Trannies of the old West; bauble-loving then as now...

One of the interesting qualities of what I will call Classical Native America - by which I mean the unadulterated state of the Indian civilizations prior to the arrival and take-over of the European - is certain freedoms in common with our own Classical Era - by which we Europeans and European-Americans mean, without apparent need for any greater elaboration, ancient Greece and especially ancient Rome.  The most fabulous aspects of Antiquity are, in my esteem, the spiritual and sexual freedoms that flourished in the cosmopolitan, polytheistic milieu of the ancient Mediterranean, and so it is very interesting to encounter similarities with this pre-Christian model reported in the accounts of Lewis and Clark as they traveled among the Indians on their Pacific-bound trek.

I've been reading The Journals of Lewis Clark - an abridged version edited by the noted scholar Bernard DeVoto in the early Fifties - and I came across a rather interesting passage.  In December of 1804 the expedition was camped for the winter at Fort Mandan and living among the Mandan indians of the upper Missouri river in the area we know today as North Dakota.  Probably not the warmest place to hunker down for winter, but still much safer than forging forward into unknown territory at the onset of a generally brutal season.  And really, there was some good company to be had:  besides the amenable Mandans, the area was frequently traversed by Canadian trappers and traders - it was here that the expedition took on Sacagawea and her Quebec-born husband, Touissant Charbonneau - and then there were others as well...

On December 22nd, Clark - who writes in a funkier, more archaic style than that of his partner, Lewis - records in his journal (parentheticals my own):

"worm (warm). a number of Squars (squaws) & men Dressed in Squars Clothes Came with Corn to Sell to the men for little things,   We precured two horns of the animale the french Call the rock Mountain Sheep." 

Hello! Trannies of the old West! And these girls want the goods, too.  Though there is no indication what exactly they walked away with after the trade, at the time the party was carrying a heavy load of trade goods  - for diplomatic presentations to tribal chiefs along the way and also, especially, to exchange for food, horses, and other supplies as needed.  These goods included tobacco, buttons, fishing hooks, woven apparel, handkerchiefs, ribbons, and especially beads, which apparently were universally well-received by the natives. 

DeVoto also adds an explanatory footnote to the passage, surprisingly balanced I think for the early 1950's:  "These are 'berdashes,' that is, homosexuals; the Indians believed that they had been directed by a medicine vision to dress and act as women and they suffered no loss of status."   And I should think at the time that visionary drag queens were in sorely short supply East of the Mississippi.

"Dance to the Berdache" by George Catlin (1796-1872)

The designation berdache actually does not have its origins in any indigenous American language, but rather it was a moniker hung on the social type by Europeans who didn't have the conceptual tools to fully apprehend the matter-of-factness and level of social integration of these people within their communities.  It's actually in root a pejorative term, and in fact the Europeans and Americans pretty much succeeded in wiping them out - or it out, I should say, as a cultural behavior - in the subsequent years of relentless Christian missionary work and otherwise "Anglicizing" educational efforts.

The berdache was a pretty interesting figure in Native American society, and not because they were simply "gay" (to rely upon a very modern construct) or even cross-dressers.  The berdaches were actually considered "two-spirited" - a unity of the male and the female constituting a "third gender"; and in fact they occupied elevated and respected positions in tribal society.  And this was pretty universal, from the Mandan peoples of North Dakota to the Pueblo cultures of the Southwest.  Wikipedia reports that instances of berdachism have been documented from over 130 tribes across the continent.

Will Roscoe, one of the pre-eminent American scholars of the phenomenon, is the author of The Zuni Man-Woman (University of New Mexico Press, 1991), a biography and consideration of We'wha -  a berdache who actually traveled to Washington D.C. in 1886 as a cultural ambassador representing the Zuni nation!  Roscoe writes of berdachism as a "socially approved channel for the expression of a pattern of sex and gender variance that allowed individuals to make unique social, religious, and artistic contributions to their communities." And both the level of contribution and reciprocal respect for it was apparently quite high.

