THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thaddeus A. Culbertson HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1809
May 20, Saturday: Alexander Culbertson was born in Pennsylvania.
French forces captured Oviedo in Asturias from the Spanish.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 20th of 5th Mo // Time steals away & alafs how poorly improved. I often think of it with sorrow & hope to be more afsiduous with respect to those things that belong to the Soul’s peace, both yesterday & today I have had a little life particularly in our pauses at Meals when it did seem as if a little of the precious life did arise & spread over the Mind & was sweetly breathed in thankfulness for our outward favors, & that we might know an increase of inward sustinance Oh Father help us. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Thaddeus A. Culbertson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1823
Thaddeus A. Culbertson was born, a younger brother of Alexander Culbertson.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Thaddeus A. Culbertson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1829
Alexander Culbertson became an employee of the American Fur Company.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thaddeus A. Culbertson HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1833
By this point Alexander Culbertson had established fur trade on the Upper Missouri. Back home in Pennsylvania, his 10-year-old brother Thaddeus A. Culbertson would read his letters describing western adventures.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thaddeus A. Culbertson HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1839
Alexander “Ksistuki Pokah” (Beaver Child) Culbertson took charge of the fur trade at Fort Union, Dakota after being at Fort McKenzie.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thaddeus A. Culbertson HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1840
Alexander “Ksistuki Pokah” (Beaver Child) Culbertson of Fort Union took charge of the fur trade at Fort Laramie, and got married with Na-Ta-Wis-Cha of the Blackfoot tribe. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1845
Alexander “Ksistuki Pokah” (Beaver Child) Culbertson established Fort Benton, the first permanent settlement in Montana. The main building of the fort would be constructed of adobe during the following year. Bones and fossils he collected in the Badlands of the Dakota Territory aroused the interest of the Smithsonian Institution.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Thaddeus A. Culbertson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1847
Up to this point Alexander “Ksistuki Pokah” (Beaver Child) Culbertson had been serving as superintendent of the Upper Missouri Outlet, which included all forts on the Yellowstone River and the upper Missouri River. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1849
Alexander “Ksistuki Pokah” (Beaver Child) Culbertson and John Evans went into the Badlands of the Dakota Territory. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1850
March: Thaddeus A. Culbertson, a younger brother of Alexander “Ksistuki Pokah” (Beaver Child) Culbertson, after an education in biology at Yale College, went at the age of 27 toward the Badlands of the Dakota Territory under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. During this month Thaddeus and his older brother Alexander left St. Louis on the steamer “Mary Blane.” Thaddeus would go ashore at St. Joseph and proceed by carriage to Fort Pierre, the point of departure for the Badlands. He would also visit Fort Clark and Fort Union. After returning to Fort Pierre with a cartload of collections, he would board the steamer “El Paso” and journey up the Missouri River to a point above the Milk River, “higher than any steamboat had ever gone previously” (refer to McDermott, J.F., ed. JOURNAL OF AN EXPEDITION TO THE MAUVAISES TERRES AND THE UPPER MISSOURI IN 1850 BY THADDEUS CULBERTSON. Smithsonian Institution Bulletin on American Ethnology 147: 1-145). His “Tabular View of the Sioux Nation on the Upper Missouri,” recorded the nations, tribes, subtribes, principal bands, and the country ranged by and leading men of each tribe. A portion of his journal would be published immediately, as an appendix to the 5th Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution.
SMITHSONIAN REPORT 5
(This 5th Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution also contains, on pages 133-136, T.C. Porter’s LIST OF PLANTS COLLECTED BY MR. T.A. CULBERTSON ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE MAUVAISES TERRES AND UPPER MISSOURI IN 1850.)
July: Thaddeus A. Culbertson and Alexander “Ksistuki Pokah” (Beaver Child) Culbertson arrived back at St. Louis.
August: Thaddeus A. Culbertson died of “bilious dysentery.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1851
Alexander “Ksistuki Pokah” (Beaver Child) Culbertson was appointed as interpreter and special agent of the US federal government in making treaties with the Indians. From this point forward he would be referred to as “Major Culbertson.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1852
December 29, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau accessed, by way of the library of the Society of Natural History in Boston, Thaddeus A. Culbertson’s “Journal of an Expedition to the Mauvais Terres and the Upper Missouri, 1850,” on page 84-145 of the SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 5TH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1851).
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON (Thoreau would make notes on this reading in his Indian Notebook #6 and in his Fact Book.)
A Spiritualist convention began in New-York’s Masonic Temple. Jonathan Buffum of Lynn, Massachusetts would serve as this convention’s chairman, Mr. Haywood of Milford, Alfred Bingham of New-York, and the Reverend Mr. Loveland of Charlestown would be their Vice Presidents, and Messrs. C.H. White and S.C. Hewitt would serve as their Secretaries. A newspaper reporter was present and taking notes, and would soon file a report full of mockery and diatribe. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
Marietta Alboni would be appearing on this evening and the following one, in Cenerentola at the Broadway Theater. Soon she would be appearing in Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment and then in Bellini’s Sonnambula and Norma (all this would be witnessed by Walt Whitman). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1855
Major Alexander Culbertson contributed to the success of negotiations with the Blackfoot and Gros Ventres tribes, permitting a survey through their territory for a transcontinental railroad. From this year into 1861, the US War Department would be publishing an enormously elaborate and fantastically well illustrated multi- volume REPORTS OF EXPLORATIONS AND SURVEYS, TO ASCERTAIN THE MOST PRACTICABLE AND ECONOMICAL ROUTE FOR A RAILROAD FROM THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN; THESE INCLUDE ACCOUNTS OF SURVEYING EXPEDITIONS WHICH GREATLY INCREASE KNOWLEDGE AND INTEREST CONCERNING THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE, DOCUMENTED BY ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTISTS ACCOMPANYING THE EXPEDITIONS, burning away in the process a fantastically large %age of the very tiny federal budget. Due to the radical increase in the size of the federal budget, with income taxes and all that — nothing we have done since this point in time, not even fighting a war or paying Social Security and Welfare and Medicare, has come even remotely close to consuming the same large %age of the annual federal budget.
And guess what? –Few scholars now even bother to consult these volumes. It was straightforwardly a boondoggle.
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Thaddeus A. Culbertson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
1879
Alexander Culbertson died in Orleans, Nebraska.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thaddeus A. Culbertson HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: September 12, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON THADDEUS A. CULBERTSON
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
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