tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63997073646658160092024-03-21T16:07:59.571-07:00Amicus Curiositatis"there's only one thing in life, and that's the continual renewal of inspiration." - d. vreelandandrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-88889960171623754212012-04-11T11:11:00.000-07:002012-04-11T11:11:42.186-07:00A short piece entitled "Escargot"<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">ESCARGOT</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I worked once in a French restaurant. The family that owned the establishment came from Cannes, but not wanting to be definingly southern in their endeavor instead focused on mainline, classical French cuisine and eschewed the provencial dishes. So I spent many afternoons and evenings serving <em>confit de canard</em>, <em>truite amandine</em>, and e<em>scargots à la Bourguignonne</em>, which is to say, snails in the Burgundy style.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Harvested snails are black in color and noticeably vaginal in shape and contour. Our snails arrived in large 28 ounce cans labeled<em> "RUBY BRAND" </em>and <em>"<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">6 DOZEN - 72 COUNT, </span> </span>EXTRA LARGE SNAILS (ESCARGOTS)" </em>and<em> "PRODUCT OF INDONESIA</em>." After washing and sorting the uncanned snails, the chefs placed them into specially purposed escargot bakers - thick white ceramic dishes each appointed with six deep holes - where they were layered over a finely diced duxelle of mushrooms, celery root, and ham. Ultimately this was baked in a highly aromatic butter sauce seasoned with plenty of garlic and parsley, a hint of white pepper and - the finishing touch - a dash of anise-flavored pastis liqueur. Once the bakers and their contents came to a perilously hot temperature, we served them with tiny forks and plenty of crusty bread.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Pastis was the one ingredient no one would think to guess if attempting to discern the recipe by taste alone. But it was one of those things one might mention upon inquiry and in so doing garner the reply, usually from Francophiles on their second martini, of "<em>Of course!</em> <em>Now I taste it so clearly!". </em>Though perhaps the person tasting it most clearly was the brooding Jean-Marc, husband of the proprietary couple, who generally started his working day with a <em>petit déjeuner </em>of a tall glass of pastis.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Well, <em>escargots à la Bourguignonne</em> is very rich and sometimes an order returns from the table unfinished. In these instances - because waiters are always hungry - if no one was looking I'd stealthily dip a piece of the crusty bread into one of the ceramic baker's untouched holes and scoop up the sauce. So exquisite; I'd lose myself for one buttery, garlicky, breath-annihilating moment and, because hungry waiters always have good breath, spend the next thrity minutes chewing peppermints.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I never ate the actual snail. I don't generally eat things that look vaginal and took the opportunity to compose a list, called <em>Things That Look Like Pussy That I Won't Eat</em>. Here it is:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">THINGS THAT LOOK LIKE PUSSY THAT I WON'T EAT:</div><div style="text-align: left;">1. escargot</div><div style="text-align: left;">2. pussy</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">(There is a tentative third item I have since added to the list: Georgia O'Keeffe paintings.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Working as a waiter is often taxing. Working for the French often even more so. To be overeducated and underemployed in the recessive, early 21st century American economy, that's not fun either. Some days, though, you just have to tell yourself :<em> Well, somewhere in the world someone is working in an Indonesian snail cannery and at least it's not me...</em> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Well, the truth is, probably somewhere in the world someone is working on an Indonesian snail ranch, dreaming of getting a job in a snail cannery in the city. Cannery vs. farm, which is worse? I've tried to weigh the pros and cons, but in both scenarios I end up Muslim <em>and</em> working with snails, and I'm just not that kind of boy. But still I have to think about these things, because I am Thoughtsy McGee.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">- a.t.s.</span></div>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-39041939838686100572012-03-06T00:42:00.000-08:002012-03-06T00:42:12.687-08:00Two curious instances of the separation of Moor and limb, conjoined now in ornamental testament to a cluttered, associative memory...One of the pleasures I think of progressing in life's journey is that as one does, one's head becomes increasingly well-furnished with ideas, images, and experiences that - hopefully - are a pleasure to revisit. At least if one is progressing well in this journey; that is my opinion. I have (or should say, my family has) chucked quite a bit of money towards many years of college to achieve this end, even if said end was never the originally-intended one meant to justify its rather expensive and coincidental means. I guess this is to say that my would-be career has yet to really pan out, but I've learned to enjoy the ride just the same. And I'll add - and I think soon illustrate - that there are all kinds of rides...<br />
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I recently had an old painting brought up from the depths of memory. It's one of the freakier works we studied in a class on Italian Renaissance art I took for an Art History minor during my quest for a second degree. The painting, by Fra Angelico, is called <em>Miracle of the Deacon Justinian</em>. It's actually one of many that decorate the the predella (or altarpiece) of San Marco in Florence and are dated around 1438-40. In the composition, two twin brothers - the Saints Cosmas and Damian, both physicians who were martyred in 287 - appear hovering around the sleeping Roman deacon Justinian. The textbook briefly describes the painting as "show(ing) the two saints, who float in trailing soft clouds, exchanging the deacon's gangrenous leg for a healthy one amputated from a Moor," before matter-of-factly segueing into a comparatively lengthy celebration of Fra Angelico's mastery of light and shadow in the interior setting.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBXJurLh_OIQuCKzLTyX5ssjWS7_Jzi2LhDI7VPcbqaYD2NIdCrZ2yQKx7Iev6TXwVqZz-vqY54hAnFjKT7DhS6qynptvX7SS5X-pjUDK92PrmnoNmgtXDVvGjJgJPhiUQm-Xvv3lMwtc/s1600/fraangelico_thehealingofjustinianbysaintcosmasandsaintdamian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBXJurLh_OIQuCKzLTyX5ssjWS7_Jzi2LhDI7VPcbqaYD2NIdCrZ2yQKx7Iev6TXwVqZz-vqY54hAnFjKT7DhS6qynptvX7SS5X-pjUDK92PrmnoNmgtXDVvGjJgJPhiUQm-Xvv3lMwtc/s400/fraangelico_thehealingofjustinianbysaintcosmasandsaintdamian.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Fra Angelico's <em>Miracle of the Deacon Justinian</em>, 1438-40</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">If you're like me, your initial response to the painting runs somewhere along the lines of: <em>Hmmm. Now that's awfully bizarre</em>. And the textbook's authors' more or less glossing over of the subject matter only enhances its strange sense of mystery - and I don't mean the spiritual, saintly sort, I mean the <em>WTF?</em> sort of mystery...</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The scene really does prompt a question or two. I mean, I suppose it's very swell to be less one rotten old leg; and so much the better to have a transplant rather than I stump, I am inclined to believe. But how strange to - you know - not exactly have a "matcher". Really, what's it like to wake up to that - The miracle <em>and</em> the mix-n-match? I'm willing to wager there's a broad expanse of reactions to be had. And then there's also the question of this new leg's origins: what happened to this donating Moor? Is he hopping around, less one leg? </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Initially I was left to wonder if the painting didn't reflect some sort of de facto reduction of the African as commodity: as not only the European's source of (later) slave labor but even body parts as well. I've since googled the painting and its subjects several times for more information. The Fra Angelico work itself shows up frequently enough in search results - many art print companies sell copies of it - but a detailed telling of the actual story it portrays is harder to come across. A couple sites modify the brief telling to include that the leg came from a "recently deceased Ethiopian". Another site goes as far as to report that the Ethiopian donor had been a slain gladiator. Well, maybe so, but I am not entirely convinced: the relative silence seems somewhat deafening for such a curious composition - one that frankly begs for explanation upon first viewing - which leads me to wonder if the whole "recently deceased" thing isn't a little ex post facto, if you know what I mean. Well - either way - another of the pleasures of progressing through life is a diminished tendency to give the European the benefit of the doubt...</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Speaking of Europeans behaving badly, my read of the moment is Charles C. Mann's delightful and fascinating <em>1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created</em>. It's the sequel to his perhaps even more compelling <em>1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. </em>I like both books very much because Mann's research and reportage really challenge the old, misguided assumptions that we as Americans - which is to say as both citizens of the United States and also as peoples of the greater continental Americas - carry about in our patchy grasp of our own history. Mann's narratives are pretty much guaranteed to elicit an ongoing series of <em>Hmmm</em>'s, <em>Huhhh</em>'s, and <em>How About</em> <em>That</em>'s...</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Speaking of Moors under the knife, it was Mann's latest book that brought <em>Miracle of the Deacon Justinian</em> to mind: specifically the story of Esteban de Dorantes, a Moor under Spanish slavery, whose life is I think one of the more fascinating, adventurous, and frankly rather surreal narratives that I've read about lately. I won't chatter on too much about it, but rather let you enjoy the lengthy passage I have transcribed from Mann's <em>1493</em><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3;"> </span><span style="background-color: #783f04; color: blue;"><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #783f04;">[with a little c</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #783f04;">ommentary of my own added in brown] <span style="color: black;">:</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq">The paradigmatic example of the African disapora may be the man known variously as Esteban, Estevan, Estevancio, or Estebanico de Dorantes, an Arabic-speaking Muslim/Christian raised in Azemmour, Morocco. Plagued by drought and civil war in the sixteenth century, Moroccans fled by the desperate tens of thousands to the Iberian peninsula, glumly accepting slavery and Christianity as the price of survival. Many came from Azemmour, which Portugal, taking advantage of the region's instability, occupied during Esteban's childhood. He was bought, probably in Lisbon, by a minor Spanish noble named Andrés Dorantes de Carranza. Dreaming of repeating Cortés's feats of conquest, Dorantes, with Esteban in tow, joined an overseas expedition led by <span class="st">Pánfilo de Narváez , a fiercely ambitious Castilian duke with every good quality required of a leader except good judgment and good luck.</span></blockquote><div><blockquote class="tr_bq">More than four hundred men, an unknown number of them African, landed under Narváez's command in southern Florida on April 14, 1528. One catastrophe followed another as they moved up Florida's Gulf coast in search of gold. Narváez vanished at sea; Indians, disease, and starvation picked off most of the rest. After about a year, the survivors built ragtag boats and tried to escape to Hispaniola. They ran aground off the coast of Texas, losing most of their remaining supplies. Of the original four hundred men, just fourteen were still alive. Soon the tally was down to four, one of whom was Esteban. Another was Esteban's owner, Dorantes. <span style="color: #783f04;">[ This is where I cannot help but put myself into the shoes of Esteban and ask of the universe, <em>Seriously? 396 men die and none of them is the turd that owns me</em>? Talk about really not catching a break...]</span></blockquote></div><blockquote class="tr_bq">The four men trekked west, toward Mexico, in a passage of stunning hardship. They ate spiders, ant eggs, and prickly pear. They lost all their possessions and walked naked. They were enslaved and tortured and humiliated. As they passed from one Indian realm to the next, they began to be taken for spirit healers - as if native people believed their horrific journey of itself must have brought these strange, naked, bearded people close to the numinous. Perhaps the Indians were right, for Esteban and the Spaniards began curing diseases by chant and the sign of the cross. One of the Spaniards brought back a man from the dead, or said he did. They wore shells on their arms and feathers on their legs and carried flint scalpels. As wandering healers they acquired an entourage of followers, hundreds strong. Grateful patients handed them gifts: bountiful meals, precious stones, six hundred dried deer hearts.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Esteban was the scout and ambassador, the front man who contacted each new culture in turn as they walked thousands of miles across the Southwest, along the Gulf of California and into the mountains of central Mexico. By some measures, Esteban was the leader of the group. He certainly held the Spaniard's lived in his hands every time he encountered a new group and, rattling his shaman's gourd, explained who they were.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Eight years after their departure, the four Narváez survivors entered Mexico City. The three Spaniards were feted and honored. Esteban was re-enslaved and sold. His new owner was named Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy of New Spain. Mendoza soon assigned him as the guide to a reconnaissance party going north - Esteban was back on the road. The party was searching for the Seven Cities of Gold. Supposedly these had been established in the eighth century by Portugeuse clerics escaping from Muslim invasions. For decades, people from Spain and Portugal had been hunting them - the Seven Cities were an Iberian version of the Sasquatch or Yeti. Why anyone should imagine these cities were in the U.S. Southwest is unexplained and perhaps unexplainable. Somehow the tales of the Narváez survivors reignited this passion, and Mendoza had succumbed. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Leading the expedition was Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan missionary who has never been charged with insufficient zeal. Mendoza's instructions took pains to command Esteban to obey him. But Esteban had no interest in following orders. As they moved north he encountered Indians who recalled him from his previous journey. He shed his Spanish garb, wore bells, feathers, and chunks of turquoise, and shook a rattle in a spiritual fashion. He again acquired several hundred followers. He ignored Niza's demand that he stop performing ritual cures and refuse his patients' gifts of alcohol and women. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">In a decision that the missionary claimed was his own, Esteban and his followers went ahead of the rest of the party after crossing the Rio Grande. Quickly they gained a lead of many miles. Once again, Esteban was moving into an area never before seen by someone from across the ocean. Days after the separation, Niza encountered some of Esteban's entourage, wounded and bleeding. In the mountains at the Arizona-New Mexico border, they told him, the group had come across the Zuni town of Hawikuh, a collection of two- and three-story sandstone homes that climbed like white steps up a hill. It's ruler angrily refused entrance. They barricaded Esteban and his cohort into a big hut outside town without food or water. Esteban was slain when he tried to escape Hawikuh the next day, along with most of the people accompanying him. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">The Zuni themselves have a different story - <em>stories</em>, I should say, because many have been recounted. In one version told to me, Esteban is not refused entry, but welcomed into Hawikuh. The people have heard of this man and his extraordinary journey. They want to keep him there - want this very badly, at least in the story. He is a man like no other they have encountered, and incredible physical specimen with his skin and hair, a man whose spirit holds a great wealth of knowledge and perhaps more, a valuable possession they have no desire to lose.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">To prevent his departure, they cut off his lower legs, lay him gently on his back, and bathe themselves in his supernatural presence. Esteban lives in this way for many years, the story goes, always treated with the respect due to such uncommon figures, always on his back, legs stretched out, with the wrappings on his stumps carefully tended. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">All versions of his end are based on stories that people have told to themselves. His actual fate may never be known with certainty. What seems clear is that in the end this man who crossed so many bridges fell into the same delusion that possessed so many Spaniards. He thought that he understood the shook-up world he was creating and that he was in control. He forgot that under bridges is only air.</blockquote><br />