It would be very easy to spend a lot of time sharing Roscoe's work - it is definitely fascinating material - but I don't want to stray too far away from the Lewis and Clark narrative. Not yet anyway.  Mostly here I am citing his work as a means of giving the Journals passage a broader context. I will, though, include this differentiation he makes between the berdache and the shaman, taken from a supplementary interview, that fleshes out the role of the berdache a bit more:

Berdaches and shamans are different, and it's very important at this point to draw out this distinction.  Shamans classically belong to small tribal societies, although not exclusively. They are involved in ecstatic experiences and contact with the otherworld and they work very much on their own.  The shaman is extremely liminal and ambivalent morally and socially.  The berdache is a social, collective figure - a specialist, a cultural worker, a priest, an artist.  A berdache is a person who mediates the divisions and contradictions within the community, as opposed to the shaman, who works with the outside.

These are very important traditions.  We know all about the shaman because he appeals to Western, individualistic, heroic patterns.  We don't know about the berdache because they wore dresses; their history has been suppressed and their voices squelched.  Even gay people today feel ambivalent about the berdache.  But to me the berdache figure is one for us to look toward as gay people.  They did magics of healing, meditation, and unification. They could foretell the future and predict the weather. And you didn't ever want to get one mad at you because their curses had an uncanny way of coming true. *

 Well I think the same rules hold true today: you simply don't want to piss off the drag queens.



* Quote is taken from an interview between Will Roscoe and Mark Thompson, in Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature with Sixteen Writers, Healers, Teachers, and Visionaries, 1994.

Always makin' friends. Or, tell it to the hand...

I probably embrace the excitement of knowing I've stepped out of my personal comfort zone - and lived to tell the tale -  more than the actual act of stepping out of it to begin with, or at least the anticipatory anxiety that often precedes such a move.   So the thought of bidding farewell to all that is known and trekking thousands of miles deep into essentially unknown territory, to meet equally unknown and radically different peoples, strange animals, and who knows what else is both thrilling in the abstract and, of course, terrifying in the logistical particulars.  It's because I am, despite my best intentions, a  what-iffer:  What if we run out of food?  What if we become lost?  What if we run afoul of a grizzly bear?  What if the natives don't like us?  What if we get scalped?!  I guess it's fair to assume that had I had charge of the Lewis' and Clark's expedition of 1804, we'd still all be east of the Mighty Mississippi...

Although Lewis and Clark included on their journey interpreters like Touissant & Sacagawea Charbonneau, their command of the indigenous languages was limited mostly to that of the tribes along the Missouri river and, west of that, the Shoshone tribes from which Sacagawea hailed.  That left a lot of territory to cross without the assist of a common spoken language and - the Native Americans of the day being pre-literate - of course no written language whatsoever.  Pretty anxiety producing when you consider the expedition departed in full expectation of a future reliant on distant, as-yet-unknown natives for food, horses, and navigation, if you ask me.

So something really interesting to be discovered in reading the The Journals of Lewis and Clark is that evidently, although this great land of America was originally inhabited by hundreds of indigenous tribes each speaking its own tongue or dialect thereof, chaos did not actually reign: the Indians had a sort of lingua franca of their own, and that was sign language.

As the expedition moved westward, approaching the Continental Divide,  Lewis writes in his journal for Wednesday, August 14th, 1805:

"The means I had of commicating with these people was by way of Drewyer who understood perfectly the common language of jesticulation or signs which seems to be universally understood by all the Nations we have yet seen.  it is true that this language is imperfect and liable to error but is much less so than would be expected.   the strong parts of the ideas are seldom mistaken."

Well, a big relief for Lewis and Clark, I should think.  (And speaking of communications, notice how Lewis' writing style is closer to modern usage than that of his contemporary, Clark.  Lewis is definitely the easier to read, and the more prolific of the two, though both bring something different and worthwhile to the journals.)

In August of 1805, Lewis and Clark were anxious to forge relations with the indigenous tribes - especially as securing horses for portage across the mountains was essential to the expedition's success and those horses were going to come from the Indians.  Here's an interesting narrative from August 11th that touches on the use of signs - or failing that, bribes - in making friends and influencing people (or otherwise, letting 'em know you're "white, uptight and outta sight"!).  It should be noted that at this point in their journey the group is dressed almost entirely in animal skins and moccasins, a bi-product of their hunt-as-you-go lifestyle and far more durable for the rigours of crossing the wild.  Lewis is afraid they'll be ignored as just another party of natives...

