InterpNEWS - Sep-Oct 2021 Issue by InterpNEWS

Volume 10, #5 Sep/Oct 2021 The international heritage interpretation e-magazine.

Nov/Dec – a Civil War Xmas

Years ago I had the opportunity to work for the Bar U Ranch in Alberta, Canada. I taught interpretation – they taught me how to be a cowboy (I should have been a cowboy). Long story short – lots of articles on old west interpretation in this issue. I also love Halloween – so articles on witches and scary clowns. Some general autumn articles as well, so I hope you enjoy this issue – lots of fun. My Nov/Dec issue is different – a focus on a Civil War Christmas. Some not too nice stories of enslaved people during that time period, and related “Christmas during the Civil War” articles are included. I hope you enjoy this issue and more special issues on Climate Change and other topics are coming for 2022. More InterpTalks to start again in September as well – watch for notices. Happy autumn. JV jvainterp@aol.com.

In this issue: - Boot Hill Cemetery Tombstone, Arizona. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Interpreting the Day of the Dead - 3000 years of cultural heritage. The Arizona Republic - Interpreting Halloween. The History Channel Staff. - Why Leaves Change Color in the Fall. USDA Forest Service. - 5 Legendary Wild West Outlaws. Lesley Kennedy. - The Trail of Tears. The History Channel Editors. - Navajo Code Talkers. Jennifer Rosenberg - Monarch Butterfly Migration and Overwintering. USA Forest Service - Victorian Mourning Interpretation For Historic Homes. Amanda Sedlak-Hevener - The Twenty Mule Team and Borax - a story of the old west. J. Veverka - 9 Halloween Tales & Traditions. History.Com Editors. - A Brief History of Creepy Clowns. Becky Little - History of Witches. History.Com Editors - History of Zombies from Ancient Times to Pop Culture. Kimberly Lin - Cahokia Mounds: The Largest Ancient City in North America. Kimberly Lin. - 7 Ancient Sites Some People Think Were Built by Aliens. Nadia Drake - Hanging coffins: China's mysterious sky graveyards. Katie Hunt - 7 of the Gutsiest Women on the American Frontier. Brynn Holland - From Witch Hunting to Witchcraft Allegations: Who Was Giles Corey? Ofek Hagag - “Events on a Halloween Night during the Bicentennial of 1976 in Stone Mount” M. Macdonald

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InterpNEWS is published six times a year as a FREE John Veverka & Associates publication and published as a service to the interpretive profession. If you would like to be added to our mailing list just send an e-mail to jvainterp@aol.com and we’ll add you to our growing mailing list. Contributions of articles are welcomed. It you would like to have an article published in InterpNEWS let me know what you have in mind. Cover photo: Tombstone Cemetery Grave Marker- www.heritageinterp.com – jvainterp@aol.com – SKYPE: jvainterp

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Boothill Cemetery Tombstone, Arizona From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Boothill Graveyard is a small graveyard of at least 250 interments located in Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona.[2] Also known as the "Old City Cemetery", the graveyard was used after 1883 only to bury outlaws and a few others. It had a separate Jewish cemetery, which is nearby. "Boot Hill" refers to the number of men who died with their boots on. Among a number of pioneer Boot Hill cemeteries in the Old West, Boothill in Tombstone is among the best-known, and it is one of the city's most popular tourist attractions. Originally called Boothill Cemetery, the graveyard was founded in 1878. Cowboys who "died with their boots on" lie next to housewives, business men and women, miners, gamblers, ladies of the "red-light district" and all the famous and not so famous occupants that contributed to Tombstone's early history. By the 1920s, Boothill had fallen into ruin with many grave markers lost or unreadable. A group of citizens in Tombstone and Cochise County began the task of researching old burial records, consulting with relatives, older residents, and using all means available to identify the occupants and mark the graves properly. The task took several years and the efforts of many to accomplish. This resulted in the graveyard being restored much as it was in the early years when it was the city cemetery.

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Notable interments and grave markers[ Boothill Graveyard in 1940, before it was fully restored 

Marshal Fred White, killed by Curly Bill Brocius on October 30, 1880. On the night of October 28, 1880, several Cowboys entered town and began drinking, with several of them firing their pistols in the air at different locations. Marshal White proceeded to confront each of them and disarm them. All of those confronted by him gave up their weapons voluntarily, without incident. Late that night, White encountered "Curly Bill" Brocius at the east end of town, on a dark street in a vacant lot where the Birdcage Theater now stands. Brocius was intoxicated and he (or his companions) were firing pistols into the air. White instructed Brocius to surrender his pistol. Brocius did this by pulling the weapon out of his pocket, handing it barrel-first to White. Wyatt Earp later claimed that he thought the pistol's hammer was "half-cocked" over a live round (it was later found to have contained six live rounds). When White grabbed the barrel and pulled, the weapon discharged, shooting White in the groin area. Wyatt Earp, who witnessed the shooting and flash but could not clearly see the action in the dark, pistol-whipped Brocius, knocking him unconscious, and arrested him. Wyatt told his biographer many years later that he thought Brocius was still armed at the time and did not notice that Brocius' pistol lay on the ground in the dark until Brocius was already down.[5] Brocius was arrested by Wyatt Earp and his brother Morgan, both of whom were working as Pima County sheriff's deputies at the time.

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Tom McLaury, [Frank McLaury]], and Billy Clanton, killed in the O.K. Corral shootout on October 26, 1881. Tom McLaury (June 30, 1853 – October 26, 1881) was an American outlaw. He and his brother Frank owned a ranch outside Tombstone, Arizona, Arizona Territory during the 1880s. He was a member of a group of outlaws Cowboys and cattle rustlers that had ongoing conflicts with lawmen Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp. The McLaury brothers repeatedly threatened the Earps because they interfered with the Cowboys' illegal activities. On October 26, 1881, Tom and Frank were both killed in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. The Tombstone shootout was his only gunfight.

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Dan "Big Dan" Dowd, Omer W. "Red" Sample, James "Tex" Howard, William E. "Billy" Delaney, and Daniel "York" Kelly, perpetrators of the Bisbee massacre, legally hanged on March 28, 1884.[7] John Heath, accused of organizing the robbery leading to the massacre, has a grave marker nearby but his body was actually returned to his hometown in Terrell, Texas.

March 8, 1884 - Tombstone, Arizona Territory- four men, members of the Heath gang, were lynched for their part in the infamous Bisbee massacre on Dec 8, 1883. One of those hung was Dan Kelly, AKA Yorky, had left his home in Cork County, Ireland in 1881 for a chance at a new life in the U.S. Kelly was living near Clifton, Arizona Territory, in December 1883 when a gang of outlaws raided the town of Bisbee and killed several people. Dan Kelly was one of the men suspected of holding up a store with two other hard cases, Red Sample and Tex Howard. He left town and headed north, where his movements were almost impossible to trace due to a blinding snowstorm that had hit the area. Kelly boarded a train at Bowie Station on Dec. 11, but was put off near Deming after claiming that he was an itinerant hobo. Kelly was eventually arrested and taken back to Tombstone, Arizona Territory, to stand trial for the Bisbee robbery. Kelly claimed he was innocent but was sentenced to hang on the gallows. He was not fearful of that moment and remained talkative and full of good spirit. Kelly signaled the executioner to proceed and shouted, "Let her loose." In an instant he was dead. Kelly's remains were transported to Boot hill cemetery.

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Jack Dunlop aka "Three Fingered Jack"]died of wounds on February 24, 1900 after an attempted holdup.

Shot by Jeff Milton. Dunlap, one of a band of train robbers, attempted to rob an express car which Milton guarded. He was critically wounded and his friends left him to die. He was found and brought to Tombstone, where he lived long enough to inform on his friends. 

China Mary a.k.a. Mrs. Ah Lum. According to True West Magazine China Mary managed a well-stocked general store where she dealt in both American and Chinese goods. Mary was also a money lender and she used her own judgment to determine borrower's credibility. When Mary died of heart failure in 1906, the town folks had a large turnout for her service. She was buried in Tombstone's Boothill Cemetery.

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Boothill Graveyard was also a huge part of Tombstone. Founded in 1879, Boothill Graveyard was used until the new cemetery – New Tombstone City Cemetery – opened in 1884. After the new cemetery opened and began being used, Boothill Graveyard was called “The Old Cemetery.” The newer cemetery is still being used today. Stories say that Boothill received its name from the fact that the individuals there had died unexpectedly or violently and were buried boots intact. However, Boothill was in fact named after the pioneer cemetery in Dodge City hopefully helping tourism in the late 1920s. Many individuals from Tombstone are in this cemetery, including victims from a shootout that took place in 1881 between the Cowboys and Earps on Fremont Street. For years, though, the cemetery was neglected. It was taken over by the desert and gravestones were removed by vandals. Some began to clean up The Old Cemetery in the 1920s and doing research so that the grave markers could be properly replaced. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is the most famous Tombstone event, although it happened in a Fremont Street vacant lot and not the O.K. Corral. The event took place on October26, 1881 when the Cowboys had a bit of a run-in with a few Earps – Morgan, Virgil and Wyatt. Not even 30 seconds and about 30 gun shots later, Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton were dead. For many, it is believed that it this sole event that has kept the city of Tombstone alive.

The Tombstone Epitaph offers us more insight to the town with it's December 29, 1881 article on the shooting of Virgil Earp. The article in part reports... " At about 11:30 o'clock last night, U.S. Deputy Marshal Virgil Earp was proceeding from the Oriental Saloon, on the northwest corner of Allen and Fifth streets, to his room at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, and when he was about the middle of the crossing of Fifth Street, five shots were fired in rapid succession by unknown men, who were standing in the old Palace Saloon that is being rebuilt next door above Tasker and Pridham's store, on the southwest corner of the same street".

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Interpreting the Day of the Dead - 3000 years of cultural heritage. The Arizona Republic

More than 500 years ago, when the Spanish Conquistadors landed in what is now central Mexico, they encountered natives practicing a ritual that seemed to mock death. Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/ent/dead/articles/dead http://www.azcentral.com/ent/dead/articles/dead-history.html#ixzz4CjALosg3 story.html#ixzz4CjALosg3 It was a ritual the indigenous people had been practicing at least 3,000 years. A ritual the Spaniards would try unsuccessfully to eradicate. A ritual known today as Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Dia de los Muertos is celebrated in Mexico and certain parts of the United States, including metro Phoenix. Although the ritual has since been merged with Catholic theology, it still maintains the basic principles of the Aztec ritual, such as the use of skulls. Today, people le don wooden skull masks called calacas and dance in honor of their deceased relatives. The wooden skulls also are placed on altars that are dedicated to the dead. Sugar skulls, made with the names of the dead person on the forehead, are eaten by a relati relative ve or friend, according to Mary J. Adrade, who has written three books on Dia de los Muertos.

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The Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations kept skulls as trophies and displayed them during the ritual. The skulls were used to symbolize death and rebirth. The skulls were used to honor the dead, whom the Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations believed came back to visit during the month long ritual. Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/ent/dead/articles/dead-history.html#ixzz4CjAGNQEd The skulls were used to honor the dead, whom the Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations believed came back to visit during the month long ritual. Unlike the Spaniards, who viewed death as the end of life, the natives viewed it as the continuation of life. Instead of fearing death, they embraced it. To them, life was a dream and only in death did they become truly awake. "The pre-Hispanic people honored duality as being dynamic," said Christina Gonzalez, senior lecturer on Hispanic issues at Arizona State University. "They didn't separate death from pain, wealth from poverty like they did in Western cultures." However, the Spaniards considered the ritual to be sacrilegious. They perceived the indigenous people to be barbaric and pagan. In their attempts to convert them to Catholicism, the Spaniards tried to kill the ritual. But like the old Aztec spirits, the ritual refused to die. To make the ritual more Christian, the Spaniards moved it so it coincided with All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day (Nov. 1 and 2), which is when it is celebrated today. Previously it fell on the ninth month of the Aztec Solar Calendar, approximately the beginning of August, and was celebrated for the entire month. Festivities were presided over by the goddess Mictecacihuatl. The goddess, known as "Lady of the Dead," was believed to have died at birth, Andrade said. Today, Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico and in certain parts of the United States and Central America. "It's celebrated different depending on where you go," Gonzalez said. In rural Mexico, people visit the cemetery where their loved ones are buried. They decorate gravesites with marigold flowers and candles. They bring toys for dead children and bottles of tequila to adults. They sit on picnic blankets next to gravesites and eat the favorite food of their loved ones. In Guadalupe, the ritual is celebrated much like it is in rural Mexico. "Here the people spend the day in the cemetery," said Esther Cota, the parish secretary at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. "The graves are decorated real pretty by the people." In Mesa, the ritual has evolved to include other cultures, said Zarco Guerrero, a Mesa artist.

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"Last year, we had Native Americans and African-Americans doing their own dances," he said. "They all want the opportunity to honor their dead." In the United States and in Mexico's larger cities, families build altars in their homes, dedicating them to the dead. They surround these altars with flowers, food and pictures of the deceased. They light candles and place them next to the altar. "We honor them by transforming the room into an altar," Guerrero said. "We offer incense, flowers. We play their favorite music, make their favorite food." At Guerrero's house, the altar is not only dedicated to friends and family members who have died, but to others as well. "We pay homage to the Mexicans killed in auto accidents while being smuggled across the border," he said.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/ent/dead/articles/dead-history.html#ixzz4CjA8CMH5

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Interpreting Halloween The History Channel Staff.

Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity, life and death, Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition. It is thought to have originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear co costumes stumes to ward off roaming ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints and martyrs; the holiday, All Saints’ Day, incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Ha Hallows’ Eve and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a secular, community community-based based event characterized by child-friendly friendly activities such as trick trick-or-treating. treating. In a number of countries around the world, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people continue to usher in the winter season with gatherings, costumes and sweet treats. ANCIENT ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN ALLOWEEN Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). sow The Celts, who lived 2,000 years agoo in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. arth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile nat natural ural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter. To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that eevening, vening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter. By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman or origin igin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. es. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of “bobbing” for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

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HALLOWEEN COMES TO AMERICA Celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups as well as the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country. In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland’s potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors. In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks and witchcraft. At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes. Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century. By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular, but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague Halloween celebrations in many communities during this time. By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodated. Between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighborhood children with small treats. A new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country’s second largest commercial holiday.

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TODAY’S HALLOWEEN TRADITIONS The American Halloween tradition of “trick-or-treating” probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The practice, which was referred to as “going a-souling” was eventually taken up by children who would visit the houses in their neighborhood and be given ale, food, and money. The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low and, for the many people afraid of the dark, the short days of winter were full of constant worry. On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits. On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter. HALLOWEEN SUPERSTITIONS Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world. Today’s Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into cats. We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians, who believed that triangles were sacred; it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe. And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt. But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today’s trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead. In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday— with luck, by next Halloween—be married. In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it. In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went, represented the girl’s future husband. (In some versions of this legend, confusingly, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.) Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night she would dream about her future husband. Young women tossed apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the shape of their future husbands’ initials; tried to learn about their futures by peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water; and stood in front of mirrors in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their husbands’ faces. Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry; at others, the first successful apple-bobber would be the first down the aisle.

Of course, whether we’re asking for romantic advice or trying to avoid seven years of bad luck, each one of these Halloween superstitions relies on the good will of the very same “spirits” whose presence the early Celts felt so keenly

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USDA Forest Service

f you are lucky, you live in one of those parts of the world where Nature has one last fling before settling down into winter's sleep. In those lucky places, as days shorten and temperatures become crisp, the quiet green palette of summer foliage is transformed into the vivid autumn palette of reds, oranges, golds, and browns before the leaves fall off the trees. On special years, the colors are truly breathtaking.

How does autumn color happen?

For years, scientists have worked to understand the changes that happen to trees and shrubs in the autumn. Although we don't know all the details, we do know enough to explain the basics and help you to enjoy more fully Nature's multicolored autumn farewell. Three factors influence autumn leaf color-leaf pigments, length of night, and weather, but not quite in the way we think. The timing of color change and leaf fall are primarily regulated by the calendar, that is, the increasing length of night. None of the other environmental influences-temperature, rainfall, food supply, and so on-are as unvarying as the steadily increasing length of night during autumn. As days grow shorter, and nights grow longer and cooler, biochemical processes in the leaf begin to paint the landscape with Nature's autumn palette. Where do autumn colors come from? A color palette needs pigments, and there are three types that are involved in autumn color. 

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Chlorophyll, which gives leaves their basic green color. It is necessary for photosynthesis, the chemical reaction that enables plants to use sunlight to manufacture sugars for their food. Trees in the temperate zones store these sugars for their winter dormant period. Carotenoids, which produce yellow, orange, and brown colors in such things as corn, carrots, and daffodils, as well as rutabagas, buttercups, and bananas. Anthocyanins, which give color to such familiar things as cranberries, red apples, concord grapes, blueberries, cherries, strawberries, and plums. They are water soluble and appear in the watery liquid of leaf cells.

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Both chlorophyll and carotenoids are present in the chloroplasts of leaf cells throughout the growing season. Most anthocyanins are produced in the autumn, in response to bright light and excess plant sugars within leaf cells. During the growing season, chlorophyll is continually being produced and broken down and leaves appear green. As night length increases in the autumn, chlorophyll production slows down and then stops and eventually all the chlorophyll is destroyed. The carotenoids and anthocyanins that are present in the leaf are then unmasked and show their colors. Certain colors are characteristic of particular species. Oaks turn red, brown, or russet; hickories, golden bronze; aspen and yellow-poplar, golden yellow; dogwood, purplish red; beech, light tan; and sourwood and black tupelo, crimson. Maples differ species by species-red maple turns brilliant scarlet; sugar maple, orange-red; and black maple, glowing yellow. Striped maple becomes almost colorless. Leaves of some species such as the elms simply shrivel up and fall, exhibiting little color other than drab brown. The timing of the color change also varies by species. Sourwood in southern forests can become vividly colorful in late summer while all other species are still vigorously green. Oaks put on their colors long after other species have already shed their leaves. These differences in timing among species seem to be genetically inherited, for a particular species at the same latitude will show the same coloration in the cool temperatures of high mountain elevations at about the same time as it does in warmer lowlands.

Does weather affect autumn color?

