Monty Roberts, a Real Horse Whisperer

Many are familiar with the popular novel, The Horse Whisperer (1995) which was later made into The Horse Whisperer (1998), the movie directed by and starring Robert Redford. To write his incredible book that populated best seller lists, Nicholas Evans, author of The Horse Whisperer (1995), met Monty Roberts and heavily interviewed him among other knowledgeable horse trainers and owners before writing.

But while The Horse Whisperer is a work of fiction, what appeared on library shelves two years later, The Man Who Listens to Horses (1997), is the autobiography of Monty Roberts, a real-life horse whisperer. In his own book, Monty tells his remarkable journey with horses and how his horse training-methods have revolutionized horse training, from the violence and exercise of force and mastery previously used to the gentling methods of those today. Horses are not to be "broken" anymore but to be "gentled". 

Here is a postage-stamp version of the Monty Roberts story.

Source

Monty Roberts, born 14 May 1935, as a babe was held in the saddle in front of his mother as she trained neighborhood youngsters in the family riding school. By age 4 Monty was riding in shows and winning prizes. At age 7 he made a precocious and controversial discovery—the realization that horses have their own language, what he came to regard as “the language of Equus”, an extremely controversial thought at the time!

His father, a mean and violent horse trainer, also mean and violent with Monty, wouldn’t allow such a thought, and tried to beat (yes, physically) the thought out of Monty’s brain. Monty hated violence and despite the beatings, continued his observations on how horses communicate. By age 11 Monty was in the family rail car and riding across the country with typically 6 horses, a groom-trainer, and a school teacher. By this time he was known to be “professional” as his competitors were kids who actually attended school and merely rode on weekends, he swooped up the highest prizes rather consistently whenever and wherever he competed.

By age 13 he was taking summer trips to the Nevada desert to do mustang round-ups, and this was where he got the biggest epiphany on horse communication—from interactions at night between a young misbehaving stallion and the leading herd mare who was “punishing” the wayward youth! To be able to see these night interactions between the herd animals, Monty realized his rare achromatopic (complete colorblind) condition was actually a blessing, as it gave him ability to distinguish the textures of the night desert and not feel the loss of the colors!

On this earliest mustang roundup he observed a mare chasing a young rambunctious stallion 300 yards away from the herd and not allowing him to return. This ostracism is critical as it prevents group protection from the coyotes, wolves, mountain lions and other predators, and it is unnatural to be excluded as horses are herd animals and thrive in socializing family herds. The young stallion was chased out and the lead mare kept him ostracized by directly facing him, eyes riveted into him, with no letup on reprimanding stance or breaking of eye contact. After some minutes the young stallion started moving his mouth, and then sticking out his tongue a bit at times, actions that Monty later learned was his beginning to admit his submission to her authority. Following this, his head would drop to just inches off the ground while he continued with the mouth action. The mare was waiting for this submissive act and then would break eye contact and look a few inches in front of him. As he continued with his submissive movements and turning his body more and more laterally to her, an overt act of vulnerability and submission, her eyes would drift further in distance ahead of him, and she too would gradually turn laterally. The more she turned, the closer he approached. What was utterly astonishing to Monty, however, was how she showed her forgiveness to him after allowing him back into the herd, provided he continued expressing his submission and not misbehaving again. She would curry his mane, withers and around his tail gently with her lips and teeth and give him lots of attention as she welcomed him back, and forgave him. If he misbehaved, out he was chased again, and the process would be repeated.

For Monty, this was revolutionary! Horses had rules, meted out punishment, expressed forgiveness and caring love, and were in fact master trainers for raising “model” communities! Monty’s father used aggression, violent submission, force and cruelty in his horse-breaking methods, and Monty was quick to note the huge differences in both process and outcome. Monty developed training methods he gained from this mustang experience, and his horses were “broken” to saddle and bridle in an average of 30 minutes after meeting. His father’s violent method took 6 weeks, and the horse was forever damaged. Monty’s method was based on speaking the “language of Equus” with the horse and gaining its trust so that he could just quietly place the saddle on the horse, reassure the horse that it wasn’t a bad thing, and then slip the bridle on the horse with the same reassurance. Monty knew his father’s method of domination was inherently wrong, and Monty’s ultimate philosophy was that the horse is an honest soul and will tell you its story, if you but take the time to listen, as “the horse is always right”!

Monty’s Training Method

According to Monty, to break a horse in 30 minutes is not difficult if one speaks the “language of Equus”. The ideal method is to use a 50-foot arena, preferably without a lot of activity around it. The horse would be put in the arena for a time before Monty entered it in order for the horse to become familiar with the space rather than have too much unfamiliar stimuli at once during the initial gentling session. Then Monty would enter the arena with a rope, not to beat the horse at all, but to just flick the rope behind the horse to keep the horse circling at a nice pace. Monty, like the lead mare who was ostracizing the fractious youth, would squarely face the horse with eyes fixed on it and the horse would be running because he was realizing Monty spoke “Equus” and he, the horse, was being punished for something.