"I was overjoyed at the sight of this stranger and had no doubt of obtaining a friendly introduction to his nation provided I could get near enough to him to convince him of our being whitemen.  I therefore proceeded towards him at my usual pace.  when I had arrived within a mile he made a halt which I did also and unloosing my blanket from my pack, I made  him the signal of friendship known to the Indians of the Rocky mountains and those of the Missouri, which is by holding the mantle of robe in your hands at two corners and then throwing [it] up in the air higher than the head bringing it to the earth as if in the act of spreading it. thus repeating three times.  this signal of the robe has arrisen from a custom among all those nations of spreading a robe or skin for ther gests to set on when they are visited.  this signal had not the desired effect, he still kept his position and seemed to view Drewyer an[d] Sheilds who were now coming in sight on either hand with an air of suspicion.   I would willingly have made them halt but they were too far distant to hear me and I feared to make any signal to them least it should increase the suspicion in the mind of the Indian in our having some unfriendly design upon him.  I therefore hastened to take out of my sack some b[e]ads a looking glas and a few trinkets which I had brought with me for this purpose and leaving my gun and pouch with McNeal advanced unarmed towards him.  he remained in the same stedfast poisture until I arrived 200 paces of him when he turn[ed] his ho[r]se about and began to move off slowly from me;  I now called to him in as loud a voice as I could command repeating the word tab-ba-bone, which in their language signifiyes white-man.  but lo[o]king over his shoulder he still kept his eye on  Drewyer and Sheilds who wer still advancing neither of them haveing sagacity enough to recollect the impropriety of advancing when they saw me thus in parlay with the Indian."

Unfortunately for Lewis, as the narrative progresses, apparently the lure of trinkets and the company of the great tab-ba-bone is simply not enough to keep a no doubt fairly freaked-out Indian from getting spooked by the group of armed men approaching him.  He gallops away on his horse.  Writes Lewis later, "I now felt quite as much mortification and disappointment as I had pleasure and expectation at the first sight of this indian.  I fe[l]t soarly chagrined at the conduct of the men particularly Sheilds to whom I principally attributed this failure in obtaining an introduction to the natives."  Chin up, Lewis: An adventurous guy like you is sure to make friends!

1970's childrens' television surprisingly not factually complete, poetic license suspected...

 

 

Chances are, if you were a babe of the Seventies like me, your first introduction to Lewis & Clark came from the Saturday morning School House Rock cartoon, "Elbow Room" - one of a series of now classic musical cartoons that sought to educate young viewers on, among other things, the history, mechanics, and ethos of this great nation of ours.  And as the lyrics go:

Lewis and Clark volunteered to go,
Goodbye, good luck, wear your overcoat!
They prepared for good times and for bad (and for bad),
They hired Sacagawea to be their guide.
She led them all across the countryside...

And so I think like most kids of the era, my lasting image of Lewis & Clark was destined to be ingrained as essentially a three-person exposition, with Sacagawea leading the way in a compact canoe.  But I must report that in reading the explorer's journals, it soon becomes apparent this is not an entirely accurate picture...

The expedition was also known in its time as The Corps of Discovery.  Frankly it's a title that I rather admire. Talk about a fitting title for some Seventies educational children's television; not entirely out of place in a line up with The Electric Company and Zoom, I should think.  And Lewis' and Clark's group numbered not just themselves and the Native American woman Sacagawea - as one might think from the cartoon - but actually comprised a somewhat perpetually morphing party that also included the enlistment of some 28 military men, two interpreters, and Clarks' black manservant (or slave), known as York.  Additionally the caravan also episodically accompanied by native guides and escorts along the trail.  Add to that the boats, the weapons, the supplies, and a very large quantity of tradegoods brought along to exchange with the Indians and you have, really, a awful lot of people trekking along with an equally daunting amount of baggage.  

