January 2011

When the daughters of James A. Drake were born, in the 1880’s, Queen Victoria was on the throne of England, and she and her brood of nine were the first family to the world at large. A fond mama who is said to have filled a hundred and ten albums with family photographs, she has survived in our memories as a ruler with very strict ideas about how people should comport themselves. In her long shadow the Drakes were raised to be as foursquare as the mounting block little Dort and her aunt Harriet Cole are standing on (opposite) in front of Grandfather Walker’s house in Corning, New York. But by the time Dort had become the Gibson girl at right, the family of Teddy Roosevelt dominated the popular imagination. His six children, all distinct characters, were encouraged in their antics by the President, who joined them in romps, pillow and water fights, wrestling, and hikes.

A large crowd was on the wharf as the Adriana arrived in Philadelphia from England on the evening of August 18, 1797. Aboard was a distinguished passenger whose name few Americans could pronounce but whose noble reputation was well known. He was Thaddeus Kosciusko (pronounced kôsh-chōōsh’kō), the illustrious veteran of the American and the Polish revolutions. Only recently released from two years in Russian prisons and suffering still from the wounds he had received while leading the ill-fated struggle for Poland’s freedom, Kosciusko was returning to the United States for the first time since the end of the American War of Independence. Word had gone ahead, and now, as the Adriana slipped into the harbor, a welcoming party went aboard to greet the general, who replied in French, saying: “I look upon America as my second country.” As he debarked, the cannon from the nearby fort boomed a salute. There was a great deal of cheering. And then, with cries of “Long live Kosciusko!” the citizens themselves took up the traces of his carriage and drew him in triumph to his lodgings.

One of the most exciting stories in American history is that of how the Indian got the horse and what this astonishing innovation did to change the culture of the red men of the Plains [see “How the Indian Got the Horse,” AMERICAN HERITAGE , February, 1964]. Indian horses were, of course, of Spanish descent, the first of them almost certainly stolen by members of the Pueblo tribe whom the conquistadors had enslaved. After the great Pueblo revolt of 1680 there suddenly were more than enough ex-Spanish horses to go around, and the long process of trading the animals from tribe to tribe across the Great Plains from Texas to Canada got under way. It can be documented that by the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century horses were in use by Indians in what is now Montana. But though this is an oft-told tale, pictorial records of the great horsepower changeover are practically nonexistent. Lewis S. Brown, formerly with the American Museum of Natural History, is an artist-scientist who has spent years studying both Indians and horses.

Kivetoruk Moses spent his youth and middle years zestfully hunting seal, reindeer, and polar bear through the Alaskan snows. He became rich trading in furs and sled dogs in Siberia and his native Cape Espenberg on the Seward Peninsula. In 1954, when injuries from an airplane crash ended his hunting days, Moses started a new career by teaching himself to paint—as a means of keeping green his memories of those best of times. Moses, now in his seventies, and his wife live in a small cabin in raffish Nome, next door to the Golden Goose Saloon and across the road from the Bering Sea. Recently, in grief over the death of a son, he stopped painting. Although not well known outside of Alaska, his prize-winning art hangs there in galleries and private collections. One devoted collector is Dr. Sergei Bogojavlensky, who met Moses while doing anthropology research in Alaska. He not only suggested this piece but provided much of the information for it.

Various legends linger around the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the circumstances of the signing. A commonly held belief, as one scholar expressed it in AMERICAN HERITAGE (December, 1962), is that “not one man of the fifty-six [signers] lost his ‘sacred honor.’ Throughout the long ordeal of an often-floundering war, in a cause that at times seemed hopelessly lost, there was not among the fifty-six men a single defection—despite the reservations that some had had about independence at the beginning and despite the repeated sagging of popular support for the war.”

Alas, this is not quite true.

One signer, following capture by the British and under pressure of a harsh confinement during what was without question the darkest hour of the Revolution for the American cause, did then defect, by taking an oath of obedience to the king and pledging that he would take no further part in the pending struggle.

Scott Joplin, riding high in the early flush of his success, wrote the jaunty words on the preceding page for a song that he fashioned in 1904 from his sensational piano rag hit of 1899. And “The Maple Leaf Rag” was all that he claimed; it changed his life, and it changed American music.

The career of this black American genius seems almost to be an amalgam of legends. Joplin exemplified the Horatio Alger legend of early success, although he reached beyond the financial rewards that mark the boundaries of Alger’s concept. But there is another, darker legend: Joplin, his full genius unrecognized, his songs bearing the unjust stigma of mere popular success, dying prematurely in mad despair.

Finally there is the legend of his belated discovery and recognition. This is happening today; his piano rags furnished the music for the hugely successful motion picture The Sting , and one, “The Entertainer,” a 1902 hit, has swept the nation again.

Thomas Coveney of Hawthorne, California, an almost incredibly learned student of military uniforms, has turned up some faux pas in our captions for “The French Connection” (December, 1974):

It seems that the reports of the Biograph’s death (Postscripts, December, 1974) are greatly exaggerated. James J. Doheny of Chicago has sent us the following letter, along with the amusement section from a local paper in which the theatre advertises its current bill:

About once a year or so journalists dig up the Dillinger case and close the Biographeatre, no doubt perpetrating a continuation of a lot of folklore. The movie house WAS closed for a couple of weeks for a modest refurbishing, reopened with the Chicago Film Festival pictures, and now continues on its way. So save the type from page ioO of the December issue—you will lie able to use it again in a few years.

Dunbar M. Hinrichs uf St. Petersburg, Florida, has sent us some interesting comments about the article on Piatt Andrew and the American Field Service that appeared in our December, 1974, issue. Mr. Hinrichs knew Mr. Andrew and served with the A.F.S. in both wars. He writes: “Mr. Gray’s article is excellent, but I must take him to task for failing to mention the Mallet Reserve, which was a major factor in helping to shorten World War I.”

At the time of our entry into the war, says Mr. Hinrichs, there were more A.F.S. volunteers than ambulances. On April 5, 1917, Mr. Andrew asked Commandant Doumenc of the French Automobile Service how the A.F.S. could best serve the French army. Doumenc said that he needed seven thousand truck drivers to serve on the same terms and conditions as the ambulance drivers. This request was passed on to the men themselves and drew an immediate response from the Cornell contingent, which had just arrived in Paris: