Northwest History at Common-Place

It has been a while since I mentioned the marvelous online history journal Common-place, which describes itself as "a bit friendlier than a scholarly journal, a bit more scholarly than a popular magazine, Common-place speaks--and listens--to scholars, museum curators, teachers, hobbyists, and just about anyone interested in American history before 1900."

It is difficult to find that historical sweet spot in-between popular storytelling and academic rigor, and Common-Place hits that mark more often than any publication I know (except maybe for Montana the Magazine of Western History).

Common-place deals mostly in colonial and early national history, but if you poke around in their archives there are some real gems of northwest history. Below are some fine pieces on Francis Parkman, the fisheries at Celilo Falls, a photographer on the Oregon Trail, and first contacts in Alaska.

Common-place: The Pathfinder's Lost Instruments It became the Emigrant Road, the main trunk of the trails to Oregon, Utah, and ...Benton had his eye on Oregon, which at the time meant all the country west of ... www.common-place.org/vol-04/no-04/rea/

Common-place: Talk of the Past The Horseshoe Falls, the most photographed part of Celilo Falls, was close to theOregon shore. Until its inundation, Celilo Falls was by far the biggest tourist ... www.common-place.org/vol-06/no-02/talk/

Common-place: Hayden's Gaze Science and art come to the Oregon Trail. When the photographer William Henry Jackson posed fourteen men around a table in a field, propped a deer head on ... www.common-place.org/vol-06/no-02/rea/

Common-place: First Meetings in the North Pacific For the best recent history of Alaska, see Stephen Haycox, Alaska: An American Colony (Seattle, 2002). For a recent and more pro-Russian position see ... www.common-place.org/vol-05/no-02/namias/index.shtml

Common-place: A Native American Scoops Lewis and Clark

Gordon M. Sayre's article A Native American Scoops Lewis and Clark offers a popular presentation and analysis of the story of Moncacht-apé, a Yazoo Indian who may have crossed the continent a century before Lewis and Clark. Moncacht-apé's adventures were recorded for posterity in Le Page du Pratz's Histoire de la Louisiane (first published in 1758, though the link is to a later translation at Project Gutenberg). Du Pratz was a French colonial official in Louisiana from 1718 to 1734, and it was in Natchez, Mississippi that he met the elderly Moncacht-apé. Du Pratz often interviewed natives for his history and for the important map or North America which accompanied the volumes.

Moncacht-apé said that in his youth he had taken two great journeys. The first was to Niagara Falls and then the Atlantic Ocean. The second journey was up the Missouri, across the mountains, and to the Pacific.

Did it really happen? I will let you read Sayre's excellent analysis of the tale. (And don't miss his own translations of Du Pratz and additional commentary at his own website.) But I do want to suggest that if Moncacht-apé did not make the journeys, other Indians surely did. A man can walk across the North American continent in one long season. (Your own sturdy blogger once walked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, 2100 miles in five months, a typical time for that journey.) If the person were a respected healer, a native diplomat, or simply sufficiently quick-witted, they could travel along native trade routes easily enough. The narrative of Cabeza de Vaca, who traveled across northern Mexico while serving as a shaman to the natives, suggests what was possible.

The essay by the way is from Common-Place, a wonderful internet journal of early American history.