter by bus from Argentina. When I visited Iguazu Falls in 2015, I was only a few miles from Ciudad del Este, which is a known hangout of smugglers and Hezbollah terrorists—but I chose not to visit it at that time. (Actually, probably never would suit me.)

If I went to Paraguay, I would be interested in visiting the old Jesuit missions that were destroyed by the Brazilians. At one time, in the 18th century, Paraguay was controlled by the Jesuits and was considered a paradise on earth. To corroborate, read Voltaire’s Candide and see Roland Joffe’s 1986 film The Mission with Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons. But after the missions were destroyed, things went bad.

And I would like to stay in Asunción sipping Tereré, a cold preparation made with Yerba Mate. If I had time, I would like to see a little bit (a very little bit) of the Chaco region in the northwest.

Vilcabamba

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Vilcabamba a.k.a. Espiritu Pampa

When Hiram Bingham III first laid eyes on the spectacular ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru’s Andes, he had been looking for the last capital of the Incas who had rebelled against the Spanish conquistadores. It was a place called Vilcabamba. Curiously, he had actually discovered the ruins of Vilcabamba a few weeks later at a place called Espiritu Pampa, but rejected it as the last Inca stronghold.

Why? Let Bingham explain in his own words, quoted in Kim MacQuarrie’s The Last Days of the Incas (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009). The American explorer found it hard to believe that

the [Inca] priests and Virgins of the Sun … who fled from cold Cuzco with Manco … would have cared to live in the hot valley of Espiritu Pampa. The difference in climate is as great as that between Scotland and Egypt. They [the Incas] would not have found in Espiritu Pampa the food which they liked. Furthermore, they could have found the seclusion and safety which they craved just as well in several other parts of the province, particularly at Machu Picchu, together with a cool, bracing climate and food stuffs more nearly resembling those to which they were accustomed.

Essentially, Espiritu Pampa was too yucky. (Note that in the above photo, a considerable amount of tropical foliage has been cleared.) Too yucky for the Inca and too yucky for the … the … Virgins of the Sun?!

Who in blue blazes were the Virgins of the Sun?

According to Wikipedia’s AI overlord: “The Aclla (Quechua for ‘Chosen Women’), often called ‘Virgins of the Sun’ or ‘Wives of the Inca,’ were young women in the Inca Empire chosen around age 10 for their beauty and purity. Sequestered in convents called Acllahuasi, they lived a cloistered, nun-like existence, specializing in weaving, brewing, and religious duties under the supervision of Mama Cuna.”

Well, I could see why a lonely American professor, scion of two generations of New England missionaries, would become entranced by the idea of Virgins of the Sun. Might as well junk everything that several generations of Spanish sources wrote on the subject of Vilcabamba and declare Machu Picchu to be the site of the Inca city It’s a nicer chunk of real estate and could more easily be promoted as the next Disneyland.

Curiously, none of those old Spanish documents ever mentioned Machu Picchu, however gorgeous it looks compared to Manco Inca’s hidey-hole in the jungle, far from the Spanish who had massacred so many of his people.

Indiana Jones “Discovers” Machu Picchu

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Did You Know That Indy Was Based On Hiram Bingham III?

He had colonialism his his genes. The man who “discovered” Machu Picchu was the grandson of the New England Protestant missionary who forbade the Hawaiians to surf in the nude and who Christianized the islands. This same grandson trained to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and make the peoples of Hawaii even more messed up than they already were.

Instead the younger Hiram decided to become an explorer and archeologist in Peru, where he was probably the first white man to visit Machu Picchu. He pretty much claimed the site as his life’s work, though he made a couple colossal error in judgment that tarnished his reputation: First, the site was not the same as Tampu Tocco, where the Incas under Manco Capac first emerged. And it certainly was not the same as Vilcabamba, where the Incas under Tupac Amaru fled for safety after Pizzaro’s Conquistadores laid waste to his kingdom. And it was not inhabited by the colorful “Virgins of the Sun.” Hiram liked the whole “lost cities” shtick and applied it everywhere his boots trod.

