Unit 5 — Historical Thinking: Evaluation of Primary Sources
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
— Maya Angelou
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
— Carl Sagan
“We must recognize the archive as a place of feeling.
— Ruth Lawlor
Optional, *Extra Mile* Zoom meeting on October 18, 2:00–3:00 pm MDT. Dr. Cathleen Cahill, Associate Professor of History at Penn State, will join us to talk about her experiences working with primary source research on the history of women’s and indigenous peoples’ rights in the American West and how that work has been impacted by the conditions of the pandemic. The Zoom link is available in Brightspace (Unit 5 Module) and this session will be recorded and posted there, as well. Dr. Cahill formerly taught at UNM and is one of my mentors, colleagues, and friends. Although this event is optional, I strongly encourage you to attend if at all possible because Dr. Cahill has been kind enough to take time out of her schedule to visit us.
- *Important Note: The documents activity slated for the second week of this Unit will take more time than the readings and posts for the first week. Please plan accordingly to make sure you dedicate plenty of time to the second week’s activity. We’ll then reflect on our interpretations and ideas on the documents during the third week of this Unit.
During the last unit, we spent some time thinking about the definition of primary sources in order to think about how to evaluate secondary sources. This short video produced by the folks at the University of Guelph Library provides a review:
An important point made in this video that we haven’t discussed in detail yet is that the categories of *primary* and *secondary* sources aren’t as fixed as we’ve made them out to be. Primary sources are the raw materials of historical research and they tend to be those created at the time of the events we’re studying, but, depending on the questions we’re asking and the way we intend to use the sources, the categorization of historical sources can be contextual.
In other words, the same sources can be considered primary in certain situations and secondary in others.
For example, textbooks are generally considered to be secondary sources (or even tertiary sources because they often synthesize information from other secondary sources), but if you undertake a research project to evaluate the ways that U.S. History textbooks published in the 1960s interpreted the Civil War, U.S. History textbooks from the 1960s would be *primary* sources for your investigation.
What other examples of the contextual nature of source categories can you think of? Post your ideas to Twitter, using the class hashtag (#CNM1103). Include links to websites, articles, etc that illustrate the source-types and examples that you’ve come up with.
History’s multiple definitions
In line with our studies thus far, we should continue to flesh out our understanding of the term “history.” Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot has written about the ways that power relations and memory shape history and our understanding of the past. In his evaluation of the Haitian Revolution and the ways we remember it (or don’t), he attempts to address the problem that, as human beings, we are imperfect. And, imperfect human beings both participate in events that become history and then later attempt to interpret and understand those events.
Human beings participate in history both as actors and as narrators. The inherent ambivalence of the word ‘history’ in many modern languages, including English, suggests this dual participation. In vernacular use, history means both the facts of the matter and a narrative of those facts, both ‘what happened’ and ‘that which is said to have happened.’ The first meaning places the emphasis on the sociohistorical process, the second on our knowledge of that process or on a story about that process. (Trouillot, Silencing the Past, p. 2).
Much of Trouillot’s book deals with understanding the boundaries between history as *what happened* and as *that which was said to have happened* in an effort to uncover the role of power in the formation of historical narratives and their associated silences.
Why do Trouillot’s ideas matter for us as we consider how to apply Historical Thinking skills to primary sources? For one, his work helps us to problematize historical evidence. Although we define primary sources as *evidence,* such evidence always requires interpretation and should never be taken at face value.
Primary sources don’t necessarily tell us “what happened,” but begin a dialogue about “that which was said to have happened.”
In Western societies, we’ve placed much faith in the value of the written word, a faith that isn’t misplaced but that often tends toward blindness. Already in the course of our class conversations, we’ve often been quick to dismiss oral or non-written histories as problematic because of the ways that they change over time. While I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t approach oral histories critically — we absolutely should, we also need to recognize the imperfections and problems inherent in written records as we look to them as historical evidence.
All written primary sources contain bias. Although that word tends to carry a negative connotation, we might simply think of it as a clue to help us understand an author’s perspective, why they might emphasize certain details and leave out others, and what those details might be. Authors’ worldviews, cultural contexts, positions of power or powerlessness always shape their accounts.
As British historian John H. Arnold has noted, bias is something we should identify and use to our advantage. Biases help us understand the context of the source and, “without bias (were ever such a thing possible), there would be no need for historians. So, ‘bias’ is not something to find and eradicate, but rather something to hunt and embrace” (Arnold, History: A Very Short Introduction, p. 67).
Sources cannot speak for themselves — they must be carefully evaluated and interpreted.
Contextualizing and Reading Primary Sources
So, how should we approach the study of primary sources and why might the questions that we ask of primary sources differ from those we ask of secondary sources?
Read “How to Read a Primary Source” from Patrick Rael’s website to consider possible answers to this question. What does his acronym PAPER stand for and how can each point help us to think critically about primary sources that we find through our research?
Additionally, this handout from Dr. Cate Denial’s work with primary sources and the Bringing History Home project provides another framework for approaching primary sources critically. In the video below, a group of students at Princeton University discusses her framework in the context of how they would apply it to the specific topics that they research.
