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unforgettable Heyward-Washington House Fort Moultrie HOSPITALITY Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon In Charleston history and hospitality are our cultural Middleton Place heritage. They’re as much a part of who we are as the American Revolution and our revered restaurants. It’s time to immerse yourself in our rich history, breathe in the salt air, and discover a place where you are always welcome. HEYWARD - WASHINGTON HOUSE Built in 1772, this Georgian-style double house was the town home of Thomas Heyward, Jr., one of the four South Carolina signers of the Declaration of Independence. Heyward, a patriot artillery officer, was captured when the British took Charleston in 1780. FORT MOULTRIE The original palmetto log fort was still incomplete when Commodore Sir Peter Parker and nine British warships attacked it on June 28, 1776. After an intense nine-hour battle the British were repelled. Charlestown was saved from occupation, and the fort was named in honor of its commander, Colonel William Moultrie. THE OLD EXCHANGE AND PROVOST DUNGEON Completed in 1771, it has witnessed some of the most important events in South Carolina history. During the American Revolution, British forces converted the bottom floor of the Exchange into a military prison known as the Provost, or dungeon. In 1791 city leaders entertained President George Washington here during his Southern Tour. MIDDLETON PLACE The ancestral home of Arthur Middleton, delegate to the Continental Congress of 1776 and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. As a defender of the city during the Siege of Charleston he was arrested by the British after the city fell in 1780. EXPLORECHARLESTON.COM

Encounter history at every turn. EXPLORECHARLESTON.COM

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Vol. 51 | No. 09 January • February 2021 features ARTISAN AMERICA 32 The Tlingit artist Nathan Jackson visits a totem pole, Kaats and His 68 Bear Wife, he carved with apprentices in the 1980s. The Lost History Making the Nation of Yellowstone Workers in today’s craft The discovery of renaissance embrace ancient artifacts, from high-touch, but they obsidian projectile also benefit from high- points to a prehistoric tech, which is connect- hearth and tepee base, ing them to consum- is upending a popular ers—and America’s myth about when hu- founding spirit mans first inhabited the by Glenn Adamson “Land of Geysers” by Richard Grant 86 Inspiring Awe 56 in Alaska First in the House Combining ancient and modern motifs, native At the start of a new artisans in coastal com- session of Congress, munities are reviving consider the brilliant, traditions, speaking little known Joseph out—and slyly joking Rainey of South Caro- Photographs by lina: 150 years ago he Fernando Decillis became the first African Text by Kimberly R. American to serve as a Fulton Orozco U.S. representative by Bobby J. Donaldson 98 prologue 04 Discussion On the Origin 08 Institutional Knowledge of Culture 11 American Icon: Peanut butter • Groundbreaking agriculture by Lonnie G. Bunch III In Japan, scientists 120 Ask Smithsonian have been studying 14 Art: David Driskell retrospective snow monkeys at the hot 16 Music: Trombone legend Kid Ory You’ve got questions. springs in Yamanouchi. We’ve got experts What they have learned • Overlooked jazz women about evolution and 22 Language : The first alphabet Cover: Yellowstone Lake is a shore culture is astonishing 26 Prehistory: Hopewell mounds bet if you’re an archaeologist search- By Ben Crair 28 National Treasure: The Black Panther’s ing for evidence of ancient humans. FERNANDO DECILLIS Photograph by Andrew Geiger costume 30 Crossword: Our monthly puzzle January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  3

