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Crossbows and Banjos: Two Appalachian Technologies with Roots in West Africa (?)

8/9/2016

9 Comments

 
Yesterday I wrote a brief post about my visit to the Museum of Appalachia in eastern Tennessee. My main point was that it's a fantastic museum, different from anything I've seen before (and I've seen a lot of museums). You can read that post for my somewhat soppy overview paragraph about what makes this museum so interesting (to me, anyway).
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The first building that you visit at the museum is called the "Hall of Fame." The sign in the entryway explains pretty well what the goal is. This is one of the most interesting places in the museum, introducing you to the people and culture of the region though an incredibly varied display of personal artifacts, photographs, and anecdotes, with many of the placards written out by hand and signed by the museum's founder, John Rice Irwin. You can read about Viola Carter's cowbell, look at Felix "Casey" Jones' devil's head, and see a fiddle made from a horse mandible.

There's a lot in the "Hall of Fame," and the slower you move the more you will absorb. I was on medium speed, still having a lot of miles to cover that day to get back to Columbia. So I didn't read every word or every display. Some of the things I bring up here may well be in the museum, somewhere.

One of the things that makes this museum great, I think, is its affection for its subject: it's a museum about Appalachia and Appalachians, created by Appalachians. It is kind of an "inside" ethnography that embraces the distinctiveness of Appalachia, communicating and often celebrating characteristics that outsiders might see as strange, even embarrassing or depressing. The museum doesn't try to make an argument, or even to explain, it just gives you a chance to run your fingers over the fabric so you can maybe get some idea of its patterns, weaves, and textures.

Pride in the distinctiveness of Appalachian culture emerges loud and clear. Two items that jumped out at me from the "Hall of Fame" displays were the crossbow and the banjo. I didn't know much about the history of either of these items in American material culture. I left the museum with the impression that both were home-grown in Appalachia. A little online research, however, suggests the introduction of both to the region was via enslaved peoples from West Africa (the case for the African origin of the banjo is stronger than that of the crossbow). This is fascinating for several reasons, not least of which is that it's an interesting historical case of the transmission of technologies (one musical and one subsistence-related) between two very different groups. Appalachia remains one of the whitest regions of the county. 

The Crossbow

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The Museum of Appalachia has at least two crossbows on display, along with stories about the men who made and used them. I had never before heard of the tradition of "mountain crossbows," and there isn't a whole lot of information online (at least not that I've found so far).  I ran across a discussion on this forum and learned that there's a short section on crossbows in the book Guns and Gunmaking Tools of Southern Appalachia by none other than John Rice Irwin (future purchase).

Based on the few things I've been able to read so far, the consensus seems to be that crossbows were made and used for hunting because their use did not require manufacture of bullets or purchase of powder (or cartridges, etc.). In other words, they were inexpensive to operate. Th poverty angle makes sense for the "why" question.

But the question of why crossbows were used doesn't explain how they came to be used. Where did the crossbow tradition come from? It's possible it came from Europe along with the people (predominantly "Scotch-Irish") who settled the region: while the crossbow had largely disappeared from military use by the mid-1500's (replaced by firearms), the weapons were apparently still used for civilian hunting until the 1700's (unfortunately the only source I've got on that so far is Wikipedia). 

One alternative to the "brought them along" scenario that I've seen mentioned is the idea that the use of crossbows was transferred first from the early Spanish explorers in the southeast to Native American peoples, and then later from descendants of those Native Americans to the European settlers of Appalachia. Another is that crossbow technology was transferred to Native Americans and/or Appalachian Europeans from West Africans brought to the New World as slaves.  In his paper "Notes on West African Crossbow Technology," Donald Ball argues that a good case can be made for transfer of crossbow technology from Africans to Native Americans:

"Available descriptions of crossbows as they occur in western Africa and among Native Americans in the southeastern United States are sufficient to postulate the transmission of a type of this weapon into the New World by slave populations and the adoption of an altered form of that technology by various indigenous tribal groups. Despite featuring a crude facsimile of the gunstocks used by their Anglo neighbors, the utilization of a simplified notch string release system (less the split stock and release peg exhibited in west African examples) may be interpreted as a modification of a much older design which had effectively been abandoned in Europe by the time of the New World entrada yet continued to flourish western Africa until at least the 1920s (Powell-Cotton 1929). Though it is but a small example of transplanted technology, further research on this topic may potentially further reveal a heretofore unheralded example of African-American contributions to the cultural mosaic of the material folk culture of the United States."