Well, quite a life's journey, don't you think? I confess that I'm going with the Zuni version of Dorantes' denouement naturally, because it adds a certain element to an already rather bizarre narrative. And Mann's telling of Esteban de Dorantes' life frankly makes me yearn for Federico Fellini to return from the dead to direct the film adaptation, preferably in the style of his <em>Satyricon</em> of 1969.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">- a.t.s.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMNJ21RBSx4hmKUE9aCdxyuO_teza6pxAI0eEVxLADUmFqnSHKZzjIm7H0kKP5NawrraVea7NMwqDS-YsZndC30KLra-0FpAT8PojTs6JODCJrKydM_FrST0wnXqsJf6vlnGaLj9DzxRw/s1600/1493.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMNJ21RBSx4hmKUE9aCdxyuO_teza6pxAI0eEVxLADUmFqnSHKZzjIm7H0kKP5NawrraVea7NMwqDS-YsZndC30KLra-0FpAT8PojTs6JODCJrKydM_FrST0wnXqsJf6vlnGaLj9DzxRw/s320/1493.jpg" width="209" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Charles Mann's <em>1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created</em> is available through Alfred A. Knopf publishers, wherever better printed books are still sold...</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Quotation in second paragraph taken from <em>History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture</em> by Frederick Hartt and David G. Wilkins, fifth edition, published by Harry N. Abrams.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-40735098464773956632012-02-08T16:17:00.000-08:002012-02-08T19:16:35.214-08:00On how to turn a black man white, a white man black, and other curious scientific hypotheses of the Age of Enlightenment...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyaHqewfv2JEVAMInuZSKmrmyyysUJMwWBKmmIOPN9mtbx5nawefQEJnM3hufvpUkVpnMSgZsyIE3nf4qdDzXOyY2IzKGpXl4a4JK-pnACOwPiS3hAxwHh0djVtVsjm2ZulHf5JJHYKa4/s1600/skunk_from_histoire_naturelle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyaHqewfv2JEVAMInuZSKmrmyyysUJMwWBKmmIOPN9mtbx5nawefQEJnM3hufvpUkVpnMSgZsyIE3nf4qdDzXOyY2IzKGpXl4a4JK-pnACOwPiS3hAxwHh0djVtVsjm2ZulHf5JJHYKa4/s400/skunk_from_histoire_naturelle.jpg" width="316" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A plate from Buffon's <em>Histoire naturelle</em>: sometimes science smells bad.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I</span>'ve just had an old Facebook meme brought to mind this week. It was called, more or less, <em>25 Things About Me, </em>and perhaps you remember it, too. Users were invited to author a note that listed twenty-five lesser-known facts about themselves; and these ranged from the very light and trivial to the astonishingly intimate, each based of course on the disposition of its confessor. Once posted, one tagged to the note twenty-five other friends deemed worthy of sharing, and in so doing obliged them to generate in turn lists of their own. And so it went as the meme spread throughout the site's usership. Actually, it was pretty good as far as Facebook things go - definitely more interesting than playing <em>Farmville</em> - and it came at a time when I think users were less leery than today and definitely more interested in exploring the potential of online social networking platforms. It was even referenced by Jimmy Fallon in the "Weekend Update" segment on <em>Saturday Night Live.</em><br />
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I mention the <em>25 Things</em> today in part because I participated, too; and really, since I am considered wordy, I was pretty happy to do so. An observation (or maybe a warning), though: it garnered a far more varied range of responses than originally speculated - but that's another story altogether. It's mentioned today mostly to resurrect a particular entry on the list:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">19. I find that if one looks at the history of human culture, of human thought and belief and social attitudes and mores, the vast and contradictory and now often disproved mass of it all tends most often in my eyes to point to an enduring arbitrariness as a quality of the human condition. I believe that at least half of what we believe today is false or a construct of convenience or at best a charming naiveté, but I could not tell you which half<em>.</em> </div></blockquote>Well, so I felt in January of 2009, and I still do today. I'm pretty sure that half of what's rolling around in your head and mine is pointless, that only time will sort it out, and that frankly by that time we'll probably be dead. <br />
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I'm guessing one could call this a kind of epistemological skepticism. It's the product of education and my experience of the everyday, too. When I started college, I knew I wanted a liberal arts sort of underpinning to my education and ended up with a B.A. in Religious Studies, with a minor in English. This was after a lot of major-dabbling, and here I think my family would gleefully interject that one might read <em>major</em> as either a noun <em>or</em> an adjective, if not both. Originally the program culminated in a degree in Philosophy, with a concentration in Religious Studies; and when a separate and distinct Religious Studies major emerged, I jumped ship. But whatever the title, what the substance of either really breaks down to is a bunch of different people entertaining a bunch of different and often wildly contradictory ideas - of both truth and <em>Truth</em> - over the great expanse of human history. And so at some point one is compelled to ask: <em>Well, so much certainty in the thinkers and believers, but how can it all be true?</em> <br />
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The answer of course is that it can't; that a lot of it is actually bullshit. Or blindness. Or wishful thinking. Yet people lived and died making of these sorts of things the compasses of their lives, pretty much none the wiser we can see today. And speaking of today, I don't know that a look at our world exactly encourages optimism that humanity has improved its interior lot: any cursory glance through the average Facebook news feed will illustrate that. To be clear, though, I definitely do <em>not</em> mean to say that we should abandon the endeavor of human thought as futile. Nor am I really positioning myself here a conscious proponent of agnosticism. Rather, I do favor a healthy sort of self-skepticism: the self-consciousness to know that what you hold to be true, you may do so not for its content and correspondence to reality, but often for what the holding does for you. And finally I am saying this: enjoy the history of human thought, because it is fucking<em> hilarious.</em><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">S</span>o what actually prompted this remembrance of Facebook past is a bit of hilarity found in my latest read, another of the terrific books I picked up along my tour through Virginia last fall. The book is titled <em>Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America,</em> and it's written by Lee Alan Dugatkin, a professor of biology at the University of Louisville. I won't<br />
attempt to abstract the entirety of its contents, but the better part of the book examines<br />
the origins and effects of one of the less-enlightened ideas coming out of the so-called Enlightenment: the <em>Theory of American Degeneracy.</em> And (news to me in 2012 and maybe you, too) basically this was a very widely embraced belief of the 18th and 19th century that <em>every living thing - man included - either born of or once integrated into the landscape of the Americas basically went to shit</em>. <br />
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<em>Say whaaat?</em><br />
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The idea was birthed from the pen of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, (1707-1788) - a preeminent natural scientist, mathematician, and later director of the Royal Gardens in France. So sweeping was Buffon's influence that he's often credited as "the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century." His popularity is due in large part to his persuasive and eloquent writing style, which prompted the widespread readership of his 36 tome <span xml:lang="fr"><em>Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, </em>as it appeared in successive volumes from </span><br />
<span xml:lang="fr"> 1749 to 1788. And not only among his scientific peers but also the literate lay-public,</span><br />
<span xml:lang="fr"> especially participants in the idea-fueled salon culture of 18th century France. </span><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">Thomas Jefferson to the rescue...</span></em></div><br />
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<span xml:lang="fr">Dugatkin spells out Buffon's stance pretty well in the preface of his book:</span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">In his massive encyclopedia of natural history, <em>Histoire Naturelle</em>, Buffon laid out what came to be called the theory of degeneracy. He argues that, as a result of living in a cold and wet climate, all species found in America were weak and feeble. What's more, any species imported into America for economic reasons would soon succumb to its new environment and produce lines of puny, feeble offspring. America, Buffon told his readers, is a land of swamps, where life putrefies and rots. And all of this from the pen of the preeminent natural historian of his century.</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">There was no escaping the pernicious effects of the American environment - not even for Native Americans. They too were degenerate. For Buffon, Indians were stupid, lazy savages. In a particularly emasculating swipe, he suggested that the genitalia of Indian males were small and withered - degenerate - for the very same reason that the people were stupid and lazy. </div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">The environment and natural history had never before been used to make such sweeping claims, essentially damning and entire continent in the name of science. Buffon's American degeneracy hypothesis was quickly adopted and expanded by men such as the Abbé Raynal and the Abbé de Pauw, who believed that Buffon's theory did not go far enough. They went on to claim that the theory of degeneracy applied equally well to transplanted Europeans and their descendants in America. These ideas became mainstream enough that Raynal felt comfortable sponsoring a contest in France on whether the discovery of America had been beneficial of harmful to the human race.</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">Books on American degeneracy were popular, reproduced in multiple editions, and translated from French into a score of languages including German, Dutch, and English; they were the talk of the salons of Europe and the manor houses of America. And it wasn't just the intelligentsia of the age who were paying attention - this topic was discussed in newspapers, journals, poems, and schoolbooks.</div></blockquote>Wow. Can you imagine such crap being proposed - as scientific truth no less - about these big, beautiful Americas of ours? This level of ridiculousness, it's a challenge to fully wrap one's head around it. Yet that this was a commonly held and enduring prejudice is equally dumbfounding: these ideas were readily picked up by intellectual leaders like Voltaire, Kant, and Hegel. Even Charles Darwin came to the Americas with degeneracy on his mind - in 1831, forty-three years <em>after</em> Buffon's death.<br />
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Well, I doubt anyone would question the eternal spring of Eurocentrism. But it's not often one has cause to envision the American "Founding Fathers" on the short end of the social stick, themselves obliged to buck against a strange sort of pseudo-scientific, multi-tentacled racism. Against taxation and the lack of representation, yes; but a real second-class human gradation on grounds other than the economics and geographic far-flungedness, no. <br />
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Thomas Jefferson and fellow 18th & early 19th century leaders knew from experience the idea of degeneration to be complete garbage, and they were also acutely aware of the damaging effect such a belief would have on the future progress of the fledgling America. Jefferson, whose passion and pleasure was natural science, made it is his mission to combat the sentiment and particularly to have the influential Count Buffon recant. His strategy was to present the Count with proof contradictory to his claims of degeneracy and diminution, in part with a taxidermied specimen of the towering American moose - as Dugatkin recounts in his aptly-named<em> Jefferson and the Giant Moose</em>. It was his work in collecting data to rebuff the Count that<em> Notes on the State of Virginia</em> - Jefferson's only published true book - was compiled and penned, an almost accidental bi-product of the endeavor.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A</span>pparently the Comte de Buffon was of a school of natural scientists who generally did not often venture out into nature. Instead they formulated theory based on both observations made from specimens in the great cabinets being amassed at the time, as well as taking data from the flow of often fanciful published reports of travelers and explorers. And it should be noted that the authors of these accounts were, in the interest of boosting readership, seldom above the occasional outrageous claim. Buffon actually did have access to some live animals in the royal collection, and apparently he also experimented in making observations of animals in captivity - as the following passage amusingly illustrates:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">Buffon was also able to gather data directly on some species, albeit in very unnatural settings. One such setting was his family estate, where he cordoned off one area and attempted to create a "semi-wild" environment that he stocked with foxes, hedgehogs, cats, chickens, dogs, badgers, and a monkey named Joko. Though Buffon was able to gather some data at Montbard, most of the time his collection of animals went about chasing each other, burning themselves near fires, and begging their keepers for food. Buffon gathered a bit more reliable data at the Royal Menagerie, where he verified what he had heard about zebras and elephants by observing them person. </div></blockquote>Now that's what I call science. I mean, really, need one be so heavy-handed with the <em>natural</em> bit?<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">From Buffon's volumn on Ornithology. I don't know what the hell is going on here, but it's starting to look like a Walton Ford painting...</span></div><br />
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The human detail of Buffon's American degeneracy theory reflects a larger overarching racial interest. I suppose one might give him credit for subscribing to monogenism (according to Wikipedia, "the concept that all races have a single origin"), which really might have seemed like a progressive idea at the time. The fact that it has its own definitive name is, I think, evidence that it has not always been regarded as a given. But, and here Eurocentrism springs again eternal, Buffon and colleagues believed Adam & Eve - that is to say, the mint, in-the-box collector's edition of man - were Caucasian, and "that other races came about by degeneration from environmental factors, such as the sun and poor dieting." Buffon's ideas of environment-based influence in an organism's outward physical expression of course predate Darwin's theories on evolution and natural selection - and they also offer a sort of naiveté that is actually rather amusing to read. Writes Dugatkin:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">The second pattern Buffon discerned centered on climate and skin color. Because humans were all part of a single race, Buffon believed that skin color was, in part, a direct result of climate. Africans, for example, were dark-skinned, but they would become light skinned if they were moved to northern climates for a few hundred years. Buffon went so far as proposing a direct test of this hypothesis: "To put the change of colour in the human species to the test of experiment, some Negroes should be transported from Senegal to Denmark, where the inhabitants have generally white skins, golden locks, and blue eyes, and where the difference of blood and opposition of colour are greatest." Then, in order to remove the effects of racial mixing on skin color, Buffon suggested that "these Negroes must be confined to their own females, and all crossing of the breed scrupulously prevented. This is the only method of discovering the time necessary to change a Negro into a White, or a White into a Black, by the mere opposition of climate." From there it would become the anthropologist of the future's job to see what sorts of changes would take place in these African Danes...</div></blockquote><br />
Well, I have to say I would also be interested in the progress of those Danish Africans unwittingly transplanted to an isolated existence in Senegal: <em>"Hello, are you black yet?... No, not yet? OK, will check back in another hundred years..."</em><br />
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So why then did a nonsensical idea like the theory of degeneracy gain such traction in Europe? Apparently, part of it was anxiety over emigration and the economic potential of the New World. Monarchs, aristocrats, and the established order were concerned over the fact that people were increasingly less bound to the status quo. They could now buy a tract of land and simply leave - both Europe and eventually Monarchical governance, too. Abbé de Pauw, author of <em>Philosophical Researches on the Americans</em> and by far the most cunty of the pro-degenerists, is credited with writing to incur the favor of his patron, Frederick the Great, who had in fact instituted an agency in Hamburg "whose sole function was to prevent emigration to the New World, and instead to attract potential newcomers to Prussia."<br />
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Well, it's interesting to me that Buffon's theory - which was in large part constructed from observations of natural curiosities of the cabinet - is today itself the curiosity. And as anti-American as it was, in an interesting twist the very theory of American degeneracy and subsequent battle to disprove it is, according to Dugatkin, what gave rise to our national self-image of "<em>America as a beautiful, vast, resource-rich region, and its inhabitants as healthy, hardworking people in tune with nature</em>." And so that's an idea that - even if it might fall into that 50%-chanced realm of the bullshit we cling to - is certainly worth hanging on to all the same. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">- a.t.s</span>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-60143928577677359462012-01-24T23:21:00.000-08:002012-01-25T17:33:15.871-08:00In praise of socialites on peyote; or, the days & nights of the very rich and very curious Millicent Rogers...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div>So like a lot of gay men, I too have my Lady style icons. And here I capitalize <em>Lady </em>to differ-entiate that sort of rarefied and celebrated creature that exists, sadly, on a plane far above you and me. But I've never been one of those <em>so-into-Judy</em> or Liza or Marilyn types of guys; I'm just not that into tragedy. Elizabeth Taylor is my idea of Hollywood glamour - and resilience, too. But you know, it isn't the luminaries of stage and screen so much as a handful of bright and astoundingly stylish 20th century gals that I'm keen on: Diana Vreeland, the former editor of <em>Vogue</em>, penned one of the most electric autobiographies around (a quote from which I currently use above in the masthead of <em>Amicus Curiositatis</em>). Pauline Potter de Rothschild went, mostly by means of intelligence and style, from a broken home and rocky childhood to create a startlingly exquisite world as <em>chatelaine</em> of the Mouton Rothschild estate. And then there is Millicent Rogers...<br />
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Maybe it's because I'm partial to both New Mexico and stylish, independent-minded people, but I've always rather admired Millicent Rogers, the Standard Oil heiress and (yes, somewhat dilettante) artisan, who ended up - after a glamorous and highly episodic life - settling in Taos. There she is memorialized in the eponymously named museum that houses the considerable collection of Native American and Spanish Colonial art, pottery, and jewelry amassed during her final years there. I think today she's best known to fashion designers and editors - as a posthumous muse of sorts - and really what we know of her is mostly just a name attached to her often pioneeringly stylish image. That's actually not necessarily such a bad place to be, since it leaves admirers either wanting more or free to fill in the blanks (or project) for themselves. Of course being of the former camp myself, when I saw that a new biography about Rogers had come out I immediately bought it, completely disregarding the size and intended sequence of my growing <em>to-read</em> stack and otherwise superseding a book on Thomas Jefferson and Natural History. I wanted to know more about the stark-looking lady behind the terrific clothes - and I'll also say that after a long literary romp with Lewis and Clark, I was ready to return to civilization...<br />
