This is a guess blog post written by Kendal resident Peter Buttenheim.

Dear Kendal Friends:

We at Kendal are right on the cutting edge of a new release of a special book of history. After many years of painstaking research, Kendal resident T. Walter Herbert’s monumental PROPHETS OF DEMOCRACY: HERMAN MELVILLE AND THE APACHE REDEEMER has been printed.

Walt gave me the honor of reading his text in galley form, and I was very moved. In my high school days, we learned a lot in history classes about: the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, the Mexican War, the California Gold Rush (“Go West, Young Man” said Horace Greeley), the Civil War, the Transcontinental Railway, the Closing of the Frontier, and American Exceptionalism. It was a somewhat one-sided history of the 19th Century.

 What we did not learn much about was our Colonialism — something we inherited from our friends in Europe. Once we got into that game, we ventured to places like the South Pacific, Cuba, the Philippines, and a number of countries in South America. And, as Walt tells the story so very well, we drove our very Native Americans from the East Coast into the plains then onward to the Rockies, the Southwest, and extinction….

That moral contradiction is the subject of PROPHETS OF DEMOCRACY. Walt uses Herman Melville and Nochaydelklinne, the Apache leader, to raise the issues of American exploitation from the South Seas to America.

FYI — PROPHETS OF DEMOCRACY is now on sale in the Gateway Store. Trust me, it is a book well worth reading!

Thank you, Walt,

Peter

For more detail about the remarkable stories in Walt’s book, check out the video of his presentation for Monday Topics. The two visionaries, Herman Melville and Nochaydelklinne, the Apache leader, seemed to be failures in their own lifetimes, but have since been recognized for the truths they saw. Kendal residents can watch the video here: https://youtu.be/DkUa0i4e8ME

As Peter notes, you can buy Walt’s book in the Gateway gift shop. It is also available from Amazon at this link: https://www.amazon.com/Prophets-Democracy-Herman-Melville-Redeemer/dp/B0HFZ1VH8Y/ref=sr_1_1