Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bucheon bum]

oh please, that's a weak apology. People in his time and era criticized him to the extreme. It wasn't like everyone agreed with Columbus and his actions in the Carribean.

[Ya-ta Boy]

I would like to submit the following four paragraphs from a history that I'm currently reading. It might be interesting to see how people respond to it. Or not. IMO, it is an example of great historical writing.

(August 2, 1642)
�The twelve canoes had reached the western end of the Lake of St. Peter, where it is filled with innumerable islands. The forest was close on their right, they kept near the shore to avoid the current, and the shallow water before them was covered with a dense growth of tall bulrushes. Suddenly the silence was frightfully broken. The war-whoop rose from among the rushes, mingled with the reports of guns and the whistling of bullets; and several Iroquois canoes, filled with warriors, pushed out from their concealment, and bore down upon Jogues and his companions. The Hurons in the rear were seized with a shameful panic. They leaped ashore; left canoes, baggage, and weapons; and fled into the woods. The French and the Christian Hurons made fight for a time; but when they saw another fleet of canoes approaching from the opposite shores or islands, they lost heart, and those escaped who could. Goupil was seized amid triumphant yells, as were also several of the Huron converts. Jogues sprang into the bulrushes, and might have escaped; but when he saw Goupil and the neophytes in the clutches of the Iroquois, he had no heart to abandon them, but came out from his hiding-place, and gave himself up to the astonished victors. A few of them had remained to guard the prisoners; the rest were chasing the fugitives. Jogues mastered his agony, and began to baptize those of the captive converts who needed baptism.

Couture had eluded pursuit; but when he thought of Jogues and of what perhaps awaited him, he resolved to share his fate, and, turning, retraced his steps. As he approached, five Iroquois ran forward to meet him; and one of them snapped his gun at his breast, but it missed fire. In his confusion and excitement, Couture fired his own piece, and laid the savage dead. The remaining four sprang upon him, stripped off all his clothing, tore away his finger-nails with their teeth, gnawed his fingers with the fury of famished dogs, and thrust a sword through one of his hands. Jogues broke from his guards, and, rushing to his friend, threw his arms about his neck. The Iroquois dragged him away, beat him with their fists and war-clubs till he was senseless, and, when he revived, lacerated his fingers with their teeth, as they had done those of Couture. Then they turned upon Goupil, and treated him with the same ferocity. The Huron prisoners were left for the present unharmed. More of them were brought in every moment, till at length the number of captives amounted in all to twenty-two, while three Hurons had been killed in the fight and pursuit. The Iroquois, about seventy in number, now embarked with their prey; but not until they had knocked on the head an old Huron, whom Jogues, with his mangled hands, had just baptized, and who refused to leave the place. Then, under a burning sun, they crossed to the spot on which the town of Sorel now stands, at the mouth of the river Richelieu, where they encamped.

Their course was southward, up the River Richelieu and Lake Champlain; thence, by way of Lake George, to the Mohawk towns. The pain and fever of their wounds, and the clouds of mosquitoes, which they could not drive off, left the prisoners no peace by day nor sleep by night. On the eighth day, they learned that a large Iroquois war-party, on their way to Canada, were near at hand; and they soon approached their camp, on a small island near the southern end of Lake Champlain. The warriors, two hundred in number, saluted their victorious countrymen with volleys from their guns; then, armed with clubs and thorny sticks, ranged themselves in two lines, between which the captives were compelled to pass up the side of a rocky hill. On the way, they were beaten with such fury, that Jogues, who was last in the line, fell powerless, drenched in blood and half dead. As the chief man among the French captives, he fared the worst. His hands were again mangled, and fire applied to his body; while the Huron chief, Eustache, was subjected to tortures even more atrocious. When, at night, the exhausted sufferers tried to rest, the young warriors came to lacerate their wounds and pull out their hair and beards.

In the morning they resumed their journey. And now the lake narrowed to the semblance of a tranquil river. Before them was a woody mountain, close on their right a rocky promontory, and between these flowed a stream, the outlet of Lake George. On those rocks, more than a hundred years after, rose the ramparts of Ticonderoga. They landed, shouldered their canoes and baggage, took their way through the woods, passed the spot where the fierce Highlanders and the dauntless regiments of England breasted in vain the storm of lead and fire, and soon reached the shore where Abercrombie landed and Lord Howe fell. First of white men, Jogues and his companions gazed on the romantic lake that bears the name, not of its gentle discoverer, but of the dull Hanoverian king. Like a fair Naiad of the wilderness, it slumbered between the guardian mountains that breathe from crag and forest the stern poetry of war. But all then was solitude; and the clang of trumpets, the roar of cannon, and the deadly crack of the rifle had never as yet awakened their angry echoes.

(from �The Jesuits in North America in the 17th Century�; Francis Parkman; (1867); The Library of America edition, p. 551-553)


Why is this good historical writing?
1. It grabs you by the throat and doesn�t let you go. The writing is dramatic, colorful and varied.
2. My favorite sentence is the last one: ��all was solitude; and the clang of trumpets, the roar of cannon, and the deadly crack of the rifle had never as yet awakened their angry echoes�. You can hear what he is writing about.
3. It�s about people. What they did. Why they did it. What happened to them. How they dealt with it.
4. As a student, I will remember what it was like to be a missionary in early colonial times. There are equally terrific episodes about nuns and Indian women, Huron heroes and Iroquois. Each group gets fair treatment, but he doesn�t call a spade a shovel in order to protect anyone�s feelings.
5. As a teacher, I could come up with days of discussion topics and/or research topics for my students who would have a kick finding out more about what happened either to these people or to the other people mentioned�the �fierce Highlanders� etc. (If you don't believe that, you have never had a discussion with a teenager about torture.)

[Hank Scorpio]

[Gopher]

deleted

[seoulunitarian]

[bucheon bum]

[bucheon bum]

[Gopher]

deleted

[bucheon bum]

1) Good luck finding people on this board who think I fit the description that you just gave of your avg. joe
2)I was teasing you, relax.

[Gopher]

Rereading that, it looks harsh, so I apologize, and I won't edit it to cover up what I said.

But dammit, Jim, if there aren't people on this board -- perhaps not you, but others -- so rigidly trapped in their ideological belief systems that talking with them is like reading a Tom Clancy novel/harrangue...so programmed, so unwilling to try a round peg in a square hole...

[EFLtrainer]

[EFLtrainer]

[EFLtrainer]

[Gopher]

[Gopher]