Missionary Grandpa Hiram Bingham I

That was only the beginning of Bingham’s trials and tribulations. Early on, the government of Peru decided they wanted control over what was dug up at their archeological sites. That is a reasonable request which is generally observed today; but back in the early days of 1911-1912, archeologists and their sponsoring stateside institutions wanted to do their own empire building. In Bingham’s case, he was bankrolled by Yale University and the National Geographic Society.

Bingham was a bit squirrely when it came to observing the Peruvian government’s reasonable restrictions and did his level best to sidestep them at every opportunity.

So the natural next step was for Hiram to go into politics, becoming in short order, lieutenant governor of Connecticut, governor of Connecticut, and Republican U.S. Senator.

Why Didn’t Napoleon Invade England?

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Between 1803 and 1805, Napoleon started planning for the invasion of England. His planning was financed by the sale of the Louisiana Purchase to the fledgling American Republic. Yet, the invasion never took place. Why?

According to Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, a French diplomat close to him, when asked why the invasion was called off, Bonaparte replied:

A great battle will be fought, which I shall gain; but I must count upon 30,000 men killed, wounded or taken prisoners. If I march on London a second battle will be fought. I shall suppose myself again victorious. But what shall I do in London with an army reduced three/fourths and without hope of reinforcements. It would be madness.

It is unfortunate that Napoleon did not apply the same reasoning in his invasion of Russia a few years later. There is a famous chart which shows graphically what happened to the French forces on the way to Moscow (shown in brown) and during the retreat (shown in black). The thickness of the line graphically illustrates the truth of Napoleon’s decision not to invade Britain.

Charles Minard’s Famous Graph of the Failure of Napoleon’s Russian Invasion

Somehow, over a period of some few years, did Napoleon’s military ability suddenly vanish?

The Politics of Tea

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Antique Thomas J. Lipton Tea Tin

I am one of those strange people who don’t like coffee. Since early childhood, I have been addicted to tea. In my days, I have probably consumed over seventy-five pounds of tea leaves. At the present time, I begin every morning with one large cup of Ceylon, Darjeeling, or Assam tea sweetened with honey and with a squeeze of lime.

Until I read Roy Moxham’s Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire (2003), I had no idea that the history of the tea trade was so bloody. In the eighteenth century, it even figured in a war fought by the British East India Company and the Empire of China. The Chinese lost and were forced to take Indian opium in trade for their finest tea. (Read Maurice Collis’s Foreign Mud for a fascinating account of the “Opium War.”)

To avoid dealing with the Chinese, the British finally decided to grow their own tea. They began in the northeastern Indian state of Assam and eventually spread to other parts of the subcontinent, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Africa.

I knew that both green tea and black tea come from the same plant, the Camellia sinensis, or Chinese camellia. It is only in the way they are processed that the resulting beverage is green or black.

Fortunately, the early planters found that the tea plant was also native to Assam, and that it was not really necessary to import plants or seeds from China. It is from these plants in Assam that most tea plantings outside of China were derived.

Where the tea trade became particularly bloody was during the nineteenth century. The native populations of the tea-growing areas in India and Ceylon did not care to become indentured agricultural workers at a tea plantation. The result was that the owners of tea plantations had to import coolies from outside the area. The way these coolies were treated by the British tea growers was shameful, resulting in many thousands of deaths.

All so that I could drink a nice cup of tea in the morning!

Vantage Point

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The Parthenon in Athens

I was unusually restless today. I started three books and gave up on two of them. The one I continued on was a re-read from fifty years ago, G. K. Chesterton’s All I Survey, first published in 1933. There was a time in the 1970s when I read everything I could find by Chesterton. Today, my shelves hold over a hundred titles of his work, including duplicates. There are few authors whom I enjoy reading so much, probably because he always makes me feel so good. The following is the first paragraph of his essay entitled “On St. George Revivified.”

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living. Without some such contrast or comparison, without some such shifting of the point of view, we should see nothing whatever of our own social surroundings. We should take them for granted, as the only possible social surroundings. We should be as unconscious of them as we are, for the most part, of the hair growing on our heads or the air passing through our lungs. It is the variety of the human story that brings out sharply the last turn that the road has taken, and it is the view under the arch of the gateway which tells us that we are entering a town.