July 31, 2013 THE VILLADOM TIMES III • Page 15 When America’s history becomes popular history I recently saw the Ken Burns PBS special, “Lewis & Clark: The Corps of Discovery,” which was splen- didly filmed. The narrative, written by Dayton Duncan, was largely based on the book “Undaunted Courage” by Stephen E. Ambrose. My envy of the amount of money Ambrose made writing popular history has to be consid- ered a factor in the following analysis. Other historians who teach for their subsistence, however, tend to agree with me. Ambrose, who died in 2002, was perhaps the most pop- ular historian in the United States during the last decades of his life. That title carries a lot of baggage. While some people are interested in being told what really happened, most people want to be told that what they want to have happened actually happened. Americans are no more culpable than other people. For example, the mainland Chinese desperately want the Japa- nese army to have killed 300,000 people after the fall of Nanking in 1937. The fact that the population of the city was about 200,000 at the time and that most of the people survived, some eating Japanese-issued rations, doesn’t shake the Chinese from that number. Some Japanese want there to have been no atrocities. They obfuscate. They also say that one key witness, John Rabe, was a Nazi and another, Harold Timperley, was a paid Chinese propagandist. The Germans want Nanking to have been a second Holocaust, but not by them. They have made six movies about it featuring good Germans and many Europeans who saw the aftermath. Their final numbers justify a death count of about 26,000, most of them Chinese sol- diers killed in battle or shot when they were caught out of uniform. Burial squads report that only 1.2 percent of the 26,000 people they buried were women or children. Bad as that is, comparison of Nanking to the premeditated mass murders in far greater numbers by Mao, Stalin, or Hitler is in bad taste. But it’s a great justification for a U.S. mass area bombing that killed 800,000 Japanese civilians. It’s also a great way for the modern Chinese to stir up opposi- tion to modern Japanese rearmament, which is supported by all Asians except the Chinese because the rest of Asia thinks we are about to flop on them or sell them out. Speaking of Hitler, does anybody remember the “Hitler Diaries”? These were supposedly rescued from a World War II plane crash in a cow pasture and preserved by a covert Hitler admirer until, in 1983, he brokered them to a couple other covert admirers, who sold them to “Der Stern,” a West German news magazine. The renowned British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper said, “I am now satisfied that the documents are authen- tic. . . and that the standard accounts of Hitler’s writing habits, of his personality and even, perhaps, of some public events, may in consequence have to be revised.” The West German historian Gerhard Weinberg, a German Jewish Holocaust fugitive who later returned to West Germany, said, “On balance, I am inclined to con- sider the material authentic.” But the 60 books of the diary offered the world a kinder, gentler Hitler who was never told about the Holocaust. This flunked the sanity test. Former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who won the Iron Cross serving in an anti-aircraft battery with the Wehrmacht, said he thought the diaries were fakes. Incredibly, it was David Irving -- an Englishman dis- missed by leftists and liberals as a right-wing nut -- who said the diaries were forgeries. Irving was, as they say, “right” in both senses of the word. The pages had been aged with tea stains and the handwriting was not Hitler’s. The two crooks who forged the diaries got four years apiece in prison. Then both retired and did well on their notoriety. Conversely, I remember reading a French textbook some 50 years ago that reported: “France won the second world war with the help of her allies.” The South Korean textbooks say they could have beaten Japan without our help. Quite. America has also seen some wild departures from peer-reviewed history. The smoking pistol in the Ambrose version in “Undaunted Courage” is the one that killed Meriwether Lewis. Ambrose says the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition undoubtedly committed suicide due to depression brought on by heredity and by ingratitude. He cites Thomas Jefferson as accepting the suicide and that, as they say, is that. In fact, the majority of contempo- rary scholars understand that Lewis was almost certainly a murder victim. James Dillon, who wrote the best biogra- phy of Lewis in the 1960s, summed it up. “Was Meriwether Lewis murdered? Yes. Is there proof of his murder? No. The Burns version has Lewis (and Clark) in 1804 very much at odds with the Lakota -- the Sioux as the narra- tive calls them -- and portrays the tribe as powerful, scary, arrogant, sometimes obnoxious, and definitely treach- erous. Francis Parkman, who lived with the Lakota 40 years later described them as powerful and arrogant but also generous, honest, immensely hospitable, and reliable. Parkman was not unduly fond of Indians in general but he rated the “Sioux” as an exceptional people, not the scowl- ing villains Ambrose and Burns serve up. The biographer Dillon, who was not quoted in the documentary, leaves viewers with one fact: In 1811, Lewis got along so well with the Lakota that, when they were approached by British agents before the War if 1812, they remained committed to Lewis and to the United States. Had the Lakota fought for the British in 1812, the Ameri- cans would have done about as well as Custer did 50 years later. Among the people who wanted Lewis dead, the Brit- ish government deserves at least a nod. That, however, is conspiracy theory. The more prob- able criminal suspects include John Pernier, Lewis’s ser- vant; James Neelly, agent to the Chickasaw Indians; or the Grinder family, who operated a roadside inn where Lewis spent his last night – Oct. 10-11, 1811. Lewis owed Pernier money, and when Lewis was dead, Pernier helped himself to Lewis’s coat and, quite possibly, the $120 Lewis was known to have been carrying. Lewis was found with sixpence in his pocket. Pernier committed suicide with laudanum a year after Lewis died. Neelly, a sometime rival, supplied most accounts of Lewis’s despondency in the days before his death -- and helped himself to Lewis’ prize rifle and pistols. Neelly had worked as a subordinate of Lewis, and the Indians he supervised -- who respected Lewis -- asked for Neelly’s dismissal, which was granted. One version has Neelly get- ting Lewis drunk and then deliberately leaving so some- one else could do the dirty work while he had an alibi. The Grinders seem to have come into some money right after Lewis died, and moved soon afterwards. The Natchez Trace, the road where Lewis died, was a known haunt of road and river pirates. Significantly, expedition co-leader Willam Clark, a close friend who named his son after Lewis, first accepted Lewis as a suicide but later believed he was murdered. Vardis Fisher, who authored “Murder or Suicide: The Strange Death of Meriwether Lewis” in 1962, said almost nobody since the 19 th century accepted Lewis’ death as sui- cide. Dillon believed the killer or killers were anonymous rogues and that the name-brand suspects and the landlady simply failed to take good care of a friend, employer, or guest while he was in his cups. Nobody admits to seeing Lewis shoot himself once in the abdomen and once in the forehead. Mrs. Grinder heard the shots, but did not help until Lewis crawled out into the yard. The forehead and abdomen are odd targets for suicide, and Lewis had been around guns all his life and knew something of anatomy. Reports indicate he was also heavily slashed with a knife or straight razor. There was no formal autopsy and nobody who was not a suspect ever saw the body. Requests for a modern autopsy by James Starrs, a retired professor at George Washington University have been approved by Lewis’ collateral relatives -- and rejected by the National Park Service. Ambrose mentioned Pernier, but never questioned his conduct. He also mentioned Neelly as being off looking for a lost horse when Lewis was killed -- and beyond sus- picion. The disappearance of Lewis’ personal property was not mentioned. The possibility of murder was brushed off with no discussion of the odd facts of the “suicide.” But besides Lewis -- a real hero for most of his life as Ambrose says -- the other hero of all of Ambrose’s books is “the American people” and their great leaders, which is why his books are so popular. Ambrose dismissed the allegation that Jefferson kept a black slave girl as his mistress. DNA has since proven that Sally Hemings’ children were fathered by Thomas Jeffer- son or his brother -- and the brother wasn’t around when the children were conceived. Ambrose dismissed George Armstrong Custer’s affair with a captive Cheyenne girl named Monasetah as a rumor. Read Custer in “My Life on the Plains” or Elizabeth Custer in “Following the Guidon,” or the account by Monasetah’s aunt, which is explicit. That rumor also appears to have been a fact. These parts of Jefferson’s and Custer’s lives would not have played well with Ambrose’s perceived Middle Amer- ican audience. The idea that a great and worthy Ameri- can like Lewis could have been murdered by “common man” types -- anonymous thieves, a greedy servant, a crooked Indian agent, or a frontier couple running a road- side tavern -- reflects badly on the population as a whole. Ask a “Sioux” about Indian agents or about stalwart fron- tier families of the early 19 th century. Those who ask will get a view of history that is a little different from that of Ambrose. Ho-Ho-Kus Jottings Club announces fundraiser The Contemporary Club of Ho-Ho-Kus is selling bags and hats sporting the Ho-Ho-Kus logo to benefit the club’s charities. The hats, available in adult and youth sizes, are $20 each. Totes are $40 each. The navy and white items may be purchased at BB Clover at 181 East Franklin Turn- pike in Ho-Ho-Kus. Summer hours at borough hall During the summer months, hours at Ho-Ho-Kus Bor- ough Hall will be 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday. Hours will remain 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. from Monday through Thursday. Cub Scouts welcome new members Registration for the 2013-14 Ho-Ho-Kus Cub Scout pro- gram is in progress. Boys who will be entering grades one through four are invited to join. Scout programs foster lead- ership, confidence, and character as participants embark on a variety of adventures. For a registration form, or more information, contact Michael Holt at mjholt9@gmail.com. VFW welcomes new members The Ho-Ho-Kus VFW Post 192, which serves Ho-Ho- Kus and Ridgewood, welcomes new members. The group meets on the second Wednesday of every month at 7:30 p.m. at the Post Home, 620 Cliff Street, Ho-Ho-Kus. For additional information, call (201) 675-7669. Memorabilia sought Area residents are asked to provide photos, newspa- per clippings, post cards, maps, aerial photos, and simi- lar items featuring the area surrounding VFW Post 192 on Cliff Street and the Hopper-Zabriskie Cemetery on First Street in Ho-Ho-Kus, prior to 1966. These items will be used for a local history project. All materials will be returned after scanning and copying. Contact Stanley Kober at (201) 445-1121.