Talk:Bloody Falls massacre

POV Tone
Article seems to give undue weight to speculation that event may not have happened. There is no reason to believe it didn't happen. Inuit and Dene were traditional enemies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1000:B16B:735F:5545:EC0C:D55A:5179 (talk) 11:35, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Fiction
Wasn't this largely discredited as fiction perpetrated by Samuel Hearne’s London editors?


 * That's the first time I've heard that. Do you have anything to back it up? I looked but couldn't find one thing to suggest that the account was fiction. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 19:41, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * A second expedition by Sir John Franklin that included Matonabbee's son found evidence of the massacre. See The Journey to the Polar Sea. Dger (talk) 00:18, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes this incident is highly disputed, and many scholars think of it as entirely fabricated. The Inuit who live at Kugluktuk also deny it. Far Off Metal River by Carleton University geography professor Emilie Cameron is an extremely thorough dissection of the myth of the Bloody Falls massacre. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.224.158.124 (talk) 03:29, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

I thought Sir John Franklin had confirmed the account during one of his expeditions. "Several human skulls which bore the marks of violence, & many bones were strewed about the encampment, & as the spot exactly answers the description, given by Mr. Hearne..." - John Franklin (1824) Vilhelmo De Okcidento (talk) 19:09, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

The account presented in Hearne's book was done in a sensationalised manner that was meant to appeal to the tastes and prejudices of a 18th century British audience, but that doesn't mean he made it up. Hearne comes across as a rather ineffectual and cowardly as he seeks to persuade the Dene not to massacre the Inuit, and it is not clear why he would seek to cast himself in that light in his book. The main objection to Hearne seems to be is that the Bloody Falls massacre is not mentioned in either Dene or Inuit oral history, but reflects a very poor understanding of how oral history works. Just as in the same way that only people only remember certain events in their life very well while other events are remembered only as a blur and some things are forgotten altogether, the same goes with oral history. Both Dene and Inuit oral histories describe their relations are one of endless skirmishes, raids, ambushes, and massacres of the sort described by Hearne; there is no reason why this one particular massacre should stick out in their oral histories when there were so many massacres over the centuries. The only reason why this massacre in 1771 is even remembered at all is about because Hearne wrote about it in his book.

In altogether different context, the German Order Police Reserve Battalion 101 massacred thousands of Polish Jews in 1942-43. In the 1960s, the Hamburg Public Prosecutor's Office interviewed the men of Reserve Battalion 101 about their actions in the 1942-43. Due to some peculiarities of the German legal system, which need not concern us here, the majority of the men of Reverse Battalion 101 were never charged and only a few junior officers got some short prison sentences in 1972. The transcripts of these interviews were the source of two books with very different conclusions, Ordinary Men (1992) by Christopher Browning, which is a very good, if rather distressing book, about how the ordinary men of the title descended into savagery, and Hitler's Willing Executioners (1996) by Daniel Goldhagen, which is a very bad book marked by a hysterical anti-German agenda. Leaving that aside, Browning makes the point that the men of Reseve Battalion 101 could only remember in the 1960s the massacre of Polish Jews at Józefów in August 1942 very clearly, which was the first massacre while the rest of the killings which went on to November 1943 only become a blur. The Reserve Police Battalion 101 stopped killing Jews in November 1943 because they were none left in the part of rural southern-eastern Poland around the city of Lublin that they were operating in. The Hamburg prosecutors kept pressing them about this massacre or that massacre, but the former policemen couldn't sort them in their minds. Only the Józefów massacre was remembered very clearly. I am not suggest there is any sort of moral equivalence here; the Shoah was a campaign to systematically exterminate an entire people while the Bloody Falls massacre was the pursuing of a local feud. One was bad, and the other far, far worse. The actions of the Dene in the 18th century should not be compared to the Shoah as their motives were completely different, but I would like to suggest that when people keep committing massacres, they don't stick out in the memory and it all becomes a blur. Hearne suggests in his account that this was not the first time the Dene he was travelling with had massacred Inuit nor probably was it the last time, so there was no real reason for this one massacre to stick out in their memory. What is striking about both Dene and Inuit oral histories is the vagueness of their accounts of their struggle; there were many skirmishes over the course of the centuries, but none of them are really described in any detail, just like how the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 had only vaguely remember their actions from the fall of 1942 to the fall of 1943.