Once the horse started moving his mouth, and then lowering his head to just above ground level while moving his mouth and still making revolutions around Monty, Monty would adjust his eye focus to just in front of the horse. The horse would slow immediately, offer more submissive mouth movements with lowered head and the further Monty adjust his eye focus in front the horse, the slower the horse circled. Finally when Monty was no longer looking at the horse and his (Monty’s body) was turned laterally in the position of little awareness and in trusting vulnerability, the horse would gaze at Monty. Monty would then turn his back on the horse, being careful to never cut his eyes in any way to see how the horse was reacting, and just slowly walk away. The horse, the herd animal, would naturally approach Monty and with its muzzle over Monty’s shoulder, follow Monty trustingly around the arena.

After a couple minutes of “round-up”, Monty would turn and touch the spots of vulnerability—the spots where for example a mountain lion would grab if it attacked, many of the same spots that the mare had curried when she welcomed the fractious stallion back into the herd. Monty was saying with these touches, “You can trust me. I would never hurt you.” Monty would touch the vulnerability points, along the muzzle, the top of the head, along the mane, the throat, the flank, and as he developed his methods, he would even lift one hoof after another, an act that demanded ultimate trust as it denied the horse the ability to run when one of its hooves was lifted. With these acts allowed, the horse was acquiescent for allowing more acts of vulnerability, the adding of the saddle, and then the bridle. After each each piece of equipment was added, Monty would reassure the horse with appropriate touches, conveying his high regard and respect to the horse for the horse putting such trust in him. And so Monty could walk into an arena, and about 30 minutes later have a “green” horse introduced to a saddle and bridle and have a rider on his back for a few spins around the arena. Of course this was just the beginning of the training, but Monty did the initial horse “breaking”, a term that is actually a misnomer. The term in regard to Monty’s method should be more like “horse gentling”.

KNYSNA-PLETT HERALD

This book is the amazing journey of Monty from a small boy who never had a childhood or owned a toy to a grown man who, living and breathing with horses all of his life, learned a method of “horse breaking” that gained the horses trust and didn’t destroy its spirit. When Monty was into his 40s, Queen Elizabeth, quite the horsewoman herself, heard about Monty and invited him to Buckingham to see for herself his methods. She was amazed and she and Monty struck up quite the friendship which lasted for years, and developed further during many more visits. Until meeting Queen Elizabeth, Monty had learned to remain silent about his controversial gentling methods of training horses. After meeting such a renowned horse advocate, Monty started giving public demonstrations and instructions on his methods, and because of Queen Elizabeth’s keen passion for humanitarian treatment of horses and her passionate approval of Monty’s gentling methods, Monty’s ways became widely known … and even was the catalyst for this book!

Monty, beaten from ages 7 to 15, and often with a chain, refused to continue with the violence that he underwent growing up. His methods gentled the training methods of horses, and he and his wife with their big hearts and passion to help even youths at risk, over the years took in 47 foster kids (typically aged 12-14) who had a lot of baggage. They used the same methods of “herd mentality”, stern looks and welcoming touches as the mare had used. None of their kids were ever beaten, communication and love were the ingredients for a strong “family” tie. And Monty says that despite the heavy baggage that his 47 foster kids had, 40 of them were “successfully taught to fly”!

Definitely this book is a high recommend!

Zen Buddhism

The down-to-earth and simple common sense of some of the illustrations in Zen Comics put a nice twist on traditional outlooks. So to share a few that most humored me:

simple thinking ... and yet very profound!



 

 
Yep, silence is still golden :)

The Jungle Effect: Notes on Indigenous Diets

In The Jungle Effect: The Healthiest Diets from around the World--Why They Work and How to Make Them Work for You (2008), Daphne Miller, MD, seeks to explore the traditional diets of some of her patients whose ethnic heritages haven't been generations of American-born and raised. When various patients from ethnic backgrounds outside of the United States were having health complications that people of their own heritage rarely had, Dr. Miller sought to question the "new" diet and look at the differences between the SAD (Standard American Diet) that seemed to be causing the health issues and the patients' native heritage diet. Following are a collection of anthropological discoveries she made in her search to form better diets for her patients:

• Research has shown the 80% of medical problems involving heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes and 40% of cancer cases could be avoided by following a healthy diet, exercising regularly, and avoiding tobacco.

• San Francisco bay area is a hot spot for breast cancer.

• "Nixtamilization" is a process used to treat maize in Central and South America. To prepare corn for consumption, corn is boiled in an alkali solution of lime and water which removes the tough outer layer of the kernels, and which also enriches the corn with essential nutrients like calcium, niacin, and certain amino acids. Without nixtamilization, Mesoamericans would have suffered from severe vitamin deficiencies, including pellagra (niacin deficiency). 

nixtamilization

• Table manners and patterns of eating are apparent in almost all cultures, and in countries that practice communal eating, one simply does NOT eat alone. That is, how one eats is extremely important in many cultures. Take Cameroon and Crete, for example. In both cultures one is absolutely expected to eat slowly--a practice that very much improves digestion, and interesting enough, less food is consumed. Also, in Okinawa, the dictum Hara Hachi Bu, or "eat only until you are eight parts full," is a standard reminder not to overeat. In outcome, Okinawans maintain their weight from age 20 to 100, Americans on the other hand typically put on one pound per year after the age of 30.

