Artist Leo Hershfield has supplied us with this charming reminiscence of an unusual visit to the White House in 1944, before it was the citadel of ominous mysteries that it seems today. “During an interval when I was an artist-correspondent I thought up assignments for myself. One of the less successful was the ‘interview’ with Fala at the White House. The white-jacketed doorman led Fala and me to a room adjoining the Oval Room and left me alone with my subject. That was an eerie affair. Voices, muffled, far off somewhere in the White House. The room with the microphones and one of F.D.R.’s wheelchairs. I think this was where the President made his Fireside Chat broadcasts. I sketched Fala who was an aging dog by that time and, after sitting up and rolling over (two tricks he had down pat but performed lethargically) he dozed off under the full-length portrait of President Garfield.
“The atmosphere of that White House was somewhat different than the present. There seemed to be, in retrospect, no security to speak of even though there was a war on. I had my interview with no credentials of a White House correspondent and, of course, no frisking.”
Mr. Hershfield’s sketch of his lethargic subject appears below.
THE UNEASY CHAIR
Wallace Stegner’s excellent biography of Bernard De Voto, The Uneasy Chair, which we had said would come out late this year, will now be published by Doubleday & Company in late February, 1974. An article adapted from the work appeared in our August, 1973, issue.
FACES FROM THE PAST
Since we are a magazine that relies heavily on illustrative material, we are, of course, most interested in new finds in the field of historical photography. Unfortunately, the invention of the camera postdates our nation’s birth by quite a few years. We have often regretted this; it would be quite wonderful to have photographs of, say, Washington and his aides touring the lines before Yorktown or of Fulton’s Claremont chugging gamely up the Hudson. Now, however, we are delighted to learn that the possibility of obtaining such significant visual documents is not so remote as we had thought. A recent issue of the Photographic Historical Society News has reported an extraordinary breakthrough. Their source, The National Enquirer, the largest feature paper in America, has published a major article featuring a photograph of Jesus Christ. This picture was taken by an Italian monk, a late renaissance man who recently abandoned his studies of ancient church music to invent a camera that captures past sound waves. The machine is about the size of a television set and has an eight-inch viewing screen that has shown pictures of Christ, Pope Pius XII, and —less gripping but still nothing to sniff at—Benito Mussolini. The Enquirer took its story from articles in the English and Italian press but was unable to interview the inventor. He has applied for a patent and, in the meantime, refuses to reveal any technological details. We hope that the patent is quickly granted and anxiously await the arrival of the camera in the New World. We have many assignments for it, especially if it will record the doings of the Founding Fathers.
BAD DAY AT WALNUT CREEK
The crowded events of this century have made it easy for us to forget what a relatively new country we are and how close to the surface our past lies. One grisly reminder came to light last April near Great Bend, Kansas, and was reported in the Kansas State Historical Society Mirror.
Spring rains had brought Walnut Creek to flood, and an astonished farmer watched the torrent expose a mass grave containing eight skeletons. The farmer called the Barton County sheriff, who determined that the skeletons were not the product of recent wrongdoing. At this point the Kansas State Historical Society tackled the mystery and came up with the story of a grim and bloody day over a century ago.
July 18 of 1864 found a group of freight wagons toiling along the Santa Fe Trail near Walnut Creek. The freighters, loaded with wagon bows and flour, had set out from Leavenworth and were bound for Fort Union, New Mexico. They were travelling without a military escort, and most of the teamsters were unarmed. Nevertheless, the drivers must have felt fairly secure that day, for they were strung out along the trail in sight of Camp Dunlap, where Captain Oscar Dunlap and forty-five men of the 15th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry were building Fort Zarah.
The wagons were about a mile away from the camp when some hundred and fifty Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians approached the train with signs of friendship and began to file down both sides toward the lead wagon. Then, about midway, they swung in and launched a ferocious attack. The leading teamsters bolted for the fort and escaped with their lives, but those toward the end of the train were massacred. The cavalry did not distinguish itself. The troopers were frightened and would not stir from the camp. (In his report of the action Captain Dunlap greatly exaggerated the number of Indians, although three against one are not good odds in any event.)
It didn’t last long. The Indians killed ten teamsters, scalped and mutilated them, tore the covers from the wagons, and scattered sacks of flour over the prairie. They slaughtered some of the oxen, drove the rest away, and then, flushed with their coup, rode off.
Eventually the soldiers and surviving teamsters came out of the camp and buried the victims in two graves, the larger of which is shown below. There they lay forgotten until Walnut Creek overflowed and the ground yielded them up, reminding us that our past is not so distant as we sometimes think.