discussion gered languages and cultures, I thoroughly appreci- ated Alia Wong’s article (“Beyond Aloha”) on the re- vitalization of the Hawaiian language. I lived in Ha- waii in the 1970s when the language was rarely heard or spoken. The renaissance of Hawaiian is wonder- ful; the language has a vibrant literary heritage. It’s good to see the number of speakers increasing. I also greatly appreciate Smithsonian’s use of the proper diacritics (‘okina “glottal stop” and kahakō “macron marking long vowels”). Hana maika‘i! — Neil H. Olsen | Holladay, Utah “Nailed all the elements A language lost is no different from the loss of a spe- we revere about da Vinci’s cies. Perhaps the lack of respect for other cultures in the economically developed world is partially re- Mona Lisa.” sponsible for diminishing linguistic diversity. What a noble effort the Harmans are engaged in maintain- ing a fuller and richer vision of reality. — Mark Meadows | Green Valley, Arizona Dog Days Smithsonian Underwater Ecosystem thanks you for I enjoyed the article about canine cognition (“Evo- your subscrip- “Prairies of the Sea” is encouraging since seagrasses lution of a Friendship”). When I got to the sentence can be sown. That is good news for the planet. Hu- about half of all the spending on pets being embez- tion, which mans are terrible stewards. We pollute and destroy, zled and gambled away by cats, I roared with laugh- supports the and greed is the major reason. ter. My cat, sitting next to me, chuckled and demand- Smithsonian ed to know why I was reading instead of making her Institution’s — Cynthia Evans | Lewisport, Kentucky dinner. Perhaps cats really are smarter than dogs. unique mission to explore the Side by Side — Don Bonney | Discovery Bay, California natural world, celebrate the Finnish photographer Niko Luoma (“Look Again”) I was charmed by the December cover photo by arts and con- may have been inspired by Picasso’s Le Rêve, but he Shaina Fishman of Oakley, the Australian shepherd nect Americans seems to have been more interested in his process of puppy. Oakley has a slight turn of the head, a coy to their history. camera and filters than in the content of Picasso’s im- sideways glance and just a hint of a smile: nailed all age. Luoma presents a light triangle that arrests the the elements we revere about da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. eye midline. Picasso begins with emotion and space. Light moves throughout the composition, as a color — George Hiner | Nevada City, California creating planes. Nothing stale in Picasso’s image. — Joyce Harris Mayer | Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania Every dog has its own personality and motivation. The Hendrix Vibe Certainly testing many dogs is required, but I will never believe that any definite conclusions can be Aside from his unrivaled musicianship, remarkable reached about the human-dog bond because dogs songwriting, and daring showmanship and attire, really are too doggone complex. one of Jimi Hendrix’s great gifts (“An Electric Pres- ence”) was his sense of humor. At Monterey Pop, he — Larry Wolf | Gettysburg, Pennsylvania plays an outrageous, spur-of-the-moment snippet of the chorus to Sinatra’s recent “Strangers in the Hawaiian Revival Night”—one-handed, no less!—during “Wild Thing,” which closed the set. It’s a wry moment, Hendrix’s As a linguist specializing in documenting endan- 4  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021

TWITTER: @SmithsonianMag INSTAGRAM: @smithsonianmagazine FACEBOOK: smithsonianmagazine way of saying to the crowd that by the end of the eve- The Executive Mansion ning we’ll no longer be strangers in the night, and our generation’s music will take a great leap forward be- “Welcome to the White House” (November 2020) did yond our parents’ button-down music tastes. an awesome job of showing just how much work goes on behind the scenes. Laura Bush’s story not only — Fred Rudofsky | Facebook describes the complicated workings of the White House, but is a real tribute to people whose faces we Good Jeans never see. It was particularly interesting to learn of those who have given their efforts for so many years. I was truly amazed at the wearable condition of the 1880 jeans (“Every Wear”). Handwash them today — Suzanne R. Bevan | Fredericksburg, Virginia and they’d be ready for hard work tomorrow. No rips and tears like jeans favored by today’s fashionistas. In these difficult times, your story was an inspira- tional reminder that the White House is the people’s — David Werdegar | Naperville, Illinois house and is run by dedicated professionals. Classic Cards — Clare Murphy | Kensington, Maryland I’ve long been fascinated by Christmas card art (“From Bambi to Bethlehem”) and the artists who design it. It’s nice to know some of Mr. Wong’s beau- tiful Christmas cards have been reissued by his daughter and can be purchased on Etsy. — Kathy Young | Little Rock, Arkansas Corrections: “It Is Here. And It Is Hungry” (October 2020) GREATNESS RESTORED mentioned that the invasive Khapra beetle had been found in warm weather climates from Arizona and New I FOUND MYSELF SPELLB OUND while reading “The Redemp- Mexico to Oklahoma and Texas. In fact, while the Khapra tion of Rosa Bonheur” (November 2020). How I wish I had known beetle has been intercepted at U.S. ports of entry, it has about her when I was teaching the art history part of the human- not been detected in the United States recently. ities course offered in the high school where I taught for 35 years. I was always trying to find women who could be used as examples The map accompanying “The Deadly Shortage of Venom for my female students to show them that it isn’t just HISstory, Antidote” (November 2020) wrongly indicated that the but also HERstory. I applaud the meticulous efforts of Katherine yellow-bellied sea snake is found in Eswatini, a land- Brault to make Ms. Bonheur’s chateau into a museum. Thank locked country. The snake is found off the coast of neigh- you so much for enlightening me on this wonderful artist and the boring Mozambique and South Africa. brave lady who is trying to keep her legacy alive. In “An Electric Presence” (December 2020) we noted that — Linda Fuller-Cross | Beattyville, Kentucky Jimi Hendrix’s vest resides at the National Museum of American History. In fact, it is part of the collection at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. TO OUR VALUED MEMBERS: Any renewal or billing notice you receive directly from Smithsonian about your membership will be mailed from Washington, D.C., Palm Coast, FL, or Boone, IA. We never call cus- tomers about bills. We do call about renewing mem- berships, but we do not ask for credit card information over the phone. If you have any question or concern about an offer you receive by mail or phone, please do not hesitate to contact us first. Email: Smithsonian@ emailcustomerservice.com, phone: 800-766-2149, mail: Smithsonian Magazine, P.O. Box 37936, Boone, IA 50037-0936 C O N TAC T Send letters to [email protected] or to Letters, Smithsonian, MRC 513, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, D.C. 20013. US Include a telephone number and address. Letters may be edited for clarity or space. Because of the high volume of mail we receive, we cannot respond to all letters. Send queries about the Smithsonian Institution to [email protected] or to OVS, Public Inquiry Mail Service, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, D.C. 20013. January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  5

