The Walam Olum, Walum Olum or Wallam Olum, usually translated as "Red Record" or "Red Score", is purportedly a historical narrative of the Lenape (Delaware) Native American tribe. The document has provoked controversy as to its authenticity since its publication in the 1830s by botanist and antiquarian Constantine Samuel Rafinesque. Ethnographic studies in the 1980s and analysis in the 1990s of Rafinesque's manuscripts have produced significant evidence that the document may be a hoax.
The work In 1836 in his first volume of The American Nations, Rafinesque published what he represented as an English translation of the entire text of the Walam Olum, as well as a portion in the Lenape language.
The text included a long list of chiefs' names, which appears to provide a timescale for the epic. According to Rafinesque, the chiefs appeared as early as 1600 BCE.Rafinesque, C.S.,The American nations; or, outlines of their general history, ancient and modern, including: the whole history of the earth and mankind in the western hemisphere; the philosophy of American history; the annals, traditions, civilization, lanuguages, &c., of all the American nations, tribes, empires, and states 1836 p. 124
The story in summary The narrative begins with the formation of the universe, the shaping of the Earth, and the creation of the first people, by the Great Manitou. Then, as the Great Manitou creates more creatures, an evil manitou creates others, such as flies. Although all is harmonious at first, an evil being brings unhappiness, sickness, disasters and death. A great snake attacks the people and drove them from their homes. The snake floods the land and makes monsters in the water, but the Creator makes a giant turtle, on which the surviving people ride out the flood and pray for the waters to recede. When land emerges again, the people are in a place of snow and cold, so they develop the skills of housebuilding and hunting, and begin explorations to find more temperate lands. Eventually, they choose to head east from the land of the Turtle to the land of the Snake, walking across the frozen ocean and first reaching a land of spruce trees.
After a few generations (from this point on, chiefs of the tribe are named), the people begin to spread into the adjoining territories. Many generations pass. (The characteristics of each chief are briefly described.) Then, a large part of the nation decides to invade the territory of the Talegawi people, with the help of the northern Talamatan. The invasion succeeds. The Talamatan later become hostile, but are quickly subdued, and a further long period of consolidation begins. Slow expansion into the rich eastern lands eventually reaches another sea, where, after generations, the first white men arrive in ships.
There the text ends, though Rafinesque did publish an additional "Fragment: On the History of the Linapis since abt. 1600, when the Wallamolum closes," which takes the story up to his own time. This (which incidentally names the composer of the original Walam Olum as one Lekhibit) exists only as a purported translation by John Burns, who has himself never been satisfactorily identified.
Provenance Rafinesque claimed the original narrative was recorded in pictographs on birch bark, or cedar wood tablets or sticks (Rafinesque explained that "Olum ... implies a record, a notched stick, an engraved piece of wood or bark.") He said "the late Dr. Ward of Indiana" acquired the materials in 1820 from a Lenape patient in return for a medical cure, and eventually passed them on to Rafinesque. From Rafinesque's personal notes and a family legend, this Dr. Ward was tentatively identified in 1954 as Dr. John Russell Ward, a Kentucky physician who died in 1834,Weer, Paul (1954). "History of the Walam Olum Manuscript and Painted Records". In Voegelin, Charles F. (et al.) Walam Olum; or, Red Score, the Migration Legend of the Lenni Lenape, Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, p. 264. but a potential Indiana candidate has been identified: Malthus A. WardWilliam Barlow and David O. Powell "The Late Dr. Ward of Indiana": Rafinesque's Source of the Walam Olum" in Indiana Magazine of History Vol. 82, No. 2 (June 1986), pp. 185-193. (1794–1863, so not "late" in the sense of "deceased") who spent some of his early career in Indiana, moved to New England in 1823 and from 1831 was professor of natural history at the University of Georgia."Malthus Ward (1794-1863)" in the New Georgia Encyclopedia. Accessed 2010-11-01 He said the explanatory transcription of verses in the Lenape language came from a different source, in 1822.Brinton, Daniel G. (1885) The Lenâpé and their Legends: With the Complete Text and Symbols of the Walam Olum After his translation was published, Rafinesque said he lost the actual plaques.Jackson, Brittany and Mark Rose. "Walam Olum Hokum." Archaeology. 4 Dec 2009 (retrieved 26 Dec 2009)
When Rafinesque wrote an essay on the Lenape language in October 1834, he did not mention the Walam Olum at all. It was two months later that he submitted a supplement about it. This was shortly after he acquired a list of authentic Lenape names compiled by John Heckewelder.Oestreicher, David M. (1996) "Unraveling the Walam Olum", Natural History 105 (10):14–21. (also revised version in Boewe, 2003) Rafinesque's translation of the 183 verses totals fewer than 3,000 words. In his manuscript he juxtaposed the pictographs with the verses in Lenape language that explained them. This material is now held at the University of Pennsylvania and has been digitized.Wallam-Olum: first and second parts of the painted and engraved traditions of the Linnilinapi / translated word for word by C. S. Rafinesque. UPenn Ms. Coll. 700, Item 217 Any items in Rafinesque's large collection of specimens, which did not find a ready sale after his death were apparently destroyed. There is no evidence other than Rafinesque's testimony that the original sticks existed. Scholars have only his work to study.
