Mark Woods: Among the things I didn't learn in school — the value of 'revisionist history'

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.

I remember in elementary school being told the story of the First Thanksgiving. It happened in the autumn of 1621, in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Mayflower Pilgrims sat down with the Indians for a harvest celebration. At the feast, everyone gave thanks for the food and fellowship.

And so began the tradition we still celebrate 400 years later on the fourth Thursday in November.

Or at least that’s what I was taught.

I doubt I was told that the Wampanoag had been there for thousands of years, or that this wasn’t the indigenous people’s first contact with Europeans, or that they were wary of the new settlers but formed a tenuous alliance for strategic purposes, or that this peace was short-lived.

I also didn’t learn that historians say similar gatherings already had happened earlier and elsewhere — including when Pedro Menendez de Aviles and Spanish settlers founded St. Augustine in 1565 and ate with the natives who lived there.

Not that I was taught the Pilgrims or Pedro Menendez discovered America.

That, of course, was Christopher Columbus.

When I learned about Columbus in elementary school, I don’t think I was told what seems like an elementary detail: He never set foot on land that became America. Or if that was included, perhaps with an explanation that he landed in part of the Americas (an island in the Bahamas), it was downplayed. Kind of like the idea of “discovering” a New World where people had been living for more than 12,000 years.

'Beware of simple stories'

It brings to mind something Jennifer Grey, public services coordinator for Florida State College of Jacksonville’s libraries, said about history: “Beware of simple stories.”

Grey says that’s one of the things she learned while working on “Bygone Jax: Our Unsung History,” a podcast created in partnership with WJCT Public Media.

She already knew that history rarely is simple, always is complicated and sometimes is flat-out wrong. But this project, delving into local history, has hammered that home. And the latest episodes of the podcast, released to coincide with National Native American Heritage Month, are devoted to debunking three myths and misconceptions about Jacksonville’s indigenous history.

One example: the timeline of the Timucuan — the name Europeans gave the indigenous people based on their language — ended when Juan Alonso Cabale died in Cuba on Nov. 14, 1767.

I should say that I’m among those who has perpetuated this story. In 2017, I wrote that the 250th anniversary of the death of The Last Timucuan came and went with hardly anyone noticing. This is partly true. The anniversary did pass largely unnoticed. But as explained in the podcast, Cabale almost certainly wasn’t the last of his people — many scattered and merged with other tribes — and the Timucua timeline didn’t end in 1767. It’s alive today with the Seminole and Muscogee (Creek).

“As we worked on this … it sort of ballooned into several different things where people kind of think they know what happens,” Grey said. “And it turns out that it's always more complicated than that — and frequently, so much more interesting.”

Beyond the myths and misconceptions, there’s the matter of simply thinking about how much human history we overlook if we start a timeline in the 1560s and focus on what happened then and later.

This is something that the National Park Service has been thinking about as it tells the story of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, a park with the name of people who lived here much longer than the French and Spanish.

It’s something that two University of North Florida professors, Keith Ashley and Denise Bossy, have been thinking about, studying and writing about for decades. And as my colleague Matt Soergel wrote about recently, they won a grant to write a book that tells the story of the indigenous people who lived in the area for thousands of years — "a story" Bossy said, "that's always been left out."

The term “revisionist history” often is dripping with negative connotations. It shouldn’t be.

I recently dug up my notes from when I went to Yellowstone and met with a longtime historian there, Lee Whittlesey. For decades, the park service told a simple creation story, of pioneers gathered around a campfire deciding to create a national park. That story was a beloved narrative, retold again and again with great fanfare. When Whittlesey helped debunk the campfire story — the park service now calls it the Campfire Myth — it earned him scorn. But when we talked, he pointed to a quote he had handy from fellow historian Elliott West.

It said: “The use of revisionist has always struck me as odd. We historians are all in the revision business, aren't we? If we don't ask new questions and work towards a fresh understanding, what's the point? Treating past historians respectfully is our obligation. Revising and building on what they have done is our job.”

These days, particularly in Florida, we have politicians proclaiming that they will do everything possible to preserve and protect history. Often what they really want to do is preserve and protect the simple story that has been told again and again, the one that perpetuates myths and misconceptions.

A gift from 'The People'

Even before I started writing this, or listening to “Bygone Jax,” I had Native American heritage on my mind. Partly because I recently went to Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona, a unique national park because the land is owned and co-managed by the Navajo Nation. Partly because I’ve been binging TV shows “Reservation Dogs” and “Dark Winds.” And partly because all of this made me think back to when I was in elementary school.

When I was 6 years old, we moved to Nevada.

My dad, a Baptist minister, took a job that involved working on the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony.

The Colony, established in the early 1900s, consists of more than 1,000 members from three tribes: the Paiute, the Shoshone and the Washoe. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dad was director of the Colony Christian Center, a social services agency that helped support tribal efforts with a housing construction project, park development, Head Start and the Neighborhood Youth Corps.

Or at least that’s what an old newspaper clipping I found recently says.

I wish Dad and Mom were still around so I could ask them more about the four years in Reno. We didn’t live on the Colony. I’m not sure why. I'm guessing that’s just what the missionaries who preceded Dad had done there. We weren’t a part of the Colony, but it was a part of our life.

I vaguely recall going to church and other events. I certainly was around more Native Americans than most white kids. Because of that, I was at least somewhat aware of some native traditions and — something my parents embraced the rest of their lives — the intense connection to the land.

But mostly I was just busy being a kid, learning how to ride a banana seat bike, sticking baseball cards in the spokes.

At the elementary school a couple of blocks from our small ranch house — when I saw it a few years ago it was even smaller than I remembered — the kids in my class were mostly white. And I now realize that so much of the history I learned in school was incomplete and flawed. Sometimes in unintentional ways, sometimes in quite intentional ways.

When I talked to Grey about “Bygone Jax,” she talked about how we typically teach history as a collection of facts, when it often should be viewed more as a collection of narratives. Stories told from distinct vantage points. That’s true even when it comes to family histories.

I wish I could talk to some of the tribal members from the time my Dad was there. Most of them are gone, too. I now wonder what they thought of an outsider coming to the colony, a white man, an American Baptist missionary, trying to help "The People" (the meaning of each of the tribal names in their languages) who had been on the land now known as Nevada for thousands of years.

Mom told me later, after Dad died, that he was the last missionary there, that when he left, he wrapped up the program there. She said he was proud of that, and that tribal members appreciated what he did while there. I’m sure there’s some truth in that. But that’s the simple family story. I’m also sure it’s more complicated. I'd like to learn more.

I do know that at some point members of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony gave us some gifts. Handmade necklaces, moccasins, a drum with feathers attached to it.

The drum eventually cracked. I fear this might’ve been because a young boy couldn’t resist banging on it.

I still have that drum.

It’s hanging on the wall near the table where we’ll have Thanksgiving dinner.

It’s still one of my favorite holidays. The idea that the story of Thanksgiving isn’t as simple as what I learned in school doesn’t spoil that. As Grey said of our local history, a story that is complicated isn't just more accurate, it often is more interesting.

mwoods@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4212

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Revisiting history of indigenous, Timucuan, Thanksgiving, childhood