The amount and brilliance of the colors that develop in any particular autumn season are related to weather conditions that occur before and during the time the chlorophyll in the leaves is dwindling. Temperature and moisture are the main influences. A succession of warm, sunny days and cool, crisp but not freezing nights seems to bring about the most spectacular color displays. During these days, lots of sugars are produced in the leaf but the cool nights and the gradual closing of veins going into the leaf prevent these sugars from moving out. These conditions-lots of sugar and lots of light-spur production of the brilliant anthocyanin pigments, which tint reds, purples, and crimson. Because carotenoids are always present in leaves, the yellow and gold colors remain fairly constant from year to year. The amount of moisture in the soil also affects autumn colors. Like the weather, soil moisture varies greatly from year to year. The countless combinations of these two highly variable factors assure that no two autumns can be exactly alike. A late spring, or a severe summer drought, can delay the onset of fall color by a few weeks. A warm period during fall will also lower the intensity of autumn colors. A warm wet spring, favorable summer weather, and warm sunny fall days with cool nights should produce the most brilliant autumn colors.

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What triggers leaf fall? In early autumn, in response to the shortening days and declining intensity of sunlight, leaves begin the processes leading up to their fall. The veins that carry fluids into and out of the leaf gradually close off as a layer of cells forms at the base of each leaf. These clogged veins trap sugars in the leaf and promote production of anthocyanins. Once this separation layer is complete and the connecting tissues are sealed off, the leaf is ready to fall.

What does all this do for the tree?

Winter is a certainty that all vegetation in the temperate zones must face each year. Perennial plants, including trees, must have some sort of protection to survive freezing temperatures and other harsh wintertime influences. Stems, twigs, and buds are equipped to survive extreme cold so that they can reawaken when spring heralds the start of another growing season. Tender leaf tissues, however, would freeze in winter, so plants must either toughen up and protect their leaves or dispose of them. The evergreens-pines, spruces, cedars, firs, and so on-are able to survive winter because they have toughened up. Their needle-like or scale-like foliage is covered with a heavy wax coating and the fluid inside their cells contains substances that resist freezing. Thus the foliage of evergreens can safely withstand all but the severest winter conditions, such as those in the Arctic. Evergreen needles survive for some years but eventually fall because of old age. The leaves of broadleaved plants, on the other hand, are tender and vulnerable to damage. These leaves are typically broad and thin and are not protected by any thick coverings. The fluid in cells of these leaves is usually a thin, watery sap that freezes readily. This means that the cells could not survive winter where temperatures fall below freezing. Tissues unable to overwinter must be sealed off and shed to ensure the plant's continued survival. Thus leaf fall precedes each winter in the temperate zones.

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What happens to all those fallen leaves? Needles and leaves that fall are not wasted. They decompose and restock the soil with nutrients and make up part of the spongy humus layer of the forest floor that absorbs and holds rainfall. Fallen leaves also become food for numerous soil organisms vital to the forest ecosystem. It is quite easy to see the benefit to the tree of its annual leaf fall, but the advantage to the entire forest is more subtle. It could well be that the forest could no more survive without its annual replenishment from leaves than the individual tree could survive without shedding these leaves. The many beautiful interrelationships in the forest community leave us with myriad fascinating puzzles still to solve. Where can I see autumn color in the United States?

You can find autumn color in parks and woodlands, in the cities, countryside, and mountains - anywhere you find deciduous broadleaved trees, the ones that drop their leaves in the autumn. Nature's autumn palette is painted on oaks, maples, beeches, sweet gums, yellow-poplars, dogwoods, hickories, and others. Your own neighborhood may be planted with special trees that were selected for their autumn color. New England is rightly famous for the spectacular autumn colors painted on the trees of its mountains and countryside, but the Adirondack, Appalachian, Smoky, and Rocky Mountains are also clad with colorful displays. In the East, we can see the reds, oranges, golds, and bronzes of the mixed deciduous woodlands; in the West, we see the bright yellows of aspen stands and larches contrasting with the dark greens of the evergreen conifers. Many of the Forest Service's 100 plus scenic byways were planned with autumn color in mind. In 31 States you can drive on over 3,000 miles of scenic byways, and almost everyone of them offers a beautiful, colorful drive sometime in the autumn. Thanks to the USDA Forest Service for this contribution to InterpNEWS.

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5 Legendary Wild West Outlaws LESLEY KENNEDY

5 Le Wild West Outlaws Train robberies. Horse thievery. Cattle rustling. Shootouts. Cold Cold-blooded blooded murder. The most notorious outlaws of the Wild West have long been romanticized as daring robbers and swashbuckling killers since their stories first hit early American tabloids. In many ways, their narratives have been shaped—in in dime dime-store store novels, TV shows and Hollywood films—to films fit the frontier ideals of rugged individualism and pioneering spirit. "Americans love an underdog, a person who stands up against perceived tyranny,” wrote Bill Markley in Billy the Kid and Jesse James: Outlaws of the Legendary West West.. “Jesse James and Billy the Kid personify that rebellious spirit. Americans overlook the crimes and see the romance of the rebel.” We rounded up five of the 19th century's most infamous outlaws outlaws,, whose popular legends endure, despite their history of violent crime.

Jesse James

Born in Clay County, Missouri in 1847, Jesse James grew up as part of a Confederacy-supporting, supporting, slave-owning slave family. As a teen in 1864, James and his brother Frank joined a guerrilla unit responsible for murdering dozens of Union soldiers. For some historians, James never stopped fighting the Civil War,, translating his fury over the defeat of the secessionist cause into a career sticking up banks, trains and stagecoaches. At times, he saw himself as a modern Robin Hood, robbing ing from the politically progressive Reconstruction supporters and giving to the poor.

16-year-old old Jesse James posing with three pistols, Platte City, Missouri, July 10, 1864.

According to the State Historical Society of Missouri, Missouri the James-Younger Younger gang operated widely, from Iowa to Texas to West Virginia. Overall, between 1860 and 1882, they are believed to have committed more than 20 bank and train robberies, with a combined haul estimated at around $200,000.

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While they usually focused more on robbing train safes than individual passengers, they did ruthlessly murder countless people who got in their way.

As newspapers began to mention James, his love for the attention grew. "He was audacious, planning and robbing banks in the middle of the day and stopping the most powerful machines of the time—railroad engines—to rob their trains and successfully get away,” wrote Bill Markley in Billy the Kid and Jesse James: Outlaws of the Legendary West. The James legend grew with the help of newspaper editor John Newman Edwards, a Confederate sympathizer who perpetuated James's Robin Hood mythology. "We are not thieves, we are bold robbers,” James wrote in a letter Edwards published. "I am proud of the name, for Alexander the Great was a bold robber, and Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte." But while he did steal from the rich, there's no evidence James gave to the poor. In 1881, the governor of Missouri issued a $10,000 reward for the capture of Jesse and Frank James. On April 3, 1882, at the age of 34, James was shot and killed by one of his accomplices, Robert Ford, who was found guilty of murder but pardoned by the governor.

The REAL Jesse James and his killer Robert Ford: Photograph owned by family who kept outlaw safe in 1870s verified by experts

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Billy the Kid

Legend says the Wild West outlaw Billy the Kid—cattle rustler, gunslinger, murderer, escape artist—killed 21 people before he turned 21 years old, his age at death. The reality may be closer to nine. But the early days of Henry McCarty, later known as William Bonney, "the Kid," are murky. Billy the Kid was likely born in New York City in 1859, later moving to Indiana, Kansas and Denver before his family settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Orphaned as a teen after his mother died of tuberculosis, Henry was separated from his brother and placed in foster homes. It wasn’t long before he fell into petty theft. After a September 1875 arrest for stealing clothing from a Chinese laundry, Henry reportedly shimmied up the jailhouse chimney and escaped, ultimately making his way to southeast Arizona. In 1876, he took up with an Arizona gang known for stealing horses. In 1877, after being charged with murdering a blacksmith, he fled home to New Mexico and joined another band of thieves. In 1878, he joined a posse called the Regulators set on revenge for a cattleman's murder in what came to be called the Lincoln County War. By 1880, his name was spread across tabloid newspapers. “Billy became the symbol of the American loner: the little guy fighting against all odds; the misunderstood youth who battled the combined corrupt government and business forces hell-bent on his destruction,” wrote Markley. “Everyone wanted to be associated with Billy the Kid—he stayed at their ranch or he stole one of their horses.” With a $500 reward on his head, the fugitive was gunned down by New Mexico Sheriff Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881. One of the most acclaimed Old West lawmen in America was Pat Garrett. He was immortalized in history after tracking down and killing the notorious outlaw, 21-year-old Billy the Kid. But Garret himself also lost his life in an infamous way: suffering two shots, one in the head, and another tearing through his ribs and shoulder. All while urinating? Perhaps. It is said his body was found with unbuttoned trousers. This nefarious event took place on February 29, 1908.

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Belle Starr

Belle Starr, pictured sitting side saddle on her horse wearing a single loop holster with a pearl-handled revolver, c. 1886. Roeder Brothers/Buyenlarge/Getty Images

Born to a well-to-do, Confederate-sympathizing family, Myra Maybelle Shirley Starr—later known as Belle, and, eventually, the "Bandit Queen"—was a teenager in Scyene, Texas, in 1864 when outlaws Jesse James and the Younger brothers used her family’s home as a hideout. In the years that followed, Starr married three outlaws: Jim Reed in 1866, who ran with the Younger, James and Starr gangs and was killed in 1874 by police; Bruce Younger In 1878; and Sam Starr, a Cherokee, in 1880. After Belle and Sam Starr were later charged with horse stealing, a federal offense for which she served time, she was again charged with horse theft in 1886. This time, because of her legal skills, she was acquitted. But in the meantime, her husband and an Indian policeman had shot each other to death. Starr herself was murdered February 3, 1889, at the age of 40, close to her Oklahoma cabin in the Cherokee Nation. Some suspect her son, Ed Reed, whom the Texas State Historical Association asserts she had recently beaten for mistreating her horse. The crime has never been solved. Two days following her death, The New York Times called her “the most desperate woman that ever figured on the borders.”

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But according to Glenn Shirley, author of Belle Starr and Her Times: The Literature, the Facts, and the Legends, the only truth in the report was the fact that she had died. “Almost overnight, the name of Belle Starr became a household word throughout the nation,” he writes. “She had been elevated to a seat of immortal glory as a sex-crazed hellion with the morals of an alley cat, a harborer and consort of horse and cattle thieves, a petty blackmailer who dabbled in every crime from murder to the dark sin of incest, a female Robin Hood who robbed the rich to feed the poor, an exhibitionist and clever she-devil on horseback and leader of the most bloodthirsty band of cutthroats in the American West. All this despite the lack of a contemporary account or court record to show that she ever held up a train, bank or stagecoach or killed anybody."

Butch Cassidy

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Born Robert LeRoy Parker in 1866, in Circleville, Utah to devout Mormons, the famed outlaw who later adopted the moniker Butch Cassidy grew up dirt poor, one of 13 children. As a teen, working on a nearby ranch to help feed his family, legend has it he met Mike Cassidy, a cattle rustler and mentor, who taught him, according to Time, "how to make a better, if distinctly dishonest, living." Landing in the gold rush town of Telluride, Colorado, Cassidy, along with three other men, on June 24, 1889 committed the first crime attributed to him—a bank robbery, during which the trio made off with $20,000. Adopting his new name (some say "Butch" comes from time spent working as a butcher) and hiding out in Wyoming, he began adding outlaw cowboys to his gang, known in the press as the "Wild Bunch." They included Harry Longabaugh, aka the Sundance Kid.

After spending 18 months in prison for horse theft in 1894, in 1896, Cassidy’s Wild Bunch robbed a Montpelier, Idaho bank, stealing $7,000. The gang went on to commit several other robberies in the Southwest, including a $70,000 haul during a Rio Grande train robbery in New Mexico. With the authorities hot on their trail, Cassidy and Longabaugh eventually fled to Argentina. Eventually, Cassidy went back to robbing trains and payrolls up until his alleged death in 1908. Now, about that death: Most historians say Butch and Sundance, immortalized in the Robert Redford/Paul Newman movie, died in a shootout in Bolivia, but others theorize the pair escaped, living out their lives under aliases.

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John Wesley Hardin

Did he kill 20 men? Forty? Fifty? The total body count may be unclear, but according to John Wesley Hardin, they all deserved it. "I never killed anyone who didn't need killing," he famously said. By all accounts, Hardin was one of the most dangerous gunslingers in the American Southwest. “When compared with John Wesley Hardin, Billy the Kid was a rank amateur,” wrote Lee Floren in his book John Wesley Hardin: Texas Gunfighter. “For by the time Wes Hardin reached his 21st birthday, he was credited with killing 27.” Born in 1853 in Bonham, Texas to a Methodist preacher, Hardin displayed his outlaw nature early: He stabbed a classmate as a schoolboy, killed a Black man during an argument at 15 and, as a supporter of the Confederacy, claimed to take the lives of multiple Union soldiers soon after, according to the Texas State Historical Society. More than a dozen killings later, he surrendered in 1872, broke out of jail, joined the antiReconstruction movement and just kept killing, the society reports. Fleeing capture with his wife and children, he was nabbed by Texas Rangers in Florida in 1877 and sentenced to 25 years for the murder of Charles Webb, a deputy sheriff. During his prison term he tried repeatedly to escape, read theological books, served as superintendent of the prison Sunday school and studied law, according to the society. He also wrote his autobiography. Hardin was pardoned on March 16, 1894, and subsequently admitted to the bar. But life on the straight and narrow didn’t last long. According to the society, Hardin hired assassins to murder one of his clients—with whose wife he was having an affair. And on August 19, 1895, Constable John Selman, one of the hired guns, shot and killed Hardin in the Acme Saloon—ironically, it is believed, because he had not been paid for the hit job.

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The Trail of Tears HISTORY.COM EDITORS

At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. By the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ ans’ land, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated “Indian territory” across the Mississippi River. This difficult and sometimes deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears.

The 'Indian Problem' White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western frontier, often feared and resented resen the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, alien people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved). Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington, Washington believed that the best way to solve this “Indian problem” was simply to “civilize” the Native Americans.

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The goal of this civilization campaign was to make Native Americans as much like white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, learn to speak and read English and adopt European-style economic practices such as the individual ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances in the South, African slaves). In the southeastern United States, many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people embraced these customs and became known as the “Five Civilized Tribes.” But their land, located in parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, and it grew to be more coveted as white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes by growing cotton, and they did not care how “civilized” their native neighbors were: They wanted that land and they would do almost anything to get it. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses and towns; committed mass murder; and squatted on land that did not belong to them. State governments joined in this effort to drive Native Americans out of the South. Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights and encroaching on their territory. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations “in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] can have no force.” Even so, the maltreatment continued. As President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court’s rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would “[fall]…still born.” Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would go to great lengths to secure this territory.

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Indian Removal Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called “Indian removal.” As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida–campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers. As president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the “Indian colonization zone” that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. (This “Indian territory” was located in present-day Oklahoma.) The law required the government to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: It did not permit the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving up their land. However, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the letter of the law and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations. In the winter of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.S. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled from its land altogether. They made the journey to Indian Territory on foot (some “bound in chains and marched double file,” one historian writes) and without any food, supplies or other help from the government. Thousands of people died along the way. It was, one Choctaw leader told an Alabama newspaper, a “trail of tears and death.”

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The Trail of Tears The Indian-removal process continued. In 1836, the federal government drove the Creeks from their land for the last time: 3,500 of the 15,000 Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip. The Cherokee people were divided: What was the best way to handle the government’s determination to get its hands on their territory? Some wanted to stay and fight. Others thought it was more pragmatic to agree to leave in exchange for money and other concessions. In 1835, a few self-appointed representatives of the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi for $5 million, relocation assistance and compensation for lost property. To the federal government, the treaty was a done deal, but many of the Cherokee felt betrayed; after all, the negotiators did not represent the tribal government or anyone else. “The instrument in question is not the act of our nation,” wrote the nation’s principal chief, John Ross, in a letter to the U.S. Senate protesting the treaty. “We are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the sanction of our people.” Nearly 16,000 Cherokees signed Ross’s petition, but Congress approved the treaty anyway.

By 1838, only about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while whites looted their homes and belongings. Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way, and historians estimate that more than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of the journey. By 1840, tens of thousands of Native Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and forced to move across the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal government promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but as the line of white settlement pushed westward, “Indian Country” shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was gone for good.

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Can You Walk The Trail of Tears?

The Trail of Tears is over 5,043 miles long and covers nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Today, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail is run by the National Park Service and portions of it are accessible on foot, by horse, by bicycle or by car.

Sources Trail of Tears. NPS.gov.

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Navajo Code Talkers By Jennifer Rosenberg Thought Co

In United States history, the story of Native Americans is predominantly tragic. Settlers took their land, misunderstood their customs, and killed them in the thousands. Then, during World War II, the U.S. government needed the Navajos' help. And though they had suffered greatly from this same government, Navajos proudly answered the call to duty. Communication is essential during any war and World War II was no different. From battalion to battalion or ship to ship - everyone must stay in contact to know when and where to attack or when to fall back. If the enemy were to hear these tactical conversations, not only would the element of surprise be lost, but the enemy could also reposition and get the upper hand. Codes (encryptions) were essential to protect these conversations. Unfortunately, though codes were often used, they were also frequently broken. In 1942, a man named Philip Johnston thought of a code he thought unbreakable by the enemy. A code based on the Navajo language. Philip Johnston's Idea The son of a Protestant missionary, Philip Johnston spent much of his childhood on the Navajo reservation. He grew up with Navajo children, learning their language and their customs. As an adult, Johnston became an engineer for the city of Los Angeles but also spent a considerable amount of his time lecturing about the Navajos. Then one day, Johnston was reading the newspaper when he noticed a story about an armored division in Louisiana that was attempting to come up with a way to code military communications using Native American personnel. This story sparked an idea. The next day, Johnston headed to Camp Elliot (near San Diego) and presented his idea for a code to Lt. Col. James E. Jones, the Area Signal Officer.

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Lt. Col. Jones was skeptical. Previous attempts at similar codes failed because Native Americans had no words in their language for military terms. There was no need for Navajos to add a word in their language for "tank" or "machine gun" just as there is no reason in English to have different terms for your mother's brother and your father's brother - as some languages do - they're just both called "uncle." And often, when new inventions are created, other languages just absorb the same word. For example, in German a radio is called "Radio" and a computer is "Computer." Thus, Lt. Col. Jones was concerned that if they used any Native American languages as codes, the word for "machine gun" would become the English word "machine gun" - making the code easily decipherable. However, Johnston had another idea. Instead of adding the direct term "machine gun" to the Navajo language, they would designate a word or two already in the Navajo language for the military term. For example, the term for "machine gun" became "rapid-fire gun," the term for "battleship" became "whale," and the term for "fighter plane" became "hummingbird." Lt. Col. Jones recommended a demonstration for Major General Clayton B. Vogel. The demonstration was a success and Major General Vogel sent a letter to the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps recommending that they enlist 200 Navajos for this assignment. In response to the request, they were only given permission to begin a "pilot project" with 30 Navajos.

