Archives, and the countless documents they hold can be considered the remains of the physical foundations of a nations history. Archival evidence is arguably the most well kept archaeological evidence of the past. But is it the most honest? Paleontologists who uncover bones and fossils are the first people to touch the artifacts for years; their bare hands don’t disorient the evidence until the evidence surfaces for the first time. However, as historians uncover artifacts in an archive, they lay their hands on documents and papers that have been sorted through and filed away by others before them who have sorted through and organized the evidence with more subjective viewpoints. Archivists, as organizers of history, are just as much the deciders of history as the historians that choose what they want to write about and how they want to frame it. Ghosh, in her piece, National Narratives and the Politics of Miscegenation, points this out in her comparison of the archives in Britain to the archives in India. The Indian archive attained bundle of unorganized documents that were unwanted by the British archives. Ironically, it was in these documents that Ghosh eventually found the evidence that she was searching for to complete her research.

As Milligan pointed out in her piece, “What is an Archive,” archives have limited power in telling the stories of history. Milligan’s focus on the debate between burning papers to quell a private family’s concerns or to protect papers in the interests of the archive and public access demonstrates how history can become more molded to the walls of an archive than we realize. In this specific case, the papers were protected and kept safe for future public access. In how many other cases though, were important papers disposed of upon personal and private requests? Milligan’s anecdote cites another example of how the actions taken by archivists have direct effects on the history that is told, remembered and tangible in a nation.

Dickinson’s story begins amidst the story of colonial America and the birth of the nation. It’s close proximity to key cities such as Philadelphia make for an interesting analysis of the college’s archives. Did Dickinson’s location influence what kinds of evidence were stored and how they were stored in the Dickinson archives? For instance, how was the history of the college’s beginnings organized? What is John Dickinson’s presence like within the archives? What is the presence of Native Americans who attended the Carlisle Indian School like? Perhaps story of our nation’s beginning that we recite today is missing a few chapters, or is longwinded at telling others. The answers to questions like these may add to our understanding of the relationships between archives and the histories we learn and teach today.