Furthermore, the group traveled initially with seven more soldiers who accomanied them as far as Fort Mandan - now in present day North Dakota - where they spent their first winter among the Mandan Indians there on the upper Missouri river.  Interestingly, when these soldiers parted with the expedition and returned to "civilization" loaded with reports and specimens, they'd been told another attachment would eventually follow.  But Lewis and Clark later decided against sparing any more manpower, and so when no further detachment arrived back East, the expedition was actually and for years suspected lost!

Additionally there was also a group of nine or so men, identified by scholars as "St. Louis Boatman," who helped escort the initially water-bound venture up the Missouri river.  It should be noted that one of the foremost hopes of the expedition was to find a water route that would easily connect the Pacific to the young republic and therefore facilitate the importation of goods from China and the Pacific Rim. (See, even then we were crazy for Chinese exports, though of course back then we were wanting things we couldn't get domestically, not farming off all our own manufacturing to improve a corporation's bottom line).  The ideal was a connecting water route linking the Columbia with the Missouri, and failing that, a predominantly water-based route punctuated with manageably short episodes of land porterage. Of course, the unanticipated magnitude of the Rockies dashed those hopes all to hell...

So it is quite evident that a group that for some time numbered up to sixty does not a ménage à trois  in a canoe make.  But I gather a more exhaustive roll call of participants would make for a fairly tedious Saturday morning cartoon.  Though aside from the simplification, the cartoon - which inarguably reflects what I would call the Bicentennial-consciousness of the 1970s (believe me, it was there - the entire world turned red, white, and blue for a year) - also reflects the Feminist interests of the decade: specifically in the enahanced stature and role attributed to Sacagawea in a story that in decades previous might likely have starred but two very noble white men.  But from reading the journals, I can also report that, while tough-stuff and an undeniable asset to the expedition, Sacagawea actually did not do much in terms of guiding the party as the cartoon reports. Shocking! 

Sacagawea was more than just the face on an inconvenient, highly unpopular piece of currency. 

Sacagawea was born a Shoshone, or Snake Indian, in the area of what is now known as Idaho, around 1788.  As a child she was taken captive and brought to North Dakota by the warring Hidatsa tribe, or - as they are referenced in the journals - the Minnetarees.  Around the age of thirteen she was taken as a wife by the French Canadian Touissant Charbonneau, a Quebec-born explorer and trapper who also served The Corps of Discovery as an interpreter.  Many French Canadians had penetrated the lands of the Northern Plains, establishing trade for animal pelts of which, to the European, the North American continent was unfathomably rich.  Sacagawea was brought along too for her knowledge of the Shoshone tongue, which Lewis and Clark acurately predicted would be beneficial for the success of the mission.  

Sacagawea proved a capable interpreter and was very adept at foraging for edible indigenous plants and roots.  It should also be noted that during the long trek she gave birth to her son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, and trekked him to the Pacific and home slung on her back.  But it is interesting that much of her value to the expedition came not from fulfilling any role one might at the time more commonly ascribed to a man, but actually from simply being herself: a woman and a Native American. And here I speak particularly of those fragile moments, in the terra incognita of the Rockies and beyond, when the increasingly ragged band of travelers came into contact with native tribes who had never encountered a white man before, much less a pack of them...

Clark writes on October 19, 1805 (and here I will note that the usage, spelling, and punctuation is his own), of encountering a small settlement of natives in what I think is a pretty fascinating passage that illustrates Sacagawea's diplomatic cachet.  Warning: Unexpected encounters with heretofore unknown races are known to induce panic attacks...

"I deturmined to take the little canoe which was with me and proceed with the three men in it to Lodges,  on my approach not one person was to be seen except three men off in the plains, and they sheared off as I saw approached near the Shore,    I landed in front of five Lodges which was at no great distance from each other, Saw no person   the enterance or Dores of the Lodges wer Shut with the Same materials of which they were built a Mat,  I approached one with a pipe in my hand entered a lodge which was the nearest to me   found 32 persons men, women, and a few children Setting permiscuisly in the Lodge, in the greatest agutation,  Some crying and ringing their hands, others hanging their heads.  I gave my hand to them and made Signs of my friendly disposition and offered the men my pipe to Smok and distributed a few small articles which I had in my pockets,  this measure passified those distressed people verry much,   I then sent one man into each lodge and entered a Second myself the inhabitants the of which I found more fritened than those of the first lodge     I destributed Sundrey small articles amongst them, and Smoked with the men,    I then Set my self on a rock and made signs to the men to come and Smoke with me    not one come out untill the canoes arrived with the 2 chiefs, one of whome spoke aloud, and as was their custome to all we had passed. the Indians came out & Set by me and smoked   They said we came from the clouds &c. &c. and were not men &c. this time Capt. Lewis came down with the canoes in which the Indians were, as Soon as they Saw the Squar [Squaw] wife of the interpreter they pointed to her and informed those who continued yet in the Same position I first found them, they imediately all came out and appeared to assume new life, the sight of This Indian woman, wife to one of our interprs. confirmed those people of our friendly intentions, as no woman ever accompanies a war party of Indians in this quarter..."