Now that you’ve read and viewed the resources provided above, write a short Medium post that answers the question of how and why we should approach primary sources differently than secondary ones. Which questions are most important to ask about primary source materials, and why? In particular, why is it important to ask what a source does not (or cannot) tell us? How does understanding Trouillot’s distinction between the two connotations of history (“what happened” and “that which was said to have happened”) help us think critically about primary sources?
Medium post and Twitter comments are due by the first Sunday of this Unit (October 17) by 11:59 pm.
Archives and Archival Thinking
Primary sources are often preserved in archives. As with our understanding of historical study more generally, our understanding of the nature of archives has changed and developed over time. Archivists and historical researchers recognize that they play a role in the organization, preservation, and public access (or lack thereof) to documents.
To quote John H. Arnold again, archives “are systematized repositories of information, cared for and nurtured by professionals. This is important for two reasons. First, the sources of the past do not survive in neat patterns of their own accord. Just imagine if the pages of [a] book, instead of being bound together in numerical order, were delivered to you as an untidy pile. It would take a long time to make sense of what was being said. . .! Archivists place the relics of the past into some kind of order, so that others can use them. Secondly, there are huge numbers of surviving sources. The NRO [Norfolk and Norwich Record Office, UK] alone houses around two million different documents. It would take a historian a very long time to leaf through all of these. Instead, archivists spend time creating what are called ‘finding aids.’ These are lists of documents, often with brief summaries of what they contain, so that the historian has some idea of what to ask the archivists to bring to him or her” (Arnold, History: A Very Short Introduction, p. 60).
Archives are more than simple repositories of documents and artifacts. Decisions are made at many points along the way, concerning whose papers/records will be held at an archive and why, how those papers will be organized and categorized, what type of access will be granted to researchers, the level of detail available via the finding aids, and which sets of records will be digitized for publication on the internet.
In certain cases, such as that of Guatemala’s National Police Archive (AHPN, Archivo Historico de la Policía Nacional) that many of you read about in Unit 3, the archive served as a tool of state repression before later being opened up to the public as a means of finding some sort of closure for violence enacted against friends and loved ones during the civil war (1960–1996). [Unfortunately, public access has been limited and the future of the archive itself remains uncertain due to developments during the last couple of years.]
As has been the case with the AHPN due to a partnership with the University of Texas at Austin, many archives are undergoing digitization and are becoming accessible to a wider range of researchers via the internet. Even with computer search technologies, and also because of them, the questions we ask of the archive can limit the types of information we’re able to find. [For more on the limitations and problems of research in digital archives, see Lara Putnam’s “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable,” American Historical Review, April 2016]
Applying What We’ve Learned
During the second week of this Unit, we’ll focus on a set of primary source documents that I came across while conducting research at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archive (NMSRCA) in Santa Fe. During my research, I took digital photos of documents relevant to the history of Columbus, New Mexico — the focus of my doctoral dissertation.
I’ll provide a bit of background information on the collection in which the documents are housed as well as their physical presentation, and then I’ll turn you loose to apply your Historical Thinking skills to interpret them. Admittedly, this assignment is a little unfair because you won’t have ready access to additional sources that you might need to contextualize those I’ve shared below. But, I hope it will still be a good exercise that will provide a window into archival research.
Take notes on the documents using the method that works best for you. They were created as .jpg files originally, so they won’t work with Hypothes.is, unfortunately.
The physical documents that are photographed in the files linked below are located in the Governor Merritt C. Mechem Papers and they relate to an investigation into the 24th Infantry stationed at Columbus, N.M., in the 19-teens and early 1920s. Collection # 1959–098, Box 6, folder 194.
Here are the photos from the collection as a single PDF file:
Or, if you’d like to view the jpg files, the Google Drive folder below contains them:
If you’ve never visited an archival collection before, each one is run just a little bit differently but all have a few things in common. The papers of people, like governors, diplomats, professors, etc., are preserved in archival boxes that contain sets of manila folders holding categorized documents. So, if you use the online finding aid to search for collections that may be relevant to your investigation, you’ll take note of the collection number, the box number, and folder number that you want to consult.
The photos in the file above are held in a single manila folder (folder 194) in a specific box (box 6) of the Governor Merritt C. Mechem Papers. Taken together, all of the boxes in the collection span nine linear feet.
Some archives require that you wear cloth gloves and face masks (even pre-pandemic as an added measure to preserve the documents). Among those that I’ve visited, the NMSRCA requires gloves and that you take notes only with paper and pencil provided by the archivists, unless you’ve brought your laptop. The Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City, housed in the building that was formerly the Lecumberri Penitentiary (the records are held in what were once prison cells), requires both gloves and a face mask, but does not require researchers to fill out paperwork for the digital photos they plan to take of the collections they consult as do some others.