• Why are most toddlers disgusted by coffee, but many adults addicted? Because acidic, spicy and bitter foods are acquired tastes.

• Eskimo tribes (Inuits), until recently, ate whale meat, seal, fish, sea bird and caribou, and despite this indigenous diet comprising about 50% high protein and 30-40% fat, Eskimos eating this diet had some of the lowest rates of heart disease and cancer in the world. Why? Probably because their blood levels showed very high levels of two omega-3 fats: EPA and DHA, fats known to prevent many chronic diseases. Eskimos ate fats from seafood and wild game, which in turn synthesized their omega-3s directly from sea greens and vegetation from the tundra. 

• Peruvian villagers in Las Palmas in the Amazon eat the cashew fruit but avoid the nut, which is known to cause stomach cramps and nausea after a few hours of ingestion due to urushio, a toxin, in the nut. These Peruvians are amused to learn that Americans consider cashews a luxury food and cook them to make them edible.

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  cashew fruit and nuts - hot to grow them

• Thiamine deficient people will have mental confusion and problems walking, but eating a thiamine-rich meal of, for example, whole grains, beans, and lean meat, immediately improves one's sense of well-being.  

• The practice of adding spices like garlic, onions, chilis, turmeric, and ginger not only aid digestion but also delay food spoilage. Many also have anti-inflammatory qualities. These tangy, spicy additions are acquired tastes. 

• Many cultures developed fermented and pickled foods which they discovered aided their digestion: Icelandic skyr (yogurt), Greek yogurt, Cameroonian fou fou and millet beer, Korean kimchi, Japanese tempeh and natto, and German sauerkraut. 

various kinds of fermented foods

• Refining grains involves removing the two most nutritious parts -- the coarse husk and the oily inner germ. These two parts give bread a rough texture and a nutty flavor, but their removal leaves only a white endosperm, a fluffy form of starch with little nutritional value. Even whole-wheat bread (as opposed to whole-grain bread) is a highly refined food as it's made with flour which has retained some husk but no germ. Basically, the flavor is removed and sweetness remains.

• Lactose intolerance. A good portion of the world's population has some discomfort or difficulty after eating dairy products. This is because their bodies don't produce lactase, the enzyme for digesting the carbohydrate lactose. Blacks, American Indians, and Asians are large ethnic groups commonly known to have difficulties with milk, while northern Europeans, some tribes in East Africa and the Middle East are able to digest lactose into adulthood.

• The Pima Indians in Arizona have some of the highest rates of type 2 diabetes in the world. Scientists have found that the Pima have a host of gene mutations that may relate to insulin reaction and sugar processing. Ironically, the Pima's cousins, the Tarahumara Indians living several hundred miles south in Sonora and Chihuahua, have a low rate of diabetes.

• 35% of Hawaiians are considered to be morbidly obese with similar numbers suffering from diabetes type 2 and heart disease. Middle-aged Hawaiians 100 years ago had the bodies of 20-year-olds, so what happened? The traditional diets of taro, breadfruit, fern shoots, purple yams, kukui nuts, fish, and free-range chickens are now only available at expensive prices in supermarkets for tourists while the foods of modern convenience are the only foods subsidized.

• Type 2 diabetes in the past 70 years in the US has increased 700% and is now affecting even the younger population. The ethnic groups most dramatically impacted by this change are Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans and African Americans. 

• All carbohydrates are not equal. The traditional carbs (e.g. cheeky yam, black bean seed, bush onion)  eaten by Pacific Islanders and Aboriginals seem to have had a protective effect against diabetes while Western food carbs (russet potatoes, white bread, white pasta, mass-produced corn, and white rice) seem to switch on diabetes.

• Over 50 species of beans are native to the Americas.

• Cretans of two generations previous consumed a guesstimated 50 kilos of olive oil per year, and lived to be quite old. A health-challenged Cretan returned to the old ways of stone-pressing olive oil when he realized the pesticides and fertilizers he used were in his precious olive oil and getting in his water supply, He also realized the modern way of processing olive oil of washing with large quantities of water, which, since antioxidants are water soluble, was washing away the most important nutrient. He returned to natural living without fertilizers and started stone-pressing his olive oil again. Health problems resolved.

stone press for making olive oil naturally

• Depression, second only to heart disease, ranks as the highest health disability worldwide, and in the U.S., 20% of women are likely to experience depression and 12% of men. In Europe, depression rates for people over age 65 are influenced by seasonal affective disorder (SAD, or "winter blues") and by location, that is, Munich, London, Amsterdam, Verona, and Berlin have the highest depression rates, whereas Iceland (with its quite Northern, sunless winter) ironically had the lowest.

• Icelanders love their fish and consume 225 pounds of fish per year, while Japanese consume the second-most at 147 pounds annually. People in the US consume only 48 pounds. The countries with the lowest per capita fish consumption rate (e.g. West Germany, New Zealand, and the United States) have, perhaps not so surprising, higher depression rates. Icelanders believe that eating high omega-3 fish, depression is greatly reduced. 

• Lamb is almost as rich in omega-3s as fish.

• Swiss alpine cheese (from Switzerland) is a dairy product of free-range cows grazing on clover and moss-rich pasturage. The cheese from these cows have milk five times the omega-3 fats and has 20-30% less saturated fat than the standard US cheddar.

