http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wicazo_sa_review/v018/18.2pearson01.html>,
>Fall 2003, pp. 12-13, 20-21)</blockquote>
>--
>Yoshie
>
Wow. You know, I'd say Thomas Brown really has to deal with the Lewis Cass reference #79 in J. Diane Pearson's essay. In his critical essay, Brown is asserting that there was no conflict with the Mandan and neighboring tribes at that time, and he specifically asks where Churchill got the idea that the U.S. deliberately withheld vaccine, and whether he knew this via oral tradition, or if it was pure fabrication. But the wicazo_sa piece definitely supports first the fact that there were antagonistic relationships, that Cass (who is at the top as Secretary of War, making planning decisions, and is not just one individual trader who may be a sympathetic character, in the Jacob Halsey personal account) did work to selectively withhold vaccine.
I looked up Churchill's essay, and Evan Connell's Son of a Morning Star. In the couple paragraphs Churchill had about the Mandan epidemic, his footnote is essentially wrong in what he implies that it supports- that the U.S. army was there and deliberately released smallpox blankets. But the account in Son of a Morning Star also came across as fairly unreliable for its accuracy because the original observation read like the person was including information that they didn't directly see, or logically wasn't likely. For instance, they were describing blankets being stolen and what the squaws of various indian men were doing, and what the fort station manager was saying to indians, when how likely was it that he even spoke their language well or they spoke english well? I don't have the book checked out so I can't quote- but this really sounds like the person originally writing this was listening to third hand reports of what other people around the fort saw, and then adding their own filter and biases to it. This is the same effect as listening to two accounts of an event that you didn't attend from two people that you know, and they will list entirely different details and interpretations. I don't trust many of the details in the Connell account, although it seems like the specific actions of people at the fort aren't so important in light of the information that the U.S. gov't was limiting smallpox vaccinations in that region as a political move. Yes, it was incorrect that the U.S. army was present but that wasn't the whole story, or the only criticism of Churchill's accusation of genocidal intent. The material that Pearson had from Cass ranks higher and must be dealt with in Brown's essay. Otherwise, it would only be right to place Brown's critical essay at the same level as Churchills as two essays that both have unsupported statements in them. I don't have the time to look up her references either, and am assuming she is reporting the material related to Cass's Secretary of War decisions accurately.
In my field, citations work quite a bit differently and I have barely learned about standards in the field of history. But it is fairly regular to discover that someone made a mistake in an experiment or element of data gathering. Forging data would be a crime, but in discussion groups we regularly shred the articles from Nature regarding what methods they decided to use or how they chose to interpret data. An example, my graduate advisor suggested that I should stop using tentative language in a draft in my research regarding the spread of a species after the last glacial maximum, and to more strongly suggest a most likely scenario, and just let others criticize it. I was waiting to see more of a longer list of flawed historical citations that Churchill had.
Also, on this strategic level where he is talking about how it was important to release the essay now because leftists need to separate themselves from charlatan leaders, while others are saying that despite all the within-left criticisms that were coming out a couple weeks ago it is important to drop that to form a united front against this McCarthyism campaign that O'Reilly is still leading on his show every evening.... is there any shortage of better leftists targets? I am leaning towards the perspective of shutting up the public conflict before it becomes a version of the Jerry Springer show that conservatives laugh over (like I am laughing at this conflict where the Free Republic people are angry at Hannity and Limbaugh for calling them marginal http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1344622/posts?page=1,50 ), but... couldn't you select a much better target among the ANSWER leadership or some of the far more embarrassing and flawed loud voices who are bringing us all down. Sometimes I feel like a sectarian myself because I can generate such a long list of people among marxists and democrats who I don't appreciate in speaking positions, but Churchill actually has enough good points that he wouldn't be at the top of the list.
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