Tableaux vivants were
popular forms of entertainment on the American frontier.In a tableau, participants make still images with their bodies to
represent a scene. Because there is no movement, or speaking, a tableau is
easier to produce than a play, yet can easily lead into extended drama
activities with one tableau succeeding another to tell a story.Tableaux continue today in the form of “living statues”,
where street performers often appear in costume as historical characters.
In the summer of 1875,
George Armstrong Custer appeared in a series of tableaux with Miss Agnes Bates
of Monroe Michigan depicting a Sioux Chief and his bride.Miss Bates was a guest of Mrs. Elizabeth
Custer at Fort Abraham Lincoln, North Dakota in 1874-1875.
In 1873, the 7th
Cavalry had moved into the fort to ensure the expansion of the Northern
Pacific Railway.The first post
commander of the expanded fort was Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, who held
the position until his death in 1876.
Since his death along the bluffs
overlooking the Little Bighorn River, in Montana, on June 25, 1876, over five
hundred books have been written about the life and career of George Armstrong
Custer. Views of Custer have changed over succeeding generations. Custer has
been portrayed as a callous egotist, a bungling egomaniac, a genocidal war
criminal, and the puppet of faceless forces. For almost one hundred and fifty
years, Custer has been a Rorschach test of American social and personal values.
Whatever else George Armstrong Custer may or may not have been, even in the
twenty-first century, he remains the great lightning rod of American history.
This book presents portraits of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn as
they have appeared in print over successive decades and in the process
demonstrates the evolution of American values and priorities.
“Mr. Custer” was a
chart busting song in 1960.Written by
Al De Lory, Fred Darian, and Joseph Van Winkle, and sung by Larry Verne this
historical novelty song became the number one song in America on October 10,
1960.It stayed at the top of the charts
for an impressive one week.This soldier’s
song about the Battle of the Little Bighorn also reached the top spot on the
Canadian charts on September 12, 1960.
The year 1931 saw one of the best known, best
publicized and most investigated deaths in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains,
the death of Adolph Ruth.Adolph Ruth was
a sixty-seven year old retired government employee and amateur treasure hunter. Adolph
Ruth’s story began not in the Superstition Mountains but in Mexico.His son Erwin, a veterinarian, who was a
cattle inspector in Mexico, helped eradicate the cattle tick problem plaguing
Mexican ranchers.He helped the Gonzales
family who were so grateful that they gave Erwin Ruth some old mining
maps.These maps had been in the
Gonzales family for many generations, and showed the exact location of a number
of gold mines in the United States.Erwin who had no interest in the maps passed them along to his father
Adolph.One of these maps showed the
location of an old mine in the Superstition Mountains.
Adolph
Ruth was familiar with the hardships of prospecting in the desert.He had previously looked for the Lost Peg Leg
Mine in California.In 1931, he came to
the Superstition Mountains to look for what he believed to be the Lost
Dutchman’s Mine.It should be noted that
Ruth was talkative.He showed his map to
any and all who were interested, and talked authoritatively about how HE was
about to find the Dutchman’s Mine.Ruth
hired guides and horses and was packed into the mountains around June 14 by two
cowboys.He set up camp at Willow
Springs in West Boulder Canyon.This was
the last time anyone saw Adolph Ruth alive.
After six days, the cowboys’ boss, Tex Barkley, went
looking for Ruth. Upon arriving at Ruth’s camp, Tex Barkley could tell that no
one had been there for at least a day and reported Ruth missing. A reward
was posted and search parties combed the mountain fruitlessly for the next
month.
In December, a skull with two holes in it was
discovered near the three Red Hills by an archaeological expedition. It was the
skull of Adolph Ruth.The story of Ruth’s death was
headlined by the Arizona Republic and
went national.Sensational
stories alleged that Ruth had been killed for his map.Ruth’s son, Erwin,
was convinced that his father had been murdered.
