Dr. Herman J. Viola is a curator emeritus at the
Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
A specialist on the history
of the American West, he served as director of the Museum's National
Anthropological Archives in addition to organizing two major exhibitions for
the Smithsonian. "Magnificent Voyagers" told the story of the United
State Exploring Expedition of 1838-42, and "Seeds of Change" examined
the exchange of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old and the New Worlds
as a result of the Christopher Columbus voyages of discovery. Prior to joining
the staff of the
Smithsonian Institution in 1972, he was an archivist at the
National Archives of the United States, where he launched and was first editor
of Prologue: The Journal of the National Archives.
Dr. Viola's research specialties include the American Indian, the Civil War,
and the exploration of the American West. He has authored numerous books on
these topics, including
Exploring the West,
After Columbus,
Warrior
Artists,
Warriors in Uniform, The North American Indians,
and
Little Bighorn Remembered: the Untold Indian Story of Custer's Last
Stand. He is also the author of the middle school social studies textbook,
Why We Remember.
Dr. Viola received his B.A. and M.A. from Marquette University, and his
Ph.D. from Indiana University/Bloomington.
1.
How did you get hooked on history?
As a child I was very asthmatic and so I could not play sports. There
was no television then—I was born in 1938. A cousin got me a library card and I
began to read and I learned to love books and reading. My favorite books were
about animals and history, especially Indians. I loved to talk about the
books I read and I would tell my teachers what I learned.
I went to a Catholic grade school and my teachers were nuns. One day
just before the dismissal bell rang my 3
rd grade teacher asked me if
I had read anything interesting that I could share with the class. I got
in front of the class and told one of the stories I had read. I think it was
about the knights and King Arthur’s court. Thereafter, every once in a
while, I was asked to tell a story. Looking back on it now I realize the
teacher had run out of things to teach and used me to fill in the time till the
dismissal bell rang, but that got me started as a historian, a teacher of
history.
2.
How has history affected your personal life?
History has been a vital part of my life. If I had any talents, it was
as an artist. I would often draw pictures of the historical events I read
about. The nuns at my grade school recognized my artistic skills and I often
was assigned the task of drawing scenes from history on large sheets of paper
that other students would color. These would be hung on bulletin boards
in the hall ways for parents to see during school visits. I would be
absent from class days at a time doing these drawings. I received my best
grades despite my absences from class.
Perhaps the most remarkable use of history in my personal life was during my
navy boot camp. After my graduation from college, I took a wrong turn at
a recruiting office and ended up at Great Lakes Navy Boot Camp instead of
Officer Candidate school. Needless to say, I was one of the few college
grads in my company. Most of the recruits were high school dropouts from the
Chicago
area. They were a rough bunch. Once it was discovered I was a college
grad, the other recruits would question me. Is it true you went to
college? What did you study? When I told them I majored in history, they
would laugh and say “What a dumb ass subject. No wonder you are a sailor instead
of an officer.” I would say, no, it is really a great subject. It
is so interesting. Did you ever hear of the
Alamo,
Custer’s Last Stand, Wyatt Earp, etc? They would say no, of course, and I
started telling my bunk mates a story from history during our evening rest
period while we spit shined our shoes for morning inspection. By the end
of my nine week boot camp, each evening I would have 20 or 30 sailors sitting
in a circle around my bunk, all polishing shoes and all listening to my
stories. Invariably, after evening chow, one of the sailors would ask,
“Hey teach, what’s our story tonight?” We had no TV’s in our barracks and
they were not readers.
It was this experience that convinced me to go for a master’s degree in
history after I left the navy. My original plan had been to go to art
school. The rest, as they say, is history. This experience
also led me to get involved in writing history text books for high school
because I was convinced a well told story would interest students and enjoy
history no matter how dysfunctional their backgrounds.
3.
How has history been a part of your professional life?
My original academic goal was to work at a museum as a curator. While
in college at
Marquette
University the
city of
Milwaukee
was building a new museum, only a couple of blocks away from the MU
campus. To be a curator you needed a master’s degree in history so that
is the program I entered at MU upon leaving the Navy. However, the
chairman of the History Department, F.P. Prucha, S.J., was so impressed with my
master’s thesis---the biography of Thomas L. McKenney, who started the Bureau
of Indian Affairs—he urged me to get a Ph.D. in history first. I went to
Indiana
University
and got the Ph.D. Then, as it turned out, the National Archives was
seeking applicants for an archival training program. Applicants needed a
History Masters or PH.D. Thanks to my biography of McKenney, I was hired
to be an archivist with the records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I remained
at the archives for 5 years. During that time I started the archives history
magazine,
Prologue. Then the Smithsonian, which was across the
street, recruited me to run their Anthropology Archives. Since my
original goal had been to be a museum curator, I accepted. It took
awhile, but I was a museum curator at last, all thanks to my study of history.
