Walam Olum Totally Explained

Everything about The Walam Olum totally explained

The Walam Olum, usually translated as "Red Record" or "Red Score," is said to be a Lenape (also called "Delaware") Native American creation narrative, although today most consider it to be a spurious account. The contents of the text include a summary of the history and migrations of the tribe. The original was allegedly recorded in pictographs on wooden tablets, though the explanatory accompanying transcription of verses in the Lenape language came from a different source.
   A purported English translation of the entire text and a sample portion of the Lenape words of the Walam Olum were published by the naturalist Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in the first volume of his book, The American Nations, in 1836. Rafinesque claimed therein to have acquired the wooden tablets containing pictographs from "the late Dr. Ward of Indiana." Someone unnamed—perhaps Dr. Ward—had supposedly received them in 1820 directly from the Lenape in return for a medical cure. Two years later the Lenape words related to the pictographs "were obtained from another individual." Rafinesque's translation of the 183 verses total fewer than 3,000 words; the supposed Lenape pictographs and verses in the Lenape language that explain them appear juxtaposed in Rafinesque's manuscript, which is now at the University of Pennsylvania. The original tablets have never been found. Scholars have had only Rafinesque’s manuscript copy to study.
   The Walam Olum includes a creation account, a flood story, and the narration of a series of migrations, which Rafinesque and others claimed or interpreted to begin in Asia. A long list of alleged chiefs are included, which appear to provide dates for the epic. According to Rafinesque, the chiefs appear as early as 1600 B.C.E.
   Despite the dubious origins of 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 archaeology, was first to republish the text in 1849. He was followed by a host of leading scholars from that time until the late 20th century. For example, in 1885, the well-known ethnologist, Daniel G. Brinton, published a new translation of the text. In 1954, a team of scholars from multiple disciplines published yet another translation and commentary. Other translations and commentaries have followed, including translations into languages other than English.
   A minority of scholars had long been suspicious of the Walam Olum’s veracity. As early as 1849 Henry Rowe Schoolcraft wrote to Ephraim G. Squier that he believed the document might be fraudulent. 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 resemblances of words in the texts to 19th century Lenape-English word lists but was unable to convince most of his colleagues that the text was spurious. A Walam Olum project was announced in 1955 by Witthoft in the Journal of American Linguistics (Witthoft 1955), but this project apparently never materialized.
   Some of this research contributed to an eventual determination of inaccuracy. For example, Witthoft's analysis implied that Rafinesque composed the narrative himself from Lenape texts that had already been put into print (Witthoft 1955). By the 1990's, the Walam Olum was considered by some to be a well-made fraud. Steven Williams summarized the history of the case and the evidence against the document, lumping it with many other famous archaeological frauds, in his 1991 publication.
   Herbert C. Kraft, an expert on the Lenape, had also long suspected the document to be a fraud. Kraft stated that it didn't square with the archaeological record and cited a 1985 survey conducted among Lenape elders by ethnologists David M. Oestreicher and James Rementer revealing that traditional Lenape had never heard of the document.
   Notwithstanding Witthoft's tentative steps, and the doubts of these many authors, there was still insufficient evidence for a satisfactory textual debunking of the narrative. In 1994, and afterwards, textual evidence that the Walam Olum was apparently a hoax was advanced by David M. Oestreicher in “Unmasking the Walam Olum: A 19th Century Hoax.” Oestreicher argued that Rafinesque crafted the linguistic text from specific sources on the Delaware Language published by the American Philosophical Society and elsewhere; that the supposedly “Lenape” pictographs were in fact truncated hybrids from published Egyptian, Chinese, and Mayan sources. Oestreicher also asserted that the stories were a conglomerate assembled from numerous sources on different cultures that literally spanned the globe; and that the Walam Olum was produced in part to win the international Prix Volney contest hosted in Paris and to prove Rafinesque’s long held theories regarding the peopling of America. A good summary of Oestreicher’s findings appears in Kraft’s last work and magnum opus, The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 BC to AD 2000.
   Although Oestreicher convincingly demonstrated that the Walam Olum isn't an authentic historical record and, in fact, must have been composed by someone having only a slight familiarity with the Lenape language, he hasn't been so successful in proving that Rafinesque created it. If the Walam Olum was invented as a hoax it's even more likely that Rafinesque was the intended victim of the hoax. During his years in Kentucky Rafinesque was often the butt of cruel practical jokes, the most notable being the mythical birds and fishes invented by John James Audubon for him to describe as scientific discoveries. Nor would Rafinesque have needed to waste ten years of his life trying to decipher the Walam Olum if he'd invented it, and surely he'd have referred to it in the text of his Prix Volney essay (1835) had he understood its alleged content, for the subject of that contest was the Algonquian languages, of which Lenape is one.
   Many traditional Lenape believe they've lived in their homeland (that is, in the New Jersey/Pennsylvania/New York City area) forever. Others, who have recently learned of the Walam Olum, have accepted that account.

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