So Sacagawea's very presence as not just another Native American but also a woman as well was a currency in itself.  And it should be noted as well that York's presence - as the first black man to explore these territories, and thus the first black man the natives had seen - proved a terrific fascination with the Indians as well.

The literary record Lewis and Clark leave behind illustrates the assertiveness of Sacagawea.  When the party has finally made its way along the Columbia river near the Pacific, the subject of a carcass of a recently beached great whale arises, the bodies of which often exceed one hundred feet in length, and the native Chinnooks are in the process of harvesting their windfall of its blubber.  Meriwether Lewis writes, in his journal entry for Monday, January 6th, 1806: 

"Capt Clark set out after an early breakfast with the party in two canoes as had been contracted the last evening;  Charbono and his Indian woman were also of the party; the Indian woman was very importunate to be permitted to go, and was therefore indulged; she observed that she had traveled a long way with us to see the great waters, and that now that monstrous fish was also to be seen, she thought it very hard she could not be permitted to see either (she had never yet been to the Ocean)."

Well, one can hardly blame her.  We were curious then as we are curious now.

Why not ... read Lewis and Clark?

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that I preferred to pick up books for souvenirs more than scented soaps.  It's true.  One of the books I picked up on my recent trek across Virginia is an abridged publication of The Journals of Lewis and Clark.  I purchased my copy in the museum shop at Monticello, which incidentally I will say is one of the best museum shops I've ever perused (and I have perused my share).  But that is probably because Thomas Jefferson, America's great Renaissance Man and definitely most beloved interracialist, was such a multi-dimensional party to the formative history of the fledgling States that, once translated into merchandise, his life and passions make for a very diverse and frankly fabulous shopping experience.  It was all there - politics, statecraft, history, diplomacy, architecture, invention, horticulture, slave nooky - you name it.  If Thomas Jefferson ever set his mind to it, there was some very nicely done representation ready to take home.

I went with Lewis and Clark's journals for a variety of reasons.  One is that in the decoration of Monticello - his plantation on the outskirts of Charlottesville, Virgina -  it seemed to me that Jefferson created very much a sort of curiosity cabinet or Wonderkammer from the specimens brought back by the exploration party which he himself had commissioned to explore the newly opened Louisiana Purchase lands.  Specifically I speak of the Entrance Hall, or carriage entrance off the East Portico.  It was here that Jefferson in his later years made his entrance to receive guests in a stage set with the curious grandeur of the still mostly unknown North American continent, in his own microcosmic museum of Natural History and Native Americana. 

Scenes from the Entrace Hall at Monticello

I also went with the Lewis and Clark because, aside from a love of discovery and the open road, I have an sometimes morbid fascination with tales of First Contact, which is to say those episodes when two heretofore unbeknownst-to-one-another cultures collide.  Of course in the history of The Americas this is going to start with Christopher Columbus dropping anchor off Hispaniola in 1492 and continue into the early 19th century, at least as far as the Merriwether Lewis and William Clark led expedition of 1804 - 1806, which set of from then frontiersy St. Louis and crossed by river and land a Northwestern trail to the Pacific Ocean.  Between the tribes of the Dakotas who'd had experience with French fur traders coming down from Canada, and the Chinnooks of the Pacific Coast, who also by this point were in trade relations with the Pacific-sailing "White Man", there was a virgin expanse of Native American existence, especially in the Rockies, that had never had firsthand contact with the European.  Lewis and Clark and company would be the first. 