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The book is called <em>Searching for Beauty: The Life of Millicent Rogers. </em>It's written by Cherie Burns, who is a Taoseño (or Taoseña) herself. I don't know if there are other biographies on Rogers on the market - Burns never cites another - and anyway it seems she did an exhaustive job with the research and interviews. But biography is a tricky, elusive thing. Often what one is reading, I think, is a record not just of its subject but also its writer's engagement with that subject (or, more likely, about the writers engagement with primary and secondary source material on the subject), and really one is never getting the full, curiosity-quenching story - and definitely not one unadulterated with the subjectivity of the biographer, to whatever degree that may be. So perhaps this is a long way to go about saying that I had mixed reviews for the biography - or possibly my now expanded perspective on the subject - but either way, if you want to be really known after your death then <em>please, please, please</em> take the time to pen your own autobiography before you die. Admirers and detractors alike will certainly respect you all the more for it. And also, like Vreeland, at the end you can casually add that you just dropped a bunch of lies into your narrative and leave posterity guessing...<br />
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After reading <em>Searching for Beauty</em>, I can say that - like most people - Millicent Rogers didn't become truly interesting until her late thirties and beyond. Or maybe this hints to a more deft or reverential treatment of Rogers' New Mexico years at Burns' hand. In fact, in the first hundred pages, I found myself wondering if I'd made a mistake in giving my admiration to someone who was actually coming off somewhat inane. Reading that Millicent, when informed her account was running low, expressed disbelief on the basis of <em>still having plenty of checks left in her checkbook</em> - well, it didn't exactly do much for her image. But the girl was, for most of her life, unfathomably rich and I suppose cluelessness about money management often comes with the territory.<br />
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Much of Rogers' character - the interesting parts, anyway - was shaped by a childhood episode of rheumatic fever, her prolonged convalescence, and the consequent heart problems that would follow her for the rest of her life. She was originally not expected to live past ten. She was often bedridden and unable to fully join in the society (and physicality) of other children, and so she found her world in art and books - and in the process fostered a curiosity that would continue throughout her life. And because her health prevented her from pursuing the outdoorsy, horsy outlets typical to most society girls of her generation, Millicent also took early to dressing as a means of self-expression and visibility - again cultivating something that would stay with her throughout her life: an acute sense of style that (plus an awful lot of money) put her in magazines and on best-dressed lists.<br />
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Rogers was a collector: art, clothes, and also men. She married or took as lovers a series of generally tall, dark, and handsome men, most all of whom offered an intelligence that could engage and entertain her. The roster included the penniless but titled Austrian Count Ludwig Salm von Hoogstraten, the Argentine playboy Arturo Peralta-Ramos, the writers (before they wrote, actually) Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl, and the film star Clark Gable. She lived the expatriate life overseas until Hitler came to power, and then she set up house in a colonial estate in the Virginia Tidewater. Fleming introduced her to Jamaica, and Hollywood friends in Jamaica turned her on to Los Angeles. Finally it was after the break up with Gable that friends brought her on a getaway to New Mexico.<br />
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Either Rogers' life becomes the most interesting, or Burns' telling of it becomes the most compelling, once she gets to New Mexico. There she is introduced to the rugged, stunning landscapes of the state by the Hollywood couturier Gilbert Adrian and his wife, the actress Janet Gaynor. And if you've ever been to Taos you'll know it is not difficult to see how she became enchanted: the little adobe town sits in a gorgeous valley ringed by mountains and is really a bit like finding the Shangri-La of <em>Lost Horizon</em>. The sun somehow seems closer and it gently caresses your face; that and the thinned oxygen of the heightened altitude conspire to lull visitors into a sublime feeling of relaxed wellbeing. And the culture to be found is a tripartite cross of the indigenous Pueblo Indian, the Spanish colonial, and the later Anglo - a fascinating and highly picturesque mix that is the pretty much the norm throughout the northern part of the state. <br />
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Rogers very abruptly fell in love with the place and bought an old adobe there which she proceeded to expand and fill, over the years, with her growing collection of Indian and Spanish Colonial arts and crafts. She took to Indian style dressing but, in heiress fashion, would purchase items like squaw skirts and send them off for a deluxe remake by her main couturier Charles James. The velvet blouses traditionally favored by the Navajo women were recreated for her in fine French velvet. Rogers collected the bold silver and turquoise jewelry, and her own designs took on inspiration from the cross-cultural and bohemian milieu in which she'd enveloped herself. She is credited with introducing "Southwestern" dressing to the mainstream consciousness, and the mix of the couture with the indigenous that she forged was soon picked-up upon by Diana Vreeland and other midcentury tastemakers.<br />
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Rogers became enthralled with Indian culture, and her natural openness, curiosity and very gracious manners eventually gained her acceptance and entree onto the Taos Indian - or <em>Tiwa</em> - pueblo, where she regularly attended dances. Indians in her employ also secured her access to dances held in neighboring reservations, which she avidly attended. Millicent was hungry to experience it all; as Burns writes of the recollections of Millicent's son Arturo (one of two she had with Peralta-Ramos) on one expedition:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Arturo was along on some of his mother's camping trips into Indian country and he remembers one outing with her, Brett, Tony Reyna, Trinidad Archuleta, Tony Luhan, and Benny Sauzo into the Apache lands around the Jicarilla Apache lakes. On that trip, he recalls, Millicent wanted to try peyote, the Indian hallucinogen. She vomited it up on the first go and tried it again. She threw up again, but she was determined to experience its effect. The third time she managed to ingest it. In her Navajo costume she was invited to dance with the Apache Indian women and continued to dance until she sank to the ground with exhaustion and had to go to bed. The next morning her fellow travelers waited for her to revive, a bit later than usual, and get started on the day.</blockquote>Once I had the pleasure of driving through the Jicarilla Apache reservation en route to visit the Ansazi - or as is increasingly correct to say, <em>Ancestral Puebloan</em> - ruins around Farmington: it's gorgeous, exhilarating country, where nature is <em>large</em>. I loved it then and I think I would have loved it even more knowing that somewhere on my route I was passing the historic site of an internationally known heiress and style icon tripping on peyote and dancing herself into a spent heap of who-knows-what kind of feathered couture costume. Well, New Mexico is called <em>The Land of Enchantment</em>, and it really is one of the few states around that really lives up to its motto...<br />
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Millicent became increasingly involved with Indian dancing, and her engagement with Indian spirituality deepened during the course of her years in Taos. It is in these final years, and the final chapters of Burns' biography that Rogers really seems to come alive. In this paragraph - yes, inordinately long but so compelling - Burns quotes Dorothy Brett, the English painter, writer, and aristocrat who'd originally emigrated to Taos in the company of D.H. Lawrence and wife and later became Millicent's friend:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">After the Horse Lake trip, winter began to close in on mountainous Taos with its quick storms, early snows, and sudden drops in temperature, yet Millicent continued to give open-air Indian dances on the mesa behind her house. They seemed to transport her, almost like a drug. She couldn't get enough. If a thunderstorm came up, the party would be transferred to Brett's studio on the north end of town. Millicent would bring the food in tubs, along with whiskey, and wine, beer, and colas and fruit juices for the Indians. Arranged around Brett's studio on cushions and chairs the guests watched the Indians dance, hypnotized by their own singing. Brett, eloquent in her own right, described the scene: "All the guests have arranged themselves around my messy gay studio. The brightly colored Indian paintings hand high up on the walls. Saws and hammers and all the paraphernalia of a work bench are pushed aside and people perch on the narrow table. In the bedroom the drum is beating softly. There is an occasional jingle of bells, as one of the Indians, ready dressed, begins to dance. We all sit and wait patiently. Millicent moves around, disappears into my box of a kitchen, and returns, with glasses of cocktails. The guests who have already eaten her picnic on the mesa before the rain nibble cookies and sip their drinks. At last, impatient, Millicent taps on the bedroom door. It opens a crack. 'We are ready now,' and in a few minutes the door opens and the blanketed singers come out and arrange themselves under the archway from the studio to the sun room and begin to beat the drums. The bedroom door re-opens. Out of it comes the line of feathered dancers. Slowly, gently, they dance into the room and become a circle of waving feathers, jangling bells. Some of the dancers have brought their little sons and the little boys dance earnestly. One of them, a very gay little four year old called Hermann, dances with such fervour and joy that his sunny gay character pervades everyone. As the evening goes on, the wine and beer provided for the Indians stimulates their dancing. They begin, as usual, to get caught up in the mesmerism of the drum and voices of the singers. Millicent sits on a low stool, quiet, absorbed as usual, her whole heart and soul hypnotized by the tremendous power of the song and the endless powerful beating of the drums. During the rests, she gets up to minister food and drink to all the guests, to the Indian guests, the singers, and to her own household, who have also come to the dance. She is untiring in her hospitality. Then at about midnight the dancers are tired. They bring the drum into the center of the room and the circle dance begins. This is a dance of friendship, and we can all take part in it. One of the dancers goes up to Millicent, takes her by the arm, and she dances slowly around with the rest of us. Between two feathered Indians she dances the curious half walk, half dance step round and round. Fatigue overtakes most of us. The circle dwindles and dwindles. The dancers return to the bedroom, take off their dancing clothes. To return to the circle, and round it goes. At last we all tire, the guests have been gradually slipping away, finally the Indians look at their tired sleepy children and decide to go, too. Everybody goes...I fall into bed with the drum still beating in my head.' When she wakes the next morning, the drum is still thudding in her head.</blockquote><br />
Millicent Rogers died early, at the age of fifty in 1953. The damage from the rheumatic fever she'd suffered in childhood finally caught up with her. She was buried in Taos, her funeral well attended by both international society and Indians from the local Pueblo. <br />
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Burns biography <em>Searching for Beauty: The Life of Millicent Rogers</em> is available from St. Martin's Press. As I have said - perhaps too much, and I suppose it indicates a not entirely ringing endorsement - the most captivating parts of the book are those centering around Rogers' life in Taos. Again, though, I am unsure if this lopsidedness is that of a life or its reportage or perhaps my own adoration of New Mexico. Plenty of bloggers seem to be all thumbs-up, so perhaps you should read it yourself and see. My final word on the book, though: a narrative about someone so legendarily stylish and, well, <em>visual - </em>someone with so many aesthetically distinctive episodes throughout life - I think both necessitates and deserves many, many more photographs than are published in the book.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">- a.t.s.</span><br />
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</div>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-91004338569788638822012-01-20T14:52:00.000-08:002012-01-25T18:37:39.720-08:00A short piece of biography, wherein the writer reminisces on the very downtown courtship of his grandparents many years ago...<span style="font-size: x-small;">(The following is a short piece about my grandparents' courtship. I was spurred to write it in a nostalgic moment not long ago, after reading the <em>Together in Tulsa</em> column in <em>This Land Press</em>, an independent multi-media presence that focuses on life and culture in Oklahoma, and especially my hometown. I hope you enjoy...)</span><br />
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</div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><span style="font-size: large;">M</span>y grandfather, Harold Black, came to Tulsa in 1929. He'd been born in September of 1900, and that being the ninth month of the new century I've always figured he was the product of his parents' own centennial fireworks. They must have had a lot to celebrate, though, since he was one of eight brothers and sisters that lived on the Iowa farmstead where he spent his childhood. <br />
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<div>My great-grandmother, it was continuously impressed upon us, continually impressed upon my grandfather that "a young man without an education is nothing." Such was the wisdom a hundred years ago, and I think the same still holds true today. My grandfather became a self-made man, successfully putting himself through medical college and completing residencies in Boston and Louisville before coming to Tulsa. The original plan had been to wander a bit, but he liked the town so much he decided to hang his shingle for good, determined to make a go of being something in a city that was, in fact, succeeding in doing much the same.</div><div> </div><div>When Harold arrived, Tulsa was a boomtown and big fortunes were in the making, though the entrée<strong> </strong>to his trade was significantly humbler. He always said his first patients consisted of winos and prostitutes, and that he preferred the latter as they always paid their bills on time. Though he never specified by what currency the account was settled. Later, it being the time of segregation, he would volunteer weekly at the "colored" hospital on the north side. And eventually he took up residence in the Hotel Tulsa, which stood then at 3rd and Cincinnati - where the Performing Arts Center stands today - his room and board in exchange for services rendered as the hotel doctor.<br />
</div><div></div><div>I am pretty sure Harold must have been one of the more eligible bachelors of 1930s Tulsa: he was tall, funny, handsome enough, and heterosexual. He was also living in a hotel that happened to be the epicenter of the city's petroleum deal making. Apparently one of the lesser publicized bi-products of the booming Tulsa oil economy was a surplus of well-heeled divorcées, several of whom had set their sites on the young doctor. This was occasionally evidenced to us at the house, in the odd run in with, say, an old but very good watch. Or a much-coveted paperweight from Louis Comfort Tiffany. Or an attic boxfull of dapper silk smoking jackets I pretty much destroyed wearing to the clubs when it was the retro fashion in the Eighties. "Oh, <em>that</em>?" My grandmother would reply to questions of provenance - and often accompanied with the most subtle of eye-rolls - "it's from one of your grandfather's <em>old girlfriends...</em>" <br />
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</div><div></div><div>My grandmother Jebbie rolled herself into town in 1946. She was an only child and she happened to be a young woman with an education as well, having been finished at a private Southern girl's college - something that I wondered would have been possible at the tail end of the Great Depression if there'd also been brothers educate. And she was also a young war widow, having - like many young women of her generation - wed her longtime sweetheart for a few weeks of marriage before he shipped off to Europe to be a tail gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress.<br />
</div><div></div><div>During the war she lived in Washington, D.C., working in the Pentagon and for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a draftsman, where she helped to lay out military camps. And she did it all in a hat and gloves, too. After the war, she took a position as an illustrator with the U.S. Geological Survey and was soon given a temporary assignment in Wyoming. But because it was scheduled for February all she could think about was how much she did not want to be that cold, in Wyoming; so she swapped assignments with a co-worker and packed her bags for Tulsa, Oklahoma, in October.<br />
</div><div>On the ride in from D.C. Jebbie started feeling ill, and by the time the train pulled into the Union Depot downtown, she was very sick with the flu. Her assignment was to work at the Federal Building on South Boulder, which then housed the local branch of the Geological Survey, and lodging for the duration of her stay had been arranged at the nearby Hotel Tulsa. When she checked in sick, the front desk shortly arranged for the hotel doctor to pay her a call, and that is in fact how Harold met Jebbie.<br />
</div><div>But Harold was not the only one with admirers, and soon Jebbie found herself not lacking for them either. She was, after all, a bit of a Southern belle, with the lilting accent and, it was sometimes noted, a coincidental resemblance to Vivien Leigh. Harold's main contender for Jebbie's attention was a man we always knew simply as Swan, an upper-level civil servant here in the city. Harold and Swan became active competitors for Jebbie's hand, and their competition did not escape the attention of the hotel staff, where after all, my grandmother would spend the next few months and my grandfather had by now resided for some years. They watched and waited, too - including, my grandmother liked to note in later years, a restaurant hostess in the habit of changing her hair rinse to match her dress.<br />
