"Truthiness" and Consequences, Part I

Happy New Year to all. Can you believe all that Y2K stuff was seven years ago?

Winter is a slow time for me in terms of traveling to museums and historic sites (yes, there are still some I haven't seen), but I do need to catch up on several topics and themes, so that is what I'll be doing over the next couple months.

My previous post on George Venn's book about C. E. S. Wood and the Nez Perce war got me thinking about "truthiness" in cultural and historical interpretation. This is a word recently coined (by Oprah or someone) to talk about fictitious or highly manipulated works (certain memoirs, for example) that purport to be true or seem true or could be true or at the very least convey "truths" about life or whatever.

Obviously, this is not a new concept in itself. Good fiction and theater and the other arts always convey truths about life--that's why we do them and are drawn to them. What's different about the new "truthiness" is that there's an implication--or outright declaration, in some cases--that the actual truth doesn't matter. Indeed, only the very naive are so unsophisticated as to value facts and accuracy. After all, "reality is constructed," right? It's okay to lie and even get caught, as long as there's lots of truthiness.

Well, even Oprah had to back down on that one and admit to her viewers that the truth does matter.

To return to Venn's book: Chief Joseph's surrender speech was not made by him in English (which many people assume), nor was it a literal translation of Joseph's words. Whatever he may have said to General Howard, it has been preserved in an embellished form through the efforts of Lt. Wood. In fact, there have been variations in the published version of the speech itself, especially early on before it settled down into the form familiar to us today, according to Professor Venn.

As Venn points out, Wood probably had an agenda, as we say nowadays, in that he wanted to capture the despair and loss of hope that the Nez Perce must have felt at that moment. Wood also wanted to question if not condemn the U.S. government and military policies that brought down a vibrant people who had maintained only friendly relations with the Americans to that point.

Wood's version of Joseph's words upon surrender are a good example of "truthiness": the speech has long been assumed to be true in the public imagination, and when we discover that it isn't or that parts of it, at least, were added or embellished by Wood, we may be a bit disappointed, but we don't really care because it is beautiful and moving and conveys important truths and Joseph could have made that speech had he not been so weary and defeated.

Is this a bad thing? I would argue that in historic and cultural interpretation, we should vigorously eschew truthiness and strive to get ever closer to the real truth. I have said so over and over in this weblog. But this does not mean that there is no place for fiction or artistic representation in these endeavors. Some of the most enjoyable Lewis and Clark interpretation I've seen has been in the form of in-character performances, comedy acts, theatrical productions, living history reenactments, even a ballet, all of which combine fact and fiction in creative and imaginative ways. It's interpretation, after all.

But as far as I know, none of these recent events claimed or implied that the fictitious portions were actually true. Indeed, many of these performances have been followed by question and answer periods where the performers can specifically discuss with the audience the challenges inherent in the interpretation of their characters or incidents.

The same cannot be said for some of the earlier Lewis and Clark works of fiction, like the 1950s movie The Far Horizons and Anna Lee Waldo's 1400-page tome Sacajawea (1978), both of which are awash in particularly appalling truthiness, and both of which distorted public understanding of L&C for years!

We will probably never know exactly what Chief Joseph said to his captors in 1877, but George Venn has done a great thing in illuminating the history and context of the words attributed to him by an admiring Lt. Wood. When we know the real truth surrounding the creation of the famous speech and accept that it was not a literal or factual translation, but an artist's imagining of the feelings and state of mind of a fellow human being, the speech loses its "truthiness" and simply conveys great truths about history, conflict, and the human condition.

No matter how depressed or sad or despairing my reactions to the facts of an event sometimes are, I will always hold to the age-old aphorism that "the truth shall set you free." Why anyone would disagree with that is beyond me!

And here is the Chief Joseph surrender speech in its entirety (widely available in many sources):

"Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before I have in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Looking Glass is dead. Too-hool-hool-zote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are--perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."