Keynote Address
Dr. Jill Lepore, Boston University
In 1908, surgeon and explorer Frederick Cook claimed to have reached
the North Pole, a year before Robert Peary did. And he had proof, photographs
taken by his two Inuit guides. But the world was
skeptical. Cook's achievement seemed nothing short of
miraculous, and the evidence slippery at best. As Mark Twain
wise-cracked, "the golfer, when he puts in a record round, has to have
his card signed, and...there is nobody to sign Dr. Cook's card; there
are two Eskimos to vouch for his feat, to be sure, but they were
his caddies, and at golf their evidence would not be accepted." To
Twain, Cook's clumsy claim illustrated the fine line between facts
and miracles: "If Dr. Cook's feat is put forward as Fact, the evidence
of his two caddies is inadequate; if it is put forward as Miracle,
one caddy is aplenty."
| As Mark Twain wise-cracked, "the golfer, when
he puts in a record round, has to have
his card signed, and...there is nobody to sign Dr. Cook's card; there
are two Eskimos to vouch for his feat, to be sure, but they were
his caddies, and at golf their evidence would not be accepted." To
Twain, Cook's clumsy claim illustrated the fine line between facts
and miracles: "If Dr. Cook's feat is put forward as Fact, the evidence
of his two caddies is inadequate; if it is put forward as Miracle,
one caddy is aplenty." Peary will always be the intrepid
Admiral but, though the good
doctor was pardoned of the oil-well fiasco a few months before his
death in 1940, he will always be crooked Cook. |
Whose history is it? Robert Peary's apparently. When the U.S. Congress
conducted an inquiry into the two explorers' competing claims
of "discovering" the North pole, Cook's Inuit guides informed
investigators that the photographs had been taken miles short of
ninety
degrees north. Cook was labeled a fraud; Peary was promoted to Read
Admiral of the U.S. Navy. Peary died a hero in 1920; Cook went
to jail in 1923, convicted of involvement in a slimy oil-well swindle.
Peary will always be the intrepid Admiral but, though the good
doctor was pardoned of the oil-well fiasco a few months before his
death in 1940, he will always be crooked Cook.
Whose history is it? History is told by those with the best evidence.
History is told by people who have left diaries, letters, stamp
collections, journals, wills, wedding rings, house plans, court
records, manifestos, newspapers, cotton quilts, woodcuts, inscriptions
on tea cups. All of these records matter, because without them, history
is only fiction. Frederick Cook knew this, of course. That's why
he posed, bundled in his furry parka, for a frigid photograph, miles
short of his goal, on a block of ice he thought might look just
enough like the North Pole to convince a fraud-weary world. Because he
knew no one would take his word for it. As it turned out, no
one would take his guides' word for it either. And, to Cook's undying
dismay, the grainy photographs he presented to Congress were
only slightly more credible than the cut-and-paste images on the
covers of Rupert Murdoch's tabloid magazines: Princess Diana
marrying Elvis, Bigfoot in a dress, Boris Yeltsin playing poker with
E.T.
Evidence matters. And history belongs to those with the most, and best
of it.
...But what's curious about this story, and about Twain's
golf metaphor, is that history, in this version of things, does not
belong to the caddies of the world. As Twain tells it, the Inuits who
guided both Cook and Peary are part of the evidence, not part of the
event. Their Arctic adventures are irrelevant because they are not
actors; they are acted upon. History can be like that. Sometimes the
evidence seems to be all on one side...."Whose history is it?"
History has long belonged to the finest golfers to the men who have
had boldest aspirations, and who have realized their goals. For
millennia, historians have celebrated great men, from Alexander the
Great to Admiral Peary, and great events, from the Peloponnesian
War to the Puritan migration. |
