Elizabeth’s Exile, a Novel of a Cherokee Refugee, by Stan Rice, part five. What Is Faith?

Author Stan Rice has just published the second of three novels (Elizabeth’s Exile) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This second novel is about a Cherokee woman, Elizabeth Hilderbrand Pettit who, in middle age, walked with a contingent of other Cherokees on the infamous Trail of Tears from the Appalachians to what is now Oklahoma, after losing their land and possessions. As Rice’s novel explains, this was totally illegal, as the law under which Andrew Jackson prosecuted this Trail of Tears was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Of course Rice, a botanist and evolution author, would revere Asa Gray, the Harvard botanist who was Charles Darwin’s main defender in America. Gray promoted Darwinism even though he was a conventionally and seriously religious Christian.

And Gray promoted the protection of Black people as far as he could in Boston. While even white Northerners were prejudiced against Blacks (they thought slavery was wrong, but had no particular love for Black people), Gray taught Sunday School for Blacks.

But Rice totally made up the stuff about Asa Gray being a leader in the Underground Railroad, which escorted escaped slaves to freedom. This is perfectly credible—especially since Gray would have had the perfect excuse to be in the borderlands of the Union and the Confederacy, searching for new plants—but it just didn’t happen. This is fiction; there has to be something that is not completely historical. Rice also invented the part about Elizabeth Hilderbrand Pettit being an Underground Railroad leader.

But Rice gives us some insights about the Christian faith in these examples. Elizabeth had to lead some of the slaves blindly in the darkness without any assurance that their rescue would be successful. That is, her journey was based on faith, not on evidence. As the Bible says, we walk by faith, and not by sight. One of Elizabeth’s sections of the novel ends with these words: “This is faith. I walk where I cannot see, leading people I do not know, toward a salvation that may not be there.”

Elizabeth's Exile, a Novel of a Cherokee Refugee, part four. How Do You Face Disruption and Tragedy?

Author Stan Rice has just published the second of three novels (Elizabeth’s Exile) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This second novel is about a Cherokee woman, Elizabeth Hilderbrand Pettit who, in middle age, walked with a contingent of other Cherokees on the infamous Trail of Tears from the Appalachians to what is now Oklahoma, after losing their land and possessions. As Rice’s novel explains, this was totally illegal, as the law under which Andrew Jackson prosecuted this Trail of Tears was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Any event as big as the Trail of Tears cannot be fully presented in a novel. The novel must focus on one or a few people and their experiences. Rice focused on Elizabeth Hilderbrand Pettit, whom he identifies in the author’s notes as his third great grandmother. By focusing on one or a few individuals, we can see the individual disruptions that occurred within the overall Disruption known as the Trail of Tears.

In Elizabeth’s case, the main disruption (aside from losing her home and land) was her husband James, a white man. It turned out that he had misrepresented himself to her when they married: he had a white wife and family just over the border in Mississippi. She sued him (historical fact) and won possession of all property and goods—all of which she lost when she had to get onto the Trail of Tears. In Rice’s novel, James was with her on the entire journey. Though James was probably an evil man, Rice treats him sympathetically as a tragic character who just wants Elizabeth to forgive him, which she never does. Despite this disruption, Elizabeth remains positive and strong on the entire trip.

The same cannot be said of Elizabeth’s daughter Minerva, who came of age on this journey. She is spunky and wise, and seems to be very strong. But then she is violated by a slimy preacher named John Schermerhorn and this, Rice suggests, ruined her ability to trust that anything good could happen in her life. Minerva was—historical fact again—married six times and died at the age of forty. She was married briefly to one of the novel’s main narrators, Lewis Hicks, her second husband, but had a child by her third husband while she was still married to Lewis. Rice uses this story in his novel, but adds in ideas from the Biblical story of David and Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite.

Rev. John Schermerhorn was a historical figure who was every bit as slimy as Rice portrays him. I think Rice might have had to invent this character, had he not actually existed. He was infamous among all the Cherokee women for trying to hit up on them. They called him Devil Horn. He was the same man who had supervised the Treaty of New Echota in which illegal representatives of the Cherokee tribe signed away their rights to their Appalachian homeland.

Rice includes other historical events such as the murder of the Cherokee leader Doublehead by his fellow Cherokees, as well as the murders of John Ridge and Elias Boudinot. Nobody in the tribe reveres Doublehead, who was also called Babykiller. But to this day some Cherokees despise, and others revere, the efforts of Ridge and Boudinot to protect the Cherokees from white oppression, although their compromises (including the Treaty of New Echota) proved ultimately futile.

Rice also includes Asa Gray, the Harvard botanist. Gray was, in fact, a defender of the rights of free Blacks in the North, but I suspect Rice has invented all the details of Gray being a leader in the Underground Railroad.

Rice ends the novel from the viewpoint of Edd Hicks, one of Minerva Pettit’s grandchildren, who regrets all the oppression in Cherokee history but who has resolved to make the best of whatever situation he is in. He is the focus of the third novel in the series, Edd’s Land, reviewed later in this blog.

Opus 700: When Botany Was All the Rage

 THIS IS THE 700TH POST ON THIS BLOG!!!

