Notes on the third epigraph

The final epigraph for Blood Meridian comes from a newspaper article on the discovery of a four-million-year-old pre-human ancestor by paleoanthropologists J. Desmond Clark (who isn’t provided full credit) and Tim D. White. The entire article can be read here and its big news is in extending the lineage of upright walking hominids, specifically Ardipithecus ramidus, into the distant past, but McCarthy is more interested in a (relatively) recent find:

a 300,000-year-old fossil skull . . . shows evidence of having been scalped.

The nostalgia for a “golden age” when things used to be better, simpler maybe, than the confusing and chaotic present is a common appeal of period piece writing, including the Western genre. This, of course, is a myth. The third epigraph attempts to dispel that myth, or at least introduce the theme that will, by illustrating a more violent, and arguably more accurate, history.

The relationship between the truth and the past is an odd one for Blood Meridian. For example, many of the events and characters in the novel are based on a nonfiction work, Samuel Chamberlain’s memoir My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue. However, Chamberlain garnered the reputation of a braggart and his book is largely seen as a sensationalized account of his early life.

Furthermore, since Blood Meridian’s publication in the 80s, scholars and enthusiasts have combed through nineteenth century records and accounts looking for details about the novel’s most striking character, the Judge. Other than in Chamberlain’s memoir, all hunts have ended fruitless.

To my reading, this is just as well. Of the many descriptives one could heap onto Blood Meridian—brutal, galling, hilarious, mystic, horrific, beautiful, perfect—the least important would be “historically accurate.”

The plot of the book is rather thin, the characters are often one-dimensional, the syntax can be tortured, and the diction is occasionally too pompous to be taken seriously, but I can’t imagine how it could be improved. In the decades since its publication, the book’s become more of a holy relic than a work of literature.

One last note on the epigraph: Even though the quotation is from an AP article and likely originated closer to the source (Berkeley, California) than the home paper for Yuma County, Arizona, the Yuma Sun in credited. In that we can find a hidden—I don’t know what to call it—clue? A self-referential joke? Nerd bait?

The Yuma Indians lived along the U.S.-Mexico border, where much of Blood Meridian takes place. In the genre of a Western novel, native peoples are expected to be threatening (out and out savage, frankly), whereas the settlers are heroic, which points to one of the main subversions of the genre the book offers: In Blood Meridian, the white men are the scalp hunters. The line between civilization and savagery is nonexistent.

It’s a safe bet that the Yumas will appear in the novel, and when they do McCarthy likely expects his civilized reader to think back to this quote and the long, savage history to which they, and we, belong.