You don’t have to worry about those types of provisions as you read through the digitized documents for this assignment, but you should try to imagine what it may have been like to work through the documents in the way they’re presented to researchers at the archive. Based on the photos, you’ll be able to tell that the documents were all contained in the same folder. One of the requirements at all archives is to maintain the order that the documents are in when they get to you. So, I opened the folder, read and photographed the document on top, turned it over onto the empty side of the folder face down, and moved on to the next one. And so on.
I haven’t included all of the documents in the folder because many were redundant and I wanted to make the reading load manageable, while still providing you with enough documentation to be able to extract a narrative from the documents. And, even if you had access to every single document in the folder, you would still find that there are major gaps and silences in the information that they provide.
Some context on the history of Columbus, New Mexico, is provided in my article, “Columbus, New Mexico: The Creation of a Border Place Myth, 1888–1916,” which some of you read during Unit 4. That article presents the history of the town prior to Pancho Villa’s raid in March 1916. The controversy over the African American 24th Infantry outlined in the archival documents occurred between 1920 and 1922, although the 24th had been stationed at Columbus on-and-off since 1916. Horace Daniel Nash’s “Community Building on the Border,” which some of you read in Unit 3, provides additional context on the history of the 24th in Columbus.
The Assignment
Now that I’ve provided you with a set of archival documents, some comments about their physical state, and a little bit of historical context, you will create a four-part post on Medium that addresses the following:
- Choose one of the documents from the set and apply the PAPER acronym as best as you can. Doing so may require some additional research.
- Write a narrative of the events and issues described in the documents. What story can you tell about the 24th Infantry? Officials in NM and Washington D.C? People in the Village of Columbus? How did you deal with the contradictory and opposing perspectives presented in the documents?
- What limitations and obstacles did you face as you attempted to create a narrative history from the documents provided? Which perspectives can you relate? Which are not included? How might you address the gaps in the record? What other resources would you like to (or did you) consult to provide further historical context?
- What did this exercise help you to understand about archival research and the analysis of primary sources? What questions do you still have?
Please feel free to include multimedia in your post, including screenshots or other copies of the documents, if you’re so inclined.
Here is a cast of characters and terms from the documents that might be helpful as you read:
- Governor Merritt C. Mechem
- 24th Infantry
- Mayor J.R. Blair
- Director of the Bureau of Protective Social Measures (Caroline E. Boone)
- John W. Weeks (U.S. Secretary of War)
- Village Board of Trustees (Columbus, NM)
- Camp Furlong
- Secretary Albert B. Fall (former NM Senator)
- Fort Sam Houston, Texas
- C.P. Mills (Major Inspector General)
- W.C. Franklin (Cashier, Columbus First National Bank)
- C.V. Safford (Administrative Assistant, Department of War)
Your Medium Post on the 24th Infantry Documents is due on the Second Sunday of this Unit (October 24) by 11:59 pm MDT.
What did we learn?
Now that we’ve critically evaluated a set of primary sources, we’ll spend some time reading, thinking about, and responding to one another’s different interpretations of the same folder of documents. Essentially, we’ve now produced a set of secondary sources based on the same primary source material.
During the third week of this Unit, we’ll spend some time reading one another’s Medium posts about the 24th Infantry Documents, responding to them, and thinking about the most important ideas we’ve taken away from this Unit’s work.
First, locate and read at least two of your classmates’ posts on the 24th Infantry Documents. To do so, look at the home page for our class publication (those posts submitted to the publication will appear there), AND/OR search for the Intro to Historical Study tag (if you’ve tagged your posts that way, go to one of your posts and click that tag at the bottom), AND/OR consult the spreadsheet of Medium usernames for our class members (if you changed yours since the beginning of the term, please update the sheet).
I’ve listed the “locate and read” step separately from the “respond” step below because I want us to take some time to sit with each other’s words and think about how and why we’ve all approached the documents in different ways. What do the differing interpretations help us learn about the nature of historical study?
Second, add substantive comments to the posts you’ve read using the Respond function that’s built into Medium. This post explains what that is and how to use it. Address some or all of the following in your comments to each other:
- Comment on the differences in interpretation you noticed in others' narratives. What specific differences did you notice? What did the other post help you to see or understand about the documents that you may not have considered when you wrote your post?
- Comment on the ways that others’ narratives demonstrate the application of some of the 5Cs of Historical Thinking (Context, Change, Complexity, Contingency, Causality). Did you have the 5Cs in mind when you wrote your narrative?
- Ask questions about why your classmates reached the conclusions they did. What factors contributed to their interpretation of the documents?
Third and finally, create one more Medium post to address the question of what this entire exercise has helped you to learn about the nature of historical study. What new insights have you gained about the processes and work that goes into creating historical narratives? Will you think differently now when you read narratives about the past? Why or why not? If you could change the document activity in any way, how would you change it? Why?
Your Responses to one another and your Second Medium post on the 24th Infantry Documents Activity is due on the Third Sunday of this Unit (October 31) by 11:59 pm MDT.
During the next Unit we’ll turn our attention to choosing topics for historical research and posing effective historical questions. Be thinking about topics you might want to research for the final project.