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Getting the Program Started Recruiters visited the Navajo reservation and selected the first 30 code talkers (one dropped out, so 29 started the program). Many of these young Navajos had never been off the reservation, making their transition to military life even more difficult. Yet they persevered. They worked night and day helping to create the code and to learn it. Once the code was created, the Navajo recruits were tested and re-tested. There could be no mistakes in any of the translations. One mistranslated word could lead to the death of thousands. Once the first 29 were trained, two remained behind to become instructors for future Navajo code talkers and the other 27 were sent to Guadalcanal to be the first to use the new code in combat. Having not gotten to participate in the creation of the code because he was a civilian, Johnston volunteered to enlist if he could participate in the program. His offer was accepted and Johnston took over the training aspect of the program. The program proved successful and soon the U.S. Marine Corps authorized unlimited recruiting for the Navajo code talkers program. The entire Navajo nation consisted of 50,000 people and by the end of the war 420 Navajo men worked as code talkers. The Code The initial code consisted of translations for 211 English words most frequently used in military conversations. Included in the list were terms for officers, terms for airplanes, terms for months, and an extensive general vocabulary. Also included were Navajo equivalents for the English alphabet so that the code talkers could spell out names or specific places. However, cryptographer Captain Stilwell suggested that the code be expanded. While monitoring several transmissions, he noticed that since so many words had to be spelled out, the repetition of the Navajo equivalents for each letter could possibly offer the Japanese an opportunity to decipher the code. Upon Captain Silwell's suggestion, an additional 200 words and additional Navajo equivalents for the 12 most often used letters (A, D, E, I, H, L, N, O, R, S, T, U) were added. The code, now complete, consisted of 411 terms. On the battlefield, the code was never written down, it was always spoken. In training, they had been repeatedly drilled with all 411 terms. The Navajo code talkers had to be able to send and receive the code as fast as possible. There was no time for hesitation. Trained and now fluent in the code, the Navajo code talkers were ready for battle.

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On the Battlefield

Unfortunately, when the Navajo code was first introduced, military leaders in the field were skeptical. Many of the first recruits had to prove the codes' worth. However, with just a few examples, most commanders were grateful for the speed and accuracy in which messages could be communicated. From 1942 until 1945, Navajo code talkers participated in numerous battles in the Pacific, including Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Peleliu, and Tarawa. They not only worked in communications but also as regular soldiers, facing the same horrors of war as other soldiers. However, Navajo code talkers met additional problems in the field. Too often, their own soldiers mistook them for Japanese apanese soldiers. Many were nearly shot because of this. The danger and frequency of misidentification caused some commanders to order a bodyguard for each Navajo code talker. For three years, wherever the Marines landed, the Japanese got an earful of strange gurgling noises interspersed with other sounds resembling the call of a Tibetan monk and the sound of a hot water bottle being emptied. Huddled over their radio sets in bobbing assault barges, in foxholes on the beach, in slit trenches, deep in the jungle, the Navajo Marines transmitted and received messages, orders, vital information. The Japanese ground their teeth and committed hari hari-kari.* The Navajo code talkers played a large role in the Allied success in the Pacific. The Navajos had created a code the enemy was unable to decipher. * Excerpt from the September 18, 1945 issues of the San Diego Union as quoted in Doris A. Paul, The Navajo Code Talkers (Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishing Co., 1973) 99. Bibliography Bixler, Margaret T. Winds of Freedom: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II. II Darien, CT: Two Bytes Publishing Company, 1992. Kawano, Kenji. Warriors: Navajo Code Talkers Talkers.. Flagstaff, AZ: Northland Publishing Company, 1990. Paul, Doris A. The Navajo Code Talkers Talkers. Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishing Co., 1973.

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Monarch Butterfly Migration and Overwintering

The annual migration of North America’s monarch butterfly is a unique and amazing phenomenon. The monarch is the only butterfly known to make a two-way migration as birds do. Unlike other butterflies that can overwinter as larvae, pupae, or even as adults in some species, monarchs cannot survive the cold winters of northern climates. Using environmental cues, the monarchs know when it is time to travel south for the winter. Monarchs use a combination of air currents and thermals to travel long distances. Some fly as far as 3,000 miles to reach their winter home! Where Do Monarchs Go? Monarchs in Eastern North America have a second home in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico. Monarchs in Western North America overwinter in California. Eastern North American Population Overwintering in Mexico The eastern population of North America’s monarchs overwinters in the same 11 to 12 mountain areas in the States of Mexico and Michoacan from October to late March. Monarchs roost for the winter in oyamel fir forests at an elevation of 2,400 to 3,600 meters (nearly 2 miles above sea level). The mountain hillsides of oyamel forest provide an ideal microclimate for the butterflies. Here temperatures range from 0 to 15 degrees Celsius. If the temperature is lower, the monarchs will be forced to use their fat reserves. The humidity in the oyamel forest assures the monarchs won’t dry out allowing them to conserve their energy. Directional Aids Researchers are still investigating what directional aids monarchs use to find their overwintering location. It appears to be a combination of directional aids such as the magnetic pull of the earth and the position of the sun among others, not one in particular. Clustering in Colonies Monarchs cluster together to stay warm. Tens of thousands of monarchs can cluster on a single tree. Although monarchs alone weigh less than a gram, tens of thousands of them weigh a lot. Oyamel trees are generally able to support the clustering butterflies, but sometimes branches break.

InterpNEWS Protection of Oyamel Forest Conservation of overwintering habitat is very important to the survival of monarchs. The Mexican Government recognized the importance of oyamel forests to monarch butterflies and created the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in 1986.

Monarchs can travel between 50-100 miles a day; it can take up to two months to complete their journey. The farthest ranging monarch butterfly recorded traveled 265 miles in one day.

Monarch butterflies clustering in tree tops at the El Rosario Sanctuary, Michoacan, Mexico. Photo by Sue Sill, LCHPP, Inc. Monarchs living west of the Rocky Mountain range in North America overwinter in California along the Pacific coast near Santa Cruz and San Diego. Here microclimatic conditions are very similar to that in central Mexico. Monarchs roost in eucalyptus, Monterey pines, and Monterey cypresses in California.

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Stories of Biodiversity on the Move, Monarch Butterflies (Danaus plexippus) A Google Earth Tour is posted on YouTube describing the migration of monarch butterflies, and the people that help them out along the way. It was produced by Atlantic Public Media in cooperation with the Encyclopedia of Life. Producers: Eduardo Garcia-Milagros and Ari Daniel Shapiro.

Flyways Traveling South Eastern North American monarchs fly south using several flyways then merge into a single flyway in Central Texas. It is truly amazing that these monarchs know the way to the overwintering sites even though this migrating generation has never before been to Mexico!

Monarch Butterfly Fall Migration Patterns. Base map source: USGS National Atlas.

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Congregation Sites Monarchs only travel during the day and need to find a roost at night. Monarchs gather close together during the cool autumn evenings. Roost sites are important to the monarch migration. Many of these locations are used year after year. Often pine, fir and cedar trees are chosen for roosting. These trees have thick canopies that moderate the temperature and humidity at the roost site. In the mornings, monarchs bask in the sunlight to warm themselves.

Monarchs at sunrise on wild black cherry (Prunus serotina) tree roost. Photo by Denise Gibbs.

Monarchs basking at sunrise before taking flight from a bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica) thicket roost site. Photo by Denise Gibbs.

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Use of Peninsulas Monarchs traveling south congregate on peninsulas. The shape of the peninsula funnels the migrating butterflies. At its tip, the monarchs find the shortest distance across open water. They congregate along the shore to wait for a gentle breeze to help them across.

Monarchs bask just after sunrise on a groundsel-tree (Baccharis halimifolia) where they roosted for the night, at the edge of Oyster Bay. Photo by Denise Gibbs.

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Traveling North As warm temperatures and lengthening days arrive, the migratory generation of monarchs finishes the development they halted prior to their migration. They become reproductive, breed and lay the eggs of the new generation. This starts the northern journey back to North America. Unlike the generation before them, who made a one-generation journey south, successive generations make the journey north.

Monarch Butterfly Spring and Summer Migration Patterns. Base map source: USGS National Atlas.

Multiple Generations Generation 1 monarchs are the offspring of the monarchs who overwintered in Mexico. Each successive generation travels farther north. It will take 3-4 generations to reach the northern United States and Canada. For More Information 

The University of Minnesota Monarch Lab: Migration

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Tracking Migration The northern migration is tracked by an organization called Journey North. You can help track the migration of the monarch butterfly by visiting this site. Report your sightings! The Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper project is part of a collaborative effort to map and better understand monarch butterflies and their host plants across the Western U.S. Data compiled through this project will improve our understanding of the distribution and phenology of monarchs and milkweeds, identify important breeding areas, and help us better understand monarch conservation needs. Help us track monarchs and milkweed across the West! You can learn more about a project to track the southern migration at Papalotzin, The Journey of the Monarch Butterfly.

The Monarch Highway Poster

The landscape that parallels roadways, like the I-35 corridor, can provide natural habitat to support the annual migration of the monarch butterfly. The Pollinator Partnership, including a number of state, local and federal government agencies, corporations, and organizations collaborating and supporting pollinators and conservation of their habitat developed this poster to celebrate the monarch butterfly. The I-35 corridor follows Interstate 35 through six states from Minnesota south to Texas, following the central flyway of monarch migration. In 2016, these states signed a memorandum of understanding that informally named I-35 the “Monarch Highway” and agreed to implement coordinated management practices along the corridor that benefit monarchs and other pollinators. Visit the Pollinator Partnership to see the poster and read more about The Monarch Highway…

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Victorian Mourning Interpretation For Historic Homes By Amanda Sedlak-Hevener mandyhevener@gmail.com (reprinted from interpNEWS July 2017)

Victorian mourning rituals permeated the 19th century. They transformed a formerly simple act of mourning the dead into something elaborate. An entire industry sprang up around mourning rituals, with manufacturers creating specific clothing, bakeries making mourning biscuits and other foods, and even artisans designing jewelry made from the hair of dead loved ones. Books on proper mourning etiquette were produced and sold both in the U.S. and in England. The mourning process started when Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert died of what is believed to be typhoid fever in 1861. They were apparently very much in love, and had a total of nine children together during their 21 year marriage. The dual loss of her mother, in March 1861, as well as her husband in December of that same year, caused Victoria to mourn deeply. She wore black clothing for the remainder of her life (even to her children’s weddings), and people dubbed her “the widow of Windsor.” This is where Victorian mourning customs come from - Queen Victoria’s actions. These customs spread across the pond and became the “only” way to mourn the loss of a loved one in America during the time period. After Prince Albert’s death, Queen Victoria only used black-bordered stationary and refused to allow her daughters and aides to wear any jewelry other than jet beaded necklaces. (For the record, jet is considered a “minor gemstone” and its chemical makeup is similar to that of coal. It’s basically made of pressurized, decayed wood that has been smoothed and made shiny and turned into beads.) She memorialized him with public statuary, including an equestrian statue in Wolverhampton, in 1866, and a seated version of him covered in gilt located in Hyde Park that was put into place in 1877. Not to mention her creation of Royal Albert Hall. Even though Royal Albert Hall was his idea, construction of it did not begin until 1867, 6 years after his death. Victorian mourning etiquette dictated how the deceased would be displayed, prior to burial. The body of the deceased was placed in the parlor or front room of his or her home in a coffin, which was sitting on top of sawhorses or simple wooden chairs. In most cases, the dead was embalmed (although not always). Flowers were placed in the room in order show that the deceased was loved, but also to mask the smell. Parlors were used because they were typically the best decorated rooms in the house. Houses of this time period were built with extra wide doors to allow the coffins to horizontally pass through them. The body was never left alone in the house. No matter what, the widow/widower/children/servants/someone was always there with it. A 24 hour vigil was the most common period for wakes, but some lasted 3 to 4 days, depending on the distance mourners had to travel.

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Not only were there elaborate rituals in the home, but there was a mourning period that had to adhered to as well. This varied, based on the survivors of the deceased. Mourning pertaining to women was in three stages: deep mourning, second mourning, and half mourning. Deep mourning started immediately following death until a year and a day have a passed. Second mourning started after deep mourning, and lasted for 9 to 12 months. Half mourning came next, and lasted for 6 months. However, some women, like Queen Victoria, remained in mourning for the rest of their lives. This mourning was typically observed by widows, and sometimes by widowers, who could remarry during the mourning period. A widower who remarried while in mourning could wear a typical suit and tie on his wedding day, but had to go back into mourning the next day. Amazingly, his new wife had to go into mourning for the prior wife as well. Mourning wasn’t just something practiced when a spouse died. Here are some mourning periods for other family members:         

For a parent: 6 months to a year For children over 10 yrs old: 6 months to a year For children under 10 yrs: 3 to 6 months Infants: 6 weeks and up For siblings: 6 to 8 months For aunts and uncles: 3 to 6 months For cousins: 6 weeks to 3 months For aunts or uncles related by marriage: 6 weeks to 3 months Grandparents: 6 months

Special clothing was the most important component of the mourning period. It was usually made of crepe – an uncomfortable black fabric known for turning a rusty color over time (where the term “widows weeds” comes from) or leaking dye all over the person wearing it. Those with more money could afford dresses made of wool, cotton, or a silk and wool blend called bombazine. Any type of cloth could typically be used, as long as it wasn’t shiny. Widowed women wore full length dresses with cape-like sleeves and high collars, styles of which went from lavish (for the wealthy) to simple (for the not-so-wealthy.) They also wore veils that covered their faces which were worn as such during the funeral/wake, and then pushed back so they could see for the rest of the mourning period. Mourning bonnets were also worn, in lieu of veils. Some went so far as to wear black gloves. During the ourning period, women wore very little jewelry and carried black bordered handkerchiefs, which were not fully dyed because of the instability of the color. No one wanted to get a face full of dye. Men who lost their wives/children/loved ones wore black suits with simple white shirts, although some simply wore their everyday suit with a black armband. Scarves, stoles, and sashes (all in black, of course) were worn, as well as black shoes, gloves and hats. Some men wore regular hats with black “weepers,” which were thin strips of black crepe wrapped around like a hatband with black ribbons festooned onto them. Children under the age of 12 in mourning wore white with black armbands during the summer months, and gray during the winter ones. However, they also wore black bonnets, sashes, ribbon trimming, and belts. Over the age of 12, children wore mourning clothing that was the same as that worn by adults. Mourning wasn’t just practiced by the family of the deceased. Household servants and other mourners not in the direct line from the deceased wore mourning cockades and badges with their regular clothing. Everyone who came into contact with the deceased in his or her daily life had to go into mourning.

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Special mourning jewelry was created to memorialize the deceased. This is where human hair brooches and bracelets, memory lockets, and other items came from. Black beads, such as jet, glass, clay, onyx, and vulcanite were favored, as well as cross pendants. The hair of the deceased was shaped into crosses and placed, alongside weeping willow branches, in shadowboxes. In some cases, the hair was sent by mail to a specialized artisan who then returned it in the correct woven form. Hairwork became a form of needlework, similar to needlepoint, and was popularized in women’s magazines at the time, such as Godey’s Lady’s Book. In the house that was previously occupied by the deceased, a number of things had to be done before the first mourner arrived to pay their respects. Portraits and mirrors in the home (or anything shiny, like vases, in more extreme cases) were covered in black crepe fabric. A simple black-ribboned wreath, usually made of laurel, yew or boxwood, would be placed on the door, and the front door knob would be decorated with black ribbons. If the deceased were a child, white ribbons would be used instead. Some people draped their windows with black crepe as well. Every family photograph in the house would be turned around to face the Love me forever Victorian morning wall, or, if it couldn’t be turned around, it was draped with jewelry reliquary broach. fabric like the others. Also, clocks would be stopped at the time of death and left that way until the funeral ceremony ended. After the house was ready, death announcements or funeral announcements would be sent out. In some cases, the announcements would be hand delivered, but they were mailed out as well. At one point during the Victorian Era, people asked the post office to produce special mourning stamps, as their regular colorful stamps were seen as too “cheery” to be used to mail out funeral announcements and death notices. Once all of the mourners had paid their respects to the deceased, a funeral hearse would arrive to carry the coffin to the church for a religious ceremony. This ceremony could be elaborate or simple, depending on the religion and class status of the deceased and his or her family. The color of the draping on the hearse indicated whether or not the dead was an adult (black cloth) or a child (white cloth). The burial ritual at the ceremony was very similar to those practiced today, complete with a prayer and everyone gathering around the casket. When the funeral ceremony was complete, people would go back to the home of the deceased and eat. A traditional tea or dinner was served. These mourning foods included ladyfingers, funeral pie, biscuits, and cakes. There were also funeral cookies, wrapped in paper with the deceased’s name and dates of birth and death printed on them. The meal was as simple or extravagant as the finances of the deceased’s family. Post funeral meals were a tradition from ancient times that are still practiced today. Sometimes the biscuits would be wrapped in white paper with black sealing wax and handed out as funeral favors to those who couldn’t make it back to the house for the post-funeral meal. While some of the food served was produced in the household of the deceased, other things were purchased. Commercial bakeries made funeral biscuits wrapped in paper that were printed with “uplifting” quotes, poems and bible verses. These can be compared to the holy cards given out today, and were kept as morbid souvenirs of the deceased. Examples of Victorian mourning poems that were printed on these wrappings:

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When ghastly Death, with unrelenting hand, Cuts down a father! brother! or a friend! The still small voice should make you understand, How afraid you are -- how near your final end. But if regardless and still warned in vain, No wonder if you sink to endless pain: Be wise before it's too late, use well each hour To make your calling and election sure. AND Thee we adore, eternal Name, and humbly bow to thee, How feeble is our mortal frame! What dying worms we be. Our wasting lives grow shorter still, As days and months increase; And every beating pulse we tell, Leaves but the number less. The year rolls round and steals away, The breath that first it gave; Whate'er we do, where'er we be, We're traveling to the grave. In addition, despite the religiosity of the time period, spiritualism was popular. This was a way of communicating with the dead in the afterlife. Séances were held to communicate with deceased loved ones. This is where the idea of the classic séance comes in – a spiritualist/psychic sitting at a round table holding the hands of the loved ones who want to communicate with the deceased in the “other world.” And yes, knocking, thumping noises, eerie noises, tables falling over or tilting, etc were all an expected part of the séance. Although it could never be proven whether or not the psychic/medium ever contacted the dead, they certainly put on a show while trying to. One of the most famous practitioners of this newfound “spiritualism” was Mary Todd Lincoln, who held séances in the White House while her husband was president. After his death, her beliefs in this grew even stronger. Photography was in existence, but many could not afford it, so only pictures taken of their loved ones happened after that particular loved one died. This led to death photography, where the dead would either be photographed alone, in some cases, laying on a bed, in a coffin, or propped up sitting or standing with the help of an elaborate set of stands. (Note: this practice is highly questioned today, and some scholars believe that photographs of the dead were never taken. However, their dissent hasn’t been proven either.) Makeup and prosthetic eyes would sometimes be applied to make the deceased look better, but sometimes they just left the him or her looking, well, dead. In some cases, the living posed alongside their dead loved one. This usually happened with children. Mourners would also have their photos taken holding pictures or a book of pictures of the deceased, as this would illustrate and memorialize the depth of their sorrow. In some cases, the photos of the dead would be taken in their homes, but in others, they would be transported (presumably by hearse) to a photography studio.

