Buttersquash Ranch

Nit-picking

"Nits breed lice." This subject came up one night when I was chatting with Kady about the children of 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being held by the CIA and, as it turns out, used as pawns to get their father to talk. (An earlier and incidental discussion had focused on his startling resemblance to porn star Ron Jeremy.)

In any case, the nits and lice came up in reference to Khalid's kids. I commented that this phrase was used as justification for murdering Indian children, while Kady thought it was used by angry slaves killing the children of slave-owners. We promptly went to Google to resolve the issue, since after all, Google knows everything. Kady promptly found the quote attributed to John Brown, meanwhile, I found it attributed to a Col. John Chivington at the massacre of Cheyenne and Arapahoe women and children at Sand Creek in 1864. This site elaborates on the Chivington story. We could probably have dropped the issue right here and then, and it might have been the best choice, but then Mirele popped in with another attribution, this to "Missouri militiamen Gov. Lilburne Bogg's 'extermination order' against the Mormons," this occurrence dated October 30, 1838, located at Haun's Mill, and adding "Little shoots make big trees" to "Nits make lice."

As if the John Brown attribution weren't enough, the same quote was also attributed to Nat Turner some time in 1831 during a slave revolt. The quote here is "Kill them all. Nits breed lice." The same quote makes it into William Styron's novel Confessions of Nat Turner. While the other quotes seem at least somewhat plausible, the use of it by abolitionists, even particularly murderous ones like John Brown, reeks of propaganda. In fact, one begins to suspect that this particular phrase was merely put into the mouths of people the historian found distasteful. It seems unlikely all these different people said these things, and the one common thread that passes through all these anecdotes is that none of them are in surviving sources. All of them are hearsay.

This thread continues as one traces the phrase back and forth in history, through other anecdotes of varying levels of worth. Another Indian-hater, George Wines, picks up the slur in 1847, while it jumps a century forward to be blamed on the Nazis by Eleanor Ayers. Rounding out the Indian thread, "one Martin Angel" is credited with it in August of 1853.

Going back further in history, the already notorious Oliver Cromwell is accused of using the phrase to justify killing Irish children. Consistently, this attribution is based on no solid evidence, although indisputable contemporaneous sources such as Cromwell's own report to Parliament certainly adequately show his bloodthirstiness. Another enemy of the Irish accused of this phrase is the dreadfully-named Sir Charles Coote, 2nd Bart. This site, with no particular evidence, claims that Coote the First is "among the first to use the term 'nits will become lice' in excusing the murder of children (in Wicklow)." If it were true, it likely would be the case. The date attributed to the quote is 1601. This site cites "the old English historian, Dr Nalson" as attributing the phrase to unnamed English soldiers in 1642. Yet another attribution is to a German soldier in the Mexican war, called to task for murdering a family of Mexicans, including children, saying "By dams don't nits made fleas." Finally, this site appears to have taken the nits thread a little way but not followed it out to the end.

Now we get to where I come to the point, if there is one. At first, I had only found the attribution of the phrase to abolitionists ridiculous and out of place, but the nature of all the attributions seems to lead to one conclusion. The phrase itself is a slur, and there's no credible evidence for the vast majority of these allegations. While I could go to even more effort to track down the provenance of each and every allegation, my conclusion is that there is simply no way this phrase has been uttered by every person to whom it has been attributed. Further, every allegation at least seems to me to be from a secondary source rather than an eyewitness, and some seem to add the quote without providing any source at all. My view of this quote is this: nobody ever said it, or no more than one or two people. Like Samuel L. Jackson's Biblical quote in Pulp Fiction, it just sounded like some cold-blooded shit to say before murdering children, so it was put in their mouths. Additionally, the people in question are all unquestionably child-killers, so it was unlikely anyone would step forward to defend their reputation. Only upon compiling the full list of occurrences of this quote, and I'm sure there are others I've missed, does the extreme unlikeliness of all of them being true become obvious.

I suppose the nutshell version of this is simply don't believe everything you read. Posted by muldrake at April 15, 2003 09:47 PM | TrackBack