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. No memory is infallible.One story can be told by someoneelse who heard it from their side of the family, but it ll turn a quarterturn.They re as accurate as people s memories can make them, andfrom then on it takes digging in and research to try and verify it. For instance, Hansen feels that the Shoshone recollection ofnative-settler relations before 1863 is somewhat flawed. When theystart telling these things that happened, they lean just a teeny bit to aprejudicial side.You ll have to excuse how I m putting this, becauseit sounds bad, I know, but it s a Poor us. Well it was a poor them, weall agree.But it s a whining Poor us. They never bring out the depre-dations they perpetrated on the pioneers, who weren t doing anythingbut trying to exist.They leave that out all the time.That s what I tryto remind them.We all feel bad about what happened here in fact Hansen 185the last two generations of people probably feel worse than any of thegenerations before us, about what happened out here. But your peo-ple, I tell them, did a lot of bad things along the Oregon Trail, whichis just north of us here, and along the Overland Mail Route. The at-tacks, the massacres that the Indians perpetrated on the white peopletrying to get to Oregon they were just passing through.Theyweren t here to do any harm.These things are never brought out.There are two sides to every story. Still, despite her extensive knowledge of her side, Hansen says, I don t think I m what you would really call an expert. How muchmore knowledgeable does one have to be before they re an expert? I d probably have to hike right on back to the lack of that diplomaon the wall.I do learn well and I do have a good memory and I mquite a serious person, but I would have to go by what other peoplesay and other people say that experts have diplomas.And are typically men, she agrees.And she agrees that men dis-play their own values when they approach the subject.She notes thatanyone researching this matter is referred to her, because I m prob-ably more knowledgeable on the complete workings of this subject.Brigham Madsen would know more about the actual because he stalked to the Indians, he s done the research.But he can t get into thefeeling and emotion, because that is not where his expertise lies, andthat s where I m dealing with The People.And I deal with the pub-lic. Most kids around Preston now know the history. Over the lastfive years I ve pretty well got everybody in the neighborhood knowl-edgeable, she says with a laugh.She also deals with historical groupswho come through the area, including a group of intermountain westhistorians. Now there, she says, I could have been very much in-timidated, because they re all educated, historical people.But theyknew practically nothing about it.What made it nice, she says, en-joying the memory, was that they knew what to ask me. No ques-tions are stupid, Hansen tells the high school students, honorsstudents, and scouts who also visit her for information, but somequestions are insightful, provocative inquiries that challenge her ownthinking about the incident.In one area, though, Hansen takes the word of oral history overthe word of academic history: the rape.She remains unconvinced bythe documents Madsen found. The Indians say no, she says. Theysay the raping and pillaging never happened: How can you eventhink that it would when they just fought a four-hour battle, they just 186 The Making of Historycrossed the river, they ve got heavy Civil War clothing on, it s twentybelow zero, two feet of snow they ve trampled through, their handsare frozen. Hansen explains that the men had to use their fingers,covered by gloves that came only to the knuckle, to pull bullets, pow-der, and other supplies from small containers.These were wet andfrozen, hard as rocks, she says. In the process, they re mutilatingthemselves, because they can t feel when they do this she demon-strates stuffing her fingers into a pocket that they re taking off thehide clear to the bone.So when it s over and they receive the wordthat they re to go among the dead and kill anything that moves, doyou think they re going to stop and rape the dead and dying bodies?The Indians say no. She notes that several Franklin citizens whostood on the bluffs and watched, along with Porter Rockwell, nevermention a rape in their writings. They did say they saw them pickup children or babies by the heels and dash them on the ground. On June 21, 1990, the site was awarded the official status of Na-tional Historic Landmark.Bearss called Hansen from Washingtonafter the meeting. He said there was no question about it, it justwent. In late August Bearss asked her to set up a dedication cere-mony for October 19.The process had concluded amazingly early. We were told in the beginning this was 1985 It s going to takefive to eight years for you to get on a study list. We dedicated in 90. Hansen asked for two bronze plaques to be struck, one that theShoshone could have.This was not standard practice [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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