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There was also spirit photography, which supposedly captured images of the dead was popular as well. Sometimes the images of the dead were superimposed behind a depiction of the living, using a kind of 19th century photoshop. In others, photos of the interior of the house were taken with ghostly images in them. Both were proof of the afterlife, and that the deceased was still around. In all, Victorian mourning is a series of interesting and complex rituals that truly hearken back to another time period. How To Set Up A Historic Home For A Victorian Mourning Ritual Mirrors and portraits in the house must be covered with black cloth, preferably crepe. In some cases, everything shiny in the house (vases, etc) was draped with black cloth as well. All clocks must be stopped at the time the deceased passed into the next realm. A black ribboned wreath is placed on the doors to the parlor. Other door knobs and hand rails are bedecked with black ribbons. If the deceased is a child, then white ribbons are appropriate. Someone must sit alongside the deceased until the funeral procession begins. White flowers were placed alongside the coffin, which usually sat on sawhorses or ladder-backed chairs. Mourning a spouse traditionally had three periods: deep mourning (the first year), second mourning (the next 9 to 12 months after that), and half mourning (6 months after second mourning ended.) Wakes traditionally took place in the home, although the body was embalmed at a funeral home. The dead were carried out of the house feet first. This prevented him from looking back at the house and trying to get another family member to follow him in death. This was more than a down-home simple way of mourning. It was very regimented and stoic and proper.

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The Twenty Mule Team and Borax a story of the old west. Compiled and Edited by John Veverka

Growing up as a child in Mansfield, Ohio, and watching black and white TV (we had 3 channels) in the 1950's there were lots of TV shows about the old west, from the Lone Ranger, to the Old Ranger, Death Valley Days (photo below) . The latter TV show had many hosts, one of whom was Ronald Regan (during his acting years) and those shows were sponsored by the Twenty-Mule Team Borax company. I even had a model of the twenty-mule team to put together. So when I came across some articles on the subject, I thought you might enjoy one of the true stories of the old west, cobbled together from several different sources, just for fun. So let's start at the beginning.

First of all -what is Borax anyway. This old advertisement booklet explains. We'll meet Borax Bill a little later in the story.

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The Twenty-mule teams. Twenty-mule teams were teams of eighteen mules and two horses attached to large wagons that ferried borax out of Death Valley from 1883 to 1889. They traveled from mines across the Mojave Desert to the nearest railroad spur, 165 miles (275 km) away in Mojave. The routes were from the Harmony and Amargosa Borax Works to Daggett, California, and later Mojave, California. After Harmony and Amargosa shut down in 1888, the mule team's route was moved to the mines at Borate, 3 miles east of Calico, back to Daggett. There they worked from 1891 until 1898 when they were replaced by the Borate and Daggett Railroad.

The wagons were among the largest ever pulled by draft animals, designed to carry 10 short tons (9 metric tons) of borax ore at a time. In 1877, six years before twenty-mule teams had been introduced into Death Valley, Scientific American reported that Francis Marion Smith and his brother had shipped their company's borax in a 30-ton load using two large wagons, with a third wagon for food and water, drawn by a 24-mule team over a 160-mile stretch of desert between Teel's Marsh and Wadsworth, Nevada. The twenty-mule-team wagons were designed to carry 10 short tons (9 metric tons) of borax ore at a time. The rear wheels measured seven feet (2.1 m) high, with tires made of one-inch-thick (25 mm) iron. The wagon beds measured 16 feet long and were 6 feet deep (4.9 m long, 1.8 m deep); constructed of solid oak, they weighed 7,800 pounds (3,500 kg) empty; when loaded with ore, the total weight of the mule train was 73,200 pounds (33.2 metric tons or 36.6 short tons). The first wagon was the trailer, the second was "the tender" or the "back action", and the tank wagon brought up the rear. With the mules, the caravan stretched over 180 feet (55 m). No wagon ever broke down in transit on the desert due to their construction.

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A 1,200-U.S.-gallon (4542.49 L) water tank was added to supply the mules with water en route. There were water barrels on the wagons for the teamster and the swamper. Water supplies were refilled at springs along the way, as it was not possible to carry enough water for the entire trip. The tank water was used at dry camps and water stops.

Borax wagons with the water tank. The June 1940 issue of Desert Magazine confirms that the primary water tank was 1200 U.S. gallons. This detail is also given in "The History Behind the Scale Model". An efficient system of dispersing feed and water along the road was put in use. Teams outbound from Mojave, pulling empty wagons, hauled their own feed and supplies, which were dropped off at successive camps as the outfit traveled. The supplies would be on hand to use when a loaded wagon came back the other way, and no payload space was wasted. There was one stretch of road where a 500-gallon wagon was added to take water to a dry camp for the team that would be coming from the opposite direction. The arriving team would use the water and take the empty tank back to the spring on their haul the next day, ready for re-filling and staging by the next outbound outfit. The teams hauled more than 20 million pounds (9,000 metric tons) of borax out of Death Valley in the six years of the operation. Pacific Coast Borax began shipping their borax by train in 1898. Horses were the wheelers, the two closest to the wagon. They were ridden by one of the two men generally required to operate the wagons and were typically larger than their mule brethren. They had great brute strength for starting the wagons moving and could withstand the jarring of the heavy wagon tongue, but the mules were smarter and better suited to work in desert conditions. In the Proceedings Fifth Death Valley Conference on History and Prehistory, two articles discussed freight operations in the Mojave with specific details on the use of mules and horses. In "Of Myths and Men: Separating Fact from Fiction in the Twenty Mule Team Story", author Ted Fave discussed how the teams were assembled, trained, and used. "Nadeau's Freighting Teams in the Mojave", based on Remi Nadeau's historic accomplishments hauling freight throughout the desert region, gives further insight as to the superiority of mules for general use. The teamster drove the team with a single long rein, known as a "jerk line", and the aid of a long blacksnake whip. The teamster usually rode the left wheeler, but he could also drive from the trailer seat, working the brake on steep descents. The swamper usually rode the trailer, but in hilly country, he would be on the back action available to work the brake.

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From the trailer, armed with a can of small rocks, he could pelt an inattentive mule and send it back to work. Both men were responsible for readying the team, feeding and watering of the mules, and any veterinary care or repairs that needed to be done. There was a mid-day stop to feed and water the mules in harness. The night stops had corrals and feed boxes for the mules. A day's travel averaged about 17 miles, varying slightly from leg to leg. It took about ten days to make a trip one way. Cabins were constructed by the company for use of drivers and swampers at the night stops. Francis Marion Smith, who came to be known as "Borax Smith", founded Pacific Borax. Cora Keagle recounted his history in an article, "Buckboard Days in Borate", published in Desert Magazine in September 1939. Smith was a great promoter and sent drivers out with jerk-line teams to major U.S. cities to promote the company's laundry product with free samples. The exhibition teams were typically mules for the promotion value, but Smith explained that in actual use, wheel horses were a standard practice. Outside contractors hauling for the company typically used mixed teams. Francis Marion Smith, who came to be known as "Borax Smith", founded Pacific Borax. Cora Keagle recounted his history in an article, "Buckboard Days in Borate", published in Desert Magazine in September 1939. Smith was a great promoter and sent drivers out with jerk-line teams to major U.S. cities to promote the company's laundry product with free samples. The exhibition teams were typically mules for the promotion value, but Smith explained that in actual use, wheel horses were a standard practice. Outside contractors hauling for the company typically used mixed teams.

Francis Marion Smith,

Joe Zentner wrote of the origins of the advertising campaign on the Desert USA website in "Twenty Mule Teams on the move in Death Valley". Bill Parkinson, formerly a night watchman for the company, had to learn quickly how to drive the team when he was given the role of "Borax Bill". He was the first, but not the last, driver known by that name. The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair was the maiden appearance for the team and was such a success that Parkinson went on tour.

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The team eventually made its way to New York City, parading down Broadway. After that showing, the mules were sold, and the wagons shipped back to California. The mules also appeared at the Golden Gate Bridge dedication, according to "The Last Ride, the Borax Twenty Mule Team 1883 - 1999". A short item in the June 1940 edition of Desert Magazine mentioned that two of the original borax wagons were en route to the New York World's Fair. The item followed with the note that muleskinner "Borax Bill" Parkinson[3] had driven an original wagon from Oakland, California, to New York City in 1917, spending two years on the journey. The mule team also made periodic re-enactment appearances on hauls into Death Valley. In 1958, a twenty-mule team made a symbolic haul out of the new pit at U.S. Borax, commemorating the transition from underground to open-pit mining.[11] Other appearances for twenty-mule teams included President Wilson's inauguration in 1917.[12] Promotional team appearances ended with an outing in the January 1, 1999, Rose Parade. The team had a shakedown outing in a 1998 Boron, California, parade. The company spent $100,000, refitting the 115year-old wagons and obtaining harness and mules for the performance. There were no plans for additional public appearances for advertising purposes, as the company no longer had a retail product line. U.S. Borax put out a paperback publication entitled The Last Ride, the Borax Twenty Mule Team 1883 1999 that included many details about the history of the team and the preparation for the Rose Parade outing. There is a photo of Borax Bill driving the team down Broadway in New York City with bells on every animal. Most of the time, only the leaders wore bells. Another picture shows the team in San Francisco in 1917. This picture clearly shows the teamster on a horse. Another historic picture shows a working borax freight team with a mixture of horses and mules. https://www.amazon.com/Last-RideBorax-Twenty-Mule/dp/B0016G0XSG

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References: Of Myths and Men: Separating Fact from Fiction in the Twenty Mule Team Story, by Ted Faye, Proceedings Fifth Death Valley Conference on History and Prehistory. Desert Magazine, http://www.scribd.com/doc/2095190/193909-Desert-Magazine-1939-September Desert Magazine September 1939, Buckboard Days in Borate. The Last Ride, the Borax Twenty Mule Team 1883 - 1999. Proceedings Fifth Death Valley Conference on History and Prehistory: Remi Nadeau's Freighting Teams in the Southern Mining Camps; Of Myths and Men: Separating Fact from Fiction in the Twenty-Mule Team Story. Community Printing and Publishing, Bishop, California 93514. 1999. ISBN 0-912494-05-0. Owens Valley History Mysteries www.owensvalleyhistory.com/ovh_mystery/page79.html 539 x 150 · 42 kB · jpeg Ghosts of the Past 4 www.owensvalleyhistory.com/20_mule_team2/page9c.html 539 x 150 · 42 kB · jpeg Death Valley and The 20 Mule Team maid4ugreenville.blogspot.com/2012_11_01_archive.html 935 x 260 · 102 kB · jpeg https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=tduZtiTc&id=4FE77E838D994813D04FA0DE 64E846A9A5C15390&q=20+Mule+Team+Death+Valley&simid=608034007445081643&selectedIndex=1 &ajaxhist=0

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9 Halloween Tales & Traditions HISTORY.COM EDITORS

On Halloween, people shed reality for a day and mark the holiday with costumes, decorations and parties. Creepy legends and characters have evolved based on real, terrifying events. And a Halloween tradition of confronting the dead has led to legions of ghost stories—and hoaxes. Read about Halloween traditions and legends:

A Fear of Vampires Spawned by Consumption

llustration of a family member dying from consumption in the 19th century. Duncan 1890/Getty Images

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During the 19th century, the spread of tuberculosis, or consumption, claimed the lives of entire families in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont and other parts of New England. Before physicians were able to explain how infectious diseases were spread, hopeless villagers believed that some of those who perished from consumption preyed upon their living family members. This spurred a grim practice of digging up the dead and burning their internal organs.

Why Witches Fly on Brooms The evil green-skinned witch flying on her magic broomstick may be a Halloween icon—and a well-worn stereotype. But the actual history behind how witches came to be associated with such an everyday household object is anything but dull. The earliest known image of witches on brooms dates to 1451, when two illustrations appeared in the French poet Martin Le Franc’s manuscript Le Champion des Dames (The Defender of Ladies).

The association between witches and brooms may have roots in a pagan fertility ritual, in which rural farmers would leap and dance astride poles, pitchforks or brooms in the light of the full moon to encourage the growth of their crops. This “broomstick dance" became confused with common accounts of witches flying through the night on their way to orgies and other illicit meetings.

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Why Haunted Houses Opened During the Great Depression

Halloween night mischief inspired communities to open haunted houses during the Great Depression. Quavond/Getty Images In the period leading up to the Great Depression, Halloween had become a time when young men could blow off steam—and cause mischief. Sometimes they went too far. In 1933, parents were outraged when hundreds of teenage boys flipped over cars, sawed off telephone poles and engaged in other acts of vandalism across the country. People began to refer to that year’s holiday as “Black Halloween,” similarly to the way they referred to the stock market crash four years earlier as “Black Tuesday.” Rather than banning the holiday, as some demanded, many communities began organizing Halloween activities—and haunted houses—to keep restless would-be pranksters occupied.

Jack-o-Lanterns and the Legend of 'Stingy Jack'

The original Jack-o-lanterns were carved out of turnips. Sandsun/Getty Images

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An Irish myth about a man nicknamed “Stingy Jack” is believed to have led to the tradition of carving scary faces into gourds. According to the legend, Jack tricks the Devil into paying for his drink and then traps him in the form of a coin. The Devil eventually takes revenge and Stingy Jack ends up roaming Earth for eternity without a place in heaven or hell. Jack does, however, have a lighted coal, which he places inside a carved turnip, creating the original Jack-o-lantern.

Abraham Lincoln’s 'Ghost' in the White House For years, presidents, first ladies, guests, and members of the White House staff have claimed to have either seen Abraham Lincoln or felt his presence. Grace Coolidge, wife of Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, was the first person to report having seen the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. She said he stood at a window of the Oval Office, hands clasped behind his back, gazing out over the Potomac, perhaps still seeing the bloody battlefields beyond.

One of the last photographs of President Abraham Lincoln taken on March 6, 1865. Library of Congress

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Spirit Photography Claims to Capture Ghosts on Film In the post-Civil War era, when many Americans were reeling from loss, a photographer named William Mumler claimed to capture ghosts on film. While taking self-portraits for practice, one of Mumler’s prints came back with an unexplainable aberration. Although he was “quite alone in the room” when the shot was taken, there appeared to be a figure at his side, a girl who was “made of light.” Mumler showed the photo to a spiritualist friend who told him the girl in the image was almost certainly a ghost. Mumler then began a swift business in so-called spirit photography.

A "spirit" photograph taken by William Mumler in the post-Civil War era. The J. Paul Getty Museum

Irving Writes ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ After Fleeing Yellow Fever Washington Irving's 1820 tale of a headless horseman who terrorizes the real-life village of Sleepy Hollow is considered one of America's first ghost stories—and one of its scariest. Irving may have drawn inspiration for his story while a teenager in Tarrytown, New York. He moved to the area in 1798 to flee a yellow fever outbreak in New York City. Irving’s story takes place in the New York village of Sleepy Hollow. A lanky newcomer and schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, is chased by a headless horseman. In the tale, Irving weaves together actual locations and family names, and a little bit of Revolutionary War history with pure imagination and fantasy.

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An illustration from 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.' Smithsonian American Art Museum, museum purchase made possible in part by the Catherine Walden Myer Endowment, the Julia D. Strong Endowment, and the Director's Discretionary Fund

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow resurfaces every year around Halloween. Washington Irving's 1820 tale of a headless horseman who terrorizes the real-life village of Sleepy Hollow is considered one of America's first ghost stories—and one of its scariest. But Irving didn’t invent the idea of a headless rider. Tales of headless horsemen can be traced to the Middle Ages, including stories from the Brothers Grimm and the Dutch and Irish legend of the “Dullahan” or “Gan Ceann,” a Grim Reaper-like rider who carries his head. Elizabeth Bradley, a historian at Historic Hudson Valley, says a likely source for Irving’s horseman can be found in Sir Walter Scott’s 1796 The Chase, which is a translation of the German poem The Wild Huntsman by Gottfried Bürger and likely based on Norse mythology. “Irving had just met and become friends with Scott in 1817 so it's very likely he was influenced by his new mentor's work,” she says, “The poem is about a wicked hunter who is doomed to be hunted forever by the devil and the ‘dogs of hell’ as punishment for his crimes.” According to the New York Historical Society, others believe Irving was inspired by “an actual Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball during the Battle of White Plains, around Halloween 1776.”

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A Brief History of Creepy Clowns Becky Little

The spectre of the “creepy clown” has gotten a lot of attention as of late. Beginning in August 2016, creepy (and fake) clown sightings spread across the U.S. and other countries, creating a kind of viral clown panic. And as summer came to a close in 2017, killer clowns came for American audiences in the TV show American Horror Story: Cult and the film remake IT, which earned $123 million at the box office on its opening weekend. Why exactly have creepy clowns become such a trope in pop culture? After all, didn’t they used to be happy and cheerful? Well, not exactly, according to Benjamin Radford, author of Bad Clowns.

“It’s a mistake to ask when clowns went bad,” he says, “because they were never really good.” The “trickster,” he explains, is one of the oldest and most pervasive archetypes in the world (think Satan in the Bible). The trickster can be both funny and scary, and he (it’s usually a “he”) makes it hard for others to tell whether he’s lying. Clowns are a type of trickster that have been around for a long time—one of the most recognizable is the harlequin, a figure who emerged in Italian commedia dell’arte theatre in the 16th century.

