Jumbo's Hide, Elvis's Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha

by Harvey Rachlin

  Indeed, the course of scholars’ thinking has changed. Thwaites believed that it was possible that the Lewis and Clark journals were not real-time eyewitness accounts of their journey, but were, rather, written at a later time during the expedition. Consequently, he thought that most of their original notes, written in field books as they went along, were probably discarded after they were transferred to the formal journals.

  But modern scholars believe that what we have today are the field books, notebooks, journals, and manuscript sheets in the hands of Lewis and Clark, written before, during, and after the expedition. And they do serve as firsthand accounts of the two-year epic journey that began in 1804 and which both hastened the development of commercial trade in the American Northwest and fostered an understanding of a vast wilderness that led to the settlement of the region.

  The historic importance and uniqueness of the journals is self-evident. The northwestern United States has over the years evolved with the burgeoning of society and technology into an area with numerous bustling metropolises that are major centers of industry in the world. Although white adventurers such as the English navigators James Cook and George Vancouver and the Canadian fur trader Alexander Mackenzie explored the American Northwest before Lewis and Clark, the journals are especially valuable in that they are the diaries of the first nonnatives to sweep through the entire region, prior to the subsequent stampede by white men into the Northwest that transformed it into an evolved region of interconnecting paved roads and concrete cities.

  The information about the Northwest passed on by Lewis and Clark revealed a land with abundant natural resources and potential. The commanders did not find a water passage through the northwest to the Pacific Ocean,* but their expedition was nevertheless a resounding success. It stirred the minds of Americans and prompted many to turn west and settle the area; as well, it gave America a claim to Oregon. The reader of the journals can vicariously experience the thrilling journey of the first American transcontinental overland expedition as the explorers followed their senses and encountered Indians and strange animals and many glorious wonders of nature. The reader can, along with the explorers, observe new species of animals and plants, feel their frustrations, sense their curiosity, and revel in their courage.

  Seven years after the epic mission ended, Thomas Jefferson wrote that Meriwether Lewis possessed “a fidelity to the truth so scrupulous that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves.” Though scholars over the years have doubted that the journals were the “scrupulous” truth, in all probability they were written soon after the events, so they are essentially genuine diaries of what happened, and as such future generations may sense the same awe and excitement that the co-commanders Meriwether Lewis and William Clark did from 1804 through 1806 as they boldly stepped into a new world and reported on it for posterity.

  LOCATIONS:

  American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has eighteen bound journals, thirteen of which are bound in red morocco, four in marbled cardboard, and one in brown leather. These are considered the principal set of surviving journals from the Lewis and Clark expedition.

  The Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, has four red morocco journals; Clark’s elk skin field book covering the journey from Traveller’s Rest Creek, Montana, to Fort Clatsop, Oregon; and numerous other manuscript material and documents written by Lewis and Clark or related to the expedition.

  Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, has Captain William Clark’s field notes covering the expedition’s stay at Camp Dubois, journey up the Missouri, and winter encampment at the Mandan villages (the notes, written on individual sheets, were returned with the escorting party in April 1805), as well as fifty-four maps of the journey route and Clark’s detailed map of northwestern America.

  Western Historical Manuscript Collection, Columbia, Missouri, has Lewis’s 1805 astronomy notebook, and Lewis and Clark’s 1809 memorandum book listing debts due by Clark and a list of Lewis’s private debts.

  Other members of the Lewis and Clark expedition kept journals, and these survive as follows: John Ordway (American Philosophical Society), Joseph Whitehouse (Newberry Library, University of Chicago), and Charles Floyd (State Historical Society of Wisconsin). It should also be noted that while many other Lewis and Clark artifacts from the expedition survive at different locations, there are, prominently, numerous plant and mineral specimens at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia; a significant collection of maps and Jefferson’s correspondence with Lewis at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Lewis’s telescope at the Missouri Historical Society; and Clark’s pocket compass at the National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.

  Footnotes

  *President Jefferson had instructed Lewis to find a water communication from the mouth of the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean “for the purposes of commerce.” Lewis and Clark instead traveled over land and mountains, not finding, as they expected, a connection between the Missouri and the Columbia Rivers.

  BEETHOVEN’S EAR TRUMPETS

  DATE: circa 1812-1813.

  WHAT THEY ARE: Two pairs of “listening tubes” that were designed to improve the composer’s hearing.

  WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE: The hearing aids consist of long tubes connected to funnels and are made of brass.

  Of all the musical sounds ever produced by humans, from the first babbled melody to the latest chart-topper’s catchy chorus, the most famous, enduring, and universally recognizable motif is arguably the simple but arresting sequence of notes that opens Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Indeed, the sublime genius of Beethoven, with his oeuvre of nine symphonies, thirty-two piano sonatas, and numerous orchestral, chamber, choral, and other works, has been recognized for two centuries both by common folk and by celebrated musicians alike. But fate dealt a cruel hand to the prodigious composer when he was a young man by robbing him of a vital sense. Before 1800, when he was not yet thirty, the maestro began losing his hearing and eventually became deaf, unable to hear any piece of music he wrote except in his mind. As the outside world fell silent to the musical genius, Beethoven withdrew from society and plunged into his work, immersed in his own private torment.