Ball observes that known Appalachian crossbows have a "trigger" mechanism more like western European crossbows than the "string-catch" system seen in West African and Native American crossbows.  I don't know how many examples of nineteenth-century Appalachian, Native American, and West African crossbows are known (my guess is not many), but it would be really interesting to find out what we know know about the age and provenience of New World examples and what could be learned by compiling data about their construction. I'm guessing someone (perhaps Donald Ball) has already done that work. I'm going to track down his "n.d." paper that he lists as "submitted to Tennessee Anthropologist."

The Banjo

The West African origin of the banjo is firmly established. Like many other people (I presume), I was under the false impression before last week that the banjo was an indigenous American invention. When I looked at the fascinating display of home-made and "early" banjos at Museum of Appalachia, I didn't see anything that made me question that. The museum displays what they claim is possibly the "County's Second Oldest Banjo" (dated to 1833), specifying that the oldest known 5-string banjo was constructed in 1831 by the Sweeney Brothers. 
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A few minutes searching online reveals that the history of the banjo in America doesn't start with the Sweeney Brothers -- not by a long shot. Joel Sweeney (1810-1860) was a minstrel performer who is known as the first white person to play the banjo on stage. He popularized the banjo among white audiences and played a prominent role in developing the five-string banjo, but he didn't invent the banjo or build the first one in the country. Historical documents make it clear that enslaved populations from West Africa brought the tradition of the "banjo" with them, creating instruments in the New World from whatever suitable materials could be found and utilized. Thomas Jefferson described slaves playing an instrument called the banjar in Notes on the State of Virginia (1781):

"The instrument proper to them in the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa, and which is the original of the guitar, its chords being precisely the four lower chords of the guitar."

Here is an NPR story on some recent research trying to trace the African origins of the banjo.

The five-string banjo is a fundamental component of bluegrass music, an indigenous American art form with a center of gravity in Appalachia. As far as I'm aware, the other stringed instruments that contribute to the distinctive sounds of bluegrass (e.g., the fiddle, the guitar, the mandolin) have roots in western Europe, the ancestral home of most of the settlers of the region. It's fascinating to me both that (1) the distinctively American sound of bluegrass owes much to the combination of European and African instruments and (2) I didn't already know that. 

The oldest banjo in the country wasn't made by Joel Sweeney, but by some African whose name we'll never know. It would be amazing if any of those pre-Sweeney, African New World banjos still survives, considering they were probably made with all (or mostly) perishable parts. I'm wondering if archaeology can contribute anything to fleshing out this story. 

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Travel Diaries: The Museum of Appalachia (Placeholder)

8/8/2016

19 Comments

 
Yesterday I spent several hours at the Museum of Appalachia in Clinton, Tennessee. I found this place to be intensely interesting and, frankly, at times surprisingly moving.  I'm not sure how much time I'll have to write over the next couple of weeks: I'm back home again from the last trip of the summer and we've got a lot to do as a family to transition to the school year. I wanted to put this post here as reminder of some of thoughts I had about Appalachia as I crossed the region several times this summer. I hope that I can circle back around and develop some of my thoughts at some point (no guarantees).

I became aware of the Museum of Appalachia through it's entry in Roadside America, which described the museum as having a "seemingly endless supply of oddities" including a wood burl devil's head and a Civil War-era perpetual motion machine. I would've enjoyed the museum just for those things, but the fact is that it is really much more than a collection of oddities. Many of the items in the museum (which sprawls across 65 acres and several buildings filled with artifacts) are attached directly to stories about the people connected to the material culture. The items (such as homemade crossbows, polka dotted furnishings, whittled toys, and unique musical instruments) and the narratives evoke peoples' lives and experiences in a way that I have never seen before in a museum, blending the personal and historical to create (in me, at least) the sense that I knew these folks. My own family history, flirting with the fringes of Appalachia, probably contributed to that sense of familiarity. This museum makes history both big and small at the same time, and gives a voice to the textures, rhythms, and trajectories of people, societies, and ways of life that don't get much play in the "big" narratives of history -- a remarkable achievement.