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The harlequin was known for his colorful masks and clothing with diamond-shaped patterns, and often served as the comical, amoral servant in plays that toured throughout Europe. These plays also inspired a clownish puppet named “Punch,” who appeared in British shows starting in at least the 18th century. The character would later be written into a popular puppet show called “Punch and Judy,” in which Punch cracked jokes, beat his wife, and murdered his child.

Punch is a “gleeful madcap colorful character, but he’s also this horrific monster,” Radford says, noting that creepy clowns appeal across age groups, not only to kids, but to teens and adults as well. “It’s this strange mix of horror and humor that has always drawn us to clowns. Bad—or at least, sad—clowns continued to appear in European culture throughout the 19th century. Charles Dickens’ novel The Pickwick Papers (1836) featured an alcoholic clown; and in the 1880s and ‘90s, both a French play and an Italian opera centered on murderous clowns (one play was accused of plagiarizing the other). These complicated clowns made it to America, too. In 1924, U.S. audiences met a bitter and vengeful clown in the silent film He Who Gets Slapped. A decade and a half later, a prankster villain named the Joker make his debut in a Batman comic. And even though Emmett Kelly, Jr., one of the most famous American circus clowns in the early 20th century, was no villain, neither was he cheerful. Rather, his “Weary Willie” character was a hobo clown with a painted-on frown. But then came a change. In the 1950s and ‘60s, American television introduced audiences to a couple of new clowns who were always happy.

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“Ronald McDonald being in commercials spread ‘the happy clown’ across the country,” Radford says of the fast food mascot. “Same thing with Bozo the Clown. There were dozens of Bozos in different regions that were very, very popular during the era. So it was really television that helped propel the sort of default happy/good clown into the public’s consciousness.” Yet by the late 1970s and early ‘80s, the American image of the clown was already shifting again, this time toward something more sinister. One of the influences in this shift was the media coverage of John Wayne Gacy, a serial murderer who had occasionally dressed as “Pogo the Clown.” Radford notes that Gacy was not a professional clown, and that he didn’t dress up as Pogo very often or use his costume to lure children (his victims were teenagers and young men). But once in jail, Gacy helped cultivate his image as a killer clown in the media by drawing selfportraits of himself as Pogo.

Then came IT, the Stephen King novel about a scary, supernatural clown who lurks around the suburbs and murders children (this was part of a bigger shift toward scary suburban scenarios in the horror film genre). After the novel came out in 1986, it was adapted into a TV movie starring Tim Curry as Pennywise the Dancing Clown.

InterpNEWS Which means that once again, television brought a new clown into people’s living rooms—a threatening, child-harming one—that recent creepy clown panics suggest viewers have not shaken since. In 2013, residents in the U.K. town of Northampton were alarmed by a man who wandered around town wearing a mask reminiscent of Curry’s Pennywise and occasionally yelled out lines from the movie (turns out it was just some 22-year-old causing problems). The United States’ 2016 clown panic, too, had echoes of IT’s mystical, murderous villain. King certainly didn’t invent the evil clown. But he may have helped make Americans paranoid that one could be lurking outside their doors.

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History of Witches History.Com Editors

Witches were perceived as evil beings by early Christians in Europe, inspiring the iconic Halloween figure. Images of witches have appeared in various forms throughout history—from evil, wart-nosed women huddling over a cauldron of boiling liquid to hag-faced, cackling beings riding through the sky on brooms wearing pointy hats. In pop culture, the witch has been portrayed as a benevolent, nose-twitching suburban housewife; an awkward teenager learning to control her powers and a trio of charmed sisters battling the forces of evil. The real history of witches, however, is dark and, often for the witches, deadly.

The Origin of Witches Early witches were people who practiced witchcraft, using magic spells and calling upon spirits for help or to bring about change. Most witches were thought to be pagans doing the Devil’s work. Many, however, were simply natural healers or so-called “wise women” whose choice of profession was misunderstood.

InterpNEWS It’s unclear exactly when witches came on the historical scene, but one of the earliest records of a witch is in the Bible in the book of 1 Samuel, thought be written between 931 B.C. and 721 B.C. It tells the story of when King Saul sought the Witch of Endor to summon the dead prophet Samuel’s spirit to help him defeat the Philistine army. The witch roused Samuel, who then prophesied the death of Saul and his sons. The next day, according to the Bible, Saul’s sons died in battle, and Saul committed suicide. Other Old Testament verses condemn witches, such as the oft-cited Exodus 22:18, which says, “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Additional Biblical passages caution against divination, chanting or using witches to contact the dead.

'Malleus Maleficarum' Witch hysteria really took hold in Europe during the mid-1400s, when many accused witches confessed, often under torture, to a variety of wicked behaviors. Within a century, witch hunts were common and most of the accused were executed by burning at the stake or hanging. Single women, widows and other women on the margins of society were especially targeted.

Between the years 1500 and 1660, up to 80,000 suspected witches were put to death in Europe. Around 80 percent of them were women thought to be in cahoots with the Devil and filled with lust. Germany had the highest witchcraft execution rate, while Ireland had the lowest. The publication of “Malleus Maleficarum”—written by two well-respected German Dominicans in 1486—likely spurred witch mania to go viral. The book, usually translated as “The Hammer of Witches,” was essentially a guide on how to identify, hunt and interrogate witches.

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"Malleus Maleficarum" labeled witchcraft as heresy, and quickly became the authority for Protestants and Catholics trying to flush out witches living among them. For more than 100 years, the book sold more copies of any other book in Europe except the Bible. Salem Witch Trials As witch hysteria decreased in Europe, it grew in the New World, which was reeling from wars between the French and British, a smallpox epidemic and the ongoing fear of attacks from neighboring native American tribes. The tense atmosphere was ripe for finding scapegoats. Probably the best-known witch trials took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692.

The Salem witch trials began when 9-year-old Elizabeth Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams began suffering from fits, body contortions and uncontrolled screaming (today, it is believed that they were poisoned by a fungus that caused spasms and delusions).

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As more young women began to exhibit symptoms, mass hysteria ensued, and three women were accused of witchcraft: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborn and Tituba, an enslaved woman owned by Parris’s father. Tituba confessed to being a witch and began accusing others of using black magic. On June 10, Bridget Bishop became the first accused witch to be put to death during the Salem Witch Trials when she was hanged at the Salem gallows. Ultimately, around 150 people were accused and 18 were put to death. Women weren’t the only victims of the Salem Witch Trials; six men were also convicted and executed.

Massachusetts wasn’t the first of the 13 colonies to obsess about witches, though. In Windsor, Connecticut in 1647, Alse Young was the first person in America executed for witchcraft. Before Connecticut’s final witch trial took place in 1697, forty-six people were accused of witchcraft in that state and 11 were put to death for the crime. In Virginia, people were less frantic about witches. In fact, in Lower Norfolk County in 1655, a law was passed making it a crime to falsely accuse someone of witchcraft. Still, witchcraft was a concern. About two-dozen witch trials (mostly of women) took place in Virginia between 1626 and 1730. None of the accused were executed.

Are Witches Real? One of the most famous witches in Virginia’s history is Grace Sherwood, whose neighbors alleged she killed their pigs and hexed their cotton. Other accusations followed and Sherwood was brought to trial in 1706. The court decided to use a controversial water test to determine her guilt or innocence. Sherwood’s arms and legs were bound and she was thrown into a body of water. It was thought if she sank, she was innocent; if she floated, she was guilty. Sherwood didn’t sink and was convicted of being a witch. She wasn’t killed but put in prison and for eight years.

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A satirical article (supposedly written by Benjamin Franklin) about a witch trial in New Jersey was published in 1730 in the Pennsylvania Gazette. It brought to light the ridiculousness of some witchcraft accusations. It wasn’t long before witch mania died down in the New World and laws were passed to help protect people from being wrongly accused and convicted.

Book of Shadows Modern-day witches of the Western World still struggle to shake their historical stereotype. Most practice Wicca, an official religion in the United States and Canada. Wiccans avoid evil and the appearance of evil at all costs. Their motto is to “harm none,” and they strive to live a peaceful, tolerant and balanced life in tune with nature and humanity.

Many modern-day witches still perform witchcraft, but there’s seldom anything sinister about it. Their spells and incantations are often derived from their Book of Shadows, a 20th-century collection of wisdom and witchcraft, and can be compared to the act of prayer in other religions. A modern-day witchcraft potion is more likely to be an herbal remedy for the flu instead of a hex to harm someone. Today’s witchcraft spells are usually used to stop someone from doing evil or harming themselves. Ironically, while it’s probable some historical witches used witchcraft for evil purposes, many may have embraced it for healing or protection against the immorality they were accused of.

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But witches—whether actual or accused—still face persecution and death. Several men and women suspected of using witchcraft have been beaten and killed in Papua New Guinea since 2010, including a young mother who was burned alive. Similar episodes of violence against people accused of being witches have occurred in Africa, South America, the Middle East and in immigrant communities in Europe and the United States

Sources About Wicca. The Celtic Connection. Case Study: The European Witch Hunts, c. 1450-1750 and Witch Hunts Today. Gendercide Watch. The Salem Witch Trials. Oxford Research Encyclopedias. Witchcraft: Creation of the “evil other.” Susan Moulton, Sonoma State University. Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia. Encyclopedia of Virginia. Witchcraft: The Beginnings. University of Chicago. Witches and Witchcraft: The First Person Executed in the Colonies. State of Connecticut Judicial Branch Law Library Services. Demonology: The Malleus Maleficarum—Proliferating Witch Hysteria. Mount Holyoke College. The Persecution of Witches, 21st-Century Style. The New York Times. Women and Witches: Patterns of Analysis. The University of Chicago Press.

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History of Zombies from Ancient Times to Pop Culture. Kimberly Lin

Origin of “Zombie”

The word zombie most likely derives from the West African Kimbundu word “nzambi,” the name for a snake god or any divine spirit. It later came to mean “reanimated corpse” in the voodoo tradition (Online ( Etymology Dictionary). In Haitian Creole or Haitian French, the zombie describes a monster from Haitian folklore. As per the legend, a zombie is a dead body that has been reanimated by black magic. The word first entered the English language nguage in 1819, when the poet Robert Southey wrote “History of Brazil.” Over a century later, W.B. Seabrook wrote a novel that introduced zombies to America, “The Magic Island,” which was about Haitian voodoo cults and their zombie minions. The first horro horrorr movie about zombies, “White Zombie,” came out three years later in 1932. Zombies in the Stone Age

The history of zombies may go back all the way to the Stone Age. Some scholars believe that fear of reanimated corpses may have led to the evolution of the gravestone. Originally, people would place cairns or piles of rocks over a freshly buried body to ma make ke sure it could not dig its way out. In the article, “The Surprising History Behind Gravestones,” Mica Matlack explains that the usage of gravestones was to keep the dead in their graves: In the stone age, when humans were still nomadic in nature, the dea dead d would be buried and a great stone or boulder rolled atop the grave. These stones were called gravestones and their purpose was to prevent the deceased from rising after death, a fear still prevalent in modern society. In Syria, Archaeologists found skullss from a site that they dated at 10,000 years old. Someone bashed the skulls in and completely removed them from the rest of their bodies. Apparently, this ritual was a tradition for some time in the Europe/Near East region, as archaeologists have found ot other her sites like this. Although scholars have posed many viable theories, Juan José Ibañez from the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona says that “the find may suggest that Stone Age cultures believed dead young men were a threat to the world of the living. (New New Scientist Scientist) Ancient Greek Zombies

In the 1980s, archaeologists found graves in a necropolis in Sicily, which was colonized by Greeks around 800 BC. Some of the tombs contained bodies pinned down with rocks and other heavy objects. Experts speculate that those particular sites may have belo belonged to people whom the Greeks thought were capable of rising from their graves. To prevent a revenant from getting out, the ancient Greeks would either incinerate, dismember, or restrain the individual in its grave. Dr. Carrie L. Sulosky Weaver, archaeologist archaeolo and researcher of the Passo Marinaro necropolis in Sicily explains:

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Skulls found in Syria crushed and detached from their bodies. Credit: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones

Cientificas. “In the ancient world, revenants are feared because it is believed that they leave their graves at night for the explicit purpose of harming the living…revenants could be trapped in their graves by being tied, staked, flipped onto their stomachs, buried exceptionally deep, or pinned with rocks or other heavy objects. Tomb number 653 in Kamarina’s Passo Marinaro necropolis contains an adult whose head and feet are completely covered by large fragments of an amphora (a ceramic storage vessel), presumably intended to pin the individual to the grave and prevent it from seeing or rising. The second tomb, number 693, contains a child approximately 8 to 13 years old, with five large stones placed on top. Like the amphora fragments, it appears that these stones were used to trap the body in its grave.”

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Tomb 653 showing feet and head of adult body weighted down with amphora. Credit: D. Weiss from G. Di Stefano’s excavation journals.

Tomb 693 showing 5 stones placed atop a child. Credit: D. Weiss from G. Di Stefano’s excavation journals.

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Greek Beliefs About Zombies

The ancient Greeks believed that certain people were especially likely to return as revenants. Those people included suicides, murder victims, and illegitimate children. Additionally, babies born on an unlucky day or with congenital defects, and people who had died from drowning, plague, or a curse could rise again. Since the initial find in the 1980s, archaeologists have found more revenant graves, including some in Cyprus that were buried between 4500 and 3800 BC and were pinned down by millstones. The Undead Around the World

Norse mythology describes the draugr, which is a revenant or undead creature. The word draugr means “again walker.” They live in their tombs but can escape to visit the living to find victims. Draugr are generally very large and swollen, ugly, and black. If someone is bitten by one, the bitten person can become a draugr. The Norse monster kills its victims by crushing them or eating them alive, flesh, and blood. However, unlike the more modern zombie, the draugr has a variety of supernatural powers. This undead creature can shape-shift and can also drive someone mad or enter into their dreams. In China, the Jiang Shi, which is Chinese for “stiff corpse,” combines the attributes of the zombie and the vampire. The Jiang Shi are often people who had been the victims of suicide or murder. They can look more or less normal, if recently dead, or their bodies can have mold and decaying flesh on them. The Chinese zombie moves by hopping.

Norse mythology describes the draugr, which is a revenant or undead creature. The word draugr means “again walker.”

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The Strigoi is a Romanian zombie that also includes many traits of the vampire. They drink blood and can transform into animals. People become strigoi if they’ve led troubled or unfinished lives. People who are illegitimate or die before becoming baptized may also become strigoi. Because those who die without marrying are also at risk, some communities will marry the corpse to a living person of around the same age to prevent them from rising as a strigoi.

From Africa to Haiti and America

The history of zombies in Haiti has an African origin. As noted, the word zombie goes back to West Africa, as does the religion of Voodoo. However, the West African zombie did not have a body; it was formless. In some South African countries, they believed in physical zombies with bodies. In those countries, children or witches could turn someone into a zombie. A witch could kill a person and then reanimate the body to use for her own personal deeds. Ideas about zombies and the practice of voodoo migrated throughout the world with the slave trade. In just one example, the French ruled Haiti from 1625 to 1804, and they established sugar plantations. Thus, they imported slaves from Africa to operate the plantations, and those slaves brought their folklore and beliefs with them. Likewise, a similar story occurred in America. Haitian Voodoo Beliefs About the Dead

Haitians, in general, practice Voodoo. Followers of the religion believe that all deaths are categorized as natural, like old age or disease, and unnatural, like murder. The spirits of people who die from unnatural causes tend to linger near their grave, for they have to wait for approval from the gods before they can join their ancestors. Souls in this state are vulnerable to abduction by a powerful bokor or sorcerer who can imprison the soul in a jar and use it to control their body.

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Interestingly, Haitians find the bokor far more frightening than the zombie, for the zombie is completely at the bokor’s mercy and has to obey them. Some bokors are benevolent and use the zombie to help them perform healing magic. An evil bokor, however, might murder someone in order to bind them as a zombie – and Haitians find the prospect of such servitude terrifying. History of Zombies in Pop Culture

The history of zombies around the world is a long one, and thus, it has inspired many depictions in popular culture. One of the very first fictional stories about the undead was Philinnion and Machates, written by Phlegon of Tralles, the Greek author of the Olympiads. The story tells of a young woman, Philinnion, who dies, but comes back to life and returns to her parents’ home. She proceeds to have sex with a visitor, Machates, at the home repeatedly over the course of a few nights. She explains that the gods of the underworld approved her resurrection, and then she suddenly dies again. Perhaps the most famous single zombie of all times is Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, the main character in Mary Shelley’s novel of 1818. Frankenstein reanimated his monster with lightning and the creature had many of the features of the modern zombie. However, Shelly personified him with human emotion, evident in the rage he felt as a result of the rejection he faced. As noted, the first zombie movie ever made was Victor Halperin’s 1932 White Zombie, in which the famous Bela Lugosi starred as the antagonist. The plot involved a woman in Haiti who an evil voodoo priest turns into a zombie. The priest uses a magic potion that “kills” her and then allows her to live again. More Recent Zombie Films

George Romero made Night of the Living Dead in 1968. It is considered one of the most influential horror movies ever. It arguably introduced the idea of the “zombie apocalypse” and portrayed zombies as aggressive predators rather than mindless slaves. Living Dead influenced and inspired later portrayals of zombies like 28 Days Later (2002) and the acclaimed TV show The Walking Dead.

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Generally, the modern zombie has fewer characteristics of the voodoo zombie, which had supernatural roots. Black magic and possession control the voodoo zombie. However, most modern zombies have a biological basis. They are the result of a contagious virus that attacks and kills the human. But allows it to reanimate into flesh-eating creatures. The zombie apocalypse is based on this premise. The Stone Age to the Information Age

Humans have been preoccupied with the undead for a long time. The history of zombies is a worldwide phenomenon. Our society, in general, has grown to love the zombie, and today it is a nearly $6 billion industry. The idea has persisted throughout time, geographic regions, and cultures, and readily found its way to the information age, where we can’t wait to stream all the best zombie flicks…in HD. References: Anthropology MSU University of Michigan Bible of Mysteries Ancient History Encyclopedia The University of Virginia Magazine

KIMBERLY LIN Kimberly is a writer and the content manager for Historic Mysteries. If she's not plunging down the SEO rabbit hole, she's visiting some ancient site in Italy, where she currently lives in the middle of an active caldera. Kimberly will continue to venture around the world and write about the history she encounters.

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Cahokia Mounds: The Largest Ancient City in North America. Kimberly Lin.

In Southern Illinois, situated along the Mississippi River in Collinsville, an ancient settlement that we call Cahokia rose to great power between 800 800-1200 CE. Nicknamed America’s Forgotten City or The City of the Sun, the massive complex once contained as many as 40,000 people and spread across nearly 4,000 acres. The most notable features of the site are hand hand-made made earthen mounds which held temples, political buildings, and burial pits. Cahokia Mounds are a testament to the highly organized culture of the early Mississippian people who built the largest city in pre pre-Columbian North America.

