"If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday." - Pearl Buck
This Week in History presents summaries of a few selected historical events for each calendar week of the year.
September 2 - The bank opens around the clock, around the globe (1969)
You young whippersnappers don't know what life was like before one could get cash at any time, just about anywhere, from the ATMs that litter the landscape today. In ye olden days, you had to go to a branch of your bank, Monday through Friday between 9AM and 3PM, wait in a long line, present your savings passbook, and ask a crotchety teller to kindly fork over a few bills from your meager account.
In short, it was a pain in the ass. If you had a job or went to college, it became a real challenge: the banks were only open when you had to be working or in class. In those days, many employers paid in weekly envelopes of cash and the friendly local grocer cashed paychecks or accepted your personal check for ten or twenty dollars over your purchase to give as cash back. All because personal banking was a Sisyphean task.
Don't even get me started about trying to obtain cash when traveling to another state (banks were limited by law to operating within single states). Traveling abroad? Excuse me a moment, I need to laugh and cry a while.
This day in 1969 liberated us from the tyranny of tellers, limited banking hours and branch locations. At the Chemical Bank in Rockville Center, New York, intrepid adventurers dared to try out a newfangled device, the automated teller machine.
There had been a few previous experiments, such as machines which accepted deposit envelopes and others which issued cash but used a one-time-only voucher or token. The first true ATM, which could dispense cash upon presentation of a permanent reusable magnetic-strip card, was created by Docutel, an automated baggage-handling company. Chemical Bank called it the
Docuteller and cleverly advertised it with "On Sept. 2 our bank will open at 9:00 and never close again."
The first machines proffered only fixed amounts of cash and couldn't accept deposits. Within a few years, major improvements arrived and customers could check their balances, transfer funds between accounts, and perform other functions previously requiring an exasperating sojourn inside the bank.
The incredibly useful inventions rapidly spread across the globe and now with worldwide banking networks you can just as easily withdraw 100 tögrögs in Mongolia as you can $100 at the mini-market down your street. So remember this day the next time you find yourself whipping out your plastic card instead of waiting in line at First Slow-as-Molasses National Bank.
Keep reading below the orange historical marker about more events during the first week of September.
September 3 - The United States becomes a nation (1783)
Everyone knows that the United States became a nation on July 4, 1776. Except, maybe not.
One might consider that the 4th of July was merely the moment of conception rather than birth. That honor might belong to this day in 1783.
When the American colonies declared their independence, in united opposition to continuing rule by Britain, the news was mostly met around the world with a collective shrug. Most countries ignored the rebellious situation and assumed that Britain would eventually brings its distant misbehaving citizens under control. Who would have guessed that the upstarts could bring the mighty British Empire to surrender?
Last page of the Treaty of Paris
During the course of our Revolutionary War, France, the longtime traditional opponent of England, recognized the colonies as a new nation, if for no other reason than to vex its enemy. The Netherlands, competitors with the English in trade, plus a few others such as Morocco and the tiny
Republic of Ragusa (in modern Croatia) also extended diplomatic recognition to the fledgling republic.
But the very first sovereign nations to formally treat with the new United States of America were the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet and Passamaquoddy tribes, nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy. On July 19, 1776 they signed the Treaty of Watertown aligning themselves in friendship and military support of our country.
However, a majority of the nations of the world reserved recognition until the outcome of our natal conflict was clear. On this day in 1783, Britain formally relinquished all claims to the former colonies and affirmed their independence as a nation by signing the Treaty of Paris. And with that, the United States officially became not a rebel province but a sovereign nation on an equal footing with every other country of the world.
So if one thinks of July 4th as our conception, September 3 would be the day we were born into the world.
Of course, Britain managed to tweak our nose with a bit of payback: it recognized the Confederacy as a new nation within weeks of the outbreak of the Civil War.
September 4 - The last surrender of a Native American warrior (1886)
Goyaałé means "the one who yawns" in the Chiricahua language. A name like that doesn't sound very intimidating but he was feared and hunted for decades by troops from two nations, Mexico and the United States. They knew him by his nickname, Geronimo.
Geronimo
The tale of his people is one we now know was sadly common during the days of America's westward expansion. Pioneers and settlers moved into Apache tribal lands (Geronimo was a member of the Bedonkohe band) and bitter conflicts arose. At that time, U.S.-Mexican borders were ill-defined or disputed and, of course, Native American tribal borders were simply ignored by both countries; eventually the two governments signed an agreement permitting cross-border pursuits.
From 1849 on, raids and battles and retaliations were common. When the American Civil War broke out, even the Confederacy joined in with skirmishes in Texas and New Mexico.
In 1858, Mexican soldiers killed Geronimo's wife, children and mother in a raid. As might be expected, that created a lifelong enmity for the invaders and he engaged in hostilities against the American and Mexican armies which tried to subdue his people and occupy their lands. Supposedly it was during these battles that he acquired his nickname; the Mexican soldiers feared him so much that whenever they saw him they appealed to Saint Jerome by crying out "Jeronimo!"