• Colon cancer, next to lung cancer, is the second biggest cancer killer in the US, affecting all ethnicities fairly equally. Western and southern Africa are cancer cold spots; it's suggested that they eat virtually no processed foods, large amounts of omega-3 fish, and their cooking oils are made from simple home-processing. Americans, on the other hand, eat a diet high in refined carbohydrates and meat, both of which promote bacteria in the gut. The traditional western and southern diet contain a diet rich in fiber, probiotics and nutrients, and the people evacuate much more frequently, which in turn eliminates the build-up of toxins more regularly.

• One of the staple foods of Okinawans is sea vegetables. Like maize in Mexico, potatoes in Iceland, and barley in Crete, sea veggies appear in an array of traditional dishes: raw in salads, pickled as sauces and relishes, dried for a snack or a wrapper for rice, cooked in soups, sweetened in jelly or ice cream. It also appears in traditional herbal medicines, cosmetics, and treatments for asthma to hemorrhoids to stomach ulcers. Studies have showed that the people eating the highest amount of sea veggies were the healthiest in villages.

various kinds of seaweed -- a seaweed salad

Alex & Me: Anecdotes on Language Acquisition

Many people are aware of the 30-year long relationship Irene Pepperberg had with her African Grey Parrot, Alex (roughly May 1976 – 6 September 2007). 

Irene Pepperberg was trained at Harvard in chemistry, but while writing her chemistry dissertation she became fascinated with the biological aspects of language acquisition in animals. She finished her chemistry dissertation but never used the degree directly. That said, however, she had learned many research and other transferable skills to enter into the biological field of animal psychology. She studied constantly -- about child acquisition of language, about animal cognition which at the time was believed to be almost non-existent. For years she battled disinterest in her studies, and especially flack from the scientific world in general; animals were strictly believed to be governed by instinct and intelligence wasn't to be considered. Until this time, language acquisition had only been testing in some primates, gorillas, and corvids (crows, ravens). Irene thought that a grey parrot, an animal known to talk, would be the ideal subject to research animal cognition and intelligence with, and so went to an exotic pet store to get one. One was arbitrarily scooped up, and that parrot became the famous talking Alex! 

Source

A video on YouTube "Alex: One of the smartest birds ever" shows some of his training to demonstrate that animals, precisely African Grey Parrots, can not only "parrot" humans but actually understand and communicate with them intellectually, rationally, intentionally - all aspects of intelligence previously denied possible in the animal world. Humans just couldn't wrap their brains around the fact that humans aren't positioned as the only "animals" that acquire and communicate with meaningful language.

Some anecdotes I pulled from the "Alex and Me" book, which become clearer after seeing this YouTube clip.

In his early years of training:

In training, Alex "was less interested in colors than the objects, probably because all the colors tasted the same, while the different objects had different tastes and textures."

"He loved chewing clothespins. We called them 'peg wood', which he picked up quickly. I then gave him a green clothespin, something he'd never seen before, and asked, 'What's this?' He looked at it and cocked his head a couple of times, obviously intrigued, as he often was with novel objects. He then looked at me and said, 'Green wood peg wood,' all one phrase. We hadn't modeled it, so this was striking. Of course, a perfect response would have been 'Green peg wood'. 

[Pepperberg's early initial struggles with funding and getting published in a time when there was a growing controversy in the field of ape-human communication .... and therefore if apes weren't given legitimacy in communication, certainly no 'bird-brain' was going to get it! She writes:  

The chimpanzee known as Washoe, for instance, in the care of Roger Fouts, had apparently coined the phrase "water bird" the first time she saw a swan; Koko the gorilla, the subject of Penny Patterson's research, seemingly described a zebra as a "white tiger". These efforts were garnering a lot of public attention (NOVA programs were just part of that; magazine and newspaper articles proliferated too). Yet linguists were expressing a growing unease over the claim that these animals had demonstrated a rudimentary facility for language. 

In November 1979, Science published a long paper by Herbert Terrace and several colleagues: "Can an Ape Create a Sentence?" It was to become a classic in the growing controversy.]

Some language acquisition with Alex was unplanned, for instance, in December 1980 Alex was taken to a washroom on researcher Kathy Davidson's shoulder and he noticed his reflection in the mirror for the first time. He looked into it, cocked his head, and asked, "What's this?" Kathy answered, "That's you. You're a parrot." Alex looked some more and then asked, "What color?" Kathy said, "Gray. You're a gray parrot, Alex." And that was how Alex learned the word grey.

After several years of work with Alex:

Alex as as grey was very affectionate and loved to have his head lightly scratched. Lab workers called it tickling, so Alex when he wanted attention sometimes would lower his head and say, "You tickle", meaning "scratch my head". One day a stuffed gray was on the desk where Alex worked. After a bit he went over to it, gave it a good look, and then lowered his head to the stuffed bird and said, "You tickle." When nothing happened, he did it again. Again nothing happened, so in a huff, Alex said, "You turkey," and walked off. "You turkey" was a phrase the lab students sometimes said to Alex when he was uncooperative.

