Editor's Note

“THIS IS THE WEST, SIR. WHEN THE LEGEND BECOMES FACT, PRINT THE LEGEND,” newspaper editor Maxwell Scott (played by Edmund O'Brien) says to Ransom Stoddard (played by Jimmy Stewart) in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, written by screenwriters James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck. The plot of this John Ford film, also starring John Wayne, intersects with the tension between fact and fancy, between reality and myth. The tendency of myth to insinuate itself over time as historical fact figures in the fine articles contained in this issue. How does fiction become fact, and when this does occur, how can the myth be dislodged?Historians have no task more important than shaking off the barnacles of “legend” from our history, be it world, national, or local. The twentieth century, for example, offers tragedies, mass bloodletting, and grinding oppressions from accepting notions like a “master race,” or “racial inferiority,” and discrimination against our fellow human beings based on any number of false assumptions.Each of the four articles within these pages focuses on this question, seeking to correct the historical record.Axell Vaughn Boomer contributes to these pages as an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. By the time this issue reaches your hands, he will be a graduate. “Mascot, Maiden, Memory: How Rockton Uses Hononegah to Rewrite Indigenous Removal,” a remarkable combination of deep research and analysis examines the use of a “racialized mascot” by a northern Illinois high school and a historic site to create a false image. Using newspapers, yearbooks, pageant scripts, interviews with modern reenactors, and scholarly studies, Boomer argues that the result is a “narrative that absolves settlers of responsibility for Indigenous removal.” The historical record, he asserts, reveals that Indigenous peoples living in early nineteenth-century northern Illinois were “forcibly removed from the landscape,” contrary to local legend.In 2018, while researching a presentation on Illinois's history, a revelation occurred. From its beginnings with a population of Indigenous peoples, through the arrival of the French and British and into the statehood era and beyond, our state has always been diverse. Peoples of differing tribal affiliations, races, national origins, and religions are tossed together, sometimes in conflict, other times, negotiating cooperation and accommodation.Noted scholar of the French Illinois Country Carl Ekberg clearly portrays this fascinating colonial society in “Slavery and Romance in the Illinois Country: Élisabeth Chonicoué and Martial Bardoux.” Utilizing censuses and civil and parish records dating back to the early 1700s, Ekberg examines the complex practices surrounding the enslavement of Indigenous people, particularly women, by French traders and habitants. He reveals a trade network extending from the Mississippi to the Great Plains that involved enslaved Native Americans from western tribes.By the mid-1700s, the mixture of French and Indigenous was common, and soon Black enslaved people from Africa were added. In time, enslaved Black people would increase more rapidly than Indigenous enslaved people. But as the need for agricultural labor increased, enslaved Black persons were more economically valuable, although enslaved Indigenous females continued to serve as domestic servants. Yet all this played out in an environment with permeable boundaries. As Ekberg writes, the line between “‘Frenchness’ and ‘Indianness’ was very fuzzy indeed.” In French Illinois, “worlds melted at the edges and merged. There was no hysteria about race.”“Autobiography” may hold pitfalls for those seeking stories based in fact. At least, this holds in the case of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. “Wright & Corwin, Architects: Frank Lloyd Wright's Unacknowledged Partnership with Cecil S. Corwin” by Gregory M. Brewer cleans up omissions and erroneous statements in Wright's autobiography. Called out by Brewer are instances of Wright downplaying or simply ignoring Cowin's key contributions to the famed architect's early career. The Corwin–Wright professional relationship began while Wright was still at Adler and Sullivan. It was Corwin who smoothed the path for Wright's first commission outside Adler and Sullivan, although he was still associated with the firm. “Evidence suggests that Corwin had an active hand in Wright's work” from 1893 through 1895, when Corwin left architecture. Obscuring Corwin's contributions, Brewer continues, is Wright's habit of “forever inventing versions of himself” in his Autobiography, which “has to be weighed carefully, as it is a curious blend of fact, fiction, saga, self-justification, and promotion.”More than twenty years ago (where does the time go?) while exploring the University of Illinois days of Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, someone mentioned the Samson Raphaelson Papers at the University of Illinois library. Among his accomplishments during a long writing career, Raphaelson raised funds for Memorial Stadium's construction. Efforts by he and others paid off, and it opened in 1924 with a legendary performance by Red Grange. Memories of great athletic feats ooze from the bricks on the classic structure, but there is a much larger story about the facility's history and impact down to the present day. Sports management researchers at Louisiana State University Chad S. Seifried and Hailee Hernandez takes us behind the bricks to the story of Memorial's predecessor, Athletic Field, and the relationship between sports, social life, tradition, and securing the University's connection to the state. “The University of Illinois's Memorial Stadium and Earlier Football Grounds: Establishing the Sport and Facilities as Social Anchors” takes us behind the scenes as football and baseball emerge in Urbana, the eventual transfer of a voluntary student association to the modern Athletic Association, and the intersection of sports, student and alumni support, and social ties. Seifried and Hernandez explore the “social anchors” represented by Memorial Stadium and their function within the university and the State of Illinois.Illinois, its people, events, and history continue to attract the interest of scholars. Tristan M. K. Draper demonstrates that with her contribution, “Research Articles in Illinois History, 2024–2025: A Bibliographic Overview.” This is her second bibliographic survey for the Journal, and we hope to see more.Returning under book review editor Kelly O'Connor are reviews on books of interest to those who find the state of “Lincoln, Logan, and our tears” an important topic.Shortly before this issue reaches you, the Journal's editorial staff observed sessions during the Conference on Illinois History held October 2 and 3 at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. Each year, the conference provides fertile ground for new perspectives on Illinois history and emerging historians. Works produced for the conference and research conducted in colleges and universities and at the desks of nonacademic historians refresh and expand our knowledge of the past.Because of those mentioned above, the Journal, unlike editor Maxwell Scott, prints the facts, not the legends.As always, please share your thoughts and suggestions.