I've read about Cortes and the Aztecs, and Pizarro and the Incas, too. I guess one of the reasons I like these stories is that, in some ways, it really is like watching a beautiful train wreck.  It's curious and dramatic, and you know it'll end in tears, but the participants don't yet. And also, there is a near extinction to that realm of human experience.  Though I guess the 1990's brought us the occasional report of contact with the odd isolated tribe in New Guinea or the depths of the Amazon rainforest, these sorts of things really don't happen anymore; the Earth is all combed over.  I suppose the closest we could come to the experience is in contact with extraterrestrial life.  So it is that "Who and What the Hell are You?"  sort of awe I find terribly fascinating, and one that no doubt triggers a radical recomposition of world construct and paradigm within the minds of its participants. 

It is interesting to note that what might have been the single most enriching act in the history of the United States - the Louisiana Purchase, whereupon Jefferson negotiated the acquisition of 828,000 square miles of land, in effect doubling the size of the nation - was also the seed of his own financial ruin.  It is commonly known that Jefferson died in debt.   Apparently in the Colonial and then early Federalist eras, a rich Virginian was a landed Virginian and all of Jeffersons's wealth was measured and held in land holdings. By opening the gates for a Westward national expansion, he sort of damned himself with Eastward decline: previously pricey Virginia land prices plummeted.  Supply exceeded demand. 

In full text the journals of Lewis and Clark weigh in at five volumes and exceed thousands of pages, and though considered a national literary treasure, the 1953 version (which I am reading) - abridged and edited by Bernard De Voto - is purported to be an excellent portrait of the journey, weighing in at a fatty but digestible five hundred pages, more or less.  Writes Stephen Ambrose in the foreward: "Recording and sharing: that is the essence of Lewis and Clark's journals.  You are with them as they discover new animals, plants, fish, Indian tribes. You get the first description of dozens of previously unknown birds, and the first attempt to transcribe the song of the western meadowlark.  And you are present for the greatest hunting experiences any man ever had.  When Lewis, at the Great Falls, writes that he had just seen the biggest buffalo herd he had ever seen, that means it was the biggest herd any white man ever saw.  Botanists, zoologists, cartographers, ethnologists, soldiers, medical historians - there is something here for each to savor."

So why not read Lewis and Clark?

Another horrible idea in home decorating...

Last time I wrote about the general ghastliness of the Colonial era beef-tallow candle.  But long before the European arrived on the scene, indigenous peoples living in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada came to utilize a small, silvery fish - and I don't mean the oil extracted from the fish, I mean the fish itself - as a means of illumination.  I mean, they came to burn the Candlefish.

This is a little something I stumbled on while researching colonial candle making. Apparently the small Candlefish, or Eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus), is a type of smelt whose body mass is so fatty with fish oil that it could be (and indeed was) "dried, strung on a wick, and ... burned as a candle."  Think of that: dried fish one can light and use as candles!  How's that for smelly? 

The Candlefish is native to the Northern Pacific coastal waters stretching from Northern California to Alaska.  It's name, Eulachon, which is also sometimes spelled Oolichan or Oulachon, comes from the Chinook language, and it was both an important part of the diet and the economy of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest and Canada's West coast.  It was also the first of the fishes to migrate from the sea and up the rivers after winter, thus ending late winter hunger anxiety with the river-dwelling tribes, who came to call them "salvation fish" or "savior fish".  Lewis and Clark even dined on them, too, when their expedition was camped out on the Pacific coast in 1806 - and boy am I ever going to write about Lewis & Clark and their diet - but no word as to whether or not the duo penned their famous journals in the flickering, fishy light of the Eulachon...

The Candlefish fish candle is certainly a phenomenon past its apogee, though I would say it's open for a comeback. All that sort of thing really takes is the right tastemaker at the right time.  But maybe it really is better to curse the darkness than light a candlefish, since as of 2010 the Eulachon is officially listed as a threatened species.  Hydroelectric dams, chemical pollutants, El Niño-related climate change - it's all taking a toll on the little guys.  The last thing they need is to end up on some avant gardist's tablescape.

The colonial home: rather smoky, mostly smells bad...