The rest of Ruth’s body
was found the next month, in a small tributary on the east slope of Black Top
Mesa. Ruth’s treasure notebook was also found at his original campsite.In this notebook, were written these cryptic
words, “Veni, Vedi, Vici” (“I came, I saw, I conquered”).Did Adolph Ruth discover the Dutchman’s mine?
There is a huge body of circumstantial evidence of
battlefield hauntings stretching back to ancient times, when ghosts were seen
and heard to engage on the plains of Marathon after the battle (the Battle of
Marathon was fought in 490 BC).In the
1930s visitors to this region of Greece were still claiming to have heard the
sound of metal clashes and screams coming from the battlefield. In Vita Isiclori, Damascius tells us that
after a battle outside the walls of Rome against the Huns in 452AD, ghosts were
reported to still be fighting for three days and nights after the battle, the
clash of their weapons being heard all over the city.The first major battle of the English Civil
War (1662) produced a well-documented case of ghost armies fighting as reliable
witnesses reported the phantom soldiers engaged in battle.King Charles I was so intrigued by the
stories that he sent a Royal Commission to investigate.The trusted officers of the Commission
reported back that they too had seen the ghastly spectacle and even recognized
the ghosts of some of their fallen friends.The phenomenon continued for some time, gradually lessening over time,
until now there are only occasional reports of people hearing the sounds of
battle at Edgehill.
How do we account for such stories?The two most often reported types of
hauntings are categorized as residual hauntings and intelligent hauntings.Residual hauntings are the most common form
of hauntings and may eventually be found to be natural phenomena.A residual haunting is similar to a DVD that
is played over and over again.In a
residual American Civil War battlefield haunting, for example, the sights,
sounds, and even smells of battle are continually replayed and are always the
same. Apparitions may be seen, but they will not notice living people around
them.The theory here is that energy
created by the strong emotions created in battle imprints itself on a physical
place and that an individual sensitive enough to pick up this embedded energy sees
and hears ghostly events while those who lack such sensitivity do not. Since
current science has no instruments to measure such embedded energy or test for
individual psychic sensitivity to that energy, such hauntings are dismissed out
of hand, even though they may actually exist. Paula Ann Kirby, author of A Yankee Roams at Dusk, describes two types of hauntings that may be occurring at
Manassas, (1) residual hauntings, which are a manifestation of stored up energy
replaying endlessly like an old movie, and (2) intelligent hauntings, which are
rare instances in which ghosts try to interact with the living.
A brief but fascinating look at humor in the
Civil War including: (1) Stories Around the Campfire, (2) Parody, (3) the
Irish, (4) Humorous Incidents, (5) Civil War Humorists, and (6) Lincoln.
Legend
tells of a fabulous mine in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains. So alluring is
the prospect of unlimited wealth that it said that hundreds have died searching
for the lost mine.
The
entire story began in 1748 when the Peralta family began mining silver and
gold. According to family records this wealthy family operated eighteen silver
and gold mines in the Superstition Mountains. With the Mexican War of 1848, law
and order disintegrated in the area and the Apache Indians grew increasingly
hostile, attacking the miners almost continuously. Disaster finally overtook
the Peraltas in September 1848 with a general massacre by the Apaches.
Following this massacre the Apaches controlled the Superstition Mountains until
1865.
Jacob Walz (or Waltz),
the “Dutchman” enters the picture in 1871 with his partner Jacob Weiser.
The two immigrants purchased a map drawn by the original Peralta family and
located the mine “within an imaginary circle whose diameter is not more than
five miles and whose center is marked by the Weaver’s Needle.”
Weaver’s Needle was
known early on as “the finger of God”.Woven into the fabric of the Superstition Mountains, this prominent peak
was named in the 1850s for Pauline Weaver, a famous pioneer scout.