</div><div>Everyday Swan ordered room service to deliver an apple to Jebbie's room - expressly to keep the doctor away. And daily Harold would pay a call on Jebbie and eat the apple in the process. But there's an advantage in proximity - and I don't doubt in an <em>M.D. </em>as well, since as we know, a young man without an education is nothing - and Dr. Black was the eventual winner of my grandmother's hand. And just like that one of Tulsa's most eligible bachelors was taken off the market, by some little missy that just breezed into town out of nowhere - or so those divorcées fumed<em>.</em><br />
<em> </em></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Rr_ULeqPisPR6OUdroEExf0qKfJpekveYVZFb09YFpYSCcztsYZZG3GNIiU0Um0du1fTY8p0UXBH3w0QqhqmWnrbbEvalGViQY3sX-6E_dmb6jQnKgfAKyotBt1rJaNXrLEGRj6SV7A/s1600/Jeb+and+HJ+01+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Rr_ULeqPisPR6OUdroEExf0qKfJpekveYVZFb09YFpYSCcztsYZZG3GNIiU0Um0du1fTY8p0UXBH3w0QqhqmWnrbbEvalGViQY3sX-6E_dmb6jQnKgfAKyotBt1rJaNXrLEGRj6SV7A/s400/Jeb+and+HJ+01+02.jpg" width="400" /></a></div> </div><div>Together they joked that she'd elected to marry him in lieu of paying her bill, and they lived at the Hotel Tulsa in the adjoining rooms of 706 and 708, until Jebbie came to be expecting the baby that was to be my mother. They bought a little bungalow in Riverview, and when that, like the hotel suite, no longer filled the bill, they built a rambling ranch house further south, in what then must have been the boonies but today is considered midtown. Here they both lived long and, I think, mostly happy lives. And my grandfather would hold court at the dinner table, alternately with a glass of bourbon or buttermilk, and revisit the episodes of his country-to-town life.<br />
</div><div>By the time I came along, years of telling had shaped the stories into well-honed anecdotes, but we cried to hear them anyway, like piano bar standards, already quite conscious of every lyric before the first word was uttered: <em>Tell us about the first time you had a Coke!</em> (At the county fair, and the fizz shot out his nose). <em>Tell</em> <em>us about the time you put up two stockings at Christmas! </em> (You can probably guess how that one went.) And alas, <em>Tell us how you met mother! </em>(Well, you just heard that one...)</div><div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> </div>I have always loved this story, and I share it today for a couple of reasons: mostly it invites me to trust in the unfolding narrative of life - one that can abruptly dissolve and yet recreate itself just as swiftly. It invites me to believe that, though the path of life is shifting and often clouded with unknowing, it is not without its illuminating moments and maybe even a shining denouement at that. I have also always liked this story because it hearkens back to the old Tulsa that was new; to a Tulsa that was exciting, bustling, on the move - a city where one gladly came to seek one's destiny, and found it, and maybe even nabbed a hottie in the process. I share this story because Harold and Jebbie were for many years together in Tulsa.andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-21581234554321423682012-01-07T18:20:00.000-08:002012-01-07T18:25:30.480-08:00I am blogged.A very pleasant cap to my (momentary?) tangent into all things Lewis & Clark occured recently when Atlanta writer, therapist, and food critic Cliff Bostock indeed blogged my blog. How meta! He picked up my post <em>Omnivore's Delight; Or, A short history of dog eating in North America </em>and linked it - with his own related content - on the blog he does for local indie paper <em>Creative Loafing's</em> online presence. His blog also happens to be called <em>Omnivore, </em>and I'll say that if titular coincidence is what it takes to get noticed, then my next posts might very well incorporate in their titles words like <em>The</em> <em>New Yorker, Utne Reader, NPR</em>. Otherwise, I am ecstatic to have a little attention: his post was in turn re-tweeted six times. Apparently the reading public is not as widely fascinated in funky dietary habits of the early 19th century as I'd have thought. Go figure.<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">You can check out the column in its full breadth, and I highly recommend it, on the <em>Creative Loafing</em> website, here at<span style="background-color: white; color: blue;"> </span><a href="http://clatl.com/omnivore/archives/2011/12/23/when-men-were-men-and-dogs-were-tasty" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: white; color: #660000;"><em>When men were men and dogs were tasty</em></span></a><span style="color: #660000;"><em>. </em></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">Likewise, you can peruse the orignal <em>Amicus</em> post here: <a href="http://amicuscuriositatis.blogspot.com/2011/12/omnivores-delight-or-short-history-of.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #660000;"><em>Omnivore's delight...</em></span></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">- a.t.s.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><em></em></div>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-50663680676544871782011-12-31T16:33:00.000-08:002012-01-02T18:38:37.127-08:00On the painter & showman George Catlin, documentarist of the now quite lost 19th century Native America, & appended with a small gallery of the artist's work...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">So, if you've followed along thus far then you know too well that I've been reading an abridged edition of <em>The Journals of Lewis and Clark; </em>and it has proved very satisfactory to present here many of the interesting details recorded within its pages. Of course this is often accompanied by much of my sometimes lighthearted, sometimes very earnest commentary, and so I mean this very much in the latter sense when I add that I hope you enjoy it all as much as I do...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">One thing I find especially compelling about the journals is that they open an incredible window into a world that no longer exists, but once truly did; a world then as now quite alien. In penning and posting these essays, I find myself turning again and again to the paintings of George Catlin for their illustration. He's a natural (and I think equally fascinating) choice for the task: like Lewis and Clark, his work is also primarily documentary in nature and it, too, offers a glimpse into a world that has long since disappeared. And furthermore it was Catlin's prescient sense of its impermanence that spurred the artist to document Native America in what has become one of our most exceptional, expansive bodies of American painting.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Catlin's work is particularly apropos to the endeavors of Lewis and Clark since so much of it was painted not too long after the expedition's original journey, the documentation produced by the two parties often overlaps the same tribal cultures, and Catlin himself even accompanied the later-career William Clark in a diplomatic mission up the Mississippi river in 1830. I think he's apropos to <em>Amicus Curiositatis</em>, too - specifically because he was not just a painter but also played the roles of collector, curator, and showman; Coupling his paintings with an equally impressive array of indigenous artifacts (and even live indigenous peoples themselves), he created a sort of traveling cabinet of curiosities that toured the United States and continued to even greater reception in Europe. George Catlin was, in fact, himself an <em>amicus curiositatis</em>, and an <em>amicus rerum mirabilium</em> to boot...</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Portrait of <em>No-ho-mun-ya, </em>or<em> "One Who Gives No Attention" - </em>Iowa tribe, 1844<br />
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No-ho-mun-ya accompanied Catlin to Europe and died in Liverpool before the exhibition departed for Paris.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">So then you see, I think he's a good match all around - as both illustrator and subject as well. And as I wind down the meditations on Lewis and Clark, I want to share more of his terrific paintings and think, too, that a short biography of the painter is in order: </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">George Catlin was born in Pennsylvania in 1796, where his interest in Native Americana was piqued in childhood from, among other things, listening to his mother's tales of her own frontier childhood and capture by Indians. Later Catlin studied law and apparently never actually received much formal art training; but at some point in his early adulthood he was struck with a sense of the impermanence of the Native American - as they looked and lived and were then, which is to say their existence as an unaffected, autonomous culture - and in a stunningly life-changing move, he left law and headed to the western frontier. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Catlin took it upon himself to document the appearance, style, and presence of the Native American. In 1830 he accompanied Clark up the Mississippi and soon after made then-frontiersy St. Louis his base for subsequent artistic expeditions along the rivers and into the lands of numerous indigenous tribes - including many that we encounter in the Lewis & Clark journals, such as the Mandan, the Hidatsa, the Blackfeet, and so forth. The result of his artistic output during the 1830s was a stunning collection of six hundred plus paintings that read today like bright Polaroids of a past mostly gone to shadow.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">George Catlin not only collected painted imagery but also the artifacts and handicrafts of the Native American tribal civilizations among whom he traveled and worked. In the 1840s, he amassed together both paintings and artifacts and took his "Indian Gallery" back east. The exhibition was supplemented with Catlin's own lectures and even the presence of actual Native Americans themselves. It is often noted that the paintings were hung in salon style, which is to say the walls were fairly paved with canvases - hung closely next to one another, above one another, and so forth. Definitely a far cry from the style of today, where museums bewilderingly seem to pride themselves on how little of their collection is actually on display. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JE-K-qAMT0E/Tv5gFvvgupI/AAAAAAAAAM8/OpZlA1Zem5s/s1600/The+Whale+Catlin+Smithsonian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JE-K-qAMT0E/Tv5gFvvgupI/AAAAAAAAAM8/OpZlA1Zem5s/s320/The+Whale+Catlin+Smithsonian.jpg" width="262" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>"Ah-móu-a, The Whale, One of Kee-o-kúk's Principal Braves" </em>Sac and Fox tribe,<em> </em>1835<br />
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">Catlin's Indian Gallery never proved as profitable as he had hoped. Eventually he packed up the collection - live Indians and all - and headed for a tour of Europe, where by default appetites for the curiosities of Native America were significantly less-sated. The poet Charles Baudelaire wrote upon seeing the exhibition in Paris: "<em>M. Catlin has captured the proud, free character and noble expression of these splendid fellows in a masterly way.</em>....." Though I think it should also be noted that at this time, in the interest of further enhancing the expensive-to-maintain production, Catlin took to dressing Caucasians in American Indian costume and presented them in various <em>tableau vivant</em>-style vignettes. So really, I'm not sure that anyone today (or then) is exactly sure what they hell they were looking at, in Paris, in the 1840s. But pretty exotic entertainment in a world before television and internet, one has to admit!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Financial troubles persisted, and though he had tried consistently but unsuccessfully to sell his collection en masse to the United States government, eventually Catlin was forced to sell his 607 paintings to private hands. They were purchased in 1852 by the wealthy industrialist Joseph Harrison, who unfortunately kept them not on public display but stored away in a factory. However, the collection remained more or less in tact.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Besides this initial body of work from the 1830's, Catlin produced other collections, such as an extensive series of engravings for the 1841 publication of his <em>Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians</em>, as well as two other subsequent publications. Additionally there is also what is known as his "cartoon collection": produced after relinquishing the initial bulk of paintings to Harrison, Catlin set out to recreate them - working not from life as with the originals but from preparatory sketches and outlines done for his work in the 1830s. Today the nearly complete collection of original paintings is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York also holds 700 of Catlin's sketches. His work is in the collections of several other museums and enjoyed by many. As the website for Gilrcrease Museum - home to an extensive American Indian and Western art collection in Tulsa, Oklahoma, notes: "<em>Indians loved him. Catlin's authentic portraits and depictions of the natives' culture and lifestyle are enlightening and fun..."</em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VvZ4Eaa-KLI/Tv5iSSDgRpI/AAAAAAAAANI/LtQrtQfhODY/s1600/Comanche+Village+Catlin+Smithsonian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VvZ4Eaa-KLI/Tv5iSSDgRpI/AAAAAAAAANI/LtQrtQfhODY/s400/Comanche+Village+Catlin+Smithsonian.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>"Comanche Village, Women Dressing Robes and Drying Meat"</em> 1834–35</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">So really, I think there is something rather inspiring about this individual. He left behind what would have undoubtedly have been a very comfortable, conventional career in law and struck out - talented but basically untrained - into what was otherwise an unknown, unprescribed life. And much of it was lived beyond the borders of what was then considered civilized. He had an idea and an urge - <em>to see and to capture</em> -and in following those inner impulses throughout his life, he had by his death in 1872 created what was to become a stellar and essentially priceless assemblage of historical and ethnographic knowledge, much beloved and relied upon by many generations since. (<em>Wow!)</em> And you know, through both prosperous times and difficult, he made the most of what he had to work with and, from what I can see, stayed on the path: stayed true to himself and his vision. So there is probably something we all can learn from this George Catlin.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">- a.t.s.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-size: large;"> So, all of that said, let's look at some paintings... </span></em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eZnnmmyJLEI/Tv5nW0AQ7NI/AAAAAAAAAO0/ZBt1LJ4b6YI/s1600/Fast+Dancer+Catlin+Smithsonian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eZnnmmyJLEI/Tv5nW0AQ7NI/AAAAAAAAAO0/ZBt1LJ4b6YI/s400/Fast+Dancer+Catlin+Smithsonian.jpg" width="327" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>"Wash-ka-mon-ya, Fast Dancer, a Warrior" </em>Iowa tribe, 1843<br />
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>"Náh-se-ús-kuk, Whirling Thunder, Eldest Son of Black Hawk" </em>Sac and Fox tribe, 1832<br />
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>"Bird's-eye View of the Mandan Village, 1800 Miles above St. Louis" </em>Mandan/Numakiki tribe, 1837–39<br />
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">It is interesting to note that the Lewis & Clark expedition spent its first winter camped among the Mandans who lived (or at least wintered) on the Missouri river. I imagine their architecture wouldn't have changed much in the following 30 or so years, so it's a fair assumption to say this is what the explorers themselves saw daily.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>"Back View of Mandan Village, Showing the Cemetery" </em>Mandan/Numakiki tribe, 1832<br />
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Mandan did not bury their dead but left the bodies to decompose on raised scaffolding. Once they are clean and sun-bleached, the skulls were arranged in large, geometric circles.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>Eeh-nís-kim, Crystal Stone, Wife of the Chief</em>, Blackfoot/Kainai tribe 1832<br />
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">When Lewis & Clark passed back through in 1806 other tribes had warned them that the Blackfeet were the terror of the neighborhood, and indeed their passage was not without incident. Looks like they chilled out a little in the interim. Although I have never been a big fan of the name Crystal, I can handle it on her.</span></div><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> "<em>Buffalo Bulls Fighting in Running Season, Upper Missouri"</em> 1837–39<br />
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Apparently during this season literally thousands of buffalo congregated together. The buffalo are today an occasional, ornamental novelty and this land is probably an under-occupied subdivision thrown up during the housing bubble...</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ka_8ACIqTvU/Tvu4kcfC7SI/AAAAAAAAAMM/qZt2_h1n8s0/s1600/450px-Wabokieshiek_%2528White_Cloud%2529_by_George_Catlin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ka_8ACIqTvU/Tvu4kcfC7SI/AAAAAAAAAMM/qZt2_h1n8s0/s320/450px-Wabokieshiek_%2528White_Cloud%2529_by_George_Catlin.jpg" width="240" /></a> <a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tovcIIhk8_8/Tv58R-b8WBI/AAAAAAAAAPY/wyNLsa0sMWw/s1600/Stamp+Panel+George+Catlin+American+Art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tovcIIhk8_8/Tv58R-b8WBI/AAAAAAAAAPY/wyNLsa0sMWw/s200/Stamp+Panel+George+Catlin+American+Art.jpg" width="191" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="work"><span class="goog_qs-tidbit goog_qs-tidbit-0"><em>"The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas"</em></span></span> 1844-45</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> From the National Gallery of Art, Paul Mellon Collection.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This Catlin portrait was made into a postage stamp in 1998.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xKYybcA7XZM/Tv5kf4Q2ikI/AAAAAAAAAOc/SRGDW1mvlDc/s1600/Bull+Dance+Catlin+Smithsonian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xKYybcA7XZM/Tv5kf4Q2ikI/AAAAAAAAAOc/SRGDW1mvlDc/s1600/Bull+Dance+Catlin+Smithsonian.jpg" /></a></div><div align="center"><br />
</div><div align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>"Bull Dance, Mandan O-kee-pa Ceremony"</em> Mandan/Numakiki tribe,1832<br />
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.</span></div><div align="center"><br />
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</div><div align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>"La-dóo-ke-a, Buffalo Bull, a Grand Pawnee Warrior"</em> Pawnee tribe, 1832<br />
