A Voyage Long
and Strange; Rediscovering
The New World
Tony Horwitz
Reviewed by Sandra Shwayder Sanchez
Since early childhood I have always been full of curiosity
about where various societies originated. “Where did these people come
from?” was my constant question of
teachers. They
loved it of course and sent me on quests to my local library to search
out the
answers. Eventually every quest disappeared into what many writers
referred to
as the “mists of history” which was alright because then my interests
led me to
look at where history and mythology inform each other. What in those
fantastic
tales might have been based on reality? And what could we then add to
our
knowledge of “real” history by analyzing them? This
intense interest in history inevitably
leads to an intense interest in travel, a need to actually see and feel
the
landscapes where people came from and where they went. So I was very
keen to
read this book which chronicles the modern travels of a journalist in
search of
clues to the explorations of Vikings, Conquistadores and French
Voyageurs. The
back cover blurb calls the book an “irresistible blend of history, myth
and
misadventure” and so it was for me.
The author describes a trip to New England
where he visited Plymouth Rock (which he compares to a fossilized
potato) and a
conversation with a Park Ranger who told him about some of the amazing
questions people asked. In her experience it seemed that most people
knew that Columbus
sailed over the Atlantic in 1492 and the
Pilgrims landed
at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and that was about it for their knowledge of
American
history. This conversation inspired the author to assess his own
knowledge,
find it lacking, and therefore decide to explore those “mists of
history” with
some fairly prodigious reading and, what is the primary meat of the
book, by traveling to the scenes of the
events he
reads about and talking to the people who live there now.
From L’Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland to The Dominican
Republic, from Taos, New Mexico to Earth, Texas and thence to
Bradenton,
Florida, and finally Jamestown of course and back to Plymouth where it
all
began, the author follows various sagas,
myths and legends and discovers the bizarre and quirky ways in which
the
current residents attempt to exploit their history,
whether proven or rumored, to attract
tourists and boost their local economies. This attempt at economic
exploitation
of history has often led to conflicts. Spain
and the Dominican Republican are at odds over where the actual remains
of Columbus
can be seen. Vitriolic protests followed
the discovery by a local historian/archeologist that De
Soto’s route through the southeast did not, in
fact,
pass through some towns that attracted tourists and business based on
the claim
that it did. In some cases the tourists don’t care anyway. In L’Anse
Aux
Meadows the Canadian government sponsored a program to retrain some of
the
thousands of unemployed as Norse re-enactors in hopes that the
millennial
anniversary of Leif Erickson’s sail in 2000 would spark a surge in
tourism.
Unfortunately few tourists made it that far north and, as Mr.Horwitz
succinctly
put it, a number of laid off fishermen then had the added distinction
of being
laid off Vikings. Perhaps this book will help direct more curious
travelers
northward. He paints an equally bleak picture of a massive museum built
in
Santa Domingo in the late 1980s in anticipation of the 500th
anniversary of Columbus’
sail.
Thousands of residents of an
impoverished neighborhood were relocated and 100 million of the
country’s
scarce funds went into the construction of a massive concrete structure
in the
shape of a cross, supposedly housing the real remains of Columbus but
they
didn’t get the crowds they hoped for and when the author visited, he
was the
only person in sight other than guards and his guide.
“He led us
down one of
the long corridors, our footfalls echoing in the empty concrete canyon.
Then we
turned through a doorway and into a large room with a painting of Columbus,
copies of books he’d read, the marriage certificate of Ferdinand and
Isabella
and other displays. I barely had time to study this exhibit before
Leopoldo
took my arm. ‘Come, come, we have sixty four more rooms to visit.’”
He himself participated in a “history fest” held in Naples,
Florida between a Wal-Mart and a
county
jail. He joined a group of men who dressed up like the conquistadores
who
accompanied De Soto into
La Florida.
Wearing about 50 pounds of steel over a couple lawyers of clothing in
the Florida
heat he mentions his envy of the bare-chested “Seminoles” and the
“Scottish
Highlander” in his kilt. The event
culminates in a grand finale during which men representing each of the
historic
periods demonstrate the weapons of that period one by one all the way
up to
WWII. This event is called “Time Shooters” and it is interesting to
note that
weaponry has been such an important aspect of human civilization
throughout
history.
Without editorializing, the author retells legends, points
out facts, describes landscapes and recounts conversations with present
day
memory keepers. What the reader comes away with is an interest not only
in what
happened way back when, but what memories modern societies choose to
preserve, why
those choices are made and how the process of preservation is pursued. If you like this book as much as I did, you
will undoubtedly want to learn more about some or all of the regions
included.
For serious students of history the author’s chapter notes contain a
rich
selection of sources so I do recommend a careful reading of those
notes. In
addition to his extensive list of books including several translations
of
contemporary sources, I would also highly recommend two additional
works on
southwest history: When
Jesus Came, The Corn Mothers
Went Away by Ramon A. Guiterrez, Stanford University Press,
1991 and, with
reference to the issue of preservation posed above, The San Diego Worlds Fairs and
Southwestern Memory 1880-1940 by Matthew F. Bokovoy, University
of New
Mexico Press, 2005 Enjoy your journey!