Getting Thanksgiving Right

 

This Thanksgiving week, I am reworking a post I originally wrote in 2014 for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium blog. The changes are mostly due to the difference in audience, but the historical perspective is the same.

In 2014, I looked for a picture of the first Thanksgiving to include with the post. Unfortunately, the only ones I found that were clearly in the public domain were also historically inaccurate. The image I ended up using, and which accompanies this post as well, is a good example. The clothing and feather are all wrong, and the position of the two groups, with the members of the Wampanoag nation sitting on the ground and the Pilgrims standing, implies that the Pilgrims were the dominant race. Since a white woman is handing out the food, the picture could also imply that the Pilgrims provided the feast and the Native Americans were simply recipients.

That’s wrong.

When I think of the first Thanksgiving, I think of friendly Native Americans bringing their knowledge, skills, and provisions to feed the starving Pilgrims. Squanto and his tribe taught the Pilgrims how to survive, and they would have perished without that help.

That’s one of the reasons I like Thanksgiving. It’s the one time of year when we remember the Native American participants as the generous people they were. That’s a lot better than the frequent stereotype of half-dressed warriors burning homes and scalping white settlers.

Those of us with European ancestry have many reasons to be grateful to Native Americans.

And I am.

Researching the Little Things

 

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been working on a story that takes place at the Grand Canyon. At one point, my protagonist visits the Tusayan ruins at a site that was inhabited by Pueblo Indians centuries ago. This is a very short scene in the book, but even short scenes should be factually correct.

As you can see from the photo I took in 2014, the “rooms” are identified with signs indicating how they were used (e.g., storage, living quarters). Since the signs don’t explain how the archeologists determined those uses, it is only natural for my protagonist to ask how they knew. And if she hadn’t asked, my readers might have wondered why she didn’t.

That’s where my initial research fell short. I have visited archeological sites before and have a general idea of how those determinations are made, and anything too complicated would confuse my middle-grade audience. So a simple description is good enough, and one paragraph was all I needed. Even so, I wasn’t totally confident in my answer, and I believe that even the smallest details should be as accurate as possible.

To check my limited knowledge, I purchased a book that used the excavation of a different Pueblo village to illustrate how archaeologist interpret the past. The book is called Life in the Pueblo: Understanding the Past Through Archaeology, and it gave me the information I needed. In fact, it was interesting enough that I read the entire book even though what I wanted to know came about a third of the way through. (I didn’t notice until I had already purchased it, but the archaeologist who wrote it is named Kathryn Kamp.)

It may seem that I went to a lot of work to ensure the accuracy of a very minor point in my book, and I suppose I did. It was worth it, however, because readers deserve to be able to trust even the smallest details.

So I’ll always research the little things.

Story Ideas That Are Out-of-Sync with Travel

 

In 2014, I dragged Roland along on a trip to Utah and California to do research for my first middle-grade book, Desert Jewels. Since Roland had never seen the Grand Canyon, we took a side trip to visit it. I had no plans to set a story there, so we spent our time at the tourist sites.

Now I wish I could have seen into the future. I am currently working on the first draft of a book that begins in the Oklahoma dust bowl in 1934 but then moves to the Grand Canyon for the rest of the story. The many photos I took as a tourist have been helpful for the setting, but I‘m missing some I would have taken if I had known. In particular, my online research tells me that the school building my main character would have attended is still there (although not in use as a school), but we didn’t visit it.

The limited knowledge I have of the school as it was in 1934 comes from a history page on the school district’s website. Although the page was quite helpful, it didn’t answer all of my questions, such as how many classrooms there were. Given that it was the third location and the second building actually constructed for the purpose, it seems logical that the attendance had outgrown the previous building. The enrollment listed in the article also supports that, with 29 students in 1914 and 250 currently. This makes it likely that there were at least two classrooms.

The website didn’t include contact information for the school or the person who put the history page together, but I did find an email address for the school librarian. Unfortunately, she hasn’t responded to my inquiry, so my conclusion that there must have been more than one classroom is simply an educated guess. An onsite visit would probably have answered the question, but I didn’t know enough to check it out a decade ago.

I also tried searching online for photos of the old school and found one labeled that way. There are two problems, though. First, I have no way of confirming that the caption identifies the correct building. Second, the front-end view isn’t enough to determine how many rooms were inside.

That’s what happens when I can’t foresee what my future novels will be about. It can also work the other way around, however.

Over a year ago I wrote a story about a girl who traveled around the Horn in 1850 on her way to the California gold fields. That manuscript is currently circulating among agents and hasn’t found one yet, but the lack of success may be a good thing.

When I wrote Around the Horn, I relied on journals written by people who had taken that trip in the mid-1800s. They were clearly the best resources, although it would have been nice to have supplemented them by taking the same route myself. I assumed, however, that it was a trip I would never take.

Wrong. Or maybe not, since we never know what the future holds. But after I started circulating the manuscript, Roland and I booked a cruise around the Horn for early 2026. We didn’t plan it as a research trip, and we aren’t stopping in the same ports as my characters did, but I’ll get whatever information I can out of it. Obviously, many things will have changed in 175 years, but much of the landscape will probably be the same.

I don’t really expect that what I see on my own trip around the Horn will change anything in the manuscript, but you never know. That’s why I’ve decided not to make another round of submissions until after I return. In this case, unlike for the book about the Grand Canyon, I may actually have a chance to do the research I didn’t expect.

But it sure would be nice if story ideas always coordinated with my travel plans.

An Hour Gained--Or Is It?

 

I haven’t posted my daylight savings poem for several years, so I thought it was time to do it again.

Spring Forward, Fall Back

Spring forward,

To save an hour of daylight.

Put it in the bank

Until the dark of winter.

Fall back

Into the evening gloom.

Open the vault

To lengthen the days.

Empty the treasure chest

Of sunlight and illusion,

Evening hours borrowed from morning

And then returned.

No hour gained,

No hour lost.

Each day still has twenty-four

To run its course.

Minds are easily deceived,

But you can’t fool Mother Nature.