VOYAGE LONG AND STRANGE
Tony Horwitz
0719566363 £10.99
Just out in paperback, having been published originally last year, the subtitle of this fascinating history is “Rediscovering the New World”, revealing how - long before the Pilgrim Fathers embarked on the Mayflower - other Europeans pioneered North America, seeking land and riches and, of course, converts. Opening with the Vikings in 1000AD, the book focuses on the neglected period in early American history between Columbus’ voyage of 1492 and when the Pilgrims arrived, nearly 130 years later, in 1620.
The phrase ‘to the victor the spoils’ is very telling here: Americans primarily see their forefathers as being of British stock, largely because the Pilgrims – the ones who made a go of their venture into this new world – wrote the history books: the many other settlers who came beforehand either died out or opted not to stay. As Horwitz mentions in his prologue, explaining how – even as a history major - his knowledge of pre-Columbus history was scant: “by the time the first English settled, other Europeans had already reached half of the 48 states that today make up continental USA” and “upon founding St Augustine, the first permanent European city on US soil the Spanish gave thanks and dined with Indians – 56 years before the Pilgrim Thanksgiving at Plymouth”.
This is a very enthralling historical adventure, but as it’s told as a personal journey, it doesn’t read like a history book: retracing the route the Spaniard Coronado took across the plains of New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, the author speaks of being ‘serenaded by grain reports and Christian radio’ and then goes on to talk to the local residents about the 1930s Dust Bowl. The tone is chatty, colloquial and is as much a Bill Bryson-style travelogue as it is a history. This is an expedition of rediscovery, travelling in the explorers’ wake to reveal the enduring influence that early Europeans had on America - and during this long and strange journey, he exposes the breach between what we preserve and what we disregard about our past.
A complete antidote to the ‘living history parks’ of Plimouth Plantation in Massachusetts or Jamestown, Virginia - with their interpreters in period costume trying to instil some sense of the past into the tourists - this is an attempt to understand the reality of the early chapters of America’s past, as opposed to the myths surrounding its foundation, A compelling and enlightening read.