Furthermore, when it comes to remembering history, people in general, not just First Nations people, tend to be very selective. Case in point. On 30 September 1938, when Neville Chamberlain came back to London from Munich after he signed the Munich Agreement and the Anglo-German declaration saying that Britain and Germany would never go to war again (contrary to what people say, the paper that Chamberlain is holding in his hand in the iconic photograph is the Anglo-German declaration, not the Munich Agreement, which was a bulky text that was a volume long), he was greeted by huge crowds who gave him a rapturous welcome. Newsreel footage at the time shows large crowds cheering Chamberlain on the streets of London as he was driven from the airport back to 10. Downing Street. There were so much congratulatory letters and telegrams coming in to 10. Downing Street that Chamberlain's staff were literally up to their waists with all the letters and telegrams. Public reaction was so favorable that many of Chamberlain's advisers suggested calling a snap election to take advantage of the public mood. As late as May 1939, a good 8 months after the Munich Agreement, a poll showed that Chamberlain had a 60% approval rating, which is a poll rating that many politicians today would kill for. Chamberlain remained a popular prime minister right up to the Phony War in the winter of 1939-40, when the perception emerged that he was an ineffectual war leader, and the failure of the Norwegian campaign brought down his government in May 1940. It was the Norway expedition, not appeasement, that caused Chamberlain's fall. But it only after the fall of France in June 1940 that really caused Chamberlain's reputation to go into a nosedive, from which it has never recovered from. In the summer of 1940, Britain was faced with the threat of a German invasion as the country was on the verge of defeat, and at that point, appeasement, which had been so popular in 1938, became the dirty word that it now is.

Since 1940, the British people have done an U-turn on the wisdom of the Munich Agreement, which has become a symbol of ignominious surrender and a diplomatic defeat, and Chamberlain, who was the most popular man in the world in the fall of 1938, has become the most despised and hated of British prime ministers. Comparing a leader to Chamberlain today is always meant to be an insult. Chamberlain's name has become so toxic that Iain Macleod, a leading Conservative politician of the 1960s, badly damaged his chances of becoming party leader when he published a sympathetic biography of Chamberlain in 1961. I myself can testify that from my own personal experience that many people out there seem to think that Chamberlain fell because of the Munich Agreement as I have lost count of the number of times that I heard people (including a great many with university degrees who should know better) say that Churchill declared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939. I keep correcting them, telling them that Chamberlain resigned as prime minister on May 8th of 1940, that Churchill only sworn in as prime minister on May 10 1940, and it was the failure of the Norway expedition that caused the fall of the Chamberlain government. Everyone looks at me like I am someone from Mars talking incomprehensible gibberish, and have told that I don't know what I am talking about. True, there were British people at the time who opposed the Munich Agreement, but they were a definitely a minority. But if you watch interviews done after 1940, almost everybody in Britain said that they were opposed to the Munich Agreement. There were very few people after 1940 who were willing to say that they were fans of Chamberlain, which contributes to the legend that Chamberlain was a massively unpopular prime minister during his time in in office (polls done at the time suggest otherwise). If one were to only use oral history to research the British people's reaction to the Munich Agreement, one gets the very misleading impression that the British public were overwhelmingly opposed to it at the time, and that Chamberlain was a widely hated prime minister. What happened in the past happened for whatever reason, and what changes is the memory of the past. The memory of the past unlike the past is fluid and ever-changing.