​For now, I'm just going to post some photos I took.
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Homemade crossbows appear in several places in the museum.
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This artifact and the associated stories really brought home to me the importance of preserving local color.
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A display of home-made banjos. The museum has what it claims may be the second-oldest banjo in the country, dating to 1833 (I think). Because of its association with bluegrass music, the banjo is often thought to be an indigenous American instrument. There are multiple racial elements to the introduction and spread of the banjo, however. I don't know much about it yet, but the banjo was apparently brought to the Americas by slaves from West Africa. Appalachia is largely white ("Scotch-Irish"), and I didn't see much mention of African Americans either in connection with musical traditions or any other aspects of Appalachian life.
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Asa Jackson's perpetual motion machine. Like so many other technological artifacts from Appalachia, it is largely carved from wood.
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Some carved toys. Many of the descriptions in the museum highlight the large sizes of families, making me wonder about infant/child mortality rates and the contributions of children to Appalachian subsistence economies.
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The tiny house occupied by Tom Cassidy until his death in 1989. Tom Cassidy was sitting on his porch playing the fiddle while the XB-70 was crusing at Mach 3 in the upper atmosphere. The furnishings in the house are still intact.
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There were millstones and grinding stones all over the place. Some of the millstones were composite, but many were one piece with a round hole in the center. This stack of stone cylinders made me wonder how the millstone holes were created -- did they use some kind of tubular drill? So far I've found no evidence of that online, and I'm guessing the stone cylinders are from cores taken for the purposes of mineral exploration. Any thoughts? One of the reasons I'm interested in this is because of the "fringe" claim that circular holes in hard stone (e.g., in ancient Egypt) could not have been created without some kind of advanced technology, despite the existence of copper tubes used in conjunction with sand to drill though granite.
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There was no story attached to this gun, unfortunately. I'm sure it was a good one.
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I bought some souvenirs to use in the triceratops head I'm working on.
19 Comments

Travel Diaries: The XB-70A

8/6/2016

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It's been a long day, mostly spent driving. This time I'm en route from Detroit, MI, to Columbia, SC. The main goal is to get me and the truck back home, but (again thanks to my wife) there's some extra time built into the journey. I was on I-75 for most of the day and am now in an Econo Lodge in an undisclosed location in eastern Tennessee with some KFC and beer. I'll skip over my stories about the new Against Me! song and sob story hustlers at a rest stop in Kentucky and get to the most interesting part of the day: an awesome technological artifact on display at the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.
The XB-70A Valkyrie

If you're interested in military aviation history but you've never been to the USAF museum in Dayton, Ohio, you owe to yourself to get there at some point. As the official museum of the Air Force, they have access to a lot of unique aircraft that you just can't see anywhere else. I made my second visit today, specifically to visit the newly-opened fourth building housing the only XB-70 in the world. The "X" designation is given to aircraft that are experimental.
PictureXB-70A in the National Museum of the Air Force, Dayton, Ohio.
​The XB-70 is a captivating aircraft: graceful, powerful, and unlike anything else that was every built (well, with the exception of the Soviet's attempt to copy the design). It was the result of a perceived need in the 1950's for a long range heavy bomber to deliver nuclear weapons from an altitude and with a speed that would make it immune to being intercepted. The B-70 program was killed by the double whammy of the development of ICBMs (inter-continental missles could deliver nuclear warheads more efficiently than manned aircraft) and the development of increasingly effective surface-to-air missle technology that could bring down even high altitude aircraft. Although the bomber program was killed, two XB-70's were built as research aircraft. They flew from 1964 to 1969, one being destroyed in an accident in 1966. You can read about the development and history of the XB-70 on Wikipedia. This video also tells the story.