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The Rise of the Mound Culture

Small villages first emerged along Cahokia Creek beginning around 600 CE. Subsequently, the climate warmed and more rain found its way to Southern Illinois. Thus, villagers could easily grow an abundance of food. As a result, thousands of people migrated to the area around the Mississippi River. Then as time went on, the Mississippians created a unified culture all their own and began building mounds across their land in the ninth century. By about 1000 CE, the Mississippians had built the largest civilization in North America. In fact, some people have referred to it as a kingdom, because the Mississippian culture reached up to the Great Lakes and down to the entire southeastern region of North America. The city became the pre-eminent center of religious and political power and may have even controlled a vast trade network from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. Although today we call the site Cahokia Mounds, no one knows the original name of the city. French explorers in the 1600s named Cahokia after the Cahokia tribe, which lived in the area around that time. However, they may not have had any relation to the original mound builders. Culture of the Mound Builders

The Mississippian culture may have originated and, indeed, reached its apex at Cahokia Mounds. The mound builders lived in the Mississippi Valley, Ohio, Oklahoma, and into the midwest and southeast. They worshipped the Sun and other celestial beings within a well-developed religion. Additionally, their lives revolved around warfare, and sacrifices were common. In many ways, however, it was the impressive Cahokia mounds that defined the culture of the Mississippians. Contrary to early beliefs, the Mississippian mound-builders had sophisticated farming tools, pottery, astronomy, and copper-work. Religion, cosmology, and an organized pantheon of gods were central in the Mississippian life and led to the development of temples within the Cahokia mound complex.

The game of chunkey emerged during the region’s early occupation. This was an important sport in which a player rolled a stone disc and had to throw a spear as close to the stopped stone as possible. The Mississippians played this game in the grand plaza surrounded by the largest mounds in the capital. However, this was not all for fun. The losers and their family members paid with their lives in ritual sacrifice.

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Building the Cahokia Mounds - There were three types of mounds: flat-top platform, conical, and ridge-top. The most common was the platform mound. - Most of the mounds were built between the ninth and 13th centuries. - The purposes of the mounds varied. Platform mounds with flat tops supported dwellings, temples, and stages for festivals and religious/political ceremonies. Conical and ridgetop mounds appear to have served as burial sites and landmarks. - Clay, topsoil, shells, or stones served as the materials in Cahokia mound construction. The largest mounds contained a high percentage of clay to hinder water seepage and erosion. - All the mounds were hand-made. Workers dug or gathered building material from one area and carried it in baskets on their backs to the construction site. They tamped soil and clay one layer at a time to create the earthen mounds.

Cahokia’s Important Features Monks Mound

Of the many structures within Cahokia Mounds, the most impressive is Monks Mound pyramid. Archaeologists believe that fourteen successive stages of construction took place between the years 900 and 1100 (Unesco). Containing over 25 million cubic feet of soil, the mound rises 100 feet into the air and covers 14 acres. These staggering figures make the Monks Mound pyramid the largest prehistoric earthen structure north of Mexico.

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Artist’s (Michael Hampshire) interpretation of Monks Mound towering over daily life. Photo: Cahokia Historic State Park. Monks Mound is a towering central structure amidst four large plazas in the city. It overlooked the Grand Plaza surrounded by the stockade. On the top of the mound, a large wooden building sat surrounded by a protective palisade wall. The purpose of the building is uncertain. However, because few artifacts related to dwellings existed during excavations, experts believe it may have been a place for the dead or a site of political and religious council. Additionally, religious ceremonies may have taken place there as well. In fact, Monks Mound may have held a central place in the cosmos of Mississippian religion that symbolically connected the “Sky Realm” with the “Earth Realm.” Thus, Mississippians would have regarded the site as a highly potent religious and political symbol. (Romain).

View of Monks Mound today looking west. Erosion has altered its original form. Photo: Historic Mysteries.

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Visitors can walk the 154 steps to the top of Monks Mound. Photo: Historic Mysteries. Woodhenge

It was important for the Mississippians to know when to plant, harvest, and celebrate the solstices and equinoxes. Therefore, they had at least five wood henges strewn around the city that served as calendars at various times. This allowed them to track the sun and seasons with a high degree of accuracy. Circular configurations of wooden posts served as the markers. Four equidistant posts marked the solstices and equinoxes, while posts in between tracked the mid-seasons.

Woodhenge construction and design of beaker (bottom R) with sun symbol found near a winter solstice pole. Artist L.K. Townsend. Photo: Cahokia Historic State Park.

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In 1961, Dr. Warren Wittry first discovered a set of 28 poles that stretched 410 feet in diameter. Four additional circles surfaced later. Of these five circular patterns built out of the red cedar (sacred to Native Americans), one set contains 24 posts, one has 36, one has 48, one has 60. The last circle, which has yet to be fully excavated, is made of 72 posts. Mound 72

The burial complex in Mound 72 is one of the most significant discoveries at the site. Between 1967 and 1971, teams from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee excavated the ridgetop mound. Its length is about 140 feet, while the width and height are 72 feet and 10 feet, respectively. Within the mound, researchers found several smaller mounds that contained more than 250 skeletons. The Mississippians had covered those sub-mounds with soil and added another layer to give it its final outer shape. The most important feature of Mound 72 is the central placement of a man and woman in a grave with a layer of more than 20,000 shell beads. The shells lay in the shape of a falcon or the “Birdman,” a powerful Sky Realm symbol and deity. Forensic work by Emerson et al. 2016 determined that a female lay under the shell bead layer, however, experts originally thought it was two males. Above the beads, the male lay atop the female. Interestingly, this configuration may allude to themes of cosmogenesis and fertility. Additionally, other skeletons and highly valuable grave goods accompanied the couple in the grave.

A reconstruction of the Birdman burial from Mound 72. Photo: Latin American Studies.

Within other sub-mounds in Mound 72, researchers discovered numerous sacrificial victims and other individuals that suffered violent deaths. One of the mounds contained 53 young sacrificial females. Experts also found that Mound 72 is aligned with Monks Mound along its horizontal axis and may have been a deliberate connection. Therefore, Cahokia’s people may have held the belief that spirits traveled along the axis to and from the Upperworld or “Sky Realm” (Romain). What Happened to Cahokia Mounds?

Cahokia was not destined to last. Its collapse is somewhat of a mystery, however, based on research, the following three events may have had something to do with it.

InterpNEWS 1). Broxton Bird, a climatologist from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis headed a study that he published in 2017. By taking ancient calcite samples in Martin Lake, Indiana, he and his team determined the precipitation levels throughout the years. Their results indicated that beginning around 1250 CE, climate change occurred. Consequently, this was the start of the Little Ice Age, which lasted 500 years. At that time, a dry period resulted. By 1350 CE, there was a serious drought brought on by dry arctic air. 2). Floods often go hand-in-hand with dry spells when large rainfall occurs during droughts. In another study, Samuel Munoz and Jack Williams took core samples up to 2,000 years old from two lakes in the Mississippi floodplain. They saw that prior to 600 CE there were many floods. Then there was a period of no floods until 1200 CE. During the floodless period, Cahokia flourished. After the flood of 1200, the population declined until complete abandonment. 3). The changes in the climate and the flood event may have severely affected corn production. Thus, famine and hunger would have inevitably led to major upheavals in the large population. As a result, Mississippian societies in the region began to collapse. The destruction of the palisades, an increase in sacrifices, and intensified warfare occurred after 1250 CE. By the end of the 14th century, residents had migrated south and east to areas with more stable climates. Preservation of the Cahokia Mounds

The Historic Site in the state of Illinois protects more than 2,220 acres of the original 4,000 acres. This includes approximately 70 of the 80 remaining mounds. In 1964 the Federal Government designated the site as a Historical U.S. Landmark. Additionally, UNESCO named it a World Heritage Site in 1982. It is also home to the Museum Society which strives to promote the educational and scientific advancements of Cahokia Mounds. Due to the vast size and organization of the city, early European settlers didn’t believe that the Mississippians could build such an astounding urban complex. Archaeology has taught us otherwise, and little by little, the true depth of their beliefs and way of life are slowly coming to light. Additional references: Emerson, T. E., Hedman, K. M., Hargrave, E. A., Cobb, D. E., & Thompson, A. R. (2016). Paradigms Lost: Reconfiguring Cahokia’s Mound 72 Beaded Burial. American Antiquity. Pauketat, Timothy R. Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006. Romain, William F. “Monks Mound as an Axis Mundi for the Cahokian World.” Academia.edu – Share Research. Accessed February 12, 2019.

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7 Ancient Sites Some People Think Were Built by Aliens Nadia Drake

P L A N E T E A R T H I S home to some spectacular relics from bygone eras, constructions that seem to defy the technological capabilities of their time either because they’re too big, too heavy, or too complex. As such, some suggest the ancient builders of the Egyptian pyramids, the Nasca lines, and others were following an extraterrestrial instruction manual. Perhaps the hands that crafted these sites weren’t really of this world. To be sure, it’s fun to think about whether aliens have visited Earth. After all, humans are on the threshold of expanding our reach in space, and places like Mars are in our sight. But the truth is, there’s no evidence suggesting that aliens have ever been here. And invoking a supernatural explanation for some of the most monumental of human achievements means skipping over the fascinating ways in which prehistoric civilizations managed to make some of the largest and most enigmatic constructions on Earth.

Sacsayhuamán

Outside the old Inca capital of Cusco, a fortress called Sacsayhuamán rests in the Peruvian Andes. Built from enormous stones that have been chiseled and stacked together like a jigsaw puzzle, some say Sacsayhuamán could be the work of an ancient civilization that had a little help from interstellar friends.

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The 1,000-year-old interlocking fortress walls are made of rocks that weigh as much as 360 tons each, and which were carried more than 20 miles before being lifted and fit into place with laser-like precision. More recently, archaeologists have uncovered traces of the rope-and-lever system the Inca used to transport stones from their quarries to their cities—a system that relied on strength and ingenuity, rather than alien architects.

Nasca Lines

On a high and dry plateau some 200 miles southeast of Lima, more than 800 long, straight white lines are etched into the Peruvian desert, seemingly at random. Joining them are 300 geometric shapes and 70 figures of animals, including a spider, monkey, and hummingbird. The longest of the lines run straight as an arrow for miles. The biggest shapes stretch nearly 1,200 feet across and are best viewed from the air. Scientists suspect the Nasca drawings are as many as two millennia old, and because of their age, size, visibility from above, and mysterious nature, the lines are often cited as one of the best examples of alien handiwork on Earth. Otherwise, how would an ancient culture have been able to make such huge designs in the desert without being able to fly? And why? Turns out, it’s rather easy to understand the how. Called geoglyphs, these enigmatic designs are made by removing the top, rust-colored layer of rocks and exposing the brighter white sand underneath.

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The why is a bit tougher to comprehend. First studied in the early 1900s, the designs were initially suspected to be aligned with constellations or solstices, but more recent work suggests the Nasca lines point to ceremonial or ritual sites related to water and fertility. And in addition to being visible from the air, the shapes can be seen from surrounding foothills. Egyptian Pyramids

Just outside Cairo, in Giza, the most famous of Egypt’s pyramids rise from the desert. Built more than 4,500 years ago, the Pyramids at Giza are monumental tombs where ancient queens and pharaohs were buried. But how, exactly, did the Egyptians build these things? The Great Pyramid is made of millions of precisely hewn stones weighing at least two tons each. Even with today’s cranes and other construction equipment, building a pyramid as big as that of Pharaoh Khufu would be a formidable challenge. And then there’s the astronomical configuration of the pyramids, which is said to align with the stars in Orion’s belt. As well, alien theorists often point to the fact that these three pyramids are in way better shape than others built centuries later (never mind the amount of work that has gone into preserving them over the past several centuries). So are Egypt’s pyramids artifacts of aliens? Not exactly. It’s true that scientists aren’t quite sure how the ancient Egyptians build the pyramids—and especially how they did it so quickly—but there’s ample evidence that these tombs are the work of thousands of earthly hands.

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Stonehenge

A huge circle of stones, some weighing as much as 50 tons, sits in the English countryside outside Salisbury. Known as Stonehenge, the Neolithic monument inspired Swiss author Erich von Däniken to suggest it was a model of the solar system that also functioned as an alien landing pad—after all, how else could those massive stones have ended up hundreds of miles from their home quarry? No one knows what, exactly, the meaning of Stonehenge is, but, as with all the other sites in this collection, the explanation is not aliens. Instead, scientists have demonstrated it’s actually possible to build such a thing using technologies that would have been around 5,000 years ago, when the earliest structures at the site were built. And now, it appears as though the stones are aligned with solstices and eclipses, suggesting the Stonehenge builders were at least keeping an eye on the heavens, even if they didn’t come from above.

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Teotihuacán

Teotihuacán, meaning the "City of the Gods," is a sprawling, ancient city in Mexico that’s best known for its pyramidal temples and astronomical alignments. Built more than 2,000 years ago, Teotihuacán’s age, size, and complexity can make it seem otherworldly, but it’s very much the work of humans. Scientists suspect that over centuries, a mix of cultures including Maya, Zapotec, and Mixtec built the city that could house more than 100,000 people. With its murals, tools, transportation system, and evidence of advanced agricultural practices, Teotihuacán is often considered much more technologically developed than should have been possible in pre-Aztec Mexico. By far, the most well known of Teotihuacán’s buildings is the massive Pyramid of the Sun. One of the largest such constructions in the Western Hemisphere, the pyramid’s curious alignment is believed to be based on calendrical cycles.

Easter Island The enigmas surrounding the moai, Easter Island’s fleet of large stone figures, pretty much follow the same narrative as the other sites described here: How in the world did the Rapa Nui make these figures more than 1,000 years ago? And how did the moai end up on Easter Island? Carved from stone, the nearly 900 human figures are sprinkled along the flanks of the island’s extinct volcanoes. The figures average 13 feet tall and weigh 14 tons and appear to have been chiseled from the soft volcanic tuff found in the Rano Raraku quarry.

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There, more than 400 statues are still in various states of construction, with some completed figures awaiting transportation to their intended resting place. The reasons for carving the moai are mysterious, though they were likely sculpted for religious or ritual reasons. It’s also not exactly clear what happened to the stone-crafting Rapa Nui, but a leading theory suggests their civilization succumbed to an environmental disaster of their own making … which is something that probably could have been prevented had ancient aliens bestowed their infinite wisdom upon the culture.

The Face on Mars

If Elon Musk has his way, humans will be capable of visiting the “face on Mars” sometime this century. Spotted by the Viking 1 orbiter in 1976, the so-called face is nearly two miles long and is in a region called Cydonia, which separates the smooth plains of the Martian north from the more cratered terrain in the south. At the time, scientists dismissed the “face” as shadow play, but over the decades it has become a favorite among those who suspect aliens with a penchant for building things have been visiting the solar system. In 2001, NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor took another good look at the face—using a much higher resolution camera—and saw … no face. Turns out that what had appeared to be a face is just another boring old Martian mesa, kind of like the landforms that litter the U.S. Southwest. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun to visit. Nadia Drake is a contributing writer at National Geographic with a particular fondness for moons, spiders, and jungle cats.

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Hanging coffins: China's mysterious sky graveyards Katie Hunt, CNN •

(CNN) — A skull pokes out of a coffin made out of roughly hewn planks of wood, its smooth white surface catching the reflection of the winter light flooding into the dark cave. It's one of about 30 caskets anchored on a limestone rock about 30 meters (almost 100 feet) up the side of a cave in Guizhou province in southwestern China. It could date back hundreds of years. The coffins, inside and out, are littered with fragments of clothes, bones and ceramics. For three decades, Wong How Man, a Hong Kong-based explorer, has been hellbent on chasing coffins like these in gravity-defying graveyards across China in an attempt to discover more about this unusual burial custom. Wong, who began his career as a journalist with National Geographic, first came across a group of coffins perched 90 meters (300 feet) up a cliff face in southern Sichuan, to the north of Guizhou, in 1985 during an expedition to track the Yangtze River from mouth to source. A life-long obsession was born. "At first, it was simply how the hell did they get there and then I couldn't stop thinking about why," he says. "And there're so many theories."

"Hanging coffins" rest in a cave in Guizhou, southwest China. Katie Hunt/CNN

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Coffin-chasing Hanging coffins, as they're known, are found across a swathe of central China -- mostly in remote valleys to the south of the mighty Yangtze River, which flows from the Himalayan foothills to China's eastern coast. The coffins rest in a variety of formations, sometimes barely visible from the ground below. They're lined up in the crevices in the cliff face, balanced on wooden cantilevered stakes, placed in rectangular spaces hewn in the rock face or stacked high up in caves like those Wong saw on his latest coffin-chasing expedition to Guizhou. The oldest are said to be in the eastern province of Fujian, dating back 3,000 years. There's no clear reason why this practice took place. Ancient literature from the Tang Dynasty suggests that the higher the coffins were placed, the greater the show of filial piety to the deceased. Others say the reasoning was more practical: It prevented animals from poaching the bodies and kept land free to farm. New sites are still being discovered. In 2015, the People's Daily newspaper reported that a total of 131 hanging coffins were discovered in the central province of Hubei, placed in man made caves in a cliff 50 meters wide and 100 meters high. "Experts haven't figured out how ancient people managed to transport the coffin, body and funeral objects -together weighing hundreds of kilograms -- to the cliff caves," the report said.

Many questions, few answers Intent on discovering more about this extraordinary practice, Wong began to amass a library of what little scholarly research had been carried out on the practice. He published his first paper in 1991 in a US archeology journal.

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However, it wasn't until 2000, once Wong had founded the non-profit China Exploration and Research Society (CERS), that he was able to get up close and excavate one of these high-rise cemeteries -- at a site named Washi in northern Yunnan not far from the first site Wong laid eyes on.

The site in Washi, Yunnan where Wong's organization conducted an archeological excavation.CERS He and his team rapelled down the cliff face to assess the coffins, which rested on rotting stakes of wood. They then built bamboo scaffolding to secure the most vulnerable coffins, which also allowed them to examine and document the contents. What he found raised more questions than it answered. The oldest coffins dated back to the Tang dynasty but many contained bones from multiple bodies. Wong believes the bodies would have been buried first and the bones put in the hanging coffins once the bodies had decomposed. The coffins, which were dug out of a solid piece of wood, were then packed with sand -- making them enormously heavy. "They must have known they would eventually fall down," says Wong.