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.</span></div><div align="center"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GkS-VnXjcNw/Tv5nvOyufKI/AAAAAAAAAPA/UwRj44D_tiU/s1600/before+after.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GkS-VnXjcNw/Tv5nvOyufKI/AAAAAAAAAPA/UwRj44D_tiU/s400/before+after.jpg" width="326" /></a></div><div align="center"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>"Wi-jún-jon, Pigeon's Egg Head (The Light), Going to and Returning from Washington" </em></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Assiniboine/Nakoda tribe, 1837-39</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>Going, going....</em> Wi-jún-jon went to meet then President Andrew Jackson and spent 18 months in the United States. Upon his return home he was filled with, writes the Smithsonian and quoting Catlin, "astonishing accounts of the white man’s cities. They eventually rejected his stories as 'ingenious fabrication of novelty and wonder,' and his persistence in telling such 'lies' eventually led to his murder." Poor Wi-jún-jon didn't fare too well either in this portrait.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w5tJlYElr64/Tv5n9bFfh3I/AAAAAAAAAPM/i3n75iFc_jo/s1600/Cu+Sick+Catlin+Smithsonian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w5tJlYElr64/Tv5n9bFfh3I/AAAAAAAAAPM/i3n75iFc_jo/s320/Cu+Sick+Catlin+Smithsonian.jpg" width="262" /></a></div><div align="center"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>"Cú-sick, Son of the Chief" </em>Tuscarora tribe, circa 1837–39<br />
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>...and Gone.</em> Cú-sick has been educated in the U.S. and is now both a Baptist preacher and, according to Catlin, "a very eloquent speaker."</span></div><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(I am indebted to the Smithsonian American Art Museum for the better part of these images. To further explore their much more extensive collection, and I highly recommend it, check out </span><a href="http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/catlinclassroom/index.html"><span style="color: blue; font-size: x-small;">"Campfire Stories with George Catlin : Encounters of Two Cultures"</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"> . Additionally, Wikipedia was consulted in the construction of this essay.)</span> <br />
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</div>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-18509684753038831612011-12-22T18:15:00.000-08:002011-12-22T18:15:47.524-08:00Omnivore's Delight; Or, A short history of dog eating in North America...It occurs to me that we Americans, when presented with the idea of eating a dog, tend reflexively to call to our minds certain Asian cultures where the practice is decidedly not as taboo as it is here in the States. Usually it's the Koreans that take the spotlight, but the Vietnamese and Chinese are certainly known to sup on the pup as well. Maybe it was the television series <em>M.A.S.H.</em> - which was set in Korea - that helped cement the idea in the minds of a generation: to this day I still remember the folksy Colonel Potter and his pithy reference to the <em>rover ragoût </em>of the locals. So, for whatever cause, Asia today has the preeminent reputation for its consumption, but it might surprise you to know that North America used to be quite the epicenter of dog eating as well, and especially who was eating it...<br />
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I first came into knowledge of an American form of the practice upon reading of <span class="st">Hernán Cortés'</span> dramatic conquest of Aztec Mexico in 1521. Apparently the Aztecs (and their many surrounding, subjugated vassals) had two primary, domesticated sources of meat: turkeys and dogs - especially a small, plump breed of dog comparable to a Chihuahua and called<em> itzcuintlis</em>. It's important to note that prior to the arrival of the European, the Americas were completely void of all those types of meat so well furnished at the grocers of today. There were no cows, no pigs, no sheep, no chickens - all of that was introduced by the Europeans, and, inadvertently, with them the devastating poxes that these animals naturally carried and against which the unexposed native populations had little to no immunity. Otherwise, there was also game to be hunted, such as deer and duck and whatnot, but as far as animals whose temperaments actually lent themselves to feasible domestication, it was just the turkey and the dog. Today in Mexico the turkey is still known as <em>guajalote.</em> or to anglicize the pronunciation <em>wa-ha-lo-tay</em>, which is not Spanish but actually is derived from the old Nahautl tongue.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAIXD4rnyoMsYvPP4PEhbGH9N6Cc5StW1JJ9O-MYLpbPryclqgjSCmnHw6gWEzVjW-v0IFelVsCDH-83rFqY6lbhRu8iL9t3Iv6bn12Jot1LtwrlSGvr1JxGcS-yh8aNhQK_KWIJjJsFo/s1600/Diego+Rivera+Aztec+Animal+Market+of+Tlatelolco+-+deer%252C+dogs%252C+fish%252C+iguanas.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAIXD4rnyoMsYvPP4PEhbGH9N6Cc5StW1JJ9O-MYLpbPryclqgjSCmnHw6gWEzVjW-v0IFelVsCDH-83rFqY6lbhRu8iL9t3Iv6bn12Jot1LtwrlSGvr1JxGcS-yh8aNhQK_KWIJjJsFo/s1600/Diego+Rivera+Aztec+Animal+Market+of+Tlatelolco+-+deer%252C+dogs%252C+fish%252C+iguanas.gif" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibmEWCK86CSCnaGLJ_G7VMi7VkWycyHJg4kGvdTg-WOlqzzXEB2t-LDTvAdZ5LjVdmyS9FUtzDYXeWNETpfnaAsr4PZoQsKrNr7tvAZuScWsZEmSueWRtbLEaRId7wBZoGJIgqkH_qbmI/s1600/Diego+Rivera+Aztec+Animal+Market+of+Tlatelolco+-+deer%252C+dogs%252C+fish%252C+iguanas.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibmEWCK86CSCnaGLJ_G7VMi7VkWycyHJg4kGvdTg-WOlqzzXEB2t-LDTvAdZ5LjVdmyS9FUtzDYXeWNETpfnaAsr4PZoQsKrNr7tvAZuScWsZEmSueWRtbLEaRId7wBZoGJIgqkH_qbmI/s1600/Diego+Rivera+Aztec+Animal+Market+of+Tlatelolco+-+deer%252C+dogs%252C+fish%252C+iguanas.gif" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigysL4QLqgYfozD9xQyuJNeMmJuakr7uX82BKM73-_wVbkXAOsGrq-dJluw_avsISleRjkVUClHyyzzi057VUAmXdEseg5V5EUtxdF8_aD2Dm5yiCSkAXwg0mQ1A_78AF2IusKvtTxdUY/s1600/Rivera+Aztec+Market.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigysL4QLqgYfozD9xQyuJNeMmJuakr7uX82BKM73-_wVbkXAOsGrq-dJluw_avsISleRjkVUClHyyzzi057VUAmXdEseg5V5EUtxdF8_aD2Dm5yiCSkAXwg0mQ1A_78AF2IusKvtTxdUY/s400/Rivera+Aztec+Market.JPG" width="265" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">From a Diego Rivera mural of the Tlatelolco animal market in the <em>Palacio Nacional</em>, Mexico City.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Note the deer, fish, iguana, frogs, and succulent little dog.</span> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>It's also interesting to note that horses were not a part of the pre-Columbian American landscape, either. They, too, arrived with the Spanish, and their absence and is often cited as a determining factor in why the wheel was never fully exploited by the indigenous civilizations of the Americas - since really, even if they did have a wheel, there weren't any animals to pull it anywhere. The Incas, however, did successfully utilize the llama as a pack animals, which is small-hoofed and agile on the uneven, stepped roads that wind throughout the Andes where horses would have been practically worthless. Otherwise if you wanted something hauled somewhere in the Americas, you pretty much had to haul it there yourself.<br />
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Speaking of hauling things yourself - and returning now to the ongoing subject of the <em>Journals of Lewis and Clark - </em>one really has to wonder how the two explorers and their extended party arranged to keep themselves fed over the course of a two year journey. Their plan, as it turned out, was two-fold: to hunt and to trade, and the expedition packed quite heavily with guns and ammunition for the former and Indian-popular trade goods for the latter. And as such the group set out into the great unknown, laden with these initial supplies and - what particularly thrills and/or gives me anxiety at the thought of - basically in loose reliance on whatever the landscape, the natives, and fate would furnish for them. And let me tell you this: <em>they ate it ALL...</em><br />
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When Lewis' and Clark's<em> Corps of Discovery</em> first started off the living was good. The plains fairly teemed with rich and tasty beasts like buffalo - not too far a cry from beef, really - and the caravan was well-stocked with flour, salt, and spices for its artful preparation for table. They also brought a supply of booze to wash it all down with. But as the landscape changed, so did the travelers' diet, and I soon learned that the expedition basically ate whatever they could get their hands on - which most often was whatever was convenient to kill. Sacagawea was adept at foraging for native plants and roots to supplement their diet, but their mainstay staple consisted of the fresh kill, and with minimal discrimination at that. Once the group had passed the great herds of buffalo, there was still venison to be found. When they started to cross through territory particularly infested with very aggressive Grizzly bears, guess what they started eating. I have no idea how that must have taste, but for once I'm guessing it wasn't like chicken.<br />
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The landscape east of the Rockies was bountiful and meaty, but when the expedition started across the difficult mountainscapes, its offerings changed. There was still the occasional deer to be had, but in scarcer measure. At times there was absolutely nothing for days, and the expedition, who had procured pack horses from the Shoshone after leaving behind the rivers, began to rely on horse meat as their main food source. And once they got west of the Rockies, things really changed for them remarkably...<br />
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Salmon was a great mainstay for both the economy and the table of the Pacific Northwest Indians, among whom Lewis and Clark traveled. Indigenous "flathead" tribes occupied the river banks where the fish swam in great plenitude, though seasonally, and the natives had a means of beating and preserving the salmon into a form that could be used for trade with other tribes for other commodities. Besides salmon, their diet also included the smaller, smelt-like euchalon, or candlefish (that I wrote of in the earlier post <em>Another horrible idea in home decorating</em>), as well as foragable plants and roots, such as the quamash, from which they made a sort of bread. This fare is what the expedition now began to eat, and the abrupt change from an almost entirely meat-based diet to one of fish and starches was acutely upsetting to their digestive systems; there was lots of illness reported as a (not necessarily immediately recognized) consequence. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tPvOUpTSW2U/TvLqkOOMAfI/AAAAAAAAALQ/RQhuMK99umo/s1600/Chinook+fishing+1861.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tPvOUpTSW2U/TvLqkOOMAfI/AAAAAAAAALQ/RQhuMK99umo/s320/Chinook+fishing+1861.jpg" width="297" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Flathead Chinook with the mighty salmon, from George Catlin, 1861. Note the baby on her back, with its little head tucked into the flattening device...</span></div><br />
The preserved fish was often an iffy proposition to the travelers, and some horse meat dining continued. But another type of animal would soon enter their culinary repertoire: the dog. Writes William Clark during his stay among the <em>Choppunish</em> - or Nez Perces - dated October 10th, 1805:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">a miss understanding took place between Sharbono one of our interpreters and Jo & R Fields which appears to have originated in just [jest]. our diet extremely bad haveing nothing but roots and dried fish to eate, all the Party have greatly the advantage of me, in as much as <strong>they all relish the flesh of dogs</strong>, Several of which we purchased of the nativs for to add to our store of fish and roots &c. &c.</div></blockquote>And though Clark personally is no fan of dog meat, it becomes quite popular among the rest of the expedition. And anyway, as we see from his entry on October 18, 1805, sometimes it really was the best one could do, especially when one's trading partners didn't have the most consistent integrity: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">The fish being very bad those which was offerd to us we had every reason to believe was taken up on the shore dead we thought proper not to purchase any, we purchased forty dogs for which we gave articles of little value, such as beeds, bells & thimbles, of which they appeared very fond, at 4 oClock we set out down the Great Columbia accompanied by our two old Chiefs, one young man wished to accompany us, but we had no room for more & he could be of no service to us.</div></blockquote>Well, William Clark may not care for the dog meat, but Meriwether Lewis and the rest of the gang can't seem to get enough of the stuff, as one can readily read in his journal entry from April 13, 1806:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">I also purchased four paddles and three dogs from them with deerskins. <strong>the dog now constitutes a considerable part of our subsistence and with most of the party has become a favorite food;</strong> certain I am that it is a healthy strong diet, and from habit it has become by no means disagreeable to me, I prefer it to lean venison or Elk, and it is very superior to the horse in any state.</div></blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UlmE-K5JkxE/TvLn7ry8hnI/AAAAAAAAALE/OHBShxiPLJo/s1600/bay+horse+and+white+dog+george+stubbs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UlmE-K5JkxE/TvLn7ry8hnI/AAAAAAAAALE/OHBShxiPLJo/s400/bay+horse+and+white+dog+george+stubbs.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>Buffet?</em> George Stubbs' <em>Bay Horse and White Dog</em>, circa early 1800s. (Really, though there is a plethora of images of dog meat online - usually served Asian-style - I really must allow us to use our imaginations for at least the purpose of this post...)</span></div><br />
As the expedition made its way westward and into winter, their diet eventually expanded to include regionally available game such as Elk, though the salmon on which so much of the region harvested disappeared from the rivers until springtime. The group made their winter camp close to the Pacific coast - at Fort Clatsop, so named for the Indians living nearby. And although they had succeeded in achieving their lofty goal of making it to the ocean, the road home was now too treacherous and a return journey would not be feasible until the mountain snows melted. <br />
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As the party built their fort close to the Pacific, they hoped that their stay would coincide with a visit from a trading ship so they might replenish their stock of supplies. Thomas Jefferson had furnished them with letters of credit expressly for this opportunity, though some historians have questioned why he didn't send a U.S. ship himself to meet the party. Unfortunately a ship never stopped during their stay and they were obliged to make do. They were long out of liquor, and the otherwise sparseness of the larder, coupled with the excessive rains of the Pacific Northwest, made for a holiday season far less merry than hoped. Writes Clark on their Christmas dinner of 1805:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">we would have Spent this day the nativity of Christ in feasting, had we any thing either to raise our Sperits or even gratify our appetites, our Dinner concisted of pore Elk, so much Spoiled that we eate it thro' mear necessity, Some Spoiled pounded fish and a fiew roots. </div></blockquote>And no horse meat was available to supplement their dinner, either. Having traversed the Rockies and again been able to return to river travel, all the horses had been left in the care of a local tribe pending the expedition's return on their journey home to the east. I get pissy when we don't have the right kind of Christmas ham - I can only imagine how spoiled elk must have gone over...<br />
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But bleak as Christmas dinner was, Lewis' and Clark's culinary fortunes were about to change again with the introduction of a new delicacy: whale blubber. Clark records the introduction of the blubber in his journal entry of January 3, 1806 ( and also takes a moment to note that his comrades' fondness for eating dog continues into the new year unabated):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">At 11 A. M. we were visited by our near neighbour Chief or <em>tid Co mo wool ... </em>and six Clatsops. they brought for Sale Some roots berries and 3 Dogs also a Small quantity of fresh blubber. this blubber they informed us they had obtained from their neighbours the <em>Cal la mox</em> who inhabit the coast to the S.E. near one of their Villages a Whale had recently perished. <strong>this blubber the Indians eat and esteem it excellent food. our party from necessity have been obliged to Subsist some length of time on dogs have now become extremely fond of their flesh</strong>; it is worthey of remark that while we lived principally on the flesh of this animal we were much more healthy strong and more fleshey then we have been Sence we left the Buffalow Country. as for my own part I have not become reconsiled to the taste of this animal as yet. </div></blockquote><br />
Although their winter at Fort Clatsop afforded neither bounty nor luxury in terms of diet - and indeed, as we have seen from my previous essay, a greater part of the expedition did succeed in contracting venereal disease from the indigenous population, the most salient features of whom were their artificially flattened heads and odd tattoos - Lewis' and Clark's time by the sea did afford them a welcome opportunity to restore their salt supply. And really, if you thought eating dog stew sucked, try the low-salt version of it.<br />
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Meriwether Lewis - always the more prolific and lyrical writer on the duo - takes a moment in the sedentary winter to reflect upon their diet in this extended passage dated January 5, 1806, including the nature of whale blubber and how it stacks up against in a taste comparison against dog meat. He also addressed the party's want of salt, want of bread, and ultimately on his own increasingly omnivorous disregard for the species of his dinner:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">At 5 P.M. Willard and Wiser returned, they had not been lost as we apprehended. they informed us that it was not until the fifth day after leaving the Fort that they could find a convenient place for making salt; that they had at length established themselves on the coast about 15 Miles S.W. from this, near the lodge of some Killamuck families; that the Indians were very friendly and had given them a considerable quantity of the blubber of a whale which perished on the coast some distance S.E. of them; <strong>part of this blubber they brought with them, it was white & not unlike the fat of Poork, tho' the texture was more spongey and somewhat coarser. I had a part of it cooked and found it very pallitable and tender, it resembled the beaver or the dog in flavor. it may appear somewhat extraordinary tho' it is a fact that the flesh of the beaver and dog possess a very great affinity in point of flavour.</strong> </div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">These lads also informed us that J. Fields, Bratten and Gibson (the Salt Makers) had with their assistance erected a comfortable camp killed an Elk and several deer and secured a good stock of meat; they commenced the making of salt and found that they could obtain from 3 quarts to a gallon a day; they brought with them a specemine of the salt of about a gallon, we found it excellent, fine, strong, & white; this was a great treat to myself and most of the party, having not had any since the 20th Ultmo.; I say most of the party, for my friend Capt. Clark declares it to be a mear matter of indifference with him whether he uses it or not; for myself I must confess I felt a considerable inconvenience from the want of it; the want of bread I consider as trivial provided, I get fat meat, <strong>for as the species of meat I am not very particular, the flesh of the dog the horse the wolf, having from habit become equally fomiliar with any other, and I have learned to think that if the chord be sufficiently strong, which binds the soul and boddy together, it does not so much matter about the materials which compose it.</strong> Capt. Clark determined this evening to set out early tomorrow with two canoes and 12 men in quest of the whale, or at all events to purchase from the Indians a parcel of the blubber, for this purpose he prepared a small assortment of merchandize to take with him.</div></blockquote>Interesting or what? So apparently dog <em>does</em> <em>not</em> taste like chicken. It tastes like beaver. I wonder how that stacks up against bear?<br />
