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Letters
To the Editor:
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I much enjoyed Ken Lomax's splendidly crafted and informative piece, "A Chronicle of the Battleship Oregon." |
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The article stirred up the dust in my memory bin when Lomax reminded me that the Oregon had been towed off for scrap in 1942. I was a ten-year-old living in Sheridan at the time, with an Oregonian route and a plan to put aside enough money for a new fielder's glove. Early in 1943, I believe it was, posters showed up on the town streets and at the local theater telling me that, in exchange for buying a War Bond for $18.75, I could have a piece of the Battleship Oregon. Dad — one of those for whom the Oregon had been "a sentimental symbol of civic pride" as you put it — was so excited over the prospect of having a piece of the ship that his enthusiasm was contagious — and there went my plans for a new glove. For my War Bond purchase I got a piece of wood, about two inches square and one inch thick, bearing a stamp that said it was from the Battleship Oregon. I kept it for years on my dresser. It might still be banging around in the bottom of some sack or box in the attic! |
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Even while being deflowered, the old battleship still managed to serve in WWII. |
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Again, my compliments on a fine piece. |
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| Charles Burgess
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| Burien, Washington |
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To the Editor:
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In support of his argument that C.E.S. Wood "confessed" to writing Chief Joesph's surrender speech himself, George Venn offers as "proof" the following sentence extracted from one of Wood's letters: "I took it for my own benefit as a literary item" ("Soldier to Advocate," OHQ Spring 2005, 75n57). |
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The context of that sentence, however, shows it to be anything but a "confession": "Neither General Miles nor anyone else knows Joseph's surrender speech accurately except myself. No one was interested to take it down. Oscar Long, Miles' regimental adjutant, was there to take it down but did not. No one was told to take it down. I was not told. The speeches of Indians were not considered of importance. I took it for my own benefit as a literary item, and I have told you I at request gave it to the Adjutant General of the Army in Washington for the archives and it disappeared." |
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This, of course, leads to a conclusion much different from Venn's: that C.E.S. Wood recorded the speech not as an assigned duty, but from a personal awareness of its importance; that it was, in fact, a record of Joseph's words and not a product of, as Venn states, Wood's "observations and fictions." |
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Mark Highberger, publisher
Bear Creek Press
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| Wallowa, Oregon |
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George Venn replies:
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When Wood wrote McWhorter in 1936, "I took it [the speech] for my own benefit as a literary item," Wood revealed — for the first and only time — that he adopted an artistic persona — not a literalistic one — to create the surrender speech. Years of witnesses implicitly confirm that revelation. In 1878, Duncan McDonald, a Nez Perce who interviewed post-war refugees in Canada, wrote that Chief Joseph's speech at the pre-war Lapwaii Council was "the only speech Joseph, Sr., ever made during the year of 1877." In thirteen published versions of the speech, Wood himself revised time, place, speaker, and text. By 1939, those conflicting revisions caused Wood to write, "Joseph's speech of surrender nowhere appears correctly and I myself am partly responsible for this." Except for variants on the last sentence — perhaps Wood's direct quote of Joseph — no eyewitnesses ever published the speech. Haruo Aoki's article in the fall 1989 Idaho Yesterdays expresses the skepticism of contemporary scholars and historians: "Any citation of the long text as an example of American Indian oratory is unwarranted and is an outcome of citing only the last and unreliable accounts of C. E. S. Wood." After researching this controversy for nine years, I stand by my statements on pp. 64–65 of my article: except for his confession to McWhorter, Wood disguised his art as artifact. |
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To the Editor:
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I take no great pleasure in knowing that others share my frustration as to the scarcity of records regarding early cooperative societies, as expressed in a letter from Ernest Haycox, Jr., printed in the Winter 2004 issue. So I am pleased to report that the incorporation papers for the Nehalem Valley Cooperative Colony do, indeed, still exist, and may be examined in the State Archives in Salem, under File No. 3319. |
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The date mentioned in the Haycox letter (Sept. 10, 1888) is the date on which the papers were signed. Three persons signed: Daniel Cronin, H.E. Girard, and L.H. Botts. |
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The file folder is barren of any material except the incorporation papers, which tends to support testimony cited by Mr. Haycox as to the brief life of the Colony. |
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| Peter Neketin
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| Portland, Oregon |
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