by Mark Gibson
Fears ago a number of Native American petroglyphs were moved from storage at The Dalles Dam to an outdoor display area across the river in Washington’s Horsethief State Park.
I was thrilled to see them again located in an accessible area, to be viewed without waiting for a guided tour. I photographed them for a story in The Dalles Chronicle, and when my father visited The Dalles that summer I made a point of taking him over to view the new display.
He was profoundly unimpressed.
As a fourth grade boy attending Joseph G. Wilson elementary school (once located near the current The Dalles Middle School) in the late 1920s he had explored “Petroglyph Canyon” itself, and found the few remnants saved from drowning nothing to get excited.
It’s hard to imagine what that canyon might have looked like – Celilo Falls is well documented, but photographs of less popular areas are hard to find. Its features are lost to the “mists of time,” mists that thicken as time passes and those who “remember when” become fewer. All that remains today are the stories, told in words or pictures, and the rocks still showing above the water.
In the stories there is a continuum, linking backward through years and generations — and forward as well as today’s stories are recorded and filed, told and retold.
Some historical stories I’ve helped tell myself: I don’t have any photographs of Petroglyph Canyon, but you will find photographs of those displayed at Horsethief State Park in the back issues of the Chronicle.
How valuable are these stories, this history?
It’s often said that if we don’t remember the mistakes of the past we are doomed to repeat them. Perhaps, but my own reading of history causes me to suspect we are doomed to repeat our mistakes regardless. Would we trade Petroglyph Canyon for an aluminum plant today, forewarned of the toxic dumps and loss salmon? Probably.
Our modern economy is based on growth, and growth requires despoiling.
The value of history, for me, is in the nature of exploration and connection: To study the voyage of Lewis and Clark is to cross the Mighty Columbia on a canoe … to camp in a fortress of rock … to trade for fish with the Indians.
And to know of the voyage of Lewis and Clark can also be to camp in a fortress of rock (although not at the mouth of Mill Creek), to cross the river in a canoe (beware the wind and motorboats), and to trade with the Indians for fish (no checks, please).
Footsteps inspire footsteps, stories inspire stories, and we gather those we believe to be true and call them history.
by RaeLynn Ricarte
Every American should visit the monuments of Washington, D.C., because that brush with history truly brings home the legacy that our forefathers left us and why we must guard the principles of personal liberty they gave us.
Although the founders instructed parents to teach their children how the government was set up to work under the U.S. Constitution, most American families spend little or no time on civics lessons.
Because the U.S. was designed to be a government by the people, Americans were charged with learning from history to respect individual rights, have regard for the law, understand their duty to participate in public life and develop concern for the common good. U.S. history provides important perspectives on what types of conflicts and concerns to be involved with and which to avoid, as well as the character traits of great leaders.
Modern citizens have not taken the charge to instill patriotism seriously enough. Back in the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Education reported that more than half of all high school seniors didn’t even have a basic understanding of American history.
A nationwide test released in 2011 showed that American proficient in their nation’s history than in any other subject.
That situation does not appear to have improved. David McCullough, an American author and historian, said: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s a form of ingratitude. And the scale of our ignorance seems especially shameful in the face of our unprecedented good fortune…”
The importance of teaching children about our rich history becomes even more important in a time when it seems that every other culture is celebrated more than our own. In fact, many Americans now focus on everything that the founders did wrong instead of the greatest experiment of personal liberty in a government that has ever been gifted to citizens.
The late Pres. Ronald Reagan once said: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
I have a passion for our national history that just isn’t there for local antiquity.
I feel compelled to be a better person after learning about all of the sacrifices that have been made to give me so many life choices.
A trip to Arlington National Cemetery is a very sobering way to bring that lesson home.
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