One of my obsessions of the moment is the fragrant Bayberry (Myrica) plant and its applications, because last month for my birthday I took a trip through Virginia and stopped off at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello plantation there in Charlottesville surrounds.  In the museum shop they sell, among quite a few things, bars of 18th century style soaps and one variety of which is Bayberry scented.  And though it is more my style to purchase books for souvenirs than scented soaps, I found myself so recurrently drawn to the fragrance that I eventually dispensed with $1.75 for a three ounce bar.  Not a bad deal in the scheme of things.  And later when I made it to Williamsburg, I found the merchants there handily stocked in the old-style soaps as well.  But actually I don't want to write about soaps; I want to write about candles...

When you tour a place like Williamsburg, one thing they don't tell you is that interiors of the American Colonial period likely stank of rancid beef fat.  At least after dark anyway.  That's because the candles of the era were, overwhelmingly, made of wicks dipped in beef tallow, and not the (alternately inodorous or intentionally-scented) waxes to which we are accustomed today.  And the beef tallow candle not only smelled badly but was a rather smoky burn as well. "Early to bed, early to rise..." penned Benjamin Franklin, but frankly despite the tri-partite promise of health, wealth, and wisdom, it probably wasn't much of a pleasurable to stay up after dark otherwise...

Throughout the year each colonial household saved up their tallow in preparation of the annual candle making day, a chore apparently so onerous (or at least odious) that there was plenty of opportunity for professional candle makers, or chandlers, to either contract the work from individual households or set up shop and sell pre-made goods -  much to the irritation of neighbors since the manufacture was a smelly business.  Otherwise candle making, though now popular and charming as an educational Colonial reenactment, was actually again very smelly and generally took over the entirety of the smallish colonial house for its completion. Most households preferred to make all of their candles for the year in the course of a day, for a variety of reasons: as the aging of the tapers throughout the following year caused them to burn more slowly, no one wanted to run out of candles at an inopportune moment, and otherwise making them was generally considered a shitty thing best over and done with.

But at some point in our history, some Native Americans said to some colonists, more or less, "Here, smell this bush. It's fabulous..."  And so the European was irrevocably turned-on to the indigenous American Bayberry bush (probably Myrica pensylvanica, or perhaps Myrica gale, which also grows in the Northeast as well as Canada).  The smell of Bayberry I would describe as mildly spicy, perhaps with a faint note of mint, and the berries themselves are thickly coated with an aromatic natural wax.  Apparently few animals are metabolically equipped to digest the waxy berry - the Yellow Rumped Warbler (Dendroica coronata) being the notable exception, thus allowing the plant's seeds to be dispersed about the landscape in the Warbler's droppings - another of Nature's little arrangements.

The Bayberry wax can be boiled off the berries and colonists soon realized it could be effectively used for candle making, especially since the resulting product not only doesn't smoke and stink of old beef fat but actually burns clearly and pleasantly scents the air.  Unfortunately it takes quite a quantity of berries to make a candle - 15 lbs. of berries yields 1 lb. of wax - so while immediately popular, Bayberry candles were expensive and likely destined for select usage.  Still, a definite improvement to any upscale colonial home. 

I see today that though the marketplace is predominantly stocked with the economical "Bayberry-scented" candles, there are still available the occasional genuine Bayberry wax candles.  In fact there is something of a lore that has been cultivated in their marketing as a holiday tradition, that "Bayberry candles burned to the socket, puts luck in the home, food in the larder, and gold in the pocket"  (or variants on that theme; also note that this one is not even grammatically correct).  Specifically they are to be burned in-full on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.  This is attributed to Colonial era tradition, but I am not entirely convinced of the authenticity of the claim, since the world has generally been lousy with superstitions of questionable provenance and today particularly ones that facilitate holiday product consumption.  (Also, I think the twelfth day of Christmas, or Feast of Epiphany, would play a role in this sort of old tradition, though hand-dripped candles are generally sold in uncut pairs.)  However, I am quite interested in burning some genuine Bayberry wax candles, for the holidays if necessary, so if anyone feels inclined to forward a pair in the name of scientific and sociological inquiry, I will be pleased to accept them and duly report my findings...