Join us as we recount a fictional story of the
Superstitions and then look at the real history of the legends that haunt these
mountains in our new book:Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition
Mountains
Arizona’s Superstition Mountains are mysterious,
forbidding, and dangerous.The
Superstitions are said to have claimed over five hundred lives.What were these people looking for?Is it possible that these mountains hide a
vast treasure?Is it possible that UFOs
land here?Is it possible that in these
mountains there is a door leading to the great underground city of the Lizard
Men?Join us as we explore the history
of the:Legends of the Superstition Mountains.
Sorting out fact from fiction is the great challenge for
anyone interested in searching for the Lost Dutchman’s Mine.
There was a
Jacob Waltz, “the Dutchman.”Waltz
(sometimes spelled Walz) was born in Germany around 1810, and immigrated to
America in 1839.Waltz arrived in New
York City, but quickly made his way to goldfields in North Carolina and Georgia.
Waltz did not strike it rich in either North Carolina or Georgia, but he
learned a valuable lesson, that he had to be a citizen of the United States in
order to stake a claim.Waltz filed a
letter of intent to become a citizen on November 12, 1848, at the Adams County
Courthouse in Natchez, Mississippi.
Gold was discovered in the newly annexed territory of
California in 1849. The California fields eclipsed the gold fields of the East,
and Waltz, like every other prospector, headed west.
Waltz arrived in California in 1850. His name appears in
California census records. Waltz worked as a miner in California for eleven
years. On July 19, 1861, in the Los Angeles County Courthouse, Jacob Waltz
became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Waltz left California in 1863, with a group of prospectors
bound for the Bradshaw Mountains of Arizona Territory. Waltz’s name appears on
a mining claim filed in Prescott, Arizona Territory, on September 21, 1863. His
name also appears on a special territorial census in 1864.Waltz mined in the Bradshaw Mountain area
between 1863 -1867.
Waltz moved to the Salt River Valley (an area near Phoenix
and the Superstition Mountains) in 1868.He filed a homestead claim on one hundred and sixty acres of land on the
north bank of the Salt River. It was now that Waltz began his trips into the
mountains surrounding the Salt River Valley.Did Waltz discover a rich gold mine or cache on one of these prospecting
trips? Witnesses who knew Waltz, say Waltz prospected every winter between 1868
-1886. Waltz died in Phoenix, Arizona Territory, on October 25, 1891, in the
home of Julia Thomas. Waltz gave Julia Thomas clues to the location of a mine
on his deathbed.Waltz is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery, in
downtown Phoenix.
Arizona’s Superstition Mountains are mysterious,
forbidding, and dangerous.The
Superstitions are said to have claimed over five hundred lives.What were these people looking for?Is it possible that these mountains hide a
vast treasure?Is it possible that UFOs
land here?Is it possible that in these
mountains there is a door leading to the great underground city of the Lizard
Men?Join us as we explore the history
of the:Legends of the Superstition Mountains.
Gordonsville Virginia’s Exchange Hotel opened in 1860 and provided an
elegant stopping place for passengers on the Virginia Central Railway.In March, 1862 the Confederate army
transformed the hotel into the Gordonsville Receiving Hospital.Dr. B.M Lebby of
South Carolina was the director of the hospital and its operations continued
under his leadership until October 1865.
The wounded and dying from nearby
battlefields such as Cedar Mountain, Chancellorsville, Brandy Station, and the
Wilderness were brought to Gordonsville by the trainloads. Although this was
primarily a Confederate facility, the hospital treated the wounded from both
sides. By the end of the war, more than 70,000 men had been treated at the
Gordonsville Receiving Hospital and over 700 were buried on its surrounding
grounds and later interred at Maplewood Cemetery in Gordonsville.
By the end of the Civil War, Virginia had
fifty three Receiving Hospitals similar to this one.All were burned to the ground by the Union
army except the Gordonsville Receiving hospital.
A brief look at love, sex, and marriage in the Civil War. The book
covers courtship, marriage, birth control and pregnancy, divorce, slavery and
the impact of the war on social customs.
