Debunking Providence

Abstract

This chapter explores the controversy that arose in 1900 when Edward Bourne presented evidence at the American Historical Association's (AHA) annual meeting that the Marcus Whitman story was false. It traces the debate exemplified by Bourne and William Isaac Marshall, and Myron Eells and William Mowry, which situates the controversy within the professionalization of the historical discipline and its relationship to the discipline of comparative religion. It also highlights the assumptions underlying the removal of the Whitman story from most scholarly histories, which retained the racialized logic of earlier modes of history. The chapter talks about scholars, such as Bourne and Marshall, who advocated the new, scientific history methods that placed their work within a broad teleology of progress which positioned their opponents as primitive. It explains how the Whitman story served as a signifier for the rejection of scientific history and the preservation of earlier moral and religious values.