In the Powell diaries, it i
s important to acknowledge historical perspective and context in order to fully grasp the situation. In this case, the person describing the event was often involved in it. For example, on January 10, the author describes how they, “Visited Shikellame, being Snoe Weather Could not well go further, invited him to Sup with us” (Powell Diary). It is clear that the author went on this journey to Shekallame, a Moravian Indian, and noted that because of the harsh weather they could not go further, so they invited him to eat dinner with them. In most of the diary the situations are descriptions of other happenings of the day, but there were frequent scenarios where the author explained that they were involved.
Based on what we’re reading, it appears as though the event and documentation of the event happened on the same day.
There was a bias, especially because we are only reading one perspective of the event. For instance, on February 25th-26th, there was an incident where Mrs. Harris had an issue with her man William involving him beating her, and the author (and assuming family, or close others, as he uses “we”) choose not to intervene and instead hand the issue to Shekallame. The reason was that they are people of peace and cannot meddle in such situations, but perhaps there was another reason that we will never know because of the perspective that we are given. Otherwise, the author usually depicts information as they hear it from other sources, for example, he-said she-said types of relayed information to the reader.
The experience is most definitely a part of their cultural heritage. There is an extended amount of information on religion and what happens in the author’s and their close others following of religion. It is well-known that in this time period, religion was a significant part of people’s lives. In addition, being surrounded and working/communicating with Native Americans almost on a daily basis is considered part of cultural heritage. Both of these things are talked about throughout the diary and show the heritage of the author.
When using distant reading in order to answer these questions, I would have to use certain tools that allow me to see key frequent words, as well as connections between words. In the Whitley article, he explains how distant reading allows for a wide-angle perspective of a text. Seeing the big picture is important because it allows the reader to get a grasp on the entirety of a text without reading the whole thing. In addition, Whitley explains, “Instead of parsing out the nuance of individual words and phrases, these scholars have used digital technology to search for patterns and to trace broad outlines, either in a single text or across a body of related texts” (188). In distant reading, technology has allowed us to look for patterns in text or a multitude of texts, a huge asset to digital humanities and many other subjects. It has changed what we as humans can do with a few mouse clicks. Whitley also talks about how distant reading can serve as an alternative to close reading. When he references the novel, The Making of Americans, he explains that many scholars had difficulty reading it, because its total number of words significantly outnumbered the unique words. This situation, Whitley explains, is perfect for distant reading because reading the whole text is unnecessary, when one can look from a distance and explore the novel’s characteristics.