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Well, here I will take a moment to clarify that it would be quite faulty to assume that every American Indian tribe was eating dog regularly. The reality is that many found the practice just as taboo as you and I. Another reality is that plenty of other, unexpected cultures (and here I am talking <em>Switzerland</em>, for starters) have also had their episodes with the canine cuisine, as a visit to Wikipedia will reveal. A lot of what the human diet comes down to is availability and convenience - and that, as I learned in an Intro to Sociology or Anthropology or Something-ology class many years ago - it has been shown that universally human communities exploit the foodstuffs that offer the highest nutrient and calorie yield to the lowest amount of effort required in its harvest. It brings to mind very literally the expression, <em>the juice ain't worth the squeeze</em>. This is to say that we are surrounded with the edible-yet-inconvenient and of such do not bother to partake. Maybe it's also to say that sometimes dogs taste better than berries, unless there's a fat, juicy buffalo out back...<br />
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Apparently as the expedition made its way homeward with its newly adopted appetite for the dog, some of the tribes they encountered - while often accommodating in the commercial sense -were not entirely impressed in the cultural sense. Write Clark on May 5th, 1806:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">while at dinner an indian fellow <strong>very impertinently threw a half starved puppy into the plate of Capt. Lewis</strong> by way of derision for our eating dogs and laughed very hartily at his own impertinence; Capt. L. -- was so provoked at the insolence that he cought the puppy and threw it with great violence at him and struck him in the breast and face, seazed his tomahawk, and shewed him by sign that if he repeated his insolence that he would tomahawk him, the fellow withdrew apparently mortified and we continued our Dinner without further molestation.</div></blockquote>Well, apparently the expedition itself wasn't entirely impressed with their new custom, either. Given the calibre of Lewis' reaction and overall humorlessness in the matter, clearly the Indian man's ribbing touched an unexpectedly and acutely raw nerve. I am guessing all members of the party quit the habit upon their return to "civilization" back east.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-V4tP6vGqF9w/TvLgtag2y4I/AAAAAAAAAK4/xogkhTy-jcc/s1600/portrait-of-an-extraordinary-musical-dog-philip-reinagle-1805-va-museum-of-fine-arts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-V4tP6vGqF9w/TvLgtag2y4I/AAAAAAAAAK4/xogkhTy-jcc/s400/portrait-of-an-extraordinary-musical-dog-philip-reinagle-1805-va-museum-of-fine-arts.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Meanwhile in 1805: <em>Portrait of an Extraordinary Musical Dog</em> by Philip Reinagle - from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts collection</span> </div><br />
On an amusing closing note I'll say that as I sat one afternoon in my usual coffeehouse (engrossed with this draft on my laptop), I hardly noticed a man shuffling from table to table with a little Pit-Lab mix in his hands. Not, anyway, until he thrust the dog in my face and bluntly offered: "<em>Puppy?</em>" I confess I really had to do a double-take before I realized he was trying to find the dog a new home. Otherwise I found myself on the verge of polite excuse: "<em>Oh no, thanks. I had a heavy lunch..."</em><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">- a.t.s</span>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-3790890155673443372011-12-17T17:53:00.000-08:002011-12-17T17:53:33.077-08:00The Native American Couture, pt. 3: easy sex, radical bodymods & a nominee for Worst Tattoo of 1805.I've much enjoyed reading <em>The Journals of Lewis and Clark, </em>as anyone whose followed <em>Amicus Curiositatis</em> thus far can pretty easily attest. But I confess I did have a moment of hesitancy when I started finding in its narrative an increasing number of very casual references to the Native Americans encountered along the way as <em>flatheads</em>. Particularly as the expedition made its way westward past the Missouri river. I wondered if this was, more or less, the frontier equivalent of certain pejorative terms - and I am sure I don't need to catalog them for you to get the picture - for other races and cultures based on differences in physical appearance and dress. Well, old books really are the great repositories of antiquated and sometimes embarrassing social order and language; indeed, ofttimes it is curiosity with these cultural fossils that spark engagement with the old books to begin with. But I think mostly we want to be turned on more than turned off. And it was in this spirit I found myself midpage, asking: <em>Hmmm. Really?</em><br />
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So it relieved me considerably to learn - and it is my pleasure to share - that the term <em>flatheads</em> was actually not being applied to Native Americans in general as a pejorative but instead rather matter-of-factly to a collection of indigenous tribes whose <strong>heads were really quite literally and intentionally flattened</strong>! <em> Say whaaat?</em><br />
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Here I am speaking specifically of the native tribes of the Pacific Northwest that Lewis' and Clark's expedition encountered, whose peoples were in the habit of flattening their heads in infancy. The culture actively institutionalized cranial disfiguration as a means to an aesthetic ideal, and they were quite keen on tattooing, as well. And, mercifully, the term <em>flathead</em> - though of course not in English - was already in common usage before the <em>paleface</em> ever even made the North American scene...<br />
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Meriwether Lewis tells all in his observations from March 19, 1806. (And of course I, not Lewis, put the really compelling bits in boldface, as is increasingly becoming the habit...)<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">The Killamucks, Clatsops, Chinnooks, Cathlahmahs and Wac-ki-a-cums resemble each other as well in their persons and dress as in their habits and manners. their complexion is not remarkable, being the usual copper brown of most of the tribes of North America. they are low in statu[r]e reather diminutive, and illy shapen; poss[ess]ing thick broad flat feet, thick ankles, crooked legs wide mouths thick lips, nose moderately large, fleshey, wide at the extremity with large nostrils, black eyes and black coarse hair. their eyes are sometimes of a dark yellowish brown the puple black. the <strong>most remarkable trait in their physiognomy is the peculiar flatness and width of forehead which they artificially obtain by compressing the head between two boards while in a state of infancy and from which it never afterwards perfectly recovers</strong>. this is a custom among all the nations we have met with West of the Rocky mountains. I have observed the heads of many infants, after this singular bandage had been dismissed, or about the age of 10 or eleven months, that were not more than two inches thich about the upper edge of the forehead and reather thiner still higher. from the top of the head to the extremity if the nose is one straight line this is done in order to give a greater width to the forehead, which they much admire. this process seems to be continued longer with the female than their mail children, and neither appear to suffer any pain from the operation. <strong>it is from this peculiar form of the head that the nations East of the Rocky mountains, call all the nations on this side,</strong> except the Aliohtans or snake Indians, <strong>by the generic name of Flatheads.</strong></div></blockquote><br />
Well how about all of that!? It certainly makes one wonder what must have been the impetus to get into that sort of habit in the first place. What are the roots of the tradition? Was it mythology? Magic? Boredom? I mean, really, what <em>does</em> make someone decide it would be a swell thing to mash their baby's head in a press? <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCIXF2ZXeYuawSGD1qvCD2QM8m_30q_Y-YGRQEbG1uB_PbWPT_5JQlRce7L78OLH2QAbGIrVrXrbYj34Q6dhs8MRRtB06gc5pozhoWE2xFcIevuwoJruJvfNT9vIhEqlNBGtd52tuCvZ0/s1600/flathead-indians-wm-clark-journal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCIXF2ZXeYuawSGD1qvCD2QM8m_30q_Y-YGRQEbG1uB_PbWPT_5JQlRce7L78OLH2QAbGIrVrXrbYj34Q6dhs8MRRtB06gc5pozhoWE2xFcIevuwoJruJvfNT9vIhEqlNBGtd52tuCvZ0/s400/flathead-indians-wm-clark-journal.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A page from Lewis' and Clark's journals illustrating the flattening process and its result.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I have to think how really odd it must have been to be a member of the expedition at this point - that is to say, a complete outsider - as they traveled among these tribes, by far I think the freakiest people Lewis and Clark were to encounter. I know I would have had my share of <em>W.T.F.</em> moments, which isn't always a bad thing per se (unless of course you burst out laughing and hurt some one's feelings). And if the head-shaping thing was not enough, apparently the tribes were into some intentional swelling of the legs as well, through some sort of ornamental binding. Lewis continues on the topic in his entry from above:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">The large or apparently swolen legs particularly observable in the women are obtained in great measure by tying a cord tight around the ankle. their method of squating or resting themselves on their hams which they seem from habit to prefer to sitting, no doubt contributes much to this deformity of the legs by preventing free circulation of the blood.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div></blockquote>I am (lightheartedly) left to wonder if this isn't some sort of indigenous, 19th century equivalent of suffering stilettos for the sake of an attractive effect on the leg. After all, every culture really does have its aesthetic idiosyncrasies. (Though I will take a moment to again clarify explicitly that these expressions of body modification were exclusive to these Pacific Northwest tribes - though the title of my post might lead one to believe otherwise. As far as the title goes, I am using <em>Native American</em> to reference in particular the indigenous peoples encountered in the narrative of <em>The Journals of Lewis and Clark</em>, and I am lumping this post's information in with a series generated around the explorers' observations of the appearance of these tribes during their journey from 1804 to 1806. I will also clarify that today there is an actual, formally-titled <em>Flathead</em> tribe - who do not intentionally flatten their heads. I am most definitely <em>not </em>writing about them.)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJLJHKS_Yyz7KFNWcfm7Lnz9T9XocPjb6sY6H8g9-DFY5RXgkRd7TVCV0u4UFJw6lv8QWwGq5Jt0z4u7CrW5BT53OBmDm3RTN0kfZkki7h5bMz3hXQ9uRe_ZcUsCvtrUPmh8p0a8_SESo/s1600/flathead-woman-circa-1860-e-demenech.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJLJHKS_Yyz7KFNWcfm7Lnz9T9XocPjb6sY6H8g9-DFY5RXgkRd7TVCV0u4UFJw6lv8QWwGq5Jt0z4u7CrW5BT53OBmDm3RTN0kfZkki7h5bMz3hXQ9uRe_ZcUsCvtrUPmh8p0a8_SESo/s320/flathead-woman-circa-1860-e-demenech.jpg" width="295" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">A flathead mother giving her baby the treatment, from 1860. Note the small feet, large legs, and extensive tattooing as well.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>So these Native Americans were very different than their European observers, on many levels. As we see, both groups had radically different ideals of beauty - clearly - and both also prescribed to different ideals in sexual expression. Not only did the Indians of the Northwest practice forms of body modification, they were also big on tattooing their skin. In the following passage William Clark touches again on the forced swelling of the legs and the tattooing, and also reveals a little bit about native sexual mores - at least as perceived through the filter of his own, which of course is always the way. This passage illustrates what I think must be nominated as <em>Worst Tattoo of 1805</em>, and it's also the beginning of a fairly amusing little sexual narrative. From Clark's journal entry from November 21, 1805:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">An old woman & Wife of the Chunnooks came and made a Camp near ours. She brought with her 6 young Squars (her daughters & nieces) I believe for the purpose of Gratifying the passions of our party and receving for those indugiences Such Small [presents] as She (the old woman) thought proper to accept of.</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">Those people appear to View Sensuality as a Necessary evel, and do not appear to abhor it as a Crime in the unmarried State. The young females are fond of the attention of our men and appear to meet the sincere approbation of their friends and connections, for thus obtaining their favors, the Womin of the Chinnook Nation have handsom faces low and badly made with large legs & thighs which are generally Swelled from a Stopage of the circulation to the feet (which are Small) by maney Strands of Beeds or curious Strings which are drawn tight around the leg above the ankle, their legs are also picked [tattooed] with different figures, I saw on the left arm of a Squar the following letters <em>J. Bowman</em>, all those are considered by the natives of this quarter as handsom deckerations, and a woman without those deckerations is Considered as among the lower Class they ware their hair loose hanging over their back and Sholders maney have blue beeds threaded & hung from different parts of their ears and about ther neck and around their wrists, their dress otherwise is prosisely like that of the Nation of <em>War ci a cum</em> as already discribed.</div></blockquote><br />
A tattoo of "<em>J. Bowman" </em>on your body? How the hell does one end up with that?! That's almost as regrettable as Johnny Depp's <em>Winona Forever - </em>especially when one looks at <em>Winona Then and Now</em>. Well, to be fair in considering the provenance of such a tattoo, the Lewis and Clark expedition was not the first group of white folks these Indians had seen - only the first to come across land from the east. By the time Lewis and Clark arrived at the Pacific, there was already regular maritime trade between natives and whites along the coast. The expedition had even considered hopping a ship for the ride back home. <br />
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I guess one can assume that Mr. (or Ms.?) J. Bowman was somehow connected to this coastal commerce. But, to reference <em>Winona Forever</em> again, was it the mark of love? Or (and it amuses me to think as much) was this abstract, just another example of a sort of illiterate cross-cultural appropriation - like when the Japanese borrow English words out of any sensible context to lend an international cachet to product packaging. Or vice versa, when Americans sport t-shirts emblazoned with Kanji characters that might translate to either "Peace" or "Ear Wax" for all they really know. So what did it mean, then, that <em>J. Bowman</em>? Did it just look cool?<br />
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It's also interesting to see reference to Indian class structure, when I think many of us grow up with perceptions of indigenous society as a more egalitarian, destratified thing. Quite the contrary, really, as - at least in the research I found of someone writing about the Upper Chinook Clackamas, and there is no reason to believe allied tribes were much different - the society was divided among a wealthy, hereditary ruling class, a lesser sort of commoner or middle class, and a whole lot of slaves. Slavery, though, was something one could buy one's way out of, and conversely find oneself in as the consequence of debt. It's interesting to see also the reference to status indicators and symbols, something that seems to transcend any cultural boundary, though in this instance is imbued in tattoos - which of course are generally not a traditional indicator of inclusion into our own upper classes. (My late and upright Protestant grandmother would have added anklets and pierced ears to the list, as well...) <br />
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The aforementioned head-flattening was also central in conveying and even accessing social status. Says one Anglo observer in 1835: "It is even considered among them a degradation to possess a round head, and one whose caput has happened to be neglected in his infancy, can never become even a subordinate chief in his tribe, and is treated with indifference and disdain, as one who is unworthy a place amongst them." Apparently you just can't shatter a glass ceiling with a round head; it's a conehead's world...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6NHPtIOzP48bRWa3xkyjAYQFR_6p8xwgzIc2u8JqeCFGzW0d11wPp20eGLlsUiq_Ern_ZbZpZegPys4JkJcufbZ3rd9usFbmKMjZkLylGNVOFZZy4VzDyluCxZy8sGiIFMBF4wYA4iao/s1600/Caw_Watcham.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6NHPtIOzP48bRWa3xkyjAYQFR_6p8xwgzIc2u8JqeCFGzW0d11wPp20eGLlsUiq_Ern_ZbZpZegPys4JkJcufbZ3rd9usFbmKMjZkLylGNVOFZZy4VzDyluCxZy8sGiIFMBF4wYA4iao/s1600/Caw_Watcham.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">How much would you pay for a night with this woman?</span></div><br />
Well, on a semi-sexy note, apparently those six aforementioned "squars" did succeed in securing some goods for a little nooky, though the<em> Journals' </em>narrative indicates the exchange was not limited exclusively to sex and trade goods. Writes Meriwether Lewis upon encountering the six ladies yet again on March 15, 1806:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">we were visited this afternoon by Delashshelwilt a Chinnook Chief his wife and six women of his nation which the old baud his wife had brought for market. <strong>this was the same party that had communicated the venerial to so many of our party in November last</strong>, and of which they have finally recovered. I therefore gave the men a particular charge with rispect to them which they promised me to observe. late this evening we were also visited by Catel a Clatsop man and his family. he brought a canoe and a Sea Otter Skin for sale neither of which we purchased this evening. The Clatsops who had brought a canoe for sale last evening left us early this morning.</div></blockquote>Oh dear! A bit of a disaster, really! Every one's got the clap - the treatment for which at the time is mercury. But fortunately lessons <em>are</em> learned, so writes Meriwether Lewis on March 17, 1806:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">Old Delashelwilt and his women still remain they have formed a ca[m]p near the fort and seem to be determined to lay close s[i]ege to us but I believe notwithstanding every effort of their winning graces, <strong>the men have preserved their constancy to the vow of celibacy</strong> which they made on this occasion to Capt. C. and myself. we have had our perogues prepared for our departure, and shal set out as soon as the weather will permit.</div></blockquote><br />
