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Stephen Bishop (Cave Explorer)Stephen Bishop (1780–1857) was a mulatto slave famous for being one of the lead explorers and guides to the Mammoth Cave in the U.S. state of Kentucky. Stephen Bishop was introduced to Mammoth Cave in 1838 by his "master," Franklin Gorin, who purchased the cave from the previous owners in the spring of 1838. Gorin wrote, after Bishop's death: "''I placed a guide in the cave --- the celebrated and great Stephen, and he aided in making the discoveries. He was the first person who ever crossed the Bottomless Pit, and he, myself and another person whose name I have forgotten were the only persons ever at the bottom of Gorin's Dome to my knowledge. "''After Stephen crossed the Bottomless Pit, we discovered all that part of the cave now known beyond that point. Previous to those discoveries, all interest centered in what is known as the "Old Cave" . . . but now many of the points are but little known, although as Stephen was wont to say, they were 'grand, gloomy and peculiar.' "''Stephen was a self-educated man. He had a fine genius, a great fund of wit and humor, some little knowledge of Latin and Greek, and much knowledge of geology, but his great talent was a knowledge of man." Appearance and manner Bishop's tour outfit was chocolate-colored slouch hat, a green jacket, and striped pants. In his spare time he explored and named large areas, doubling the known map in a year. He began the naming tradition of the cave, using half-homespun American, half-classical terms (e.g., the River Styx, the Snowball Room, Little Bat Avenue, the Giant Dome). He discovered strange blind fish, snakes, silent crickets, and the remains of cave bears along with centuries-old Indian gypsum workings. In 1852, Bishop guided Nathaniel Parker Willis to Echo River. On the trip, Willis learned that despite knowing that he would be freed in five years, Bishop intended to buy his and his wife's and son's freedom and move to Liberia, a plan which never materialized. Willis later said "he is very picturesque ... part mulatto and part Indian. With more of the physiognomy of a Spaniard, with masses of black hair, curling slightly and gracefully, and his long mustache, giving quite an appearance. He is of middle size, but built for an athlete. With broad chest and shoulders, narrow hips and legs slightly bowed. Mammoth Cave is a wonder in which draws good society and Stephen shows that he is used to it." Bishop's "1835 mummy discovery": Debunking the myth An earlier revision of this Wikipedia article states: "In 1835, Bishop discovered the mummified body of a pre-Columbian Native American in the cave, later archeological exploration confirmed the prehistoric use of the cave." Stan Sides, historian of Mammoth Cave, and past president of the Cave Research Foundation, refutes this as a one of many false legends about Stephen Bishop, possibly created as a promotional story by the commercial operators of Mammoth Cave during Bishops's time, or their sucessors, as a way of either further romanticising the story of Bishop, or as a rather slapdash way of combining the very real historical character of Bishop and the real mummy discoveries made by others into a conveniently told, but unfortunately false, story. For starters, the year of 1835 is too early, predating Bishop's presence at the cave. Roger W. Brucker and Richard A. Watson, in The Longest Cave (Knopf, 1976) write: "In 1838, Stephen was put to work learning the routes in Mammoth Cave from Archibald Miller, Jr., and Joseph Shakelford, white guides who were sons of former guides." (p. 266). Native American remains were indeed recovered from Mammoth Cave, or other nearby caves in the region, in both the 19th and 20th centuries, by 1813 on the early side (the "Short Cave Mummy.") Most mummies found present examples of intentional burial, with ample evidence of pre-Columbian funerary practice. An exception to purposeful burial was discovered when in 1935 (not 1835) the remains of an accidentally deceased adult male were discovered by Grover Campbell and Lyman Cutliff under a huge boulder. The boulder had shifted and settled onto the victim, a pre-Columbian miner, who had disturbed the rubble supporting it. The remains of the ancient victim were named "Lost John" and exhibited to the public into the 1970s, when they were interred in a secret location in Mammoth Cave for reasons of preservation as well as emerging cultural sensitivies with respect to the public display of Native American remains. (In the same regard, the old practice of assigning a fanciful name to archeological remains, such as "Lost John," is now considered presumptuous and insensitive.) In 1993, the National Geographic Explorer television program entitled "Mysteries Underground" depicted Stephen and his explorations in a historical re-enactment. The narrative asserts that "some archaeologists believe" that Bishop may have independently discovered the 1935 mummy, showing "Stephen"'s reaction to a fake skeleton shown with arm and skull protruding from underneath a large boulder, in the same configuration as the "Lost John" discovery more than 90 years later. The show abandons the discussion of Bishop at this point, and quickly segues into a discussion of the 1935 discovery. To place the assertion in context, the same television segment depicts the renactor as he examines pre-Columbian artifacts such as torch cane fragments and a footprint, with the narrative all but implying that Bishop was the first to discover evidence of pre-Columbian use of Mammoth Cave. This is clearly false, given the huge volume of such artifacts that are found throughout portions of Mammoth Cave well known from the time of its modern rediscovery in the 1790s, and extensively visited during the cave's heyday as a saltpetre resource. However, it is quite likely that Bishop rediscovered many places in the cave that had not been disturbed since pre-Columbian visitors, and