On 2017-08-14 07:37, William Robison wrote: > There is a fairly well known story that the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh > predicted both the solar eclipse of June 16, 1806 and the New Madrid > Earthquake of December 16, 1811, and used this to convince the Shawnee the > gods supported war against the white man. One version of the story says > Tecumseh knew about the eclipse in advance because he had seen it forecast > in an almanac. > > I have read speculation that Twain drew upon this story for the scene in *A > Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court *in which Hank Morgan out-wizards > Merlin by predicting a solar eclipse. > > Does anyone on the list know if there is evidence to support that? When this topic came up before on this list (2013-04-26, thread entitled "Hank Morgan's Solar Eclipse,") I replied that if you read Connecticut Yankee itself, Twain makes a joke about it directly in the text: "You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind in the nick of time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one of those people, played an eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and I saw my chance. I could play it myself, now, and it wouldn’t be any plagiarism, either, because I should get it in nearly a thousand years ahead of those parties." (Connecticut Yankee, Chapter 5) Barbara Schmidt also noted: > The use of the solar eclipse to prove a claim to supernatural power > was not a new concept when Twain wrote CY. In the Iowa/California > edition of the WORKS OF MARK TWAIN, edited by Bernard Stein, (p. 553) > Stein points the reader to THE LIFE AND VOYAGES OF CHRISTOPHER > COLUMBUS, Book 16, chapter 3 by Washington Irving. (Columbus > exploited an eclipse to get natives to procure supplies for him.) > Clemens owned a set of these books in the 1880s. -- Alan Eliasen [log in to unmask] https://futureboy.us/