A quick look at women doctors and medicine in the
Civil War for the general reader. Technologically, the American Civil War was
the first “modern” war, but medically it still had its roots in the Middle
Ages. In both the North and the South, thousands of women served as nurses to
help wounded and suffering soldiers and civilians. A few women served as
doctors, a remarkable feat in an era when sex discrimination prevented women
from pursuing medical education, and those few who did were often obstructed by
their male colleagues at every turn.
Although the story of the Lost
Dutchman’s Mine is the best known of the treasure legends in the Superstitions,
there are others.One of these legends
involves the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), a
Roman Catholic order of priests founded by St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis
Xavier, and others in 1534, to do missionary work (and to act as the “shock
troops” of the Pope during the Counter-Reformation).
When the Spanish arrived in Arizona they set about
building missions.Most of these
missions were built near highly mineralized regions.When gold and silver were discovered, the
priests set converted Indians, both Pima and Papago, to working the rich
deposits.The precious metals were
stored in the missions in the form of gold and silver ingots (so the legend
says).The great Pima Revolt of 1751
temporarily drove the Jesuits out of the area.Missions were burned, and priests were killed.Fleeing priests decided to hide their gold
and silver in mines located deep in the surrounding mountains.The mines were then carefully concealed.Other treasures hoards were deposited in
caves.It is said that Jesuit missionaries
led two hundred and forty gold-laden mules across southern Arizona into the
barren mountains, stashing their riches somewhere among the bluffs, caves and
canyons of the Superstition Mountains.
A variation of this story says that the Jesuits did
not hide their treasure because of Indian revolts but because of the expulsion
of the Jesuits by the Spanish crown in 1767.The Jesuits were a rich order, accumulating wealth not only by mining
but by raising enormous herds of
cattle, horses, mules, burros, sheep and by raising crops.These commodities were sold to the miners and
settlers.The wealth of the Jesuits was
used for display to overawe Indian converts.Churches, so the thinking went, needed the allure and shining examples
of gold and silver to give testament to the magnificence and power of God.
The Jesuits were often as concerned with power and
politics as they were with piety, which lead to their expulsion in country
after county in Europe.Due to Jesuit involvement in rebellions in
Portugal, they were expelled from all of Portugal's lands around the world on July
6, 1758.Due to their political
intriguing, the Jesuits were expelled from France and its holding in November
1763.The Jesuits had reason to think
that they were likely to be expelled from Spain and the Spanish empire, so the
legend says, and took steps to hide their wealth.The Jesuit treasures were safely tucked away
somewhere near Weaver’s Needle in the Superstitions just in the nick of
time.The Jesuits were expelled from
Spain in 1767, and all of their property seized. Unfortunately, no one seems to
know exactly where the Jesuit treasures were tucked away.
Arizona’s Superstition Mountains are mysterious,
forbidding, and dangerous.The
Superstitions are said to have claimed over five hundred lives.What were these people looking for?Is it possible that these mountains hide a
vast treasure?Is it possible that UFOs
land here?Is it possible that in these
mountains there is a door leading to the great underground city of the Lizard
Men?Join Josh, a skeptical journalist,
as he explores the mysteries of the Superstition Mountains in our new fiction book
Death and Delusion in the Superstition
Mountains.
The ukulele is one of the world's most popular instruments. The ukulele evolved from several small guitar-like instruments of Portuguese origin. In the early 1880s, Portuguese immigrants began making small guitar like instruments in Hawaii. The instruments became locally popular and were given the Hawaiian name "ukulele", which means "jumping flea".
The standard size ukulele is known as "soprano", but the larger "concert" and "tenor" sizes are also popular. Today the ukulele is a respected solo instrument and is popular for playing many styles of music.
El Himno de Bayamo (The Bayamo
Anthem) is the national anthem of Cuba. The
anthem was first performed during the Battle of Bayamo in 1868. Perucho
Figueredo, who took part in the battle, wrote and
composed the song.Officially adopted in 1902, the anthem was
retained after the revolution of 1959.