Personally I am wondering how these men could have found the wherewithal to lay with some freaky flat-headed, tatted-up, swollen-leg gals - but I guess pussy is another of those things that transcends cultural borders. Generally as long as it isn't tattooed or flattened. Though in the defense of the ladies, there is always something to be said for tenacity...<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">- a.t.s.</span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"></blockquote>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-35341672723367841912011-12-14T15:48:00.000-08:002011-12-14T15:51:07.800-08:00The Native American Couture, pt. 2: mad about beads; wherein the author discourses additionally on the occasional uselessness of European currency and its interesting consequences.It's not uncommon to hear disparaging commentary on the beads-for-land trade that opened the island of Manhattan for European colonization. At least not if one hangs out with liberal-minded, hyper-educated types (and here I'll ask, why wouldn't you?). The transaction in question occurred between the Dutch and the indigenous Lenni Lenape tribe in 1626, and apparently cross-cultural misunderstanding ruled the day: the Dutch thought they were making an outright purchase; the natives - possessing no concept of personal land ownership - instead "interpreted the trade goods as gifts given in appreciation for the right to share the land." And the goods that secured the transaction - be it for tenancy or outright ownership - consisted of a bag of "beads and trinkets" valued then at 60 Dutch guilders. I don't know that one could even buy a string of beads in Manhattan for that today, though back then I am sure it made for a fairly sizable bag. But what I think is interesting - especially for people like ourselves, whose every consuming move is governed and facilitated by ethereal, fiat currencies like the US$, and who are generally removed from any sort of barter or commodity-for-commodity trade - is not the price, but the means of payment: firstly, that the Dutch did not settle the account in guilders, or even plain old gold for that matter, and secondly, that they paid primarily in beads.<br />
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So apparently it's true: money really doesn't buy everything, though it seems likely everything still has its price. I'm not an economist (just the alumnus of a sophomore <em>Principles of Macroeconomics</em> course, the sole sparking interest in which I took in the British economist John Maynard Keynes, his bisexuality, and his involvement in the Bloomsbury group), but what it really comes down to, and perhaps you will agree, is this:<em> </em>a<em> </em>unit of exchange only has liquidity if both parties imbue it with value in relatively equal measure. Which is to ask, <em>what the hell is a Lenni Lenape going to spend a guilder on in 1626?</em> What, for that matter, are they going to do with a gold coin short of flip it or wear it, or flip it to see who gets to wear it?<br />
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An interesting example of the very non-European non-primacy of gold comes from the Spanish conquest of "New Spain". When the conquistador <span class="st">Hernán Cortés</span> made his <em>entrada</em> into the Aztec-dominated lands we now know as Mexico, although the Spaniards could easily be diagnosed as suffering from a robust case of gold fever, the Aztecs, while rich in the shiny commodity, did not value it above all others. The Aztecs - who were quite terrific with feathers and wore them to no end - actually valued the<em> </em>feather of the Resplendent Quetzal (<em>Pharomachrus mocinno)</em> most of all. Diplomatic offerings were sent to the conquistadors as they approached Tenochtitlan from the gulf, including quantities of the coveted quetzal feathers, to demonstrate the wealth, power, and opulence of the Aztec emperor. But of course a gold-hungry Spaniard had no cultural impetus whatsoever to reciprocate in appreciation. I mean, really, what if aliens invaded and we tried to appease them with offerings of Louis Vuitton handbags?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVRw8EF8hs5grQHbAIdM6FGOv1G016MSrFty6bgQFhUB8c7wyN_mDGt1FcQ0FNV5cNnupCgP5iNAAXJG7_X2UO6KzdM0E47gc8aaD44ZGlkeFbixoT56oUldTEvjdk4jWKYVsVX56_-nE/s1600/portrait_of_montezuma_ii.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVRw8EF8hs5grQHbAIdM6FGOv1G016MSrFty6bgQFhUB8c7wyN_mDGt1FcQ0FNV5cNnupCgP5iNAAXJG7_X2UO6KzdM0E47gc8aaD44ZGlkeFbixoT56oUldTEvjdk4jWKYVsVX56_-nE/s400/portrait_of_montezuma_ii.jpg" width="225" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">European School portrait of Montezuma II - note the feather work on the outside of his cloak and shield. I've always been especially fond of the orange and blue coloration of this painting, as well.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>In an earlier post I wrote of Indian sign language being the lingua franca of the North American continent: an effective means of communication that could successfully carry one, more or less, across the comparatively primitive, polyglot "wilderness," from sea to shining sea. Obviously in a world without traveler's checks, or even formal currency for that matter, paying one's way along the journey presents a challenge, and from the Dutch experience we already see that beads could open doors. Similar valuation of beads is found throughout the Lewis and Clark journals, from which I can comfortably say that they were the most universally accepted trade commodity, and indeed paid many an expense as the expedition made its way from St. Louis to the Pacific and back again. Of course the natives were also keen on procuring guns, axes, kettles, metal tools, blankets, and tobacco - but beads in particular seem to have been a hit. Possibly because they are such fun to wear (I mean, they are hardly essential to living), and the Native Americans of course had a terrific sense for personal adornment. Beads one can work with, guilders one cannot.<br />
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<div>As Clark and the expedition make their way along the Columbia river, he takes time to reflect on the primacy of the bead among the salmon-fishing tribes living along its banks. His journal entry of November 1, 1805, really hints at the widespread currency of beads:</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">...however they git in return for those articles Blue and white beeds copper Kettles, brass arm bands, some scarlet and blue robes and a fiew articles of old clothes, they prefer beeds to any thing, and will part with the last mouthfull of articles of clothing they have for a fiew of those beeds, those beeds the[y] traffic with Indians Still higer up this river for roabs, Skins, cha-pel-el [biscuitroot] bread, beargrass &c. who in turn trafick with those under the rockey mountains for Beargrass, quarmash roots & robes &c.</div></blockquote>Clearly there is widespread currency in beads. And I'll also add here, though it is not entirely relevant, that I suspect beads were much prettier in 1805, or at least of more consistent integrity - when everything was naturally derived, handmade, and American Indian apparel was the apparel of everyday life and not costume for the odd pow wow. No artificially dyed feathers or plastic beads here, paleface.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg57G6rdOUlIcMT3w6N_M7pMbGifzlZZp5Jfc6Glxm-J-8j7w5Kp0nfYSdArUqG9ZfEWvDDd_ndJEwfW-UGqjwzrtvAQPcfPR56-n-Q5YJM7BmbgxjhBOR3A95M-BAk-t9WrCYWydMOvqU/s1600/beads.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg57G6rdOUlIcMT3w6N_M7pMbGifzlZZp5Jfc6Glxm-J-8j7w5Kp0nfYSdArUqG9ZfEWvDDd_ndJEwfW-UGqjwzrtvAQPcfPR56-n-Q5YJM7BmbgxjhBOR3A95M-BAk-t9WrCYWydMOvqU/s320/beads.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Portrait of Shó-me-kós-see<em>,</em> or "The Wolf", of the Kansa tribe. Painted by George Catlin in 1832. From the Smithsonian collection.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Beads were often worn copiously - on strands and integrated into complex mixed-media accessories as well. Returning from the Pacific, Clark notes the appearance of the Choppunish, or Nez Percés (from the French for "pierced nose"). His journal entry from May 7th 1806:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">The orniments worn by the Chopunnish are, in their nose a single shell of Wampom, the pirl & beeds are suspended from the ears. beads are worn arround their wrists, neck, and over their shoulders crosswise in the form of a double sash. the hair of the men is cewed in two rolls which hang on each side in front of the body. Collars of bears claws are also common; but the article of dress that in which they appear to bestow most pains and orniments is a kind of collar or breastplate; this is most commonly a strip of otter skins of about six inches wide taken out of the center of the skin its whole length including the head. this is dressed with the hair on. this is tied around the neck & hangs in front of the body the tail frequently reaching below their knees; on this skin in front is attatched pieces of pirl, beeds, wampom, pices of red cloth and in short whatever they conceive most valuable or ornamental.</div></blockquote>Bear fur and claws are particularly valued in apparel as the bears of the west - especially the grizzly - were dangerously aggressive and extremely hard to kill. Lewis and Clark, armed with shotguns and accustomed to the more docile black bears of the East, underestimated the temper and might of the grizzlies and were surprised to find that felling one often required both multiple gunshots and a hell of a lot of running for your life until the bear finally dropped. Needless to say, gunless and armed with just bow and arrow, the indigenous Americans were not keen to take them on and so to actually fell a bear was considered an accomplishment and by extension, seemingly, to sport the trophy of such a kill, high status.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgItv9ZgSzU1IxQI24V6w8y1WKLO26fr9sjHex3qFDL0VaXdclpdgKdvBiWbyojauJ-FTjPUelmu4mhVFob3QKfpf17Ob-FF_g6FZK_uXd1Bzh5nGpMOZuesgGpOJewDLyUFPG87e7pZtg/s1600/Iowa+indian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgItv9ZgSzU1IxQI24V6w8y1WKLO26fr9sjHex3qFDL0VaXdclpdgKdvBiWbyojauJ-FTjPUelmu4mhVFob3QKfpf17Ob-FF_g6FZK_uXd1Bzh5nGpMOZuesgGpOJewDLyUFPG87e7pZtg/s320/Iowa+indian.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The noted warrior Shon ta yi ga, or "Little Wolf" of the Iowa tribe - painted by George Catlin, 1844. Note the abundance of beads, as well as the formidable bear claw necklace. </span></div><br />
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Here's a truly interesting passage, one where William Clark pretty much spells out the value of beads to his American Indian associates in no uncertain terms. He also describes some of the more gruesome and curious accessory choices of the Nez Percés, and again I will put the more sensational details in boldface, since that's the sort of person I am. From his entry dated May 1th, 1806:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">...they do not appear to be much devoted to baubles as most of the nations we have met with, but seem anxious always to recive articles of utility, such as knives, axes, Kittles, blankets & mockerson awls. blue beeds however may form and exception to this remark; This article among all the nations of this country may be justly compared to gold and silver among civilized nations. They are generally well clothed in their stile. Their dress consists of a long shirt which reaches to the middle of the leg, long legins which reach as high as the waist, mockersons & robe. those are formed of various skins and are in all respects like those of the Shoshone. Their orniments consists of beeds, shells and pieces of brass variously attached to their dress, to their ears arround their necks wrists arms &c. a band of some kind usially serounds the head, this is most frequently the skin of some fir animal as the fox otter &c. I observed a tippet worn by Hohastillpilp, <strong>which was formed of Humane scalps and ornemented with the thumbs and fingers of several men which he had slain in battle</strong>, they also were a coller or breastplate of otter skin ornimneted with shells beeds & quills. the women brade their hair in two tresses which hang in the same position of those of the men, which ar[e] cewed and hand over each shoulder &c.</div></blockquote> A tippet, by the way - and I had to research it myself - is a sort of long scarf that wraps over the shoulders and hangs down the front on either side, such as one finds in the vestments of certain types of clergy, though the natives' were made from skins. Would you wear one? Would you wear one covered with thumbs and fingers? <em>Well, maybe...</em><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">Another terrifically curious example of the occasional worthlessness of European currency is one that culturally and stylistically still touches our lives very much today. In the early years of global maritime trade - when state-chartered companies like the <em>East India Company</em> (founded 1600 by Elizabeth I) and its Dutch equivalent, the <span xml:lang="nl"><em>Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie</em> (of 1602)</span> were sending ships on the astonishingly long voyage around the cape of Africa and on to ports in Asia - the initial goods for acquisition were spices. The appetite of the European market for which simply could not be satiated, and historically many fortunes were made trying. <br />
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Many desired varieties of spices came from the "Spice Islands" of Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, and though the European ships set sale with stores of gold to make their purchase, the producing tribes of the islands were basically pre-literate and without currency - and they found no utility whatsoever in gold, either. Again, what does a guilder buy you in the jungle? So spices-for-gold was a no go, however the natives would trade for more practical items, particularly textiles. And so the trade became triangular: European ships would exchange gold for textiles in India, then sail to the islands to trade Indian textiles for spices, then return to Europe to resell the spices for gold on the European market. Problem solved.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">But thanks to the success of the spice trade, another market was opened as its accidental bi-product: some of these spice-heavy ships started returning home also with leftover remnants of Indian textiles. The directors of these trading companies - and I am quite sure their wives, too - got a look at the colors and the patterns and basically said, "<em>These. Are. Fabulous</em>." And so shortly ships began returning laden with textiles as well, which in turn introduced the <em>Tree of Life</em> design to Europe and European craftsmen, which is pretty much the common evolutionary ancestor to every piece of large-scaled floral patterned chintz to which we somewhat reflexively accredit today as the backbone and basis of the "English country look". French merchants especially came to appropriate the Indian design motifs as they soon realized, amidst great demand, it was far more profitable to domestically manufacture <em>Indienne</em>-style knock-offs than to actually go to the expense of importing them for resale - and this is why "French Provencial" textiles are often a curious combination of European flora mixed with Eastern design elements such as paisleys and palmettes...<br />
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(Yeah, I basically ache to write scads on this - in my esteem a fascinating and antique sort of cross-culturalism - but that will have to wait until after I finish up with Lewis & Clark, which I assure you is only going to get freakier...) </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"></blockquote>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-76975805882822030452011-12-07T23:36:00.000-08:002011-12-07T23:36:20.632-08:00The Native American Couture, pt. 1: skins on skin. Or, the peek-a-boo chic...<div style="text-align: justify;">Last month there was something of an uproar here in town when a party promoter proposed what would be an ill-fated, or at least ill-themed, Thanksgiving food drive at a local club. The name of the party was originally slated to be "<em>Pocahotass</em>" and it invited fashion-forward attendees to dress up, more or less, as Pilgrims & Indians. </div><br />
And while I suspect the initial intention of the gay promoters was one of innocence (coupled with an overwhelming desire to wear feathers), probably little more than to invoke the sort of celebratory, elementary-school playfulness most likely apparent the last time any of us actually did dress up as Pilgrims and Indians, naturally the event was immediately seized upon by critics who vociferously dubbed the entire affair far too exploitative and insensitive. Well, in retrospect I suppose <em>anyone</em> could have, or should have, seen that coming. Apparently in this world of ours there is simply no room for the canned good-collecting homosexual dancing in feathered headress - unless of course it's of the Vegas showgirl variety. But still the reality remains: nobody really wants to dress like a Pilgrim and anyone, with any style, would rather dress like an Indian. Or I'll just say this: that in the classical Native American costume there is a certain style, a flair, and a materiality that today's fashion queen likely wants to explore in greater depth...<br />
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As Lewis and Clark make their historic journey across the continent, they are in almost constant company with Native Americans along the way: the Mandans and Minnetarees of the upper Missouri river, the Shonshonee, the Nez Perces, the various Chinnook tribes along the Columbia to the Pacific. Many of the tribes, particularly those around the Rockies, are isolated from both the "white" settlements of the East and the maritime trade along the Pacific coast, and have never encountered a European before. They are, however, generally cognizant of their existence, and in some cases posses possibly second and third-generation traded goods from Spanish colonials and frontiersmen to their south (I am guessing in Colorado). Both Lewis and Clark take copious notes about what they encounter on their long journey, and the appearance, dress, and customs of the natives are no exception.<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> The Mandan medicine man, Mah-to-he-ha, or Old Bear, painted by George Catlin, 1832 - Smithsonian Collection</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span>In my reading of <em>The Journals of Lewis and Clark</em>, I've noted some passages for consideration: ones that illustrate the almost exclusive usage of animal skins in the construction of garments - as these tribes have no means of fiber processing at this time - and their sense of adornment. But interestingly (or maybe I am just a perv), these passages also reveal the Native American's comparatively racy sense of bodily display - which is to say, more accurately, absence of Judeo-Christian modesty - of which the white explorers were unable to feign ignorance, for better and, as the record I think amusingly shows, sometimes for worse. That's right, often they were lettin' it all hang out! And I'll be happy to put the illustrative passages in <strong>bold face</strong> for the sake of simple sensationalism, but besides that, it is actually interesting to see what constitued the fashion...<br />