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institutional knowledge LONNIE G. BUNCH III, SECRETARY In Museums, We Trust The past 12 months, especially, have been a lesson SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY; ILLUSTRATION SOURCE: MICHAEL BARNES / SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ARCHIVES in how the Smithsonian can serve our public. We can AFTER A YEAR FRAUGHT WITH grow our digital capabilities to reach new audienc- CHALLENGES, WE MUST BUILD ON OUR es. We can work closely with teachers, students and STRENGTHS FOR A COMMON PURPOSE families to provide invaluable educational support. We can marshal our expertise and our collections to A S MUCH AS THE NEW YEAR is a time facilitate productive conversations around the most for new hopes and new resolutions, divisive issues. it also invites us to reflect. With the Smithsonian planning for the busy In moments of crisis, people turn to institutions year ahead, I find myself looking they trust. This past year demonstrated how import- back over my years at this institution, ant it is to protect our institutions, and in turn, how at the moments that have shaped my professional those institutions must work to help their commu- and personal life. Two decades have passed since my nities. The challenges of a pandemic spurred the team raced to finish the exhibition Smithsonian to collaborate more closely than ever “The American Presidency,” open- with museum colleagues across the globe, with ing just ahead of the inauguration of school districts across the country, and with leaders President George W. Bush. This Feb- in local communities. Time and time again, I have ruary marks the fourth Black Histo- been humbled by the faith they put in us. ry Month since the opening of the National Museum of African Ameri- Among all the resources that we have at our dispos- can History and Culture, for which I al—historic collections, groundbreaking research, proudly served as founding director. deep scholarly expertise—perhaps our most pre- And the year I’ve spent as Smith- cious is public trust. For many years, museums have sonian Secretary has been one of ranked among the nation’s most trusted institutions. striving and sprinting to respond to As confidence in other public-facing institutions fal- seismic shifts that have shaken the ters, museums remain safe havens. The public counts foundations of this country. Each of on us to safeguard culture, heritage and knowledge. these experiences, fraught with chal- lenges, has shown me how much we I am inspired by staff members across the Institu- can accomplish when we come to- tion who are helping our audiences endure hardship gether for a common purpose. and pursue hope. Together with you, our readers, and the entire Smithsonian community, I look for- ward to a creative and fulfilling new year. The carriage that Ulysses S. Grant rode in to his second inauguration is one of 900 items in the exhibition “The American Presidency.” 8  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021 Portrait illustration by Jurell Cayetano