Rapelling down a cliff to get a look at the coffins. CERS

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Wong's research has tied the burial custom to the Bo people -- a rebellious minority tribe that once inhabited the border between today's southern Sichuan and northwestern Yunnan provinces. It's thought they disappeared in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), persecuted by military expeditions led by China's Imperial Armies. But Wong believes some remnants of the tribe assimilated into other local minority groups and may have survived secretly until today. His research formed the basis of a 2003 Discovery Channel documentary on the hanging coffins, where they attempted to recreate how the caskets would have been transported up the cliff face. Some believe they were lowered down from above while others believe they were raised up via scaffolding. It's not just the mind-blowing effort it must have taken to erect the coffins that makes the cliff and cave burials so fascinating. The custom seems so at odds with underground burial and cremation -- the way most modern societies, including China's, handle death. But the open-air burials do have something in common with other funerary practices in China's borderlands. Tibetans and Mongolians practice sky burials -- where bodies are chopped up and offered to vultures or other animals. In more recent years, Wong's obsession has taken him to Sagada, Luzon, in the Philippines, where cliff burials were practiced as recently as 2007.

Cliff burial site in Sagada, Luzon in the Philippines.CERS No protection? Earlier this year, I inadvertently rekindled Wang's interest in China's hanging coffins when I shared some photos of the caskets in a cave in Guizhou I came across unexpectedly during a trip to the province in 2016.

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Never having heard of hanging coffins in this area, Wong set out from his China field office in Kunming in the neighboring province of Yunnan with a small team to find out more. The cave where the coffins are located is only accessible by river, which emerges from the spectacular limestone cave where the coffins are stacked. "I like when information comes to me like this in a personal way," says Wong. "The Internet, there's so much information available. It takes away the joy and the reward for big effort. I like the footnotes."

The Guizhou cave with the coffins is only accessible by river, where bamboo rafts are the traditional form of transport. Katie Hunt/CNN Li Fei, a researcher at the Guizhou Provincial Institute of Archaeology, says that there were up to 100 cave coffin sites in the province and the burial practice was followed by Yao and Miao minorities in the region. Most of the coffins date back to the Ming or Qing (1644-1912) dynasties, he adds, though some date back to the Tang dynasty. The Guizhou site Wong and I visited, like others, wasn't well-protected. Reluctant to scramble up the rocky sides of the caves I didn't get close, but Wong said that while some of the 30 or so coffins were intact, most were falling apart -- bones and disintegrating clothing visible. Wong was told that there used to be more than 300 coffins in an elevated part of the cave but a fire destroyed them. Banknotes have also been left by more recent visitors to the site, a superstitious offering for the dead, though not all visitors are respectful -- one skull had a cigarette jutting out of its jaw. In a steep gorge down river, local tourist authorities have erected fake hanging coffins -- perhaps an effort to satiate tourist curiosity and preserve the existing site.

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The stunning karst scenary near the Guizhou cave. Katie Hunt/CNN Looting In 1999, at one of the most famous hanging coffin sites in Matangba, Sichuan, which Wong had first visited in the 1980s, he discovered that many of the coffins had been looted -- despite being some 90 meters above the ground and being protected as "national cultural relics." The swag allegedly included ancient swords and other valuables, says Wong. "Going back 20, 30 years, yes China had different priorities and limited funding, but today China has such influence and (protecting these sites) would be small change. It's about the integrity of the their culture and cultural identity. "

An event held by the Chongqing Cultural Heritage Research Institute. Chongqing Cultural Heritage Research Institute

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Xu Jin, a researcher at Chongqing Cultural Heritage Research Institute, studies a hanging coffin site at Longhe, near Chongqing, where coffins are grouped by families. He's held educational events to teach people about the coffins. He says in a karst region where caves and cliffs are plentiful, burying the dead at a height might have seemed a better option than in land that erodes easily and is prone to sinkholes. Little studied Archeology in China is a well-funded and well-regarded field but the study of the suspended coffins appears to have been neglected. Anke Hein, an archeologist at Oxford University, who has studied burial customs in western China, says the phenomenon straddles different time periods, geographical regions and even disciplines -- falling between archeology and anthropology. "I'm sure if someone really wanted to do this they could," says Hein. "But you would need the cooperation of difference provinces and local governments, which is difficult, and requires a lot of energy."

Bamboo scaffolding erected to allow a CERS team to excavate the coffins in Yunnan.CERS Most expertise seems to be regional, confined to provincial bureaus that focus on individual sites rather than the practice as a whole. The earliest mention of them in Wong's library is an account by a US missionary in the 1930s. The most comprehensive study in Chinese is by a scholar named Chen Mingfang, who was colorfully profiled by the Los Angeles Times in 2001. Now likely in her seventies, CNN was unable to track her down.

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Wong's spent much of his career exploring, documenting and trying to protect traditions like these in China's borderlands but he doesn't think the mystery of exactly how or why people chose to bury their dead in this way will ever be known. "We can only speculate," he says. CNN's Serenitie Wang contributed to this report

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7 of the Gutsiest Women on the American Frontier Brynn Holland

Spies and scouts, mothers and homestead keepers, women quietly made their mark on America's changing western frontier. History and lore of the American frontier have long been dominated by an iconic figure: the grizzled, gunslinging man, going it alone, leaving behind his home and family to brave the rugged, ru undiscovered wilderness. But as scholars of the American West continue to explore the complex realities of the frontier, two facts become increasingly clear: It was anything but empty when white men from the east went to “discover” it; and few frontiersmen ersmen succeeded alone. Women were in the picture much more than traditional histories have told. The frontier was occupied not only by indigenous people, but also by African Americans, Spanish colonialists and others of European descent, offering skeletal social networks for white explorers and settlers from the east. By tapping into these networks, they learned survival skills (like how to find food) and made alliances, often through marriage. White frontiersmen often wed Native American women who could act ct as intermediaries, helping navigate the political, cultural and linguistic gulf between tribal ways and those of the white men. In fact, says Virginia Scharff, distinguished professor of history at the University of New Mexico, men could not have likely succeeded in these unknown lands without connections to indigenous communities—or or without women, who provided networks, labor and children. Placing frontiersmen in context of these networks doesn’t diminish their individuality, she says, but adds much needed ded dimension to their stories. Case in point: Daniel Boone,, one of the most celebrated folk heroes of the American frontier, renowned as a woodsman, trapper and a trailblazer. Twice captured by native warriors, he earned the respect of the Shawnee for his backwoods knowledge, and was even adopted by the tribe’s Chief hief Blackfish while being held captive. In several encounters, the tribal connections he had forged helped him save the lives of white cohorts the Indians wanted to kill. And with Boone traveling frequently, surveying land and blazing trails, his wife Reb Rebecca ecca provided much-needed much stability and labor: bearing him 10 children, while keeping homefires burning as they moved from Virginia to ever more rugged settlements in North Carolina, Kentucky and SpanishSpanish controlled Missouri.

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Families of settlers resting as they migrate across the plains of the American Frontier. (Credit: Archive Photos/Getty Images) “If we start to think of these individual heroic men as participants in really rich sets of social relations, it makes them come to life in ways that are more than just running around with a rifle in their hand and a knife in their teeth looking for trouble,” says Scharff. “They are people who have to live in a world and survive day-to-day, doing things besides having to rip flesh with their bare hands.” So how does the traditional understanding of the American frontier shift when women’s experiences are accounted for? Below, a look at several women who—while birthing babies, managing homes and businesses, and engaging in the political lives of their communities—quietly made their mark on the American frontier.

1. Molly Brant: Native American Diplomat and Spy The daughter of a Mohawk chief in upstate New York and consort of a British dignitary, Molly Deganwadonti went on to become an influential Native American leader in her own right and a lifelong loyalist to the British crown before, during and after the American Revolution. Born in 1736 at a time when the Mohawk, part of the larger Iroquois federation of tribes, were increasingly subject to European influence, Molly grew up in a Christianized family. In 1754, at the age of 18, she accompanied a delegation of Mohawk elders to Philadelphia to discuss fraudulent land transactions—a moment that is cited as her first political activity.

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Molly met Sir William Johnson, a British officer during the French and Indian War who had been appointed superintendent for Indian affairs for the Northern colonies. After his wife died, she became his mistress. And although her race and class prevented them from being officially wed, they were common-law married and had nine children together. Johnson had acquired 600,000 acres of land in Mohawk Valley, and Molly, like other women of her time, came to manage a large and complex household, entertaining dignitaries both European and Indian. Their partnership proved politically fruitful, giving Johnson a familial connection to the powerful Iroquois tribes and earning Molly, who hailed from a matrilineal clan, increasing prestige as an influential voice for her people. During the Revolutionary War, Molly and her family, like many Indians, sided with the British, who promised to protect their lands from colonists’ encroachment. Known as a persuasive speaker, she is credited with convincing Iroquois leadership to fall in with the British camp. Throughout the war, she acted as a spy, passing intelligence about the movement of colonial forces to British forces, while providing shelter, food and ammunition to loyalists. When they ended up on the losing side, Molly and her family fled for Canada, where she and other loyalists established the town of Kingston. After the war, the British paid her a pension for her services.

2. ‘Mad’ Anne Bailey: Frontier Scout and Messenger

A statue of ‘Mad Anne’ Bailey along the Ohio River. (Credit: Nicole Beckett/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0)

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Anne Hennis Trotter Bailey, known as “Mad Anne,” worked as a frontier scout and messenger during the Revolutionary War. Originally from Liverpool, England, Anne sailed to America at the age of 19, after both her parents died. She eventually married a veteran frontiersman and soldier named Richard Trotter and settled in Staunton, Virginia. Richard, who joined the Virginia militia as tensions between frontiersmen and Native Americans grew, was killed in the Battle of Point Pleasant, West Virginia in late 1774. After learning of her husband’s death, Mad Anne showed her mettle: She dressed in buckskin pants and a petticoat, left her son with neighbors—and sought revenge. With rifle, hunting knife and tomahawk in hand, Anne became a scout and messenger recruiting volunteers to join the militia and sometimes delivering gunpowder to the soldiers. She couriered messages between Point Pleasant and Lewisburg, West Virginia—a 160-mile journey on horseback. Anne remarried to John Bailey, a member of the Rangers, a legendary group of frontier scouts, in 1785. As the group worked to defend new settlements from Native American attacks, Mad Anne once again used her skills as a scout and courier. After her second husband’s death, she spent the rest of her days living a solitary life in the woods.

3. Jemima Boone: A Young Woman of the Woods

Daniel Boone rescuing his daughter Jemima from the Shawnee, after she and two other girls were abducted from near their settlement of Boonesboro, Kentucky. (Credit: MPI/Getty Images)

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InterpNEWS Rebecca Boone wasn’t the only formidable female in Daniel Boone’s family. His daughter Jemima earned her own spot in the history books on July 14, 1776. That’s when a Cherokee-Shawnee raiding group abducted Jemima, aged 14, along with two other girls while they floated in a canoe near their Kentucky settlement. Demonstrating their own knowledge of frontier ways, the quickwitted teens left trail markers as their captors took them away—bending branches, breaking off twigs and leaving behind leaves and berries.

Their rescue team, led by Daniel Boone himself, took just two days to follow the trail and retrieve the girls. The rescuers included Flanders Callaway, Samuel Henderson and Captain John Holder, each of whom later married one of the kidnapped girls. This event became such an integral part of frontier lore, author James Fenimore Cooper included it in his classic novel The Last of the Mohicans.

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4. Sacagawea: Translator and Guide

Sacajawea guiding Lewis and Clark from Mandan through the Rocky Mountains. (Credit: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images) One of the best-known women of the American West, the native-born Sacagawea gained renown for her crucial role in helping the Lewis & Clark expedition successfully reach the Pacific coast. Born in 1788 or 1789 in what is now Idaho, Sacagawea was a member of the Lemhi band of the Native American Shoshone tribe. At the age of 12, she was kidnapped by a war party of Hidasta Indians (enemies of the Shoshone) and taken to their home in Hidatsa-Mandan villages, near modern-day Bismarck, North Dakota. Around 1803, Sacagawea, along with other Shoshone women, was sold as a slave to the French-Canadian fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau. She soon became pregnant, giving birth to son Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau in February 1805.

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Meanwhile, after the U.S. government had completed the Louisiana Purchase, which added 828,000 square miles of “unexplored” territory to America, President Thomas Jefferson dispatched Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to chart the new land and scout a Northwest Passage to the Pacific coast. After more than a year of planning and initial travel, the expedition reached the Hidatsa-Mandan settlement. Here they met Sacagawea and Charbonneau, whose combined language skills proved invaluable–especially Sacagawea’s ability to speak to the Shoshone. Sacagawea, along with her newborn baby, was the only woman to accompany the 31 permanent members of the Lewis & Clark expedition to the Western edge of the nation and back. Sacagawea proved invaluable to the explorers not just for her language skills, but also for her naturalist’s knowledge, calm nature and ability to think quickly under pressure. When a squall nearly capsized a vessel they were traveling in, Sacagawea was the one who saved crucial papers, books, navigational instruments, medicines and other provisions, while also managing to keep herself and her baby safe. In appreciation, Lewis and Clark named a branch of the Missouri River for Sacagawea. Sacagawea died at the age of 25, not long after giving birth to a daughter. Clark became legal guardian to both her children.

5. Mary Donoho: Southwest Innkeeper

Settlement on the Santa Fe Trail. (Credit: Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images)

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While a woman named Susan Shelby Magoffin is often credited as the first white woman to travel the Santa Fe Trail, Mary Donoho made the trek 13 years prior. Leaving Independence, Kentucky in 1833, Mary and her husband, William Donoho, headed to Santa Fe, bringing along their 9-month-old daughter. Together, the Donohos created La Fonda, an inn for travelers at the end of the trail. It was here that Mary gave birth to two more of her five children—all of whom she eventually outlived. Because married women of the time couldn’t legally own property without significant negotiation, it’s unlikely that Mary Donoho owned La Fonda. But with William gone on frequent trading trips, it’s believed that she operated the business largely on her own. In the west, women were gaining rights more quickly than back east, says Jane Simonsen, associate professor of history and women’s and gender studies at Augustana College. Despite the restrictive laws, “Women were still property owners—or sought to be—especially in the west. Later in the 19th century, with the allotment of land to Native Americans, women are given pieces of property that they owned in their own right.”

6. Narcissa Whitman: Oregon Missionary Believed to be one of the first two white women to cross the Rocky Mountains on foot, Narcissa Whitman left behind accounts of her life as a missionary in the Oregon territory with her prolific letters home to her family in New York State. She, her husband and others were killed by Indians in a savage attack on the mission.

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Narcissa Whitman, who was killed during the Whitman Massacre. (Credit: Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images; MPI/Getty Images)

Soon after marrying Marcus Whitman, a physician and fellow missionary in 1836, they left for Oregon Country and settled in what would later become Walla Walla, Washington. She wrote of the travails of rugged travel, such as fighting the current while fording strong rivers, and getting all of her belongings soaked each time. And she described learning of Indian ways: “There is a manner of crossing which Husband has tried, but I have not… Take an Elk Skin and streach (sic) it over you spreading yourself out as much as possible. Then let the Indian women carefully put you on the water, & with a cord in the mouth they will swim & drag you over.” The Whitmans’ mission, officially begun in 1837, ministered to the Cayuse Indian tribe. Marcus held church services and practiced medicine while Narcissa taught school and managed their home. Already struggling with the unfamiliar customs of the Native Americans, she fell into a deep depression after her beloved toddler daughter drowned in the river behind her house. Her sorrow eased somewhat when she and her husband adopted a family of mixed-race children. On November 29, 1847, tensions between the missionaries and the local Cayuse turned deadly. Accounts say that after Narcissa refused to share milk with some tribespeople—and shut the door in their face—they struck Marcus with a tomahawk in the back of his head, and shot and whipped Narcissa. In total, nine white people were killed and two more died days later. Scores were held hostage as the conflict, known as the “Whitman Massacre,” escalated into the Cayuse War.

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7. Susan Shelby Magoffin: Chronicler of the Dusty Trail

Susan Shelby Magoffin, circa 1845. (Credit: Fotosearch/Getty Images)

In June 1846, after just eight months of marriage, 18-year-old Susan Shelby Magoffin and 45-yearold Irish immigrant Samuel Magoffin set off on a trading expedition along the Santa Fe Trail, a 19th-century transportation route connecting present-day Missouri to New Mexico. After Mary Donoho, Susan Magoffin was one of the first white women to travel that trail. Susan, born into a wealthy Kentucky family (her grandfather was Kentucky’s first governor), kept a detailed travel diary that vividly chronicled the hazards of traveling the rugged byways of the American frontier. She detailed the plant life and terrain of her journey, as well as her personal challenges. On her 19th birthday, July 31, 1846, she lost a pregnancy, possibly due to a carriage accident. She wrote in her diary: “In a few short months I should have been a happy mother and made the heart of a father glad.” Susan’s diary also discusses encounters with Native Americans and Mexicans who already occupied these lands. While initially disinclined toward the unfamiliar people she encountered, she writes about learning and adapting to their culture, including taking a “siesta” on a “buffalo skin with the carriage seats for pillows,” which she quite enjoyed. Throughout Susan’s diary, she recounts the burdens of womanhood on the trails of the American West. She contracts yellow fever, loses another child, is responsible for setting up and maintaining homes, and finds herself repeatedly pregnant and uncomfortable. Susan writes, “I do think a woman emberaso [pregnant] has a hard time of it, some sickness all the time, heartburn, headache, cramps, etc, after all this thing of marrying is not what it is cracked up to be.” By July 1847, 13 months after their journey began Susan contracted yellow fever and gave birth to a son who died shortly thereafter. That September, Susan’s diary abruptly stopped. The Magoffins eventually abandoned their trading life and settled back in Kirkwood, Missouri. Susan Shelby Magoffin died in October 1855 at age 28.

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From Witch Hunting to Witchcraft Allegations: Who Was Giles Corey? Ofek Hagag

Looking into the Salem witch trials will send you spiraling down a rabbit hole of unbelievable cases, testimonies, and medieval practices. Most of those trials dealt with women who were accused of witchcraft, but there were a few men who have also suffered the consequences of the deadly accusation. One of those men was Giles Corey. This is his story.