Another phrase he picked up inadvertently was "Pay attention!" He had aspergillus infection, a killer, and had to be taken to the vet and put into a nebulizer to help him breathe in drugs for treatment. Of course he didn't like it in the confining nebulizer. He knew he had to "wait" until the bell went off after the treatment, but one time there was an emergency and when no one came after his timer went off, he rapped on the glass and said not only his unhappy-with-this-environment phrase of "Wanna go back", he called out, "Pay attention! Wanna go back!" He had picked up "Pay attention" from students who were testing him in the lab.

At the vets, Alex was popular during the day, but at night he was basically alone. One night the accountant stayed late, and Alex tried to communicate with her. She was working so therefore quiet, so Alex asked, "You want a nut?" "No, Alex." He persisted, "You want corn?" "No, thank you, Alex, I don't want corn." This went on for quite a while with the accountant trying to ignore him in order to do work. Finally, Alex apparently in exasperation said in a petulant voice, "Well, what do you want?" The accountant cracked up laughing and gave Alex the attention he was demanding.

After recovery, Alex was taken back to the lab, but he didn't seem interested. In response to the question "How many wool?" based on the number of wool pieces on a tray, Alex answered, "One." The correct answer was two. When asked again, he said, "Four." Back and forth, one and four. Finally Irene said he would have to go into time-out and put him in his private room away from people. He immediately called out from behind the closed door, "Two ... come here ... two." Yep, Alex had fully recovered and was up to his old tricks!

Of course Alex wasn't the only bird in the lab. There were others like Griffin and Wart. Both were younger than Alex and both were obtained years after Irene had bonded with Alex, so Alex was king in the lab. He always had to have the higher perch, be closer to Irene's face in pictures and in communal work, and was therefore bossier. When Griffin was asked a question and didn't answer immediately, Alex would call out the answer (and sometimes the incorrect one to confuse Griffin). If Griffin's pronunciation wasn't clear enough, Alex would call out, "Say better" and Griffin better sound better on the next try. 

Did Alex understand language? Well, what do you think? 

Irene came storming into the lab one day angry to lose funding for her research ... yet again. Alex looked at her, and said, "Calm down!" 

He babbled and played with sound when alone, for instance, "green, cheen, bean, keen ..." So one day while Irene was testing him with a photographer on a limited schedule, she was asking Alex questions related to phoneme sounds, something she'd never worked with Alex on, but because the interviewer was on a tight schedule Irene skipped giving Alex a reward for every correct answer because Alex eating a nut after each answer would take too much time. Alex was getting frustrated and at not being appropriately rewarded for his efforts and would call out, "Want nut!" He continued to answer each phoneme question correctly, despite never being asked such questions before, and after each would demand more loudly, "Want nut!" Finally, in exasperation Alex called out, "Want nut! Nnn ... uh ... tuh!" Irene was stunned! His response was equivalent to, "Hey stupid, do I have to spell it out for you?" 

Could Alex put thoughts together to create new meaning? Well, one day someone brought a birthday cake into the lab and everyone shared it, including the birds. Community was very important for fostering communication and relationships. When Alex got his piece, he appreciatively said, "Yummy bread." He had known "yummy" and "bread" before, but putting them together was totally Alex's idea.

The night before Alex died, September 2007. 

Alex stayed in the lab with the other birds, and every night before Irene would leave, she and Alex would say their parting words. Wart and Griffin said nothing.

Alex: "You be good. I love you."
Irene: "I love you too."
Alex: "You'll be in tomorrow?"
Irene: "Yes. I'll be in tomorrow."

And those were the last words Alex spoke to her, "You be good. I love you!" Irene treasures them!

Quanah Parker - Empire of the Summer Moon

"Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History" was quite the historical read. Writer S. C. Gwynne gives background to why the Comanches were so little known -- basically, they were in the wild west further than other tribes, and they didn't trade, mingle or interact with the invading Whites. They kept to themselves, rarely took captives, were quick to strike, elusive to catch, and commanded thousands of miles so were almost impossible to pin down anywhere. They were the true "cowboys" of the west. 

Source

The Comanches measured wealth in horses and in the years after the Civil War, managed a herd of some fifteen thousand. They also owned "Texan cattle without number" and they roamed freely and fought passionately over the land that contained the country's largest buffalo herds. The Spanish knew a lot about them and were their marked enemy, as were many of the other tribes in the area:  Apaches, Utes, Osages, Pawnees, Tonkawa, Navajos, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes. They were a nation of military supremacy with a keen eye for horse flesh and adept with controlling their cattle and following the buffalo herds. One sign of their domination in their huge region was that their language, the Shoshone dialect, became the lingua franca of the southern plains. 

The Whites continued to pour into the West and the Comanches, unlike some Indians, refused to make treaties. Comanches fought, raided, burned, killed and disappeared back into their wild prairies and soldiers could not safely follow them and exact revenge despite their superior musket power. It was proven that a Comanche could loose 20 arrows in the time it took a soldier to load and fire one round, and this was even more deadly because the Indians knew about using the terrain in their warfare and didn't make themselves easily visible. 