EXECUTIVE EDITOR CREATIVE DIRECTOR EXECUTIVE EDITOR Terence Monmaney Maria G. Keehan Debra Rosenberg SENIOR EDITORS Kathleen M. Burke, Arik Gabbai, CORRESPONDENTS Amy Crawford, Franz Lidz, Tony Perrottet, Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, Ted Scheinman Matthew Shaer, Paul Theroux, Clive Thompson, Abigail Tucker CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR Quentin A. Nardi CONTRIBUTORS Ben Crair, Ian Frazier, Richard Grant, COPY CHIEF Karen Larkins Joshua Hammer, Robin Henig, Joanna Marchant, Liza Mundy, DIGITAL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brian Wolly Susan Orlean, Shaun Raviv, William T. Vollmann COPY EDITOR Jeanne Maglaty EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Natalie Hamilton, Michelle Strange ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Erik K. 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BOX 420300, PALM COAST, FL 32142-0300, SMITHSONIAN.COM OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES: (386) 246-0470 MAIN ADVERTISING OFFICES: 420 LEXINGTON AVENUE, SUITE 2335, NEW YORK, NY 10170, (212) 916-1300 SECRETARY Lonnie G. Bunch III MEMBERS NATIONAL BOARD BOARD OF REGENTS The Vice President of the Dr. Vijay Anand, Mr. Kenneth J. Bacon, Mrs. Lisa Bennett, Mr. Harold M. United States (Ex Officio) Brierley, Mr. John F. Brock, III, Mr. Roger W. Crandall, Mr. Edgar M. Cullman, CHANCELLOR The Chief Justice Jr., Ms. Donelle Dadigan, Mrs. Wendy W. Dayton, Mr. Vincent J. Di Bona, of the United States Hon. John Boozman Mr. Trevor Fetter, Mrs. Julie A. Flynn, Ms. Brenda J. Gaines, Mr. William J. CHAIR Mr. Steve Case Hon. Patrick J. Leahy Galloway, Mr. Rick Goings, Mr. Edward R. Hintz, Mrs. Nancy Hogan, VICE CHAIR Dr. Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey Hon. David Perdue LL COOL J, Mr. David G. Johnson, Mr. David W. Kemper, Mr. Todd Krasnow, Hon. Doris Matsui Mr. Allan R. Landon, Mr. Dale LeFebvre, Ms. Cheryl Winter Lewy, Mr. David Mr. John Fahey M. Love, Mr. Robert D. MacDonald, Mr. Kevin M. McGovern, Mrs. Jo Michalski, Mr. Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. Mr. Charles W. Moorman, Ms. Sarah E. Nash, Ms. Nancy Newkirk*, Ms. Emilie Mr. Michael Govan M. Ogden, Ms. Anne MacMillan Pedrero, Mrs. Sarah Perot, Mr. G. Jeffrey Mr. Michael M. Lynton Records, Jr., Mr. Kenneth C. Ricci, Mr. John C. Ryan, Mr. Philip K. Ryan, Ms. Denise M. O’Leary Ms. Debbie Shon, Ms. Diana Strandberg, Ms. Naoma Tate, Mr. John K. Tsui, Mr. Franklin D. Raines Ms. Donna F. Zarcone Hon. Lucille Roybal-Allard Mr. David M. Rubenstein HONORARY MEMBERS Mr. Hon. John Shimkus Mr. Williams S. Anderson, Hon. Max N. Berry, Mr. L. Hardwick Caldwell III, SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL BOARD Dr. G. Wayne Clough, Mr. Frank A. Daniels, Jr., Ms. Sakurako D. Fisher, Mrs. Patricia Frost, Mrs. Jean B. Mahoney, Mr. Paul Neely, Justice Sandra Day Mr. Dennis J. Keller, Chair O’Connor, Mr. Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Mr. Lloyd G. Schermer, Dr. David J. Ms. Michele J. Hooper, Vice Chair Skorton, Hon. Frank A. Weil, Mrs. Gay F. Wray (*Ex-Officio) Dr. Jorge G. Puente, Vice Chair Ms. Fredericka Stevenson, Vice Chair January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN.COM  9

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THE PAST IS prologue By Photograph by AMERICAN ICON Kate Wheeling Dan Saelinger Veteran food critic Florence Fabricant has called peanut butter “the pâté of childhood.” Going Nuts The bizarre sanitarium staple that would become a spreadable obsession January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  11

