Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/86



NE of the most noticeable features of the present time is the interest manifested in historical investigation. For many years the historical societies of New York City and New England stood alone in this work. Within the past few years, however, societies of a similar nature have sprung up in different sections of the country, which, by their rivalry, have greatly stimulated a taste among Americans for historical research. Nearly every State now has a society devoted especially to putting into durable form for posterity its history, and many counties have, likewise, organizations for preserving local history, which turn their knowledge over to the larger societies of the States. The formation of these societies has already produced valuable results, chief among which is the exploding of no small number of statements that have hitherto been regarded as verities in history. Jane McCrea, dressed for her wedding, no longer receives the tomahawk in her brain while on her way to her lover—although the picture of the scene will doubtless for a long while to come be repeated in children's pictorial reading books. The romance which Captain John Smith tells of having his brains saved by Pocahontas, and which every one used to read and take for gospel, comes, at least, very near to being dispelled in a clear and apparently exhaustive statement in the "North American" for January, 1867. Nor does this stop here. If the case is made out, and Smith's mendacity is proved, much of the early history of Virginia will have to be revised. And yet his story, with nothing to sustain it, and a strong negative evidence against it, has maintained its place in history for more than two centuries, and would, perhaps, still do so for many years to come but for the recent development of a taste for historical investigation. The statement of Mr. Irving that the Hessians bore the brunt of the battles of Stillwater and Saratoga is shown to be erroneous by several journals of German officers recently published. Only one Hessian regiment was in those battles (the rest were in Long Island and in the Southern department), and that one bore no part whatever in the action, the Brunswickers alone participating. Nor is it Americans only who have had their pet traditions rudely dispelled. European countries are beginning to have a similar experience. Robin Hood and Will Scarlet turn out to be but a couple of ragged, sorry knaves. William Tell, driven by persevering historical investigators from Switzerland further and further north, finally disappears in a rude Norse legend dating many