UNL archaeologists hope to dig in Cuba

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BY MATTHEW HANSEN/Lincoln Journal Star

The relationship began, as so many do, at a cocktail party. Peter Bleed steeled his nerves and approached the Cuban archaeologists. Using the broken Spanish he learned in high school, he told them about the dream he shared with Doug Scott.

The Cubans seemed excited. Business cards were exchanged.

"I said, ‘Let's do the archaeology of San Juan Hill,' or something like that," said Bleed, an archaeology professor and assistant dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

"After that, one thing led to another."  

That encounter at a U.S. archaeology conference led to the UNL professors standing atop the Spanish-American War's most famous hill, contemplating the first-ever professional dig to uncover Teddy Roosevelt's heroics and other military mysteries hidden in the Cuban soil. 

The weeklong reconnaissance mission to the southern tip of Fidel Castro's island made the pair believe a dig could answer many of the 1898 war's lingering questions.

How large of a role did Cuban soldiers play in the defeat of the Spanish, a hotly contested issue for the past century? 

How did the war's technology influence the American army as it entered two world wars and grew into a superpower?

What do historians choose to remember, and what have they chosen to forget?

"The facts are in the ground," says Scott, a UNL adjunct professor who likens historians to detectives and archaeologists to forensic scientists.

The five-person UNL team, which included the two archaeologists and journalism professor Luis Peon-Casanova, traveled from Nebraska to Santiago, Cuba, in March to meet with Cuban historians and decide if the Spanish-American war battlefields could be properly studied.

The National Geographic-funded group found a country proud of the U.S. and Cuban victory over the Spanish — war memorials and triumphant plaques dot the landscape around San Juan Hill.

They met Cuban scholars who  believe their country got slighted by U.S. history books that downplay Cuban heroism during the war.  

They also discovered many of the battlefields undeveloped and ripe for an archaeological dig.

Particularly untouched is the area around El Caney, site of a major battle on July 1, 1998, five months after the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, sparking the war, and mere hours before Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill and into American folklore.

The group found remnants of trenches and what Bleed believes may be mass graves.

"It's just perfectly preserved," Bleed says. "There's almost a Hollywood quality to it."

The battle itself is a case study in  20th century warfare and a type of fighting the United States would learn from before it entered World War I.

The U.S. Army dispatched some 8,000 soldiers to El Caney that day, believing it would take little effort to overrun the 500 or so Spanish troops holding a hill near the city.

Instead, the battle raged for 12 hours and ended without a clear winner, largely because the Americans had never encountered the Spanish tactic of digging deep trenches and protecting them with barbed wire, historians believe.

A dig would shed light on the tactic and various other technology — particularly machine guns and bolt-action, small-caliber rifles — used for the first time in the war, Bleed says.

A dig that uses techniques Scott perfected studying the Battle of Little Bighorn and other U.S. frontier battles may also uncover the true extent of Cuban involvement in the war, Bleed says.

The archaeologists may be able to find and differentiate the spent  ammunition Cubans were known to use from the ammo the Spanish and Americans used.

That process could either buoy or sink Cuban academics' contention they've been excluded from the war's official history.

"We really could resolve that disagreement," Bleed says.

There's no guarantee the Nebraska archaeologists will get that return trip to Cuba.

They must first finish their report to National Geographic and get the Cuban government's permission to dig there. But the bigger hurdle will be securing funding for a second, more expensive trip.

The logistical difficulties haven't stopped Bleed and Scott from dreaming.

Bleed envisions a two-week trip where 10 archaeologists — Americans, Cubans and Spaniards — would reach into the soil to learn about their shared past.

"Who was where? Who did what?" he asks.

"The facts of battles are rarely clear. Archaeology really can help solve that uncertainty."

Reach Matthew Hansen at 473-7245 or mhansen@journalstar.com.