Times were changing and firearms would quickly overpower the Indians skill: the Colt revolver with quicker loading action and power for up-close shots suitable for killing Indians on horseback appeared in 1835,  in 1860 the Spencer repeating carbine revolutionized how a few soldiers could hold off a mass of attacking Indians, and in 1873 the powerful Winchester created a complete imbalance in the "fairness" of warfare. Whites could kill at a great distance while Indians became powerless with their second-hand flintlocks, castoff muskets and short-range arrows. [In 1876, however, Custer was defeated by the combined forces of Lakotas, Northern Arapahoes and Cheyenne at the Little Big Horn despite his weapon advantage. Comanches as southern tribes didn't participate in the battle but the battle's effect caused a very hardline against ALL Indians, and White brutality against almost all Indians escalated with the clear message: the Indians must go because the Whites have come.]

Amongst all the raids of Comanches which usually resulted in taking captives, a band of Comanches swooped down on a northern Texan new settlement and killed the majority and took a few young prisoners. Cynthia Ann Parker (1827-1871), age 9 or 10 at the time, was one, along with a young aunt, younger brother and two cousins. Cynthia Ann disappeared for the next 24 years into the land of the Comanches. The others who were captured at the same time either were killed soon afterwards or in the case of her cousin Rachel Plummer Parker were brutalized and escaped many months later to tell, and document, the story. 

The story of Cynthia Ann Parker is unclear. What is clear is she became full Indian, and whenever Whites came to the camp she was in, she would disappear ... by choice. In her 24 years with the Comanches she completely lost her first language, married Peta Nocona and it was a love match, bore three children, and then with the invasions into Indian land increasing, her husband was killed in front of her and the "blue-eyed Indian" was recaptured and repatriated to her "own  people" ... which she could not understand and she rejected White life, which Whites could not understand. 

Many times she tried to escape, but always was returned to yet another distant relatives' who watched over her, often imprisoning her in a house. Cynthia had seen her two sons fleeing and would never meet them again. One soon died of injury or sickness, and the other Quanah Parker (1845-1911) grew to become the last of the Comanche chiefs. Cynthia Ann's daughter Prairie Flower died of influenza after a few months, and finally after 10 years in White captivity and not adjusting or understanding why she couldn't return to "her people", Cynthia Ann lost all interest in life and starved herself, dying herself of influenza. Years later Quanah Parker would hear the full story of his mother and sister's capture, and their deaths. He somehow obtained the single photograph made of them together and, though he built a great wooden mansion and entertained lavishly both politicians and his fellow Indians, that picture was his single-most treasured possession.

Cynthia Ann Parker with daughter Prairie Flower

That last sentence was a big jump in time. Quanah held out as a free-roaming Indian chief as long as he could. However, his dwindling nation, which was now taking in former enemy tribe members who equally rebelled against the Whites, was weak in number, lacked food in the harsh winter, particularly since the buffalo were gone, and Quanah the strategist realized that fighting the Whites was a losing battle. When he saw the north Texan range where the buffalo had roamed by the millions, wave upon distance wave moving against the yellow distance, when he saw the plain devoid of life, only yellow with no spot of dark fur, he knew he and all the Indians were defeated. At that time, his single remaining option was to cooperate with the Whites. With the killing of the buffalo, they had won. 

Quanah Parker, only survive child of Cynthia Ann Parker, last chief of the Comanches

So being a highly intelligent strategist, he taught himself the White laws, eventually went to Washington DC, became a passionate spokesperson and was the representative powerful and charismatic voice for all the Indian nations. He made some difference, but the Whites were determined to take everything. The lands that were first awarded his Indian tribe were soon stripped from the Indians with White cunning. Quanah spoke out for the Indians who came to him, counseled them, and though they lost almost everything, without his voice, his Indian nation would not have fared even as well or for as long as they did.

Despite wearing White man's clothes, particularly on his visits to Washington, Quanah never cut his hair.
That was the one aspect of "being Indian" he retained, and he retained it with pride.
Source

In any regard, Quanah as a spokesperson and of very charismatic personality, became wealthy. He entertained lavishly with a massive table, china, cutlery and tablecloths. His home was equally open to all Indians who passed through for advice, talk, food. He fed everyone indiscriminately and teepees surrounded his wooden mansion. Over the years his 10 wives either died or divorced him, and  he died in near bankruptcy at the age of 66. But Quanah Parker, despite what Whites said about the lack of morals in Indians, was a man who lived with principle. Life might have attacked him, but he stood up and made a difference for both "his people" and was respected by Whites for his uprightness.  

China: Influenced by and Influencing the West

"Western Knowledge Flowing into the East"

Since the 16th century, with the opening of sea routes and development of sea trade, the distance between the East and the West drew closer and closer. Europeans could come into direct contact with the mysterious Orient, discovery complexity and the richness of Chinese civilization, and the Maritime Silk Road was the link of communication between the two worlds.

European merchants and missionaries unceasingly arrived to promote and market their lifestyles, religion and sense of values, while the mainstream mentality of the Chinese empire responded mostly with defense, restriction and objection. The delineation between Chinese and foreign things and the notion that "our heavenly kingdom is perfect in every way" severely hindered the rational observation and awareness of the world outside of China.

From the Ming to early Qing, foreign missionaries, while carrying out missionary work, also introduced Western science and technology to the Chinese and ultimately advanced the development of science and technology for the Ming-Qing China.