I've been fascinated by photos of the XB-70 since I was a little kid and it was a thrill to see it in person (I was delighted to find that many other unique experimental aircraft that I'd only ever seen in pictures were also on display in the new building -- really amazing). As a technological artifact, this vehicle marks the endpoint of the evolutionary trend of bombers going faster and higher. It was designed to fly at Mach 3 with a ceiling of 70,000-80,000 feet (depending on the source). Just over sixty years after the Wright brothers first flew their aircraft a total of distance of 120 feet at about 6.8 mph, humans had produced a flying machine that could surf through the stratosphere on its own shockwave at three times the speed of sound. 

The chess game of military aviation took design in new directions after the 1950's, leaving the B-70 as a design that was strangely both ahead of its time but also obsolete. The B-52 (which the B-70 was supposed to replace) is still in service, and emphasis is on producing bombers that can fly low  (such as the B-1B) and/or use stealth technology (such as the B-2) to avoid radar detection. The newly announced B-21 is a stealthy, sub-sonic design that aims to evade detection rather than outfly it.

I think the phenomenon of advanced "orphan" designs like the XB-70, produced at the very edges of technology but also not terribly useful, may be more common than we might guess. Technologies change, and once common ways of doing things often persist in niche roles. The "survivors" however, are not the most developed expression of a technology.  I had a 1987 Dodge Colt, for example, that had a very complicated feedback carburetor. Fuel injection has replaced carburetors in automobiles, but carburetors are still used in numerous other applications. But neither my chainsaw nor my lawnmower has a feedback carburetor like the one on a  1987 Dodge Colt. I can think of other examples. The most "advanced" examples of technology occur not at the end of a technological tradition, perhaps, but at the "peak" of its use. Just a thought.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to see a perpetual motion machine from the Civil War. It's going to be hard to top finally getting to see the XB-70.


Here are a few additional photos I took of experimental aircraft on display in the National Museum of the United States Air Force. Here is a map of building four showing the locations of the aircraft. Many of the "X planes" on this list are present.
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View of the ailerons and six engine outlets of the XB-70A. The X-4 (1948) is hanging from the ceiling to the right.
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A Bell P-59B, the first operation U.S. jet aircraft. It was developed during WWII but not deployed.
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The XF-85, a small jet aircraft that was used to explore the practicality of "parasite fighters" that could be carried to defend large bombers such as the B-36. The plane would be dropped from the bomber to fend off enemy fighters then recovered back into the bomber via the large hook on the front. Once mid-air refueling became possible, the "parasite fighter" idea was scrapped.
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Lockheed YF-12. The well-known SR-71 was developed from this aircraft, originally designed as a Mach 3 interceptor that would be used to protect the continental U.S. from Russian nuclear bombers. As that perceived need diminished in the late 1960's, the interceptor program was cancelled. The derived SR-71 continued to be used as a high-speed, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft.
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Tacit Blue, a stealth research aircraft that was declassified in 1996. It was used to demonstrate how stealth aircraft could be used in air-ground battles and, apparently, how things shaped like bricks could actually be made to fly in a controlled fashion.
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VZ-9 Avrocar.
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Back of the YF-23, which lost the design competition to what is now the F-22. To the right is the X-36, a small aircraft used to experiment with tailless flight.
4 Comments

North Carolina Junket: In Search of the Strange

7/7/2016

8 Comments

 
Thanks to my wife, I'm going to be taking a few days off soon to do one of the things I love the most: hitting the road alone with not much more than spare clothes. a toothbrush, and a little cash. In my opinion, wandering is the best way to learn about your world. There are interesting people, places, and stories everywhere. But they take some time, attention, and flexibility to find. I don't get those things in combination much these days, so I'm grateful for the opportunity.  Cue the music:
Yes, I'll be driving a Camry. 

This time around, I'll be in southern North Carolina and/or northern South Carolina. I'll probably stay within a broad corridor stretching from Wilmington to Asheville. The only destination I have planned is a stop at the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte. I would be interested to hear about any interesting "off the beaten" path locations in the vicinity of U.S. 74, anywhere from the coast to the mountains. Readers of this blog won't be surprised at the kinds of things I'll go out of my way to see: small museums, junk yards, dinosaurs, aircraft, folk art, dragonfly habitat, and just about anything that can interpreted as the visible product of active imagination. If you have suggestions for the region, let me know! 
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