Research Note: Hu-wite People Did It

So I’m reading this book, The Secret History of Twin Peaks, as part of my research for a creative project and I’ve just encountered a thing that I think bears discussion not just in the context of Twin Peaks but in the larger context of how we tell stories that talk about history, especially colonial history.

See, in The Secret History of Twin Peaks, there is a repetitive use of Native American religion as an unknown other, a sort of mysticism that needs no explanation. That, in and of itself is… a thing we do, I guess… and maybe needs some scrutiny itself. The thing I want to talk about is the Jade Ring, a very important object in the Twin Peaks mythos, which was, according to the book, given originally to chief Twisted Hair of the Nez Perce by… wait for it: White People.

Who or what these white people are or were is a mystery of the book that ties back again to the Twin Peaks expanded lore and has a very probable answer within the diegesis of the show, but the book draws our attention to a myth from the time about an alleged group of Welsh-speaking Native Americans. This was a folklore myth based on no archaeological evidence that was used to apparently explain the presence of some buildings and other constructions judged by Europeans to be too complex to have been built by Native Americans.

Here I thought it would be useful to point out something about what’s going on here. This is a fairly common narrative you will encounter across colonial history where white people have encountered various non-white people they deem to be “uncivilised” and decide that the best explanation for the incredible things produced by their culture is that actually huwite people did it. The best example of this is probably the extended whitewashing of Ancient Egyptian history, and for that matter Ancient Greek history in order to pretend that the pyramids, the Parthenon and Isaac Newton are all members of the same clear lineage.

This is, of course, nothing new. People have always tried, through folklore, to claim things they like to be part of their culture. Staying with Egypt, there was actually a popular myth among Egyptians that the last Pharoah of Egyptian descent snuck away to Macedonia after his deposition and cucked the father of Alexander the Great, explaining why Alexander was such a cool and good king - he was actually Egyptian!

However, in the context of colonialism this tendency to massage history into a cohesive story where your guys did everything cool ever isn’t simply an innocent desire to build a sense of culture, but a deliberate attempt by huwite people who can’t fathom the idea that people other than huwite people could build anything taller than a chair or more complicated than a spoon to explain why huwite people did it instead. It’s pure, straightforward, unambiguous racism.

By trying to establish the Egyptians as probably white but if not white then at least a lot whiter than the other people from the area but trust me, probably white people European colonisers of Africa were able to point to incredible castles, structures and inventions throughout, for example Ethiopia and say well that was probably the Egyptians. You can see an example of similar thinking today in the show Ancient Aliens, in which an explanation is offered for everything from the Inca Lines to the Pyramids that no it was really aliens. In this instance it doesn’t even matter to claim the constructions as the product of white people, only to establish that it definitely couldn’t have been brown people.

I wanted to draw attention to this specific example in the Twin Peaks book because I thought it served as an excellent teachable moment. In trying to build a conspiracy-theory style lore for the world of Twin Peaks it is necessary to throw up red herrings and false ends that offer nothing, but in this specific example, uncritically offering the myth does something unfortunate. You see, within the diegesis of the world of Twin Peaks, which you are in when you read the book, there is a good explanation for Chief Twisted Hair’s “white people” most likely in the people from the White Lodge or other entities from the spirit world, and so the idea of welsh-speaking native americans is not the answer to the question of who made the ring.

However, the story of welsh-speaking native americans isn’t meant to be the answer to the question, only a red herring that we know by inference is not relevant, and the uncritical presentation of the narrative only establishes it as a possibility. The book is only educating the reader on the existence of the possibility of white native americans.
If the book had presented the idea as racist hocum, as I’ve explained here, created by Europeans, then it could have said “therefore this does not provide an answer to the question - mystery unsolved” and educated the reader on the falsehood while also deepening the mystery of the ring. But it didn’t do that.