Welcome, fellow skeptics, to Skeptical History: where we dissect the mystery that is history!
I’m Juliana, I have a Bachelor of Arts in History & Writing, and am studying a Master of Research in History. My mission here at the Skeptical Historian is to challenge the myths and get to the truth about historical events, heroes and ideas. I am especially passionate about giving people tools to question accepted narratives, especially those which were created to disadvantage certain groups due to historical and/or social prejudices.
For a long time history has been something which comprised of events and dates, with the occasional dead (white) guy thrown in to try and make it interesting. But events, dates and dead (white) guys are only part of the story, and usually not the interesting part either.
For example, in the British Museum of Natural History (a repository of stolen cultural artefacts) is a small copper nugget, weighing 2.95 grams, which was found by explorer Samuel Hearne in 1770, in what is now the far north of Canada. He was guided to the copper field by Matonabbee, who was a leader of the T’satsaot’ine (Copper People), the indigenous people of that region. Hearne found the nugget, but attempts to mine for copper by the British were a failure and the nugget was displayed at the museum as a symbol of British grit and determination! What other people, they said, could possibly reach the very ends of the earth and return?
That’s the official story. It’s predictable, it’s dull, and it follows the usual formula: event + date + dead white guy = history.
But, what Hearne and the British copper miners never knew was that Matonabbee and the T’satsaot’ine had pulled the wool over their eyes to protect their precious and sacred copper fields. The T’satsaot’ine had had contact with British invaders and knew that these white men were nothing but trouble! They brought disease, deadly weapons and famine with them wherever they went; they were violent and had no respect for the laws of the people they encountered, and tended to leave piles of bodies behind them. The T’satsaot’ine wanted to keep them off their land and out of their copper fields!
Image of the copper nugget “found” by Samuel Hearne in 1770. (Museums Victoria, Treasures of the Natural World Catalogue, Melbourne, Museums Victoria Publishing, 2021, p. 228)
So they took Hearne to a place where they had already stripped the copper, apart from a few small nuggets they couldn’t use. Hearne saw copper, so assumed there was more, but was disappointed and went home with his copper miners. Meanwhile, the T’satsaot’ine went back to the copper fields they had kept secret and continued to mine their precious deposits for centuries, in an area of land the British had written off as having no value, due to the lack of copper.
Isn’t that a much more interesting story?
Far from being a story of how the British got to the end of the world, this artefact tells the story of how Matonabbee and the T’satsaot’ine ensured the safety and prosperity of their people for centuries to come. Given the racist attitudes and white supremist mindset prevalent in Britain (and much of western Europe) at the time, Hearne and his party wouldn’t have believed the T’satsaot’ine were intelligent enough to fool them. In their minds, they were the God ordained masters of the world, destined to rule over inferior people, so if the “inferior people” said there was no copper, then it must be true because they wouldn’t have the ability to deceive the rightful masters of the universe.
Ha!
We know the stories, so let’s find out what really happened.
Juliana, the Skeptical Historian