A different life Corey was born and baptized in England in 1611. He was raised Christian and stayed that way even when he moved to Salem, Massachusetts, and got married. He became a wealthy farmer, was married three times, and widowed twice. For the most part, he’s lived a quiet farmer’s life. In 1676, at 65 years old, however, things took a turn for the worst. Back then, it was legal for landowners to use corporal punishment on their workers. When Corey used force to punish one of his workers for picking apples from someonee else’s property, the worker didn’t survive. He was badly injured, only sent to a doctor after 10 days, and died shortly after his arrival. Today, Corey would have faced trial for manslaughter, but back then the court gave him no more than a slap on the w wrist rist for using accessive force. Karma, however, caught up with him in the end.

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At 80 years old, Corey and his third wife, Martha, were among the first people to attend the Salem Meetinghouse at the time of the pre-trial examinations of the Salem witch trials. Martha was the first to lose faith in the whole process and Corey soon followed her. Once they’ve stopped attending the proceedings, they were an easy target for witchcraft allegations. Martha was targeted first, and in March 1692, she was arrested for suspicion of practicing witchcraft. At first, Corey fell for the allegations and even testified against her, citing that he’s seen her silently praying by the fireplace. A month later, Corey had to face similar allegations that were made against him. During the preliminary proceedings, he refused to plead innocent or guilty. His trial was scheduled for September, and he spent his time waiting for it in prison. The trial Corey’s September trial was attended by an unnamed witness who claimed to have been tormented by Corey’s appearance while the latter was still in jail. Since Corey wouldn’t enter a plea, the court resorted to extracting one from him by means of torture (again — legal yet brutal). He was stripped of his clothes, laid on the ground, and had a wooden plank placed on top of him. Then, heavy rocks were placed on top of the wood, slowly crushing the man underneath. Instead of letting the rocks press a plea or a confession out of him, Corey is said to have handled the torture bravely.

The only words he reportedly let escape from his lips were “more weight”. After two days of enduring the crushing weight, Corey passed away. Legend has it that his final words were a curse to both the sheriff and the village of Salem and that the place is still cursed because of it.

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Devil’s Rope: The Story of Barbed Wire Barbed wire has a uniquely American history. Simon Winchester

Central to the concept of owning land is the right to tell others to get off it. One who acquires land gets to enjoy the right of possession, the right of control, the right of enjoyment, the right of disposition — and, most relevant here, the right of exclusion. A landowner may exclude others, may forbid others to stray onto his property, and has a right in law to demand that enforcement officers compel the person who does so — who trespasses — to leave. Warning signs themselves do not keep people off another’s land. The American invention that is most traditionally placed to deter intruders from trespassing — and one which has spread worldwide since its invention in the mid-19th century — is barbed wire, the devil’s rope. The idea behind the invention that has at least half a dozen claimants to being its originator is simple: “two wires, twisted together, with a short transverse wire, coiled or bent at its central portion about one of the wire strands of the twist, with its free ends projecting in opposite directions, the other wire strand serving to bind the spur-wire firmly to its place, and in position, with its spur ends perpendicular to the direction of the fence-wire, lateral movement, as well as vibration, being prevented.”

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The man who, with this elegantly incomprehensible description, lays the principal credible claim to the first patent for it in late 1874 was the son of English immigrants to the United States and named Joseph Glidden. His early demonstration of the usefulness of his creation had one unanticipated consequence: It helped in no small measure to bring about a signal change to the American diet, almost overnight. The first purpose of the wire was to keep animals in, not to keep people out.

The change derives from the simple fact that the first purpose of the wire was to keep animals in, not to keep people out. And to display how easy this was, Glidden built himself an enormous ranch on the near grassless plains of the west Texas panhandle and housed there the near unimaginable number of 20,000 head of cattle. He was able to corral these animals in such numbers and at such relatively low cost by ringing the entire ranch with his newly made wire — some 120 miles of it, at a cost of some $39,000, far less than a conventional wooden fence, and far less cumbersome. Having so many cattle pinioned in one place, conveniently close to a railway line that led ultimately to the stockyards in Chicago, played into the great “beef bonanza” that was just then gripping the nation. Beef became all of a sudden both cheap and available, with the result that almost overnight it would replace pork as the preferred national dinnertime dish. Corralling cattle in such numbers became, from the producers’ standpoint, economically most advantageous — leading to the invention of that current abomination of the Midwestern agricultural scene, the feedlot. Given the known cardiac health disbenefits of today’s massive beef consumption — leaving to the side the effects of so unnecessarily large a cattle population on climate change — one might fairly say that Glidden’s invention of barbed wire led, in time, to the currently high American incidence of heart attack. Once Glidden’s famous patent, number 157124, had been approved, and with the appeal of his well-publicized panhandle demonstration, so it seemed that every farmer west of the Mississippi was determined to string this newfangled barbed wire along his property lines. The railroads followed suit: Not wanting to have livestock, or more especially heavy and locomotive-disrupting bison, wandering dangerously onto their tracks, they also purchased thousands of tons of the wire to spool out alongside their rights-of-way.

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After that, for the barbed-wire industry, it was off to the races — with the result that the devil’s rope, which over the decades would come in many weights and strengths, with many different designs of barb, leading to today’s viciously displeasing sibling razor wire, became the world’s default barrier to unwanted movement. It kept prisoners in; it kept rabbits (in Australia) out. It helped keep North Koreans from venturing southward, or Pakistanis from attempting sojourns eastward. Coils of it kept Great War soldiers safe in their trenches. And all types of it are on display in museums and at conventions of the various state wire collectors’ associations — most notably in California, Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska — where it is seen as powerfully emblematic of American pioneering and expansion — also being a vivid and potentially painful reminder that to trespass is a most foolhardy endeavor. Once Glidden’s famous patent, number 157124, had been approved, and with the appeal of his well-publicized panhandle demonstration, so it seemed that every farmer west of the Mississippi was determined to string this newfangled barbed wire along his property lines. The railroads followed suit: Not wanting to have livestock, or more especially heavy and locomotive-disrupting bison, wandering dangerously onto their tracks, they also purchased thousands of tons of the wire to spool out alongside their rights-of-way. After that, for the barbed-wire industry, it was off to the races — with the result that the devil’s rope, which over the decades would come in many weights and strengths, with many different designs of barb, leading to today’s viciously displeasing sibling razor wire, became the world’s default barrier to unwanted movement. It kept prisoners in; it kept rabbits (in Australia) out. It helped keep North Koreans from venturing southward, or Pakistanis from attempting sojourns eastward. Coils of it kept Great War soldiers safe in their trenches. And all types of it are on display in museums and at conventions of the various state wire collectors’ associations — most notably in California, Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska — where it is seen as powerfully emblematic of American pioneering and expansion — also being a vivid and potentially painful reminder that to trespass is a most foolhardy endeavor.

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KEEP OUT! The rules to protect private property against trespass vary state by state In all American states, trespass is seen as a serious violation of personal space, and the trespasser’s failure to leave when asked or told to is an offense. It is a law most robustly enforced, and in some particular states — Florida, Louisiana, and Texas — most demonstrably so. It is from states like these that one hears lurid tales of landowners opening fire on uninvited sojourners, even though the law specifically forbids the shooting of a trespasser unless he is brandishing a weapon and threatening the life of the owner. Warning signs declaring “Trespassers Will Be Shot” are to be seen on all sides in states like these, and though the signs are permissible as a deterrent, they are not to be regarded as a warning of any impending fusillade. Where I live in Massachusetts, there is a great deal of seasonal hunting — for deer, mainly, though black bear on occasion, and with a variety of weapons, including crossbows, black-powder muskets, and rifles, each of which is assigned a specific week in every autumn. Signs at the town limits note that hunters must have, and must carry at all times, written permission from the landowner to pursue their bloodthirsty calling, and during the affected weeks nonhunters are advised to stay indoors and to suit up their larger pets in reflective orange coats, so that they are not mistaken for deer. In addition, though, the owner must festoon his land’s perimeter with orange signs, stapled to a tree every hundred feet or so, with a wordy insistence under the warning word “POSTED,” that there be “No Trespassing,” followed by a list of specific activities — hunting most obviously — that shall not be pursued. In Texas, studded as it is with ranches, especially in the western ranges, regulations for the landowner who is concerned with trespassers are strict, detailed, and much enforced. For instance, under Title 7, Chapter 30, of the state’s penal code, which defines criminal trespass as “a person entering or remaining on or in property … without effective consent,” there are special rules for how such a warning might be presented in unfenced properties. The caution can be indicated by signs or paint marks at specified heights and intervals so that they can be clearly seen. In Massachusetts, it is common for ancient boundary trees to have grown so much since signs were placed on them by former owners that they have folded themselves around the old metal plaques that once read NO TRESPASSING but which now are wizened, their lettering conflated to read NOG or NOSING — which a good lawyer would probably argue renders the boundary invalid, letting any poacher off scot-free. From the book Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World by Simon Winchester. Copyright ©2021 by Simon Winchester. Reprinted by permission of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. This article is featured in the May/June 2021 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.

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“Events on a Halloween Night during the Bicentennial of 1976 in Stone Mount” Dr. Martha Macdonald College English instructor (Ret) author, and performer. doctorbenn@gmail.com

On Halloween Night in Stone Mount, a celebration has taken place for years. After all, who does not like to wear costumes, trick or treat, dance, and hear ghost stories? Well, some people, for one reason or another, do not. That particular night, the moon was pale, and a wind stirred in the trees, a few maples pattering to the ground, portending rain. I wasn’t sure, nor did I know that two rapes would occur while the crowd gathered on College Avenue to hear music and dance, the choir of Stone Mount Presbyterian singing, “We Plow the Fields and Scatter, the Good Seed on the Ground,” hoping to drown the chants of witches on the street and their invitation to partake of the stew with an “eye of newt” bubbling in a black cauldron Two rapes? One to an octogenarian, the other to a recent college graduate: both teachers, one retired, the other in her first year. What would we make of them? What would you make of them? Both in the small college town of Stone Mount in the hills of South Carolina, at twilight? Hannah Smith had gone to bed early that night, tired from an afternoon tea and a cold, and she’d left her bedroom window slightly raised to combat the sultry air. Drowsing, she did not hear the intruder, the wizened garbage collector, enter. But when he began removing her nightgown, she screamed. “I wouldn’t do that,” he whispered, stuffing her mouth with a dirty handkerchief. She protested, but he conquered. “Sleep well. “I remember when you didn’t give me no money for shoes at Christmas.” She stared at him, at his face that reminded of her of a cow in their manger set of long ago, as he crept through the window, closing it. The air grew stuffier and stuffier. Miss Smith twisted and twisted, finally falling onto the floor from her antique four-poster bed. She tried to scream, but could not.

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No one found her until late the next afternoon when a doctor’s wife wondered because the newspapers still lay on the sidewalk. Cathy fished out her key from her purse and unlocked the front door, found Miss Smith squirming on the floor. Cathy’s husband arrived and pulled out the dirty handkerchief, while, she quickly put a night gown on the victim. Together, they lifted the old woman to the bed. Lloyd took her vitals. “High blood pressure, and high fever. She needs to go to the hospital in Rutherford.” “No, please, let me just rest,” Miss Smith begged. “I remember my mother died when they took her to the hospital.” Against his better judgment, Lloyd agreed. “Lloyd, she’s had lung cancer,” Kathy reminded him. He nodded. They waited, watching Hannah breathing. Within the hour she breathed her last. Cathy felt anger rising, but resisted saying anything. Lloyd called 911 and waited for the ambulance to arrive, wondering if other neighbors had figured out what happened. Cathy would be telling them. He also wondered if the town had learned about the rape on the other end of College Avenue, not far from the Presbyterian Church. Tolly Brown was the victim. When her husband, Jamie, a prominent young attorney in town, had come home during the dancing the evening before, he’d found the window open. Tolly was heaving. Looking at blood all of the sheets, Jamie vomited. “Who would do this?” He called Tolly’s gynecologist/obstetrician. He agreed to meet at the hospital. “Call 911,” he had ordered. Tolly resisted. “My baby’s dead,” she sobbed. That brute raped me. I want to die.” She remembered his laugh, bovine, dull eyes. The medics arrived and took over. Fortunately, there were no sirens. Tolly cried hysterically as she was strapped to the gurney and lifted into the back of the ambulance. Jamie rode with her. “Who did this?” That vile man, the garbage collector, Fergus Whittaker, because our garden club decided not to give his family money last Christmas. I was the one who told him. He never forgot, the evil man.” “I never liked him, the wizard. We had trouble with him at the bank.” The medics got Tolly into a bed and began preparing her for surgery: hooking her up to IV’s, giving her blood, despite Jamie’s questions. The nurses wheeled her to the operating room where surgical techs gave her what he asked for. But Tolly died on the table. “She’d lost so much blood, Jamie, and I am very sorry.” Jamie called the chief of police and the sheriff who arrived. “I want that man dead,” Jamie said, this time quietly, kissing Tolly good-bye. “We’ll find him. We’ll put out alerts.” “I am so sorry, Mr. Brown,” one of the officers said, adding that he’d called the Coroner.

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Interpretive planning and self-guiding media for interpretive trails. John Veverka & Associates – jvainterp@aol.com

We’ve been working to update our interpretation programs, services and media Market Place as a place for exhibit planners and designers, media developers and other interpretive related agencies and organizations to advertise their services. We are happy to offer non-profit organizations reduced advertising for their memberships or fund-raising as well. We reach thousands of agencies and organizations in 60 countries! Our advertising for 2020: Our new advertising ratesrates for 2021-2022 - Full page advertisement - $200.00 - ½ page advertisement - $100.00 ¼ page advertisement - $50.00 For advertising details visit our InterpNEWS Advertising Website: http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpnews_advertising_details.html For special discounts for multiple ad placements for 2020, send me an e-mail and we can work out a deal for you. jvainterp@aol.com

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Do you need a “real” interpretive writer for a project, or would you like to learn how to do interpretive writing yourself? Besides offering interpretive writing services I teach interpretive writing courses: http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_writing_course.html Questions? John Veverka – jvainterp@aol.com What makes the interpretive writing for museum exhibits, outdoor interpretive panels, self-guiding trail or tour guides or web site scripting, interpretive vs. just informational? Here are some clues: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Interpretive writing follows Tilden’s Interpretive Principles (provokes, relates and reveals). Is based on supporting an interpretive theme. Is based on interpretive objectives (learn, feel, do) the writing should accomplish. Uses tangibles and intangibles in creating relatable memories for the visitors. Paints pictures with words via active language supporting graphics or artifacts. 50-100 words average for panels and museum labels (want to know why?) Tells or reveals the “rest of the story” sleeping in objects, landscapes or artifacts.

If you’d like to know more I’d be happy to send you my course handout on “Real Interpretive Writing”.

The harpoon of death at a snail's pace and the cigarette snail. Did you know that these beautifully patterned Cone Shells are capable killing machines - killing a human in less than 30 minutes – with a “poke”!

Instead of teeth these snails use a venomous harpoon for hunting food which is a hollow, barbed and very deadly tool much like a doctor’s hypodermic needle – but this needle injects death! Cone shells feed on sea worms, fish and even other Cone shells. Because they are slow moving they use their harpoons to capture a faster moving prey. The harpoons have to be strong enough to penetrate the scales of fish, but they can also penetrate the gloves a human might be wearing searching the water for other "edibles". Handling the live snail can have tragic consequences and be deadly to humans. The Geographic Cone shell is so poisonous that it has been called the cigarette snail in the belief that the victim has only enough time left to smoke a cigarette before death. Now you know the rest of the story.

But the venom of the Magician Cone shell seems to be a non-addictive pain reliever one thousand times

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The Heritage Interpretation Training Center The Heritage Interpretation Training Center offers 44 college level courses in heritage interpretation, from introductory courses for new interpretive staff, docents and volunteers, to advanced courses for seasoned interpretive professionals. Courses can be offered/presented on site at your facility or location, or through our e-LIVE on-line self-paced interpretive courses. Some of our on-line courses are listed below. You can start the course at any time and complete the course at your own pace: Introduction to Heritage Interpretation Course. 14 Units - 2 CEU credits. $150.00 http://www.heritageinterp.com/introduction_to_heritage_interpretation_cou rse.html Planning/Designing Interpretive Panels e-LIVE Course - 10 Units awarding 1.5 CEU Credits $125.00 http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_panels_course.html Planning Interpretive Trails e-LIVE Course - 13 Units - 2.5 CEU Credits $200.00 http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_trails_course.html Interpretive Writing e-LIVE Course - 8 Units and 2 CEU Credits $200.00 http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_writing_course.html Training for Interpretive Trainers e-LIVE Course - 11 Units and 2 CEU Credits. $200.00 http://www.heritageinterp.com/training_for_interp_trainers.html The Interpretive Exhibit Planners Tool Box e-LIVE course - 11 Units and 2 CEU Credits. $200.00 http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_exhibits_course.html Interpretive Master Planning - e-LIVE. 13 Units, 3 CEU Credits. $275.00 http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_master_planning_course.html A supervisors guide to Critiquing and Coaching Your Interpretive Staff, Eleven Units, 1.6 CEU Credits. $175.00 http://www.heritageinterp.com/critiquing_and_coaching_interpretive_staff.h tml

The Heritage Interpretation Training Center/John Veverka & Associates. jvainterp@aol.com – www.twitter.com/jvainterp - Skype: jvainterp Our course catalog: http://www.heritageinterp.com/interpretive_training_center_course_catalogue_.html

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InterpNEWS - Sep-Oct 2021 Issue

Articles inside

From Witch Hunting to Witchcraft Allegations: Who Was Giles Corey? Ofek Hagag

“Events on a Halloween Night during the Bicentennial of 1976 in Stone Mount” M. Macdonald

7 of the Gutsiest Women on the American Frontier. Brynn Holland

Hanging coffins: China's mysterious sky graveyards. Katie Hunt

7 Ancient Sites Some People Think Were Built by Aliens. Nadia Drake

Cahokia Mounds: The Largest Ancient City in North America. Kimberly Lin

History of Zombies from Ancient Times to Pop Culture. Kimberly Lin

9 Halloween Tales & Traditions. History.Com Editors

History of Witches. History.Com Editors

A Brief History of Creepy Clowns. Becky Little

The Twenty Mule Team and Borax - a story of the old west. J. Veverka

Victorian Mourning Interpretation For Historic Homes. Amanda Sedlak-Hevener

Monarch Butterfly Migration and Overwintering. USA Forest Service

5 Legendary Wild West Outlaws. Lesley Kennedy

The Trail of Tears. The History Channel Editors

Navajo Code Talkers. Jennifer Rosenberg

Interpreting Halloween. The History Channel Staff

Why Leaves Change Color in the Fall. USDA Forest Service

Interpreting the Day of the Dead - 3000 years of cultural heritage. The Arizona Republic

Boot Hill Cemetery Tombstone, Arizona. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia