Heroes, Changing Times, and the Indiana Magazine of History, 1905–2005

JAMES H. MADISON

It was so long ago that there really were buggy whips for sale when the first issue of the Indiana Magazine of History appeared in 1905. We live in a different world, of course, and there are many ways to see those differences. One way is to think about the heroes of that generation of 1905, to think about whom the people of this state placed on pedestals, and then to move forward in time to consider how our generation today chooses its heroes.	1
Indiana's heroes in 1905 were mostly political and military leaders and mostly white men. Hoosiers at the beginning of the twentieth century studied and revered William Henry Harrison, George Rogers Clark, William Conner, and many others less well known today. School children learned that these men created a civilization in an untamed wilderness by defeating the Indians and the British and then by laying the foundation for prosperity and democracy. Their achievements remain laudable today, and it is appropriate that Indiana's fourth graders and adults learn about these great men. It is good that we continue to visit Harrison's home at Grouseland, the Clark Memorial in Vincennes, and the Conner House in Hamilton County.	2
General George Rogers Clark Statue, Monument Circle, Indianapolis, 1907 Celebrated in stone nearly a century ago, George Rogers Clark is remembered today not only as a hero but also as a symbol of the violence that accompanied much early White-Indian contact in Indiana. Courtesy Indiana Historical Society, Bass Photo Company Collection, C115
But our generation has the eyes to consider these heroes in a different light from that of Hoosiers one hundred years ago. We can no longer ignore the fact that some of the workers at Grouseland were Harrison's property, slaves, even if the preferred term for a long time was "servants." We know now that along the banks of the Wabash River, Clark ordered his men to murder in cold blood bound Indian captives. We know that when it became more economically and culturally profitable to abandon his Delaware Indian wife and children, Conner moved with the speed of a modern entrepreneur, which is what he was.1	3
In the early 1990s, as part of the so-called "culture wars," some Americans labeled such troubling sides to the lives of their heroes as "politically correct" history or "revisionism." Some accused historians of "tearing down" American heroes. Such arguments have little validity, regardless of political or ideological views. People past and present have always been real human beings and have never been perfect. People have never lived in simple black-and-white worlds of good and bad, right and wrong. In trying to fool ourselves into thinking otherwise, we have not always served our best interests as responsible citizens in a democracy. If we see our past now as more ambiguous, more troubling, it is also more real, more interesting, and more important. How we see Harrison, Clark, and Conner is part of how we see ourselves.	. . .