Throughout the nineteenth century in Europe and America, botany was extremely popular. It was not unusual for a popular botany book to sell a quarter million copies. It was not uncommon to see someone taking a botanical hike, carrying a vasculum on a strap around the neck. The vasculum was a metal cylinder with a little door. Inside the cylinder, the collector would place fresh plant specimens, which would stay moist by means of damp cloths. The collector would go home and press the plants in a plant press in order for them to dry and be suitable for mounting on paper for a collection. Doesn’t sound like your idea of a good time? It would have 150 years ago. In this drawing, a wise old botanist is explaining plants to some utterly fascinated young men.

Why was “botanizing” so popular? Elizabeth Keeney, in her 1992 book The Botanizers, gives some reasons. The drawings and quotes posted in this blog come from her book.

First, botanizing was a mentally and physically good form of exercise. Looking at and collecting plants was a good way (and still is) of getting people to think about the world around them. It helped them to notice the tremendous diversity of life that they would otherwise not notice. And this would, in turn, make them more relaxed. We know from scientific studies today, as they knew from experience 150 years ago, that walking in the woods leads to relaxation. People also knew, especially if they had indoor jobs, that they needed exercise. One man even got his exercise by carrying shovelfuls of soil from one side of his basement to the other, then back to the first side. This was just boring, repetitive exercise. But taking a botany hike was also exercise (especially if you climbed a hill) and was interesting. One author wrote, “Many boys and girls go through the world, almost without seeing it. Now he who has eyes and does not use them, in such a beautiful world as this, is very much to be pitied. But the study of Botany will learn [sic] him to keep his eyes open…” especially to keep from blundering into the poison ivy.

Second, it was sometimes a popular way for men and women to meet one another. In one case, a man and a woman met on a botanizing expedition, later got married, and spent their honeymoon collecting plants. It was not unusual for colleges to keep men and women entirely separate—separate gardens, separate sidewalks—except on botanizing expeditions, where males and females could mingle. I wonder how many first dates today would go better if the couples went botanizing rather than to a dinner or a movie. On a similar note, botanizing was considered a safe form of recreation for delicate young women, as in this drawing. One author wrote, that botany was sufficiently refined for female attention. Flowers, with their “fragility, beauty, and perishable nature,” were like “a pure-minded and delicate woman, who shrinks even from the breath of contamination.” Males and females were not supposed to meet in bars, and meeting in a parlour at home was stuffy, so why not meet on a botany trip? Sounds fun to me, especially if the young man and woman have to hide under a bush to get out of a sudden rainstorm.

One author wrote, “In botany all is elegance and delight. No painful, disgusting, unhealthy experiments or inquiries are to be made. Its pleasures spring up under our feet [and] reward us with health and serene satisfaction. [No one could] pollute its lovely scenery with unamiable or unhallowed images…[Botany is] among the most innocent things in the world.” At least, so it would seem, until you realize that flowers are sexual structures with their organs all out in the open.

Finally, to some religiously-minded scientists, botany was an excellent way to see the mighty hand of God in the natural world. Studying plants will incline your mind to holiness. One botanist who championed this approach was Asa Gray, the Harvard botanist who, incidentally, was the major American proponent of the theories of Charles Darwin. Here is the cover page of Asa Gray’s botany book for young people.

The good news is, you can still go botanizing. Just find a like-minded friend for a hike, or take a hike by yourself. Even if you take the same hike over and over, you will see things changing over the seasons. Gotta go now; my wife and I are going to take a botany hike.

Darwin Celebrates Halloween

Last Monday was Halloween (or, in the traditional spelling, Hallowe’en, or Hallowed Evening). I taught my evolution class that morning. I wore a T-shirt with a skull on it, with the word “Evolution” over it. Evolution is the name of a little store in the Soho section of New York City which sells items that are vaguely connected with evolution (e.g., tarantulas in plastic).

I then put on a zombie mask and screamed out to the class, “Brains! Brains! BRAINS! BRAINS! I’m Charles Darwin and I’m going to eat your brains and your children’s brains and turn you all into atheists!”

I then removed the mask and explained that Darwin was not a zombie, and that I had no intention of turning anybody into an atheist. I said something like this. “Now, if your religion requires you to believe things that are scientifically disprovable, then I will have to tell you that you are mistaken. But science cannot tell you whether or not there is a purpose behind the universe, or even if there are other universes, or whether this purpose is a personal God. Many scientists believe in God, without any contradiction with their roles as scientists.”

Then I told them about Darwin’s American friend, the Harvard botanist Asa Gray, who was the chief defender of Darwinian evolution in America, but who was as traditional and orthodox a Christian as you could hope to find. A Sunday school teacher, no less. Darwin explained in a letter to Gray how much he regretted that he could not agree with Gray on a religious view. Darwin wrote to Gray, “With respect to the theological view of the question. This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us.”

I then told them about the correspondence I have been maintaining with a prisoner in California. He first wrote to me a couple of years ago when he read my review of an evolution book. He must already have been pursuing an understanding of evolution, because he got my name from a book review I wrote for the National Center for Science Education Reports. He has written to me with many questions, and I have sent answers back to him. I have also sent him paper printouts of things I have written (hardcover books are not allowed in prison mail delivery).

At one point, the prisoner wrote to me about becoming an atheist and the freedom of thought that this allowed him to have. I wrote back to him recently, explaining that atheism was not necessary in order to accept science in general or evolution in particular, and that many scientists are religious. I do not want to lead anyone to atheism. In this way, I am doing exactly what Darwin did. I have not yet received a reply from the prisoner.

I used Halloween as a humorous opportunity to bring up a discussion of this important topic.

Don't miss the YouTube video that I have posted about Darwin and zombies!