Map-making

Well-known missionary Matteo Ricci was a literati, and at the same time, affluent in astronomy, calendric systems, geography, mathematics and engineering, among other knowledge and fields of study. After coming to China, he continually presented Western sciences to Chinese governmental officials and scholars, especially the knowledge of astronomy and geography. In Zhaoqing City, Matteo Ricci re-illustrated the map of the Western world, accompanied by Chinese annotations (this is the famous Complete Map of the Earth's Mountains and Seas). In 1601, after entering Beijing, Matteo Ricci made special efforts to illustrate the Complete Map of the Myriad Countries of the World, in which he divided the earth into "five continents" and "five zones" [terms still used today unlike the Western concepts of the seven continents and the seven seas]. The five continents were Asia, Europa, Libia (Africa), Americhe and Magellanica (Antarctica); the five zones were the north frigid zone, north temperate zone, tropical zone, south temperate zone and south frigid zone. And to suit the traditional concept and custom of China [that yellow represents the emperor and since yellow is central, the emperor must be in central position], Matteo Ricci placed China at the center of the map, making Emperor Wanli quite pleased. [Typically when a country makes a map, their country is centrally located.]

Source - Jesuit missionaries, like Fr. Matteo Ricci, and Adam Schaal von Bell (above) recognized that the coherence between the teachings of Christianity and those of Confucius, made Chinese civilization receptive to Western Science.

Matteo Ricci introduced to the Chinese that the earth was round, as well as concepts of the north and south poles, the equator, longitudes and latitudes, to name a few. The new knowledge completely overthrew "the heaven is round and the earth is square" theory, and widened the horizon of many Chinese.

After Matteo Ricci, there was Didace de Pantoja (1571-1618) who was ordered by Emperor Wanli to translate the European map (a work which remained unfinished). In 1623, Giulio Aleni (1582-1649) completed the An Extra Record of Geography, a book illustrating the customs and geography of the countries in five continents, a rather complete account of world geography. In the early Qing Dynasty, missionaries including Luigi Buglio (1606-1677) and Ferdinand Verbiest together compiled the Important Accounts of the Western World, specially devoting attention on Western countries, their people and routes, a book which complemented Matteo Ricci and Giulio Aleni's works.

Source - Beijing observatory, designed and built by Fr. Ferdinand Verbiest.

The Italian Jesuit missionary Martino Martini (1607-1661) on the basis of field surveys, combined academic achievements from Chinese and foreign scholars, published the New World Map and the Map of the Chinese Empire in Augsburg in 1654. The following year he published Novus Atlas Sinensis (New Atlas of China) in Amsterdam (it's contents were detailed and precise), and Martini was considered the "father of geographical studies on China" in the West.

In 1707, Emperor Kangx ordered missionaries Joachim Bouvet (1656-1730), Jean-Baptiste Regis (1663-1738) and Pierre Jartoux (1668-1720) along with Chinese scholars He Guodong, Ming Antu and others to organize a cartography team, which then traveled to every province of China. Using longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates, they drew a detailed map of China: Complete Map of the Empire of Kangxi, a cartographic work considered very advanced.

Calendars

In 1601, Matteo Ricci had recommended the Western calendar to Emperor Wanli in Beijing, and Matteo along with scholar Li Zhizao and others finished many works, including Illustrated Explanation of the Sphere and Astrolabe, by using the Western calendar, knowledge in mathematics and in geography.

Following Ricci, other Jesuit missionaries like Didace de Pantoja, Sabbathin de Ursis (1575-1620), Nicolas Longobardi (1559-1654) Jean Terrenz (1576-1630), Johann Adam Schall von Bell arriving in China were affluent in astronomical calendars. They served the Chinese government by translating western teachings, participated in the revision of the calendar, made astronomical equipment, and contributed to the reforms of the calendric systems of the Ming and Qing dynasties, which ultimately abolished the old system of Datong Calendar and implemented the new Shixian Calendar.

Other Developments

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, missionaries introduced other Western disciplines to China, some of which included physics, agronomy, biology, medicine, architecture, music, fine arts, linguistics, philosophy, and more. There were also hands-on executions in the areas of horology, firearms, gardening, to name a few.

China Influencing Europe and America

Since the 16th century, Europeans who visited China were mostly missionaries, and they introduced a great deal of Chinese culture to the West. The missionaries studied Chinese literature and were pioneering figures in Western Sinology, and profoundly influencing modern cultural development in Europe. The Jesuits periodically reported in writing to the Church about developments in China, and these writings were the most crucial materials for informing Europe about Chinese thinking and culture.

Chinese literary works translated by missionaries included The Doctrine of the Mean, The Great Learning, and The Analects of Confucius by Prosper Intercetta (1599-1666), Confucius Sinarum Philosophus by Philippe Couplet (1624-1692), The Four Books, Book of Filial Piety, and Learnings for Children by Franciscus Noel (1651-1729), Idea Generalis Doctrinae libri Ye Kin by Joachim Bouvet, The Book of History by Antoine Gaubil (1689-1759), and more.

In the 18th century, translated by Jesuit missionaries, as many as 15 volumes of Chinese works on history, science, arts, and customs appeared in Europe. And disseminators of Chinese culture beyond missionaries were the journal logs of navigators along with adventurers and merchants to China.