prologue AMERICAN ICON N ORTH AMERICANS WEREN’T THE FIRST to grind peanuts—the Inca beat us to it by a few thousand years—but peanut butter reappeared in the mod- ern world because of an American, the doctor, nu- tritionist and cereal pioneer John Harvey Kellogg, who filed a patent for a proto-peanut butter in 1895. “It’s the Great Food Company, selling nut butter and the mills to Kellogg’s “food compound” involved boiling nuts Depression make it, seeding countless other peanut butter busi- and grinding them into an easily digestible paste for nesses. As manufacturing scaled up, prices came patients at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a spa for all that makes the down. A 1908 ad for the Delaware-based Loeber’s kinds of ailments. The original patent didn’t specify PB&J the core of peanut butter—since discontinued—claimed that what type of nut to use, and Kellogg experimented childhood food,” just 10 cents’ worth of peanuts contained six times with almonds as well as peanuts, which had the vir- the energy of a porterhouse steak. Technological in- food historian Andrew F. Smith has said. tue of being cheaper. While modern peanut butter novations would continue to transform the product enthusiasts would likely find Kellogg’s compound into a staple, something Yanks couldn’t do without bland, Kellogg called it “the most delicious nut but- and many a foreigner considered appalling. ter you ever tasted in your life.” By World War I, U.S. consumers—whether con- A Seventh-Day Adventist, Kellogg endorsed a vinced by Kellogg’s nutty nutrition advice or not— plant-based diet and promoted peanut butter as a turned to peanuts as a result of meat rationing. healthy alternative to meat, which he Government pamphlets promoted saw as a digestive irritant and, worse, a “meatless Mondays,” with peanuts high sinful sexual stimulant. His efforts and THE ACTIVE BRAINS OF on the menu. Americans “soon may be his elite clientele, which included Ame- AMERICA’S INVENTORS eating peanut bread, spread with pea- lia Earhart, Sojourner Truth and Henry nut butter, and using peanut oil for our Ford, helped establish peanut butter as HAVE FOUND NEW salad,” the Daily Missourian reported in a delicacy. As early as 1896, Good House- ECONOMIC USES FOR 1917, citing “the exigencies of war.” keeping encouraged women to make THE PEANUT. The nation’s food scientists are noth- their own with a meat grinder, and sug- ing if not ingenious, and peanut butter gested pairing the spread with bread. posed a slippery problem that cried out “The active brains of American inven- for a solution. Manufacturers sold tubs BUYENLARGE / GETTY IMAGES tors have found new economic uses for the peanut,” of peanut butter to local grocers, and advised them the Chicago Tribune rhapsodized in July 1897. to stir frequently with a wooden paddle, according Before the end of the century, Joseph Lambert, to Andrew Smith, a food historian. Without regular an employee at Kellogg’s sanitarium who may have effort, the oil would separate out and spoil. Then, been the first person to make the doctor’s peanut in 1921, a Californian named Joseph Rosefield filed butter, had invented machinery to roast and grind a patent for applying a chemical process called par- peanuts on a larger scale. He launched the Lambert tial hydrogenation to peanut butter, a method by 12  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021