The Cuban War of Independence was the
last of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain, the other two
being the Ten Years' War (1868–1878) and the Little War (1879–1880). The final
three months of the conflict escalated to become the Spanish–American War, with
United States forces being deployed in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine
Islands against Spain.
To combat, run, Bayamesans!
For the homeland looks proudly upon you;
Do not fear a glorious death,
For to die for the homeland is to live.
To live in chains is to live
Mired in shame and disgrace.
Hear the sound of the bugle:
To arms, brave ones, run!
Fear not the vicious Iberians,
They are cowards like every tyrant.
They cannot oppose the spirited Cuban;
Their empire has forever fallen.
Free Cuba! Spain has already died,
Its power and pride, where did it go?
Hear the sound of the bugle:
To arms, brave ones, run!
Behold our triumphant troops,
Behold those who have fallen.
Because they were cowards, they flee defeated;
Because we were brave, we knew how to triumph.
Free Cuba! we can shout
From the cannon's terrible boom.
Hear the sound of the bugle,
To arms, brave ones, run!
A brief history of the
causes and methods of U.S. intervention in Latin America from the Spanish
American War to the era of the Good Neighbor Policy.
The Monroe Doctrine effectively expressed the U.S. conception of the “Western
Hemisphere idea” ... that notion which predicates a special relationship
between the countries of the Americas that sets them apart from the rest of the
world. Largely ineffectual when pronounced the Monroe statement eventually came
to delimit relations between the Western Hemisphere and the rest of the world;
and served as a constant referral point in the development of U.S.-Latin
American policy.
On March 13, 1997, Arizona experienced one of the largest
mass UFO sightings in history, the so called Phoenix Lights. Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of
people during a three hour period, over a distance of three 300 miles
stretching, from the Nevada line,
through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson. There were two
distinct events involved in the incident: a triangular formation of lights seen
to pass over the state, and a series of stationary lights seen in the Phoenix
area. The United States Air Force identified the second group of
lights as flares dropped by military aircraft.The
initial sightings remain unexplained.
The first call came from a retired police officer in Paulden,
Arizona, a small town about 2 hours north of Phoenix at approximately 7PM.After that calls began pouring into
television stations and the police.The
reports were unanimous on several key points: there was a triangular craft that
was enormous (some witnesses described it as a mile wide), it was totally
silent, it moved slowly, and it often stopped to hover.
An eyewitness
reported to the National UFO Reporting Center, “…. I
looked and what I saw was what looked like, at first, a pattern of 5 lights in
a half oval on its upside. I thought it was a blimp with lights on it. It
seemed to be floating but I noticed it was coming directly in our direction. My
son went in the house and got my wife, my 13 year old grandson and my 18 year
old daughter, to come outside. We all watched these lights approach. Whatever
it was it was moving rather slowly. As it came close it no longer had an
up-oval shape, but began to look more like a "V" of 5 lights, with
one light in the center lead point and two lights on each side. The angle of
the "V" was not very sharp, maybe 60 degrees. As we stood there
watching we were completely flabbergasted because it was going to pass directly
over our house. And it did. It passed directly overhead maybe a thousand or so
feet overhead. Our house is up on the side of a mountain in the Northeast part
of Phoenix and we can see pretty far to the northwest and southwest. When it
passed overhead we all were looking at it and talking. For one thing, it seemed
to float over us and it made absolutely no detectable sound at all. We were
trying to imagine what it was. It certainly couldn't be a group of aircraft
flying in formation, because the lights remained absolutely fixed in relationship
with each other. As we looked up we could see through the middle of the
"V" but each arm seemed to be flat shaped like a ruler, and rather
long from the first lead light to the tip lights, maybe a couple of hundred
feet or more. It was huge…. My background: I am 54 years old, in perfect
health. I have a Master’s Degree from Columbia University Teacher's College.