Although Native Americans clearly had a moral right to their territories by today's standards, the brutal actions that ensued left no one with clean hands. All sides committed atrocities in the decades that followed, during the period known as the Apache Wars.
In 1874, the U.S. government forced Geronimo and his people onto a reservation in Arizona. Life was difficult in such inhospitable territory and continued conflict was inevitable as the Apache were squeezed tighter and tighter. Geronimo and followers escaped numerous times, only to be forced back onto the reservation. As Geronimo wrote in his autobiography,
"Why did you leave the reservation?" I said: "You told me that I might live in the reservation the same as white people lived. One year I raised a crop of corn, and gathered and stored it, and the next year I put in a crop of oats, and when the crop was almost ready to harvest, you told your soldiers to put me in prison, and if I resisted to kill me. If I had been let alone l would now have been in good circumstances, but instead of that you and the Mexicans are hunting me with soldiers".
At the end of his campaign, Geronimo had only 38 members in his party, including women and children. It was impossible to succeed against either the American or Mexican governments and their armies. He negotiated a surrender to Captain Henry Lawton on this day in 1886, the last Native American warrior to formally do so.
He and his group were sent to Florida, then Alabama, and finally Oklahoma. Geronimo settled into being a farmer and in his elder years he became a popular celebrity. He attended the St. Louis World's Fair and took part in the wild west shows there, rode in Teddy Roosevelt's inaugural parade, and dictated his autobiography, Geronimo’s Story of His Life. Seemingly, those experiences mellowed his feelings about his captors but not his attitude about his erstwhile Mexican opponents.
I am glad I went to the Fair. I saw many interesting things and learned much of the white people. They are a very kind and peaceful people. During all the time I was at the Fair no one tried to harm me in any way. Had this been among the Mexicans I am sure I should have been compelled to defend myself often.
He died on February 17, 1909, still technically a prisoner of the federal government, who was never to be allowed to return to the land of his birth. His last words were reported to be "I should have never surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive."
September 6 - It's a small world after all (1522)
When the Victoria sailed into the Spanish harbor at Sanlúcar de Barrameda on this day in 1522, after a grueling three year journey, the world suddenly seemed smaller. For the first time, mankind had traveled all the way around the globe in a feat barely dreamed possible not long before, when many people believed the Earth had edges where ships would fall off and maps were labeled with "here there be dragons." Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation proved that not only was the world a sphere but that it was possible to journey to any part of it.
The small fleet composing the Armada de Molucca set forth on August 10, 1519 from Seville, Spain. Seville is an inland port, on a river rather than on the ocean, and that is why the expedition's circumnavigation was considered complete when it returned to its oceanic point of departure.
The flotilla consisted of the flagship of captain-general Magellan, the Trinidad, and four accompanying vessels. It wended its way down the Guadalquivir River and finally embarked on its long sea voyage from Sanlúcar on September 20.
Sailing first to West Africa, then crossing the Atlantic to Brazil, the explorers searched for a passage west. They found it at the tip of South America, just above the island Tierra del Fuego ("Land of Fire"), where they took 38 days to cross through what is now known as the Strait of Magellan.
Click the map to embiggen
The new ocean was calm and peaceful compared to the brutal Atlantic they had battled and Magellan named it Mar Pacifico ("Peaceful Sea") which became Pacific Ocean in English. Calm it may be but it had a different challenge: it was vast, with few islands to find and search for water and food. At one point, the sailors were chewing leather to try to stay alive until the next landfall.
Eventually they arrived at Guam, the Philippines, and lands previously known to European explorers. Curiously, they missed the Spice Islands; finding a new route to them had been one of the primary reasons for the journey. The most mysterious parts of the voyage had been successfully traversed, but for Magellan, at the cost of his life. On April 27, 1521, he died from a poisoned arrow in a battle on the island of Mactan, near Cebu in the Philippines.
Out of five ships and 270 men, only the Victoria, its captain (Juan Sebastian Elcano), and 17 crew members survived to finish the incredible journey.
Ferdinand Magellan organized and led the expedition but his death during the voyage meant that he himself never actually circled the entire globe. His name lives on in our commemoration of the accomplishment as Magellan's Expedition but it was his surviving crew who were honored as the first people to circumnavigate the globe.
However, that may not be accurate. Magellan traveled with a personal slave, Enrique, who was originally from Malacca, a city now in modern Malaysia. That means that when the expedition reached the East Indies (Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other islands nearby), Enrique had traveled almost the entire globe.
When Magellan was killed, his last testament dictated that Enrique should be freed. However, the expedition needed him as a translator in that part of the world so his slavery was to continue. Back on Cebu, Enrique contrived to secure his freedom by instigating the natives to ambush the remaining crew. During the fracas, he was left behind as the expedition hastily escaped and no further record of him exists.
Ships regularly traveled among the islands of the East Indies at that time, so it is reasonable to speculate that Enrique might have found his way home to Malacca. If that did happen then he would be the first person to travel entirely around the world.
Of course, history is written by the winners. So, unsurprisingly, no one of that era investigated Enrique's fate or thought of honoring a slave with such a distinction.
And that's the news for this week. Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.