double finger / devil's finger

Another uncommon species was the devil’s fingers fungus found in the Malvern hills on the Herefordshire-Worcestershire border. This fungus looks like a sea creature with striking pink-purple “tentacles” covered in stinking goo. The stench attracts insects to the tentacles where the spores lie, and which are picked up and spread by the insects. The fungus originally came from Australia and New Zealand and appeared in France in 1914, possibly carried in military equipment during the first world war; it was first discovered in England in 1946.

Wooden slit gongs

Wooden slit gongs played a pivotal role in Bamum society in Cameroon. Their function was to send out signals in times of crisis from within the royal court. By the time German colonists reached the Bamum kingdom for the first time in 1910, they found eight of these spectacular instruments, each hollowed out from a central slit, decaying on the palace ground like felled giants from a mythical past. Two French colonial administrators stationed in the Bamilike region noted that these gongs were carved when a king was enthroned; when he died they were abandoned in the market square and left to rot as if undergoing the same process of decomposition as the king himself.

Drum,_Akan_or_Fante_-_Glenbow_Museum

"The Natives of Florida worship the column," from Theodor de Bry, America (13 vols., Frankfurt, 1590-1634).

Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere and the Indian Chief Athore Visit Ribaut's Column, c.1570 (gouache on parchment, New York Public Library)

 

In 1562 Jean Ribaut of Dieppe led a French expedition to the New World, landing in Florida. Here he set up the column shown in this print, to indicate French claims to ownership. Such columns were often put up in Europe, to mark the boundaries between the possessions of different kings, and so it seemed appropriate to do this in the New World as well.Ribaut left some colonists at Charlesfort, but their settlement did not thrive, and they eventually returned to France in great distress. Two years later, when the religious wars had broken out in France, the Protestant René de Laudonnière led an expedition back to this site, hoping to found a colony. The Indians greeted him in a very friendly way, and took him to the column erected by Ribaut. Our plate shows the Indian chief Athore showing the column to Laudonnière, who is described as being much shorter than the majestic Indian. Indeed, European travellers often noted how tall and well-built the coastal Indians were; no doubt they were much better nourished than most Europeans of that time.Athore points to the column, which other Indians are worshipping as a cult-object, symbol of their alliance with the powerful king of France. The column has been wreathed with flowers; before it lie offerings of fruits and vegetables, a bow and some arrows. We know that this scene is likely to be accurate, because, uniquely for the roughly fifty images engraved by de Bry from this expedition, the original water-color made by Jacques le Moyne de Morgues has been found and closely resembles the engraving. 

encounters

For the early voyagers, wonder not only marked the new but mediated between outside and inside (Milton's 'sees|Or dreams he sees'). Hence the ease with which the very words marvel and wonder shift between the designation of a material object and the designation of a response to the object, between intense, almost phantasmagorical inward states and thoroughly externalised objects that can, after the initial moments of astonishment have passed, be touched, cataloged, inventoried, possessed.

Gleenblatt/ Marvellous Possessions/ 22

Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness

And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle.

See here a helmet which a fearless soldier previously wore and which was often spattered with enemy blood. After peace was won, it retired to be used as a narrow hive for bees; it holds honey-combs and nice honey. - Let weapons lie far off; let it be right to embark on war only when you cannot in any other way enjoy the art of peace.

Samson went down to Timnah together with his father and mother. As they approached the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion came roaring toward him. ⁶ The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat. But he told neither his father nor his mother what he had done. ⁷ Then he went down and talked with the woman, and he liked her.
⁸ Some time later, when he went back to marry her, he turned aside to look at the lion’s carcass, and in it he saw a swarm of bees and some honey. ⁹ He scooped out the honey with his hands and ate as he went along. When he rejoined his parents, he gave them some, and they too ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the lion’s carcass.
¹⁰ Now his father went down to see the woman. And there Samson held a feast, as was customary for young men. ¹¹ When the people saw him, they chose thirty men to be his companions.
¹² “Let me tell you a riddle,” Samson said to them. “If you can give me the answer within the seven days of the feast, I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes. ¹³ If you can’t tell me the answer, you must give me thirty linen garments and thirty sets of clothes.”
“Tell us your riddle,” they said. “Let’s hear it.”
¹⁴ He replied,

“Out of the eater, something to eat;
    out of the strong, something sweet.”

For three days they could not give the answer.

¹⁵ On the fourth day, they said to Samson’s wife, “Coax your husband into explaining the riddle for us, or we will burn you and your father’s household to death. Did you invite us here to steal our property?”
¹⁶ Then Samson’s wife threw herself on him, sobbing, “You hate me! You don’t really love me. You’ve given my people a riddle, but you haven’t told me the answer.”
“I haven’t even explained it to my father or mother,” he replied, “so why should I explain it to you?” ¹⁷ She cried the whole seven days of the feast. So on the seventh day he finally told her, because she continued to press him. She in turn explained the riddle to her people.
¹⁸ Before sunset on the seventh day the men of the town said to him,

“What is sweeter than honey?
    What is stronger than a lion?”

Samson said to them,

“If you had not plowed with my heifer,
    you would not have solved my riddle.”

¹⁹ Then the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. He went down to Ashkelon, struck down thirty of their men, stripped them of everything and gave their clothes to those who had explained the riddle. Burning with anger, he returned to his father’s home. ²⁰ And Samson’s wife was given to one of his companions who had attended him at the feast.

home and away /// heads on poles

h/andover

the gate of ishtar

gathering nuts or shaking your darling buds

MAY DAY
M'AIDER

attr. jacques le moyne / a daughter of the picts / c1585

Beyonce



Olive Oatman, 1858. She was the first tattooed white woman in the U.S. After her family was killed by Yavapais Indians, on a trip West in the eighteen-fifties, she was adopted and raised by Mohave Indians, who gave her a traditional tribal tattoo. When she was ransomed back, at age nineteen, she became a celebrity. Photograph courtesy of the Arizona Historical Society, Tucson, 1927.
















The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman


"the tattooed captive." It evidently became a popular myth told in circuses towards the end of the 18th century. Victims of kidnapping by the "redskins" offered "the notion that people of color could transform whites into people of color --- ethnically and decoratively, as a means of exploitation and degradation."





Nora Hildebrandt, the first American tattooed circus attraction, in the late eighteen-eighties. Like many early attractions, Hildebrandt claimed to have been forcibly tattooed by western Indians, following Olive Oatman’s example. She was tattooed in New York, by her common-law husband, Martin Hildebrandt, one of the first shop tattooists in the U.S.

Thomas Hariot, 1560-1621, John White, fl. 1585-1593, illustrated by, and Richard Hakluyt, 1552?-1616, translated by

A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia: of the Commodities and of the Nature and Manners of the Naturall Inhabitants : Discouered bÿ the English Colonÿ There Seated by Sir Richard Greinuile Knight In the ÿeere 1585 : Which Remained Vnder the Gouerenment of Twelue Monethes, At the Speciall Charge and Direction of the Honourable Sir Walter Raleigh Knight Lord Warden of the Stanneries Who therein Hath Beene Fauoured and Authorised bÿ Her Maiestie and Her Letters Patents / This Fore Booke Is Made in English by Thomas Hariot seruant to the Aboue-Named Sir Walter, a Member of the Colonÿ, and There Imploÿed in Discouering.

observations, weather changes …

9-6-20
HMS Resolution
This is Alexander Copper Mines
Note the aerial railway

pearl diving

… we were forc'd to season our indian Corn… with little Frogs that the Natives gather'd in the Meadows…

… we lived on wild garlick, which we were obliged to grub up from under the snow.

… the entrails of deer, full of blood and half-putrefied excrement, boiled fungus, decayed oysters…

Apalache/ Paul Metcalf

pearl diving

…the transmissibility of the past had been replaced by its citability…
Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell.






Stradanus / pearl diving/ C16

poison and traps

Charles Waterton

fanny stevenson's painted pony throws itself off a cliff, samoa

illegitimacy/extermination

The Selk'nam or Ona people

artefacts

hunters and gatherers

observations, weather changes or other events of daily importance