People only remember things that put them in a good light and forgot about things that put them in a bad light. Oral history is a legitimate source, but it has to be used with caution because people can be very selective with what they remember. Another example concerns Australian veterans of the Battle of Gallipoli. In the 1920s-30s, several Gallipoli veterans were interviewed by the Australian media, and they all presented the standard "Digger" stereotype, recalling how they were brave, tough, resolute, determined and fierce, talking about the battle like it was a bit of a lark. In the 1970s-80s, the same men were interviewed by oral historians, and they all presented different memories of Gallipoli. Speaking now as old men, the veterans recalled how they were terrified in the battle to the extent that they regularly lost control of their bowls, were horrified by the carnage, and spoke of their sadness at losing friends. What the same men were saying in the 1920s-1930s cannot be reconciled with what they were saying in the 1970s-1980s. They speak of the same events, but their reactions to them were completely different in these interviews that were done 50 years apart. What changed was the sort of stories that the Australian people wanted to hear. In the interwar period, Australians wanted to hear about how the men of Gallipoli had been "Diggers", who would just dig in and defend their ground no matter what, and the veterans adjusted their memory to what people wanted to hear. Nobody at the time wanted to hear about the horrors of Gallipoli. In the 1970s-80s, the veterans were all old men and in a post-Vietnam war era, people were more willing to talk about the horrors of the war, which explains the differences in how they they remembered Gallipoli. Not to pick on Australians-research has shown the same thing happens all the time. In 1943, a secret poll done by the U.S. Marine Corps showed that 60% of Marines in battle on Pacific islands against the Japanese confessed to being so scared that they lost control of their bowels-given that is an embarrassing question to answer honestly, the real percentage was likely higher. Yet, in American popular memory, the Marines who fought in islands the length of the Pacific are usually brave, tough soldiers who unflinchingly killed the Japanese. That part is right-the kill ratio for the Marines against the Imperial Japanese Army was lopsided as the Marines lost hundreds of men while the Japanese lost thousands. Through the Japanese code of Bushido where it was the greatest honor for a Japanese to die for the Emperor, whom the Japanese worshiped as a living god, helps explain why the Japanese losses were so high as the Japanese would never surrender and instead sought death in battle or committed suicide. For the Japanese caught up in the death cult fanaticism of Bushido, to surrender was the greatest shame, and death in battle was beautiful, romantic and erotic, which is why the Japanese were so anxious to die for their Emperor. This also helps why World War II is something of a taboo subject in Japan, as for many Japanese today, the values of their grandparents and great-grandparents seemed so strange and alien.

People who claim this massacre was fabricated by Hearne because Dene oral history doesn't mention it really don't understand the following. 1) That oral history doesn't record everything that happened, especially things that happened all the way back in 1771. Many things are remembered only in a blur, if at all. 2) That people tend not to remember things that put them in a bad light. Why would would the Dene remember an event that makes them look bad? Please don't get me wrong; I am not saying to say that all First Nations oral history is a pack of lies, because many aspects of First Nations oral history are correct. But those who very naively think that oral history is the total and complete unvarnished truth that records everything that happened really don't understand oral history very well. So broadly speaking, Hearne's account of the massacre seems to be accurate.--A.S. Brown (talk) 21:15, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

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Sources that doubt the massacre
Right now, the Historiography section is entirely unsourced. We could rewrite it to summarize the NICHE Canada] source. Its author, Emilie Cameron, has also written a book that doubts the massacre. Are there any sources, preferably not linked to Cameron, that share that perspective. Firefangledfeathers 20:12, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Ian S MacLaren isn't quite as explicit as Cameron in his 1991 ARIEL article "Samuel Hearne's accounts of the massacre at Bloody Fall, 17 July 1771", but he does doubt it, using phrases like "the so-called massacre", though his broader arguments are more towards embellishment than falsehood, a view that is supported by Adriana Craciun in "Writing the Disaster", pgs 447 and 448.
 * The opposite view is also expressed; Robin McGrath does so in his "Studies in Canadian literature" article "Samuel Hearne and the Inuit Oral Tradition", where he analyses the Inuit Oral tradition, concluding "It would be improper to come to any firm conclusion about Hearne and the Bloody Fall massacre based upon the various stories of Indian attacks recorded in the Coppermine area in this century, but the presence of European figures in so many of their massacre narratives does give weight to the belief that the massacre Hearne claimed to have witnessed did, indeed, happen at the Fall, and his presence there was noted by survivors."
 * "Romantic Literature and Postcolonial Studies" By Elizabeth A Bohls (pg 23) might also have some relevant information - I'll see if I can find a copy, though it may take some time. BilledMammal (talk) 23:03, 26 January 2022 (UTC)