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puttering with a trowel in a mound; no firmer base than convention
We were camped — four fellows from the same Class and the same Entry — on a windy hill overlooking the Missouri, where it swings in a wide curve called on the old steamboat maps Mountaineer Bend. The site is a vantage point for a little of the finest scenery the “prairie country” can afford : and that is a large order of praise.
We cannot boast of having discovered this ideal camping place with its enhancing discomforts. The Indian had known it long before us. We were camped upon the site of an ancient Mandan village, abandoned, it may be, for a hundred and fifty years...
...We found just such a bundle of human bones in a little mound outside the fortifications : the skull alone was missing. Curiously enough we found the skull bones of children in all the large mounds we investigated.
Finding evidence of customs so utterly at variance with our own, shocks us into considering that, after all, whatever we hold sacred may be founded upon no firmer base than convention. Thus, whatever shows us how other peoples have lived is apt to give enlightenment to our own lives. One way to spend a summer vacation — and by no means the worst way — is to enjoy the boon of sun and storm, and incidentally to try and swell the sum of human knowledge. It may be done with puttering with a trowel in a mound that can tell secrets of the past...
ex H. J. Spinden. “A Summer on the Missouri.” The Harvard Illustrated Magazine 7:2 (November 1905) : 34-37
NYPL copy/scan (via google books) : link
Harvard copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
Herbert Joseph Spinden (1879–1967), anthropologist, archaeologist and art historian
wikipedia : link
without getting too deeply into Spinden’s weeds, and only for my personal convenience, I list (with links to wikipedia, &c.) his first and second wife, and his second wife’s story.
“no firmer base than convention” —
- Ellen S. Spinden (1897-1985), archaeologist; first wife of H. J. Spinden
wikipedia : link - Ailes Gilmour (1912-1993), dancer, early member of Martha Graham’s dance company; second wife of H. J. Spinden
wikipedia : linkdaughter of
- Léonie Gilmour (1873-1933), educator, editor and journalist; lover and editor of writer Yone Noguchi, mother of sculptor Isamu Noguchi and dancer Ailes Gilmour.
wikipedia : linksee Lisa Yin Zhang, her thorough and beautifully written (and illustrated) essay, “The Incomplete Chronicle of Léonie Gilmour”
at noguchi.org : link - Yone Noguchi (野口 米次郎, 1875-1947), poet, art and literary critic, essayist; father (with Léonie Gilmour) of sculptor Isamu Noguchi
wikipedia : link
26 July 2024