Life, 1906-10-04 · page 19 of 44
Life — October 4, 1906 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes American founding myths through irreverent retellings. The main cartoon mocks Senator Reed Smoot (a prominent Republican) by having Balboa discover the Pacific by shouting his name—suggesting Smoot's prominence is absurdly inflated. The satire implies that even accidental American "discoveries" get credited to current politicians. The text then ironically reframes famous colonial encounters from Native American perspectives: Powhatan is devastated that his daughter Pocahontas becomes "meat for historical novelists," and Chief Massasoit's dignified gift of arrows becomes fodder for Yale-style joking. The "Water Cure" illustration (captioned as applied to "colonial dames") likely references torture methods, though the specific colonial reference is unclear. Overall, the page mocks how Americans mythologize their colonial past while ignoring indigenous suffering and agency.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Some Discoveries BiLBoN’s discovery of the Pacific was even less easy than it looks. For the intrepid Spaniard found difficulties of no mean sort awaiting him, “Is it the Pacific, ort only Great Salt Lake?” he exclaimed, vainly trying to pene- trate, with his eagle cye, the inscrutable depths of-the waters which thundered their defiance at his feet. Then it was that, under a species of inspiration, he suddenly called out, “Reed Smoot!” thrice, in a distinct nd, upon getting no answer, said, ly: “The ayes appear to have it. The ayes have it. It is the Pacific ” Was not this fortunate, in view of all the interesting and important things which history still had up her sleeve? om ie TR" THE “WATER CURE" AS APPLIED TO CERTAIN COLONIAL pastes Had Balboa chosen the wrong horn of Whether it was because they were not his dilemma, how would President gifted with the dramatic instinct, or Roosevelt ever have gone to work to dig whether, although aware that the mo- the Panama Canal, and what would ment was in no uncommon sense psycho- BALBOA DISCOVERS THE PacTTIC world politics be without a Far East ? Civilization owes something to Spain, and as often as she sends a collector we should treat him courteously ayd tell him when to call again. The adventure of John Smith and Pocahontas has never been looked’ at, in a serious way, from the point of view of Powhatan, the girl’s father. As a mat- ter of fact, Powhatan was profoundly affected. “To think of a man at my age being made meat of for the historical novelists by his own flesh and blood!” he ex- claimed, and never smiled again. logical, they reflected that a moment was not enough, under the Church of England ritual, Smith and Pocahontas did not Notwithstanding this, there have been Smiths in this country. At one time there were no fewer than six Smiths sitting in Congress, not to men- tion any other correctional institutions. When the Chief Massasoit, putting on as many airs as if he were Sox at the very. least, handed out to Governor Winthrop the rattlesnake skin filled with arrows, the Governor, who was some- thing of a sport himself, passed it back with the Yale yell rendered into Pequod comicbooks.com