Twentieth-century archaeology has confirmed that by Rafinesque's time, Native Americans had been using birch bark scrolls for over 200 years. In 1965 the archaeologist Kenneth Kidd reported on two finds of "trimmed and fashioned pieces of birch bark on which have been scratched figures of animals, birds, men, mythological creatures, and esoteric symbols" in the Head-of-the-Lakes region of Ontario. Some of these resembled scrolls used by the Mide Society of the Ojibwa.Kidd, p. 480 A scroll from one of these finds was later dated to about 1560 +/-70 CE.Rajnovich, Grace. Reading Rock Art: Interpreting the Indian Rock Paintings of the Canadian Shield. Dundurn Press Ltd., 1994. .
The Walam Olum in the 19th century While there was controversy about the Walam Olum, it was treated as an accurate account by historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists for many years. Ephraim G. Squier, widely regarded as an influential figure of American 19th-century archaeology, republished the text in 1849. He accepted it as genuine, partially on internal evidence but also because the educated Indian chief (Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh) (George Copway), to whom he showed the manuscript, "unhesitatingly pronounced it authentic, in respect not only to the original signs and accompanying explanations in the Delaware dialect, but also in the general ideas and conceptions which it embodies. He also bore testimony to the fidelity of the translation." More recently, Barnhart noted that Copway was "fluent in his native dialect and knowledgeable of the traditions of the Ojibwa and other Algonquian groups such as the Lenape, but he was certainly not an expert on the traditions and language of the Delaware."Barnhart, pp. 130-131 On February 16, 1849, after the documented was republished, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft wrote to Squier that he believed the document is "well sustained by comparisons with such transcripts as I have obtained from bark scrolls, and the tabular pieces of wood called music boards".
In 1885, after the third printing, the well-known ethnographer Daniel G. Brinton published a new translation of the text.Daniel Garrison Brinton, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque. 1885 The Lenâpé and Their Legends: With the Complete Text and Symbols of the Walam Olum. A New Translation, and an inquiry into its authenticity. Brinton explained, "In several cases the figures or symbols appear to me to bear out the corrected translations which I have given of the lines, and not that of Rafinesque. This, it will be observed, is an evidence, not merely that he must have received this text from other hands, but the figures also, and weighs heavily in favor of the authentic character of both."Brinton, p. 157
The 1885 edition may have been read by ethnographer and explorer James Mooney. Published in 1888, his Myths of the Cherokee references the Walum Olum. In his "Historical sketch of the Cherokee" at the beginning of the work he attempts to adduce the origins of the term 'Cherokee:' "... among other synonyms for the tribe are Rickahockan or Rechahecrian, the ancient Powhatan name, and Tallige', or Tallige'wi, the ancient name used in the Walam Olum chronicle of the Lenape'."Mooney, James. King, Duane (ed.). Myths of the Cherokee. Barnes & Noble. New York. 1888 (2007). pp. 4 - 10
The Walam Olum in the 20th century In the 1930s, Erminie Voegelin attempted to find evidence of Walam Olum narrative elements in independent Lenni-Lenape and Delaware sources; the parallels were at best inconclusive.Voegelin, Erminie W., "Cultural parallels," pp. 28-31 Doubts about the text's authenticity began to grow. In 1952 renowned archaeologist James Bennett Griffin publicly announced that he "had no confidence in the 'Walam Olum'." Historian William A. Hunter also believed the text a hoax. In 1954 archaeologist John G. Witthoft found linguistic inaccuracies and suspicious correspondences of words in the texts to 19th-century Lenape-English word lists. He concluded that Rafinesque composed the narrative from Lenape texts already in print.Witthoft, John, 1955. "The Walam Olum Project", International Journal of American Linguistics Vol. 21, p194. The following year, he announced in the Journal of American Linguistics the start of a Walam Olum project for further study, but this project did not take place.
In 1954, a multidisciplinary team of scholars from the Indiana Historical Society published another translation and commentary. They stated, "The 'Red Score' is a worthy subject for students of aboriginal culture." A reviewer noted that the team was not able to identify Dr. Ward, and he concluded that the document's origins "are undeniably clouded". Anthropologist Della Collins Cook commented on the 1954 study, "The scholarly essays are best read as exercises in stating one's contradictory conclusions in a manner designed to give as little offense as possible to one's sponsor."Buikstra, Jane and Lane Beck, eds. Bioarchaeology: The Contextual Analysis of Human Remains, Academic Press (2006) Other translations and commentaries have followed, including translations into languages other than English.