which the main naturally occurring oil in peanut but- Sustainable ter, which is liquid at room temperature, is converted into an oil that’s solid or semisolid at room temperature GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER’S RESEARCH and thus remains blended; the practice had been used WAS ABOUT MORE THAN PEANUTS to make substitutes for butter and lard, like Crisco, but By Emily Moon Rosefield was the first to apply it to peanut butter. This more stable spread could be shipped across the country, N O AMERICAN IS MORE closely associated stocked in warehouses and left on shelves, clearing the with peanuts than George Washington Carver, way for the national brands we all know today. The only who developed hundreds of uses for them, from invention that did more than hydrogenation to cement Worcestershire sauce to shaving cream to paper. But peanut butter in the hearts (and mouths) of America’s youth was sliced bread—introduced by a St. Louis baker our insatiable curiosity for peanuts, scholars say, has in the late 1920s—which made it easy for kids to con- struct their own PB&Js. (In this century, the average obscured Carver’s greatest agricultural achievement: American kid eats some 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before graduating from high school.) helping black farmers prosper, free of the tyranny of cotton. Rosefield went on to found Skippy, which debuted Born enslaved in Missouri around 1864 and trained in Iowa crunchy peanut butter and wide-mouth jars in the 1930s. In World War II, tins of (hydrogenated) Skippy as a botanist, Carver took over the agriculture department at were shipped with service members overseas, while the return of meat rationing at home again led civilians to the Tuskegee Institute, in Alabama, in 1896. His hope was to peanut butter. Even today, when American expats are looking for a peanut butter fix, they often seek out mili- aid black farmers, most of whom were cotton sharecroppers tary bases: They’re guaranteed to stock it. trapped in perpetual debt to white plantation owners. “I But while peanut butter’s popularity abroad is grow- ing—in 2020, peanut butter sales in the United King- came here solely for the benefit of my people,” he wrote to dom overtook sales of the Brits’ beloved jam—enjoying the spread is still largely an American quirk. “People colleagues on his arrival. say to me all the time, ‘When did you know that you had fully become an American?’ ” Ana Navarro, a Nic- He found that cotton had stripped the region’s soil of its araguan-born political commentator, told NPR in 2017. “And I say, ‘The day I realized I loved peanut butter.’ ” nutrients, and yet landowners were prohibiting black farmers Though the United States lags behind China and In- from planting food crops. So Carver began experimenting with dia in peanut harvest, Americans still eat far more of the spread than the people in any other country: It’s a gooey plants like peanuts and sweet potatoes, which could replenish taste of nostalgia, for childhood and for American his- tory. “What’s more sacred than peanut butter?” Iowa the nitrogen that cotton leached and, grown discreetly, Senator Tom Harkin asked in 2009, after a salmonella outbreak was traced back to tainted jars. By 2020, when could also help farmers feed their families. In classes and at Skippy and Jif released their latest peanut butter inno- vation—squeezable tubes—nearly 90 percent of Ameri- conferences and county fairs, Carver showed often packed can households reported consuming peanut butter. crowds how to raise these crops. The ubiquity of this aromatic spread has even fig- ured in the nation’s response to Covid-19. As evidence Since his death in 1943, many of the practices Carver emerged last spring that many Covid patients were los- ing their sense of smell and taste, Yale University’s Dana advocated—organic fertilizer, reusing food waste, crop Small, a psychologist and neuroscientist, devised a smell test to identify asymptomatic carriers. In a small, rotation—have become crucial to the sustainable agriculture three-month study of health care workers in New Hav- en, everyone who reported a severe loss of smell using movement. Mark Hersey, a historian at Mississippi State the peanut butter test later tested positive. “What food do most people in the U.S. have in their cupboards that University, says Carver’s most prescient innovation was a provides a strong, familiar odor?” Small asks. “That’s what led us to peanut butter.” truly holistic approach to farming. “Well before there was an environmental justice movement, black environmental thinkers connected land exploitation and racial exploitation,” says Hersey. A true accounting of Ameri- can conservation, he says, would put Carver at the forefront. HULTON ARCHIVE / GET T Y IMAGES; ISTOCK (2) Carver in his laboratory, circa 1935.

prologue By Amy Crawford ART MASTER PIECES Spirituality, culture and memory come together in collages by a curator and artist A S A LEADING SCHOLAR and curator of Woman With retrospective, at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. ART BRIDGES, BENTONVILLE, ARK ANSAS, AB.2018.3 ©ESTATE OF DAVID C. DRISKELL. COURTESY DC MOORE GALLERY, NEW YORK African American art, David Driskell, who Flowers, oil Driskell’s seven-decade career stretched from the died of Covid-19 last April at 88, worked to and collage on dawn of the civil rights movement to our current era carve a place in the mainstream for gener- canvas, 1972. A of political polarization, and social justice themes, celebration of perhaps inevitably, run through his canvases. Still, ations of artists who, he said, “wanted to black beauty, says Julie McGee, the show’s guest curator, Driskell the work alludes understood the importance of seeking the beautiful prove to a skeptical world that they were as to both African and divine despite chaos and strife. As he once put sculpture and it, “art is a priestly calling . . . that shows us life can good as anybody.” As an artist himself, Driskell cre- African American be so beautiful.” quiltmaking. ated exuberant paintings and richly detailed collag- es steeped in black art history. In February, some 60 of his works will go on view in his first posthumous 14  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021

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prologue By Jim Beaugez MUSIC Coda for the Kid His pioneering trombone work put New Orleans jazz on the map, but only now is Kid Ory getting the encore he deserves I F YOU WERE SAUNTERING through Ory in November MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES / GETTY IMAGES the packed-dirt streets of back-of- 1945, during his town New Orleans in the 1910s, any- comeback after working as a where between Storyville and Gert janitor. Town, chances are you would have by stretching his trombone slide over the tailgate and blasting competing groups with his signature encountered several brass bands blow- goodbye tune, “Do What Ory Say,” as the crowd cheered. “Kid Ory’s band would cut all of the bands ing a new flavor of music from wagons that pro- during his tailgate advertising,” Louis Armstrong marveled in a 1970 interview. moted upcoming performances. But none of them The origins of jazz have always been murky. blew like Kid Ory’s band. Ory wowed onlookers While the early 1900s bandleader and cornetist Buddy Bolden is often credited with pioneering 16  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021