  When Beethoven realized his ability to hear was fading—noticing that he had to draw his head closer to the piano to hear when he played—he tried everything he could think of to ameliorate his condition, from visiting physicians to applying salves and other remedies, all to no avail. The composer despaired at his lack of success and was embarrassed by his condition, letting few of his friends know at first. Despite his growing deafness, he still carried on his life as best he could. “To give you an idea of this curious condition,” he wrote to a friend, “I must tell you that in the theater I must get close to the stage in order to hear the actors. If I am at a slight distance then the high notes of instruments and singers I do not hear at all. I can often hear the low tones of a conversation but I cannot make out the words. It is strange that in conversation people do not notice my lack of hearing but they seem to attribute my behavior to my absence of mind. When people speak softly I hear tones but not the words. I cannot bear to be yelled at. Heaven knows what will come of this.”

  But as the sounds of life faded over the years, Beethoven (who was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1770 but spent most of his professional life in Vienna) even contemplated suicide. He agonized over his hearing loss and became more impatient and short-tempered with those around him. “For me there can be no recreation in the society of my fellows, refined intercourse, mutual exchange of thought,” the composer wrote in 1802. “Only just as little as the greatest needs command may I mix with society. I must live like an exile.”

  It is not known whether it was at the composer’s behest or the maker’s initiative, but around 1812 or 1813, Johann Nepomuk Mälzel made four brass “Horinstrumente,” or listening instruments, for the maestro. Beethoven was acquainted with M
älzel (1772-1838), having composed his op. 91, “Wellington’s Victory,” for Mälzel’s mechanical musical instrument, the Panharmonikon, in 1813; in later years Beethoven used a metronome developed by Mälzel for tempo markings.

  Beethoven hoped that Johann Nepomuk Mälzel's ear trumpets, pictured above, might enable him to better hear the music he composed. But the primitive hearing aids did not help Beethoven and the composer's hearing loss continued to grow worse over time.

  Mälzel intended that as sounds passed from the funnel through the tubes of his ear trumpet, their volume would increase, and when they made direct contact with the listener’s ear on the other end, the person would be able to hear them more clearly. Unfortunately, Mälzel’s ear trumpets didn’t help Beethoven much, if at all, and the composer’s hearing continued to worsen. By 1818 Beethoven was totally deaf and could not communicate orally. Visitors to his home used “conversation books” to write their communications to him. When he could no longer hear, Beethoven relied on his auditory memory to compose. The composer, whom Mozart praised and Vienna’s nobility embraced admiringly, was condemned to an existence of external silence.

  Poor Beethoven! His music was timeless, but the technology of his day was too primitive to remedy his physical impairment. But his condition gives rise to an intriguing question: If Beethoven had lived at a later time, say the late twentieth century, would technology have been able to help him hear, or even to cure his deafness?

  Whether Beethoven’s condition could have been improved or cured would have depended on the etiology of his deafness, which is uncertain. However, from a description of his condition written to his friend Karl Amende, it appears that he had a progressive sensorineural hearing loss (a hearing loss derived from a problem in the inner ear). Initially, Beethoven experienced a “whistle and buzz continually” in his ears. This tinnitus may have been due to the degeneration of hair cells in the cochlea. High-frequency sounds were lost first, and then the low tones.

  Modern technology probably could have improved Beethoven’s condition. Once his deafness was diagnosed, he would have been fitted with hearing aids. These would have made sounds louder, so he would not have needed to get so close to his piano keys to hear. He could also have utilized an FM system in the concert auditorium so that sounds from the orchestra would be delivered into his hearing aid directly, like a personal radio station. This system would have also eliminated the distracting background mumble of the audience. With special frequency-transposing hearing aids, his speech discrimination would have been improved, so in conversations he would have been able not only to detect voices but also to discriminate some spoken words as well.

  With modern developments in assistive technology, he might have been a candidate for a cochlear implant when his hearing loss became profound. With his excellent auditory memory, the implant would have allowed him to hear with an internal coil inserted into his cochlea to substitute for the missing hair cells. This coil would receive sound information from an external ear-level microphone and speech processor that Beethoven would have worn at his waist or behind his ear.

  In this nineteenth-century painting by A. Grafle, Beethoven plays for a small but appreciative audience.

  The speech processor, a tiny computer, would have had several programs to choose from. The composer could have selected the best one depending on the environment he was in. One setting would allow him to hear better in conversation, one at a noisy gathering, and another when listening to music. He would have needed to relearn sounds, however, because the new signals he received would have sounded different from what he had heard in the past. Once his brain had made the switch, he probably would not have lapsed into the despair he felt at the end of his life.

  One can only dream of what music the highly original Beethoven, who diverged from Mozart’s and Haydn’s pure classical form and initiated the Romantic period, might have composed had he had access to modern hearing-device technology. Then again, it could have been his deafness that drove him to create the masterpieces he did once he became isolated in the sanctum of his own inner voices.

