I read in a newspaper Sports section today, "There is a tradition in the South, as in other parts of America, that a story worth telling places a responsibility on the listener to tell it again, in another place."
Some campfire stories bear repeating, and some don't, to be sure. Like some sermons, it's usually easier to pass on the good news, the keep on keeping on parts than it is the sad and troublesome. Relays bear the burden of choice especially in partings.
"To Powell's fury a group of archeologists persuaded Congress to divert part of the bureau's [the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology] funds into Mound Builder research aimed at proving that ancient European civilizations had once flourished in the Midwest. Powell [a self-taught geologist] responded by recruiting Cyrus Thomas, an entomologist-turned-archeologist, to prove that 'the prehistoric mound builders and the historic tribes were part of the same fabric of unbroken cultural development' (148, The Adventure).
"Fanning out over mound country in 1882, Thomas and his assistants found that popular tales about the mounds had created a fever for collecting artifacts. Landowners were selling them off; collectors traveled around the country digging into mounds and hauling away everything they found.
"Trying to stay ahead of the vandals, Thomas's colleagues worked as quickly as possible" (148).
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