4.
Why is history important?
The knowledge of history is vital. History, in a sense, is the
memory of mankind. Without knowledge of the past, we cannot full understand
current events and that knowledge, ideally, helps us from making similar
mistakes that bedeviled people in times past. I titled the middle school
social studies textbook I wrote,
Why We Remember, because youngsters
always ask, why do we have to know that, why is that important? So the
book outlines why it is important to know facts and to remember them.
5.
What is the role of curators in preserving and promoting history?
Curators are scholars who specialize in certain subjects. Usually, they
have several advanced degrees and work in museums or art galleries. Their
specialties can seem very narrow, like the study of aquatic beetles or 18
th
French portraiture, but they fill an essential role in science and the arts.
Usually curators are responsible for a museum’s collections in their subject
areas and so they control access to these collections by other scholars and the
public. Often, they are called upon to participate in exhibits that
showcase the treasures in their custody. At the Smithsonian’s
Museum
of Natural History,
where I worked for more than twenty years, curators have specific titles such
as curator of botany, curator of entomology, and the like. I was the only
one in the museum with no specialty. I was simply curator.
There is some belief today that the role of curators is dying, but that is
erroneous. The role of curator is evolving, adapting to the major changes
in museum research and publication brought about by the technological
revolution. Curators are becoming more public figures through educational
programs, especially in the arts. Thanks to the internet, curators are
empowering a wider audience through collaboration and innovation not only
within their institutions but also in the virtual world.
6.
What incomplete stories of American Indian or Western history are left to be
told?
At first glance anyone interested in these topics would think there is
nothing left to research and write about. The key is to find a topic of
interest and then study what has already been told or written about it.
This should raise questions. What is missing? Is there
another side to the story that has been missed? One area of
research that has many possibilities is biography. Even very famous
people often have not had a biography written. My whole career as a
historian evolved from a term paper topic I was assigned. My professor,
Fr. Prucha, was writing a book and needed to know about Thomas L. McKenney, the
man who started the Bureau of Indian Affairs. When I got the assignment I
was very upset because no one had ever written his biography so I had to do
considerable original research in archival materials and this was before the
computer. My term paper received an A and I became fascinated with McKenney.
Fr. Prucha suggested I write my master’s thesis about him, which I did. I
then made him the topic of my doctoral dissertation. My dissertation then
became my first book. That book led directly to my next two books because
I discovered no one had written about two important topics that McKenney dealt
with: the portraits of American Indians by Charles Bird King and the story of
Indian chiefs who came to
Washington,
DC. to meet
the president of the
United
States.
All this resulted from a term paper assignment I did not want to
write. Now, when I speak to school students, I tell them to always be
happy with their assignments because they could open a door to their life’s
work.
7.
What accomplishments in history have been most rewarding to you personally?
I am proud of many things of the things I have accomplished during my
career.
Doug Shipman has an extensive educational background in
issues of race, ethnicity and gender including undergraduate and graduate
studies in topics including the relationship between economics and poverty, the
history of American minority groups and religion as applied in social movements
including the American Civil Rights movement, the Indian independence movement
and the Buddhist environmental movement in Southeast Asia.
He
has also served as a facilitator for discussion groups exploring racial
understanding in Richmond, VA and Cambridge, MA. Doug has an MPP (Master of
Public Policy) from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University with
an emphasis on domestic politics; an MTS (Master of Theological Studies) from
the Harvard Divinity School with an emphasis on religion in public situations
and politics and a bachelor’s degree with High Honors from Emory University
with majors in Economics and Political Science. In 2010, Doug was named one of
the New Leaders Council's "40 under 40" in the area of political entrepreneurship.
History grounds each of us in
something deeper than today. History gives us a way to see patterns and
explore why the world looks as it does and why people believe what they do in
the present. I have always found myself more confident and more excited
in moving forward by understanding the context that can only be gathered
through the understanding of the historical precedents of a person, group or
place.