  Beethoven didn’t even complete his famous Symphony no. 5 in C Minor with its stirring opening theme until around 1808, when his hearing loss was marked and he was well acquainted with despondency.* Had they worked, the ear trumpets Mälzel made for Beethoven could have spared one of history’s greatest musical geniuses the physical and emotional torment that ravaged his life; perhaps they could have enabled him to give to the world an even more glorious body of music. But besides the immortal music he did compose, among the items Beethoven left to posterity are two sets of ear trumpets, which, in their futility, demonstrate that despite a debilitating physical handicap, Beethoven’s genius and determination prevailed, enabling the great maestro to enrich the ages.

  LOCATION: Beethoven House, Bonn, Germany.*

  Footnotes

  *The first four notes of Symphony no. 5 were used during World War II as the station identification signal by the BBC European Service and as an Allied signal meaning “Victory”; in Morse code, the sequence of three shorts and a long stands for V.

  *Beethoven’s hearing aids came into the possession of his clerk, Anton Schindler, probably as an inheritance from the composer. Schindler donated the hearing aids to the Königliche Bibliothek in Berlin, which in 1889 presented them to the Beethoven House on the recommendation of the king of Prussia.

  HARRISON’S PEACE PIPES

  DATE: 1814.

  WHAT THEY ARE: Two of the three surviving peace pipes presented by Major General William Henry Harrison to the Delaware, Shawnee, and Wyandot Indian tribes at the Second Treaty Council of Greenville, Ohio, on behalf of President James Madison.

  WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE: The pipes are made of sterling silver and have an S-shaped stem and an urn-shaped bowl with a hinged cover with beaded edges and acanthus leaves in Federal style engraved at the base. The bowls are 2 inches in diameter. From the mouthpiece to the bowl the overall length of the Delaware pipe is 16 inches, the Shawnee pipe 20 inches. The bowls have four oval medallions adorned and engraved as follows: a scene of a Native American and an American general shaking hands; an eagle derived from the Great Seal of the United States; two hands clasped above the inscription “Peace and Friendship”; and the legend, for the Delaware pipe, “Presented by Maj. Gen. Harrison to the Delaware Tribe of Indians 1814,” and for the Shawnee pipe, “Presented by Maj. Gen. Harrison on behalf of the U.S. to the Shawanoese Tribe of Indians 1814.” The pipes were originally identical, but the stem of the Delaware pipe was broken and the repair altered the angle of the stem, which perhaps accounts for its stem being shorter than that of the Shawnee pipe.

  His name was Wabozo, or Snowshoe Hare, but he was commonly called the Mysterious One because he could change his appearance to any shape he desired, just as the hare can metamorphose from brown to snowy white during the winter. Born to a mortal mother and an immortal father countless ages ago, the young man headed west over prairies and plains and mountains in search of the Creator—his father—because of his growing concern that his people were becoming self-absorbed and losing their spiritual identity. And when Wabozo found the Creator, his eternal father gave him a pipe for his people to smoke so that their thoughts and prayers and words would become visible to the Creator in the form of tobacco smoke, and the Creator would be able to give the people proper guidance. Over time the peace pipe born of this Native American legend became not just a holy object, a tool of prayer, but a sign or offering of friendship.

  In 1814 the U.S. government presented three peace pipes to indigenous tribes as gifts of thanks for their pledge to fight on America’s side against the British in the War of 1812. While these frontier pipes were strictly items of diplomacy, compositionally and structurally inconsistent with an authentic peace pipe—a sacred instrument of prayer—they nonetheless represented the amity between the two groups and their evolving relations. But for the Indians, who entered into a second treaty at Greenville, Ohi
o, in the wake of disastrous defeats and the death of the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh, the agreement more or less meant the beginning of their end. Weakened until they could no longer significantly resist the Americans, who usurped and settled their land, the Indians faced the dawn of a new era, and the pipes became tangible symbols of their reluctant acquiescence to the new order.

  Some historical context will shed light on the circumstances that led up to the presentation of the silver pipes in 1814. The Revolutionary War brought independence to America but left Americans anxious to push the country’s borders westward, even if such settlement encroached on the natural rights of the native inhabitants of the lands. For its part, the U.S. government had tried to prevent Americans from settling on Indian land. When war with England broke out in 1775, the Continental Congress had ordered Americans not to settle on Indian land out of fear that the Indians, who were fierce and powerful fighters, would side with the British in their fight against the colonists. The Continental Congress’s policy was only moderately successful. Although force was sometimes used to keep colonists from moving onto Indian land, the settlers were resolute in their determination to live, hunt, and work on lands to the west. This resulted in fierce Indian attacks on colonial settlements in Kentucky, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania, where the Iroquois and other tribes lived.

  The Native American tribes were still viable after the Revolutionary War, so it was in the interests of the new American government to keep relations between the Indians and American citizens cordial and peaceful. It was the position of the American government that Indian land belonged to the Indians, and the government’s War Department set up posts in Indian country not only to maintain cordiality but to establish a system of fair trade with them through recognized agents and prevent unscrupulous white traders from swindling the natives.