Formerly worked for IBM as a systems engineer. More recently worked in the
electronics repair industry in management. Presently executive in a
manufacturing firm. My wife is a secretary at St Mary's Catholic High School.
My one daughter is an honor student at the High School. We live up on the side
of this mountain and are always looking at the sky, so if we're outside not
much is going to go by without us seeing it. And we all have never seen
anything like this.”
The Governor’s office was besieged
with calls, especially after a USA Today
article in June brought international attention to the incident.To stem a mounting sense of panic in the state,
Governor Fife Symington, held
a press conference during which he claimed to have “found who was responsible”
for the lights.Symington then brought
in his chief of staff dressed in an alien costume, handcuffed and looking
contrite.Crisis averted.Ten years later, however, Symington confessed
before the National Press Club, that he had pulled this stunt only to avert
public panic.He said that he himself
had seen the object and that it was, “enormous
and inexplicable.”
What
is the truth behind the Great Secret? Unidentified Fly Objects (UFOs), where do
they come from? Why are they here? What do they want? Here are six original
short stories dealing with First Contact:
(1)The Vatican’s Dilemma (Is there a Vatican conspiracy?)
(2)Mountain Mist (Does a parallel universe exist?)
(3)Earthly Arrogance (Pity the poor Aliens)
(4)An Intelligent Idea (Is this the end?)
(5)Change and Hopelessness ( The great Civil War)
(6)An Answer on the Moon
The
Skeleton CaveMassacre was the
first principal engagement during the 1872 Tonto Basin Campaign in Arizona
conducted by the U.S. Army. On December 28, 1872, elements of the 5th
Cavalry under the command of Captain William H. Brown, together with thirty
Apache scouts took up positions around the Yavapai stronghold at Skeleton Cave
in the Salt River Canyon. The
soldiers approached the cave before dawn and
surprised the defenders when they tried to leave.The warriors
refused to surrender and the soldiers opened fire.Some of Brown's men aimed for the roof of the cave, causing
the deaths of women and children, as well as warriors, within the cave by
ricocheting bullets. Others soldiers rolled rocks and boulders down from the
cliffs above.
“… (Captain) Brown ordered our
fire to cease, and for the last time summoned the Apaches to surrender, or to
let their women and children come out unmolested. On their side, the Apaches
also ceased all hostile demonstrations and it seemed to some of us Americans
that they must be making ready to yield, and were discussing the matter among
themselves. Our Indian guides and interpreters raised the cry, ‘Look out! There
goes the death song; they are going to charge!’ It was a weird chant … half
wail and half exultation—the frenzy of despair and the wild cry for revenge.”
So wrote Captain John G. Bourke, U.S. Cavalry.
The warriors counter-attacked to
buy time for their women and children to escape. The soldiers stopped the
counter-attack, and the surviving Indians were driven back into the cave where
they resumed their death chant. At this point, the soldiers were ordered to
fire “as fast as the breach-block of the carbine could be opened and lowered
... into the mouth of the cave,” where, according to Captain Bourke, “lead
poured in by the bucketful.”
The battle continued, with
cries of wounded women and children becoming ever more desperate. “It was
exactly like fighting with wild animals in a trap,” observed Captain Bourke. The massacre lasted most of the morning and about
seventy men, women, and children were killed. The survivors were taken
prisoner. The dead were left unburied.
The cave was rediscovered in
the 1890's. Jeff Adam's found the cave again in 1906 and reported it to
newspapers. Walter Lubken was guided to the cave in 1908 where he photographed
the bones and artifacts within the cave. Around 1920, the bones were removed
and buried by some Yavapai Indians. Nothing remains in the cave now.This site is located on the north
shore of Apache Lake, about 1/2 mile northeast of Horse Mesa Dam.
Whatever else George Armstrong
Custer may or may not have been, even in the twenty-first century, he remains
the great lightning rod of American history.
Posts