Evidence of Chinese influence beyond China

18th century French ideologist Denis Diderot (1713-1784), Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789) and leaders of the French Enlightenment movement Montesquieu (1689-1775) and Voltaire (1694-1778) appreciated traditional Chinese culture and were keen to absorb its soul. Voltaire especially was an advocator of Chinese philosophy, ethics, and politics, and in his eyes, Confucius was greater than Jesus. Voltaire dreamed of finding a "rational religion" in which Confucius served as its model.

Traditional Chinese thinking with "emphasis on agriculture" profoundly impacted "physiocratic" theories of French economists Francois Quesnay (1694-1774) and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781). German philosopher Leibniz (1646-1716) was fascinated by the Yi Jing (The Book of Changes) and diagram of the 64 hexagrams, which influenced his Monodology and Natural Law. The great Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) performed systematic studies on Chinese thinking and culture late in his life, particularly praising Lao Zi, whom he referred to as his "most adored philosopher".

 

 The eight trigrams and the 64 hexagrams

 

In the 1760s British classical economist Adam Smith (1723-1790) learned of Chinese physiocracy and policies through Francois Quesnay, and this knowledge became a principle ideology behind his classical masterpiece on political economy, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Wealth of Nations).

In the 17th and 18th centuries large quantities of Chinese silk, porcelain and tea in fad proportions were shipped to Europe, along with household items like fans, sedan chairs, wallpapers, and garments, Eastern cultural additions which brought a poetic and fresh feeling to the West. 

 

Pair of large imari vases

From the 1770s to the 1780s, the pinnacle of "Chinese fashion" manifested in consumer fashion as well as in art style. The art style was a rebellion and negation against the Baroque art style that dominated Europe before the 18th century. This new style called "Rococo", originating from the French word "rocaille," which means having the characteristics of fineness, lightness, flamboyance, intricacy and dynamism. This style primarily influences landscape architecture that advocated Chinese fresco with floral patterns, home furniture with Chinese flower and bird paintings, Chinese prints, etc. Rococo art was popular in Europe for about a century until neoclassicism in the 1760s emerged and gradually became the mainstream art of Europe.

 

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Text Source:

 

This fascinating selection was taken from Li Qingxin's 2006 book "Maritime Silk Road", translated by William W. Wang, and published by China Intercontinental Press, pp. 183-189. An absolute read for the historian!

Animalia: Why Wild Dolphins Walked on Their Tails, Then Stopped

Most people think of dolphins as entertaining, some know them to be intelligent, but sometimes it's neat to look at a more scientific explanation of behavior that we humans anthropomorphize in animals, that is, view their behavior through our own human cultural eyes. An email from the Washington Post touched on some insights of recently developed dolphin behavior and how that behavior might not be just as "fun" behavior but might also include mourning:

By Karin Brulliard 

Tullula, a wild dolphin, tail-walking in Adelaide, Australia. (Whale and Dolphin Conservation) 

Anyone who's visited an aquarium — or seen photos from SeaWorld — knows dolphins at such facilities are good at learning tricks. But so are wild dolphins, and they can learn from each other. 

Researchers working in Adelaide, Australia, have known this for decades, thanks to the bottlenose dolphins that swim the busy, urban waters of the Port River. Starting in the late 80's, they watched as the marine mammals delighted boaters with the aquarium-standard skill of tail-walking. That's when a dolphin rises vertically out of the water and uses its tail to scoot along the surface, forward or backward. 

There was a reason these dolphins were doing this: They had a good teacher. It started with a female dolphin nicknamed Billie, who in early 1998 was rescued from a polluted creek off the river and spent a few weeks rehabilitating in a local dolphinarium. When she was released into the river, she started occasionally tail-walking — just like she'd seen the captive dolphins that were briefly her roommates do. Within a few years, she'd caught the attention of a conservationist named Mike Bossley, who told the Atlantic this week that the sight was "spectacular."

Read "A Once-Captive Dolphin Has Introduced Her Friends to a Silly Trend" (5 Sept 2018)

But more stunning, according to a recent news release from Bossley's organization, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Center, was that other dolphins picked it up from Billie. By 2011, nine had been observed performing the behavior, WDC said it had become an example not just of a learned cultural behavior, but of a cultural fad. 

What made it a fad, Bossley and other researchers who documented the tail-walking wrote this week in Biology Letters, was that it eventually started to fade. Since the 2014 death of a dolphin dubbed Wave, whom Adelaide Now referred to as "the most prolific tail-walker Port Adelaide has ever seen," just two have been spotted doing this watery moonwalk. (Adelaide Now, however, also reported that Wave's son, Tullula, is the "new star" of this show.) 

The mystery is why the wild dolphins adopted tail-walking. It doesn't help them eat or mate, so what's the point? Fun, maybe — but then again, Wave was seen doing it next to the corpse of one of her offspring, the researchers reported. 

“My wife, Claire, thinks they did it simply because it felt good,” Bossley told the Atlantic. “It might have been a form of artistic or aesthetic performance, like someone dancing — a behavior that has its own intrinsic value to the dolphin, rather than any functional significance.”