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Here William Clark shares his sartorial observations among the Nez Perces, who traditionally led a seasonally-nomadic existence through Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. His entry from October 10, 1805:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">The <em>Cho-pun-nish</em> or Pierced nose Indians are Stout likely men, handsom women, and verry dressy in their way, the dress of the men are a White Buffalo robe or Elk Skin dressed with Beeds which are generally white, Sea Shells & the Mother of Pirl hung to the[i]r hair & on a piece of otter skin about their necks hair Ceewed in two parsels hanging forward over their Shoulders, feathers, and different Coloured Paints which they find in their Countrey Generally white, Green & light Blue. Some fiew were a Shirt of Dressed Skins and long legins & Mockersons Painted, which appear to be their winters dress, with a plat of twisted grass about their Necks.</div></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">The women dress in a Shirt of Ibex or Goat [bighorn] Skins which reach quite down to their anckles with a girdle, their heads are not ornemented. their Shirts are ornemented with quilled Brass, Small peces of Brass Cut into different forms, Beeds, Shells & curious bones &c. <strong>The men expose those parts which are generally kept from few [view] by other nations but the women are more perticular than any other nation which I have passed [<em>in s[e]creting the parts</em>].</strong></div></blockquote><br />
On October 17th, 1805, Clark has an encounter with another group down the road, where the ladies are, apparently, plus-sized and hardly modest. <em>I wonder if this constitutes the 1805 equivalent of a camel toe...?</em><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">The Dress of those natives differ but little from those on the Koskoskia and Lewis's rivers, except the women who dress verry different, in as much as those above ware long leather Shirts which [are] highly ornimented with beeds shells &c. &c. and those on the main Columbia river <strong>only ware a truss or pece of leather tied around them at their hips and drawn tite between their legs and fastened before So as bar[e]ly to hide those parts which are so sacredly hid & s[e]cured by our women</strong>. Those women are more inclined to Co[r]pulency than any we have yet Seen, their eyes are of a Duskey black, their hair of a corse black without orniments of any kind as above.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Shé-de-ah, or Wild Sage, of the Wichita tribe painted by George Catlin, 1834 -Smithsonian Collection</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Catlin wrote: “Amongst the women of this tribe, there were many that were exceedingly pretty in feature and in form; and also in expression, though their skins are very dark. … [They] are always decently and comfortably clad, being covered generally with a gown or slip, that reaches from the chin quite down to the ankles, made of deer or elk skins.…" The Smithsonian adds "</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">The sensual appeal (of this portrait) suggests that the artist was not always an objective observer of Indian life."</span></div><br />
I've mentioned before that Lewis is the more gifted writer of the two, and this, perhaps the most sensational of all, does not disappoint. He records on March 19th, 1806, as the expedition prepares to depart the Pacific and make their journey home:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">The Killamucks, Clatsops, Chinnooks, Cathlahmahs, and Wic-ki-a-cums resemble each other as well in their persons and dress as in their habits and manners .... The dress of the women consists of a robe, tissue, and sometimes when the weather is uncommonly cold, a vest. their robe is much smaller than that of the men, never reaching lower than the waist nor extending in front sufficiently to cover the body. it is like that of the men confined across the breast with a string and hangs loosly over the shoulders and back. the most esteemed and valuable of these robes are made of strips of the skins of the Sea Otter net together with the bark of the white cedar or silk-grass. these strips are fist twisted and laid parallel with eath other a little distance assunder, and then net or wove together in such a manner that fur appears equally on both sides, and unites between the strands. it make[s] a warm and soft covering. other robes are formed in a similar manner of the skin of the Rackoon, beaver &c. at other times the skin is dressed in the hair and woarn without any further preparation. the`vest is always formed in the manner first discribed of their robes and covers the body from the armpits to the waist, and is confined behind, and destitute of straps over the sholder to keep it up. when this vest is woarn the breast of the woman is concealed. but without it which is almost always the case, they are exposed, and <strong>from the habit of remaining loose and unsuspended grow to great length, particularly in aged women in many of whom I have seen the bubby reach as low as the waist</strong>. The garment which occupied the waist, and from thence as low as nearly to the knee before and the ham, behind, cannot properly be denominated a petticoat, in the common acceptation of that term; it is a tissue of white cedar bark, bruised or broken into small shreds, which are interwoven in the middle by means of several cords of the same material, which serve as well for a girdle as to hold in place the shreds of bark which form the tissue, and which shreds confined to the middle hang with their ends pendulous from the waist , the whole being of sufficient thickness when the female stands erect to conceal those parts usually covered from formiliar view, <strong>but when she stoops or places herself in many other attitudes, this battery of Venus is not altogether impervious to the inquisitive and penetrating eye of the amorite.</strong></div></blockquote>Oh, Meriwether Lewis, that's a hell of a way to say you can see a gal's muffin! But of course though, truly, we like nothing really impervious to the inquisitive and penetrating eye, amorite or otherwise. <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"></blockquote>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-24284241511349952912011-11-26T01:15:00.000-08:002011-12-07T23:40:08.637-08:00Trannies 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.<br />
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I've been reading <em>The Journals of Lewis Clark </em>- 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...<br />
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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):<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">"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." </blockquote><br />
<em>Hello! Trannies of the old West!</em> 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. <br />
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DeVoto also adds an explanatory footnote to the passage, surprisingly balanced I think for the early 1950's: <em>"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."</em> And I should think at the time that visionary drag queens were in sorely short supply East of the Mississippi.<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Dance to the Berdache" by George Catlin (1796-1872)</span></div><br />
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The designation <em>berdache</em> 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 <em>it</em> out, I should say, as a cultural behavior - in the subsequent years of relentless Christian missionary work and otherwise "Anglicizing" educational efforts. <br />
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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.<br />
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Will Roscoe, one of the pre-eminent American scholars of the phenomenon, is the author of <em>The Zuni Man-Woman </em>(University of New Mexico Press, 1991), a biography and consideration of We'wha - <em> a berdache who actually traveled to Washington D.C. in 1886 as a cultural ambassador representing the Zuni nation!</em> 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.<br />
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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 <em>Journals</em> 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:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">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.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">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. *</blockquote> Well I think the same rules hold true today: you simply don't want to piss off the drag queens.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">* Quote is taken from an interview between Will Roscoe and Mark Thompson, in <em>Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature with Sixteen Writers, Healers, Teachers, and Visionaries</em>, 1994.</span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"></blockquote>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-45599913615228323952011-11-21T00:36:00.000-08:002011-11-21T00:36:48.241-08:00Always 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 <em>what-iffer</em>: 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...<br />
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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.<br />
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So something really interesting to be discovered in reading the <em>The Journals of Lewis and Clark</em> 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.<br />
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As the expedition moved westward, approaching the Continental Divide, Lewis writes in his journal for Wednesday, August 14th, 1805:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">"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."</blockquote>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.)<br />
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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...<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">"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 <em>tab-ba-bone</em>, which in their language signifiyes<em> white-man</em>. 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."</blockquote>Unfortunately for Lewis, as the narrative progresses, apparently the lure of trinkets and the company of the great <em>tab-ba-bone</em> 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, <em>"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."</em> Chin up, Lewis: An adventurous guy like you is sure to make friends!<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"></blockquote>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-695540909031339692011-11-17T01:14:00.000-08:002011-11-17T01:14:44.762-08:001970's childrens' television surprisingly not factually complete, poetic license suspected... <br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">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:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>Lewis and Clark volunteered to go,<br />
Goodbye, good luck, wear your overcoat!<br />
They prepared for good times and for bad (and for bad),<br />
They hired Sacagawea to be their guide.<br />
She led them all across the countryside...</em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">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...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The expedition was also known in its time as <em>The Corps of Discovery. </em>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 <em>The Electric Company</em> and <em>Zoom</em>, 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 <em>manservant</em> (or slave),<em> </em>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. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">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!<br />
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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...<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">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. <em>Shocking!</em> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sacagawea was more than just the face on an inconvenient, highly unpopular piece of currency.</span> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">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. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">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, <em>and</em> 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 <em>terra incognita</em> 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...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">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...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;">"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..."</span></blockquote></div></blockquote>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.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">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: </div><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote class="tr_bq">"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)."</blockquote></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Well, one can hardly blame her. We were curious then as we are curious now.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-76343241704743196952011-11-11T02:35:00.000-08:002011-11-13T19:53:08.673-08:00Why not ... read Lewis and Clark?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO9k_tj8i9XPIi3npwQW9pWtkDW0oBbwZEoor2XxlZ8zFcfzJZ3WFlJYtAgpO_zcFBvb9WdhXApk1nIpkGo__P69IOSmnPwketxsppZwnc-gb-FHZ6OH2EvpQZDqh1zuIc8TLi8sTvIn8/s1600/LEWIS+and+CLARK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO9k_tj8i9XPIi3npwQW9pWtkDW0oBbwZEoor2XxlZ8zFcfzJZ3WFlJYtAgpO_zcFBvb9WdhXApk1nIpkGo__P69IOSmnPwketxsppZwnc-gb-FHZ6OH2EvpQZDqh1zuIc8TLi8sTvIn8/s400/LEWIS+and+CLARK.jpg" width="261" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">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 <em>The Journals of Lewis and Clark</em>. I purchased my copy in the museum shop at <em>Monticello</em>, 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.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I went with Lewis and Clark's journals for a variety of reasons. One is that in the decoration of <em>Monticello</em> - his plantation on the outskirts of Charlottesville, Virgina - it seemed to me that Jefferson created very much a sort of curiosity cabinet or <em>Wonderkammer</em> 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. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Scenes from the Entrace Hall at Monticello</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">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. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">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 <em>"Who and What the Hell are You?"</em> 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. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">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<em> doubling</em> 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. </div><div align="left" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">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: "<em>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</em>."</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So why not read Lewis and Clark?</div>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-51842032444403672732011-11-09T22:53:00.000-08:002011-11-12T15:16:47.029-08:00Another horrible idea in home decorating...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>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 <em>from</em> the fish, I mean the <em>fish itself</em> - as a means of illumination. I mean, they came to burn the Candlefish. <br />
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This is a little something I stumbled on while researching colonial candle making. Apparently the small Candlefish, or Eulachon (<span class="binomial"><em>Thaleichthys pacificus), </em>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? </span><br />
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<span class="binomial">The Candlefish is native to the Northern Pacific coastal waters stretching from Northern California to Alaska. It's name, <em>Eulachon</em>, which is also sometimes spelled <em>Oolichan</em> or <em>Oulachon, </em>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 <em>their</em> diet - but no word as to whether or not the duo penned their famous journals in the flickering, fishy light of the Eulachon...</span><br />
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<span class="binomial">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, <span class="st">El Niño-related climate change</span> - 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. </span>andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6399707364665816009.post-13535726563178790512011-11-07T00:50:00.000-08:002011-11-12T15:17:17.476-08:00The colonial home: rather smoky, mostly smells bad...One of my obsessions of the moment is the fragrant Bayberry (<em>Myrica</em>) plant and its applications, because last month for my birthday I took a trip through Virginia and stopped off at Thomas Jefferson's <em>Monticello</em> 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...<br />
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</div>When you tour a place like Williamsburg, one thing they don't tell you is that <em><strong>interiors of the American Colonial period likely stank of rancid beef fat</strong></em>. 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. "<em>Early to bed, early to rise</em>..." 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...<br />
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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.<br />
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But at some point in our history, some Native Americans said to some colonists, more or less, "<em>Here, smell this bush. It's fabulous...</em>" <strong>And so the European was irrevocably turned-on to the indigenous American Bayberry bush</strong> (probably<em> </em><em>Myrica pensylvanica</em>, or perhaps <em>Myrica gale</em>, 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 (<em>Dendroica coronata) </em>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 <em>little arrangements</em>. <br />
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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. <br />
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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 "<em>Bayberry candles burned to the socket, puts luck in the home, food in the larder, and gold in the pocket" </em>(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...andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07192364923529116990noreply@blogger.com0