in so doing could lay legitimate claim to the original discovery of any Native American artifacts found in those locations. The fact that Stephen did not discover a mummy, as some have said, in no way detracts from his unprecedented achievements in cave exploration, especially under the vile condition of involuntary servitude. Mammoth Cave historian Harold Meloy, in his monograph Mummies of Mammoth Cave: Facts about the Mummies Found in Short Cave, Mammoth Cave, and Salts Cave, Kentucky (1968) makes no mention of an 1835 mummy discovery, or indeed any mummy discovery at all during the period from Bishop's introduction to the cave to his death. The Stephen Bishop mummy discovery story crops up in fiction within the pages of Alexander C. Irvine's 2002 novel, A Scattering of Jades, set in the year 1835. Perhaps it is from this source that the legend springs. Bishop's 1842 map of Mammoth Cave In 1839, Dr. John Croghan of Louisville bought the Mammoth Cave Estate, including Bishop and its other slaves from their previous owner, Franklin Gorin. Croghan briefly ran an ill-fated tuberculosis hospital in the cave, the vapors of which he believed would cure his patients. A widespread epidemic of the period, tuberculosis would ultimately claim the lives of both Bishop and Croghan. In 1842, Bishop was sent to Croghan's estate (Locust Grove, in Louisville) for two weeks to draw a map of the cave system (see Mammoth Cave). The map he made from memory in 1842 remained in use for forty years and was published in 1844 by Morton and Griswold in Alexander Clark Bullitts Rambles in Mammoth Cave in the Year 1844 by a Visiter sic (Morton and Griswold, 1845.) Unusually for a slave, Bishop was given full credit for his work. The map is quite impressive, showing some 16 km of cave passages, half of which were discovered by the cartographer, Bishop. While the map does not represent a modern accurate instrumental survey, Bishop took some pains to indicate relative passage dimension and length, with cross shading to show water (as modern cave cartographers do.) The topology, if not the scale and orientation, of the map is accurate, that is, the indications of junction layouts correspond to reality in a way that some later celebrated maps do not. Beyond this, the Bishop map is the first to truly suggest, at a glance, the majestic scale of Mammoth Cave, especially its extraordinary degree of connectivity. In 160 years, Bishop's map has not lost the ability to inspire interest in both its subject and its source. Incredibly, in 1972, when modern explorers discovered a connection between the Flint Ridge Cave system to the northeast and Mammoth Cave, they were astonished to discover that the Mammoth Cave end of the connection was actually indicated as a passage lead on Bishop's map. (It is seen as a long thin line branching off from the eastern end of the Echo River complex.) The construction in 1905 of a dam on the Green River in the interim caused the passage to be flooded (and therefore inaccessably hidden by murky water) most of the time after the dam's completion, and the passage was rediscovered backwards, from its remote end, by cavers entering the Flint Ridge Cave System. Although he never knew its significance, Bishop had unwittingly shown the key to connecting two major components of the longest cave in the world, 130 years before the connection was made. Agent on the Underground Railroad? A previous version of this article, apparently drawing from a few scant sources, asserts that during the period of the Underground Railroad, Bishop used the cave to hide slaves heading north to cross the Ohio River. Other corroborating sources are needed in order to place this assertion within the realm of fact or speculation. Freedom and death Stephen Bishop was freed in 1856, seven years after the death of his owner, in accordance with Dr. Croghan's will. Bishop died in the summer of the next year at the age of 37 (although the exact date is not recorded) before he could carry out his life's dream of buying the freedom of his wife and son and travelling to Liberia. His wife Charlotte (we do not know her second name, although most slaves took the last name of their masters) survived him, although she had very little money. Bishop was buried on the south hill above the cave, in what became known as "The Old Guides Cemetery." More than 20 years later, Mr. Mellon, a visitor from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, arranged for a headstone for his grave. He persuaded a local industrialist to pay for the stone, which formerly marked the grave of a Union soldier. The soldiers name was sanded off and replaced with "Stephen Bishop, First Guide & Explorer of the Mammoth Cave, Died June 15, 1859? in his 37th year." Legacy The modern explorer of Mammoth Cave is faced with a dilemma in confronting the legacy of Stephen Bishop. On the one hand, none of us, or very few of us, will ever truly know the degradations of human slavery. We are unable to walk in his shoes, separated from Bishop as we are by gulfs of human condition as well as history. On one important level, to even imagine doing so would be "identified as revisionism on our part," as archaeologist Patty Jo Watson has said. On the other hand, Bishop was the first great explorer of the world's longest known cave, and it has proved quite impossible for generations of modern explorers not to feel a debt and a sense of kinship with this early pioneer. These explorers have been where Bishop travelled, and have done what he did. Moving through a cave without injury is a very personal thing to do. It is the sort of thing that involves the moment-to-moment choice of the human being, weighed against the often-hazardous cave environment. How far one gets in this environment is a unique measure of the human spirit, and Bishop got very far indeed. External links Bishop, Stephen Bishop, Stephen Bishop, Stephen Bishop, Stephen
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