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prologue MUSIC the “hot” improvisational brass music that became Ory and his Orleans and paid $67 for his first trombone—nearly jazz, Ory is largely remembered as a sideman for signature sextet $2,000 in today’s money. It was a shorter model with stars like Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. valves, like those on a trumpet, instead of the lon- His status as one of the most pivotal bandleaders blowing hot ger slide that would soon become synonymous with in jazz, who helped popularize the trombone glis- at the Beverly New Orleans jazz. sando—a central element of New Orleans jazz—has receded from the popular memory. Yet it was Ory Cavern in With the instrument in hand, he stopped by his who prepared the ground for the work of nearly all Los Angeles, sister’s house near Jackson Avenue, which hap- subsequent New Orleans jazz musicians, and who pened to be near a popular musicians’ hangout. Bud- arguably brought jazz into its modern form through circa 1948. dy Bolden walked by and heard Ory play. “I was run- his charismatic, innovative playing and his dogged, ning over the horn . . . and he stopped and rapped business-minded bandleading. Remembering Ory on the door,” Ory recalled in a 1957 interview. Bolden as a mere sideman, says John McCusker, author of a offered him a job on the spot. 2012 biography of Kid Ory, Creole Trombone, is “like talking about Duke Ellington as a pianist. Ory’s in- Though tempted, Ory couldn’t move to New Or- strument really was the band.” leans; he’d promised his parents before they died that he would stay in LaPlace to take care of his But jazz’s greatest glissandeur is now being re- younger sisters. Still, he and his bandmates—by membered more fully. For the first time, the public 1911 they were known simply as Kid Ory’s band— can now visit Woodland Plantation in LaPlace, Lou- began making regular trips to the Crescent City. isiana, the former 1,882-acre sugar cane operation They had befriended—and learned from—Bolden’s 29 miles up the Mississippi River from New Orleans group, whose loose, improvisational style was de- where Edward “Kid” Ory was born to Ozeme Ory and scribed as “hot,” as opposed to other brass bands Octavie Devezin on Christmas Day 1886. As it hap- that played to sheet music, including Bolden’s rival pened, Ory’s childhood home was also where the John Robichaux. largest uprising of enslaved people in U.S. history originated, the famous revolt of 1811. Ory saw how Bolden had adapted his style of play- Young Ory, who lived in the estate’s former slave ENJOY A VARIETY of Kid Ory’s playful, colorful quarters with his parents and siblings, had a deep album covers at Smithsonianmag.com/kidory interest in music, and before he picked up an instru- ment, he and his friends would sing in quartets. “We would stand on a bridge at night and hum different tunes with different harmonies,” Ory recalled. “It was dark and no one could see us, but people could hear us singing and they’d bring us a few ginger cakes and some water. . . . It was good ear training.” Inspired by the brass bands that performed at settlements up and down the river, Ory and his HE IS AN ARTIST, THE GREATEST HOT TROMBONE OF ALL TIME. friends began playing on homemade cigar-box gui- LOUISIANA STATE MUSEUM COLLECTIONS tars, banjos, violins and a soapbox bass strung with fishing line and metal wire. On occasion, while at- tending a brass band concert, he would pick up an unused trombone while a group was on break and start working out its mysteries. After he made seri- ous money in 1905, likely from that year’s sugar cane harvest, Ory traveled to Werlein’s for Music in New 18  SMITHSONIAN.COM | January • February 2021

ing from Holy Roller churches, where The new muse- music’s durability and universal appeal,” David Sag- attendees danced, clapped and moved um at the 1811 er, a musician and jazz historian, said in 2005 when however the spirit directed them. But Kid Ory Historic the Library of Congress selected the song for the Na- to Ory, Bolden played too loud and tional Recording Registry, which recognizes exem- brash, while Robichaux was too for- House offers plars of the nation’s musical heritage. mal. “Bolden was very rough,” said exhibits about Ory. “You have to give him credit for the jazzman’s The song was among half a dozen Ory recordings starting the ball rolling. . . . But he re- life—and the 1811 on three 78 rpms released at once. The entire first ally wasn’t a musician. . . . He was a pressing of 5,000 records sold out and gave Ory a gifted player with effect but no tone.” uprising that new audience. Today, an original copy of “Ory’s Cre- So Ory went about creating music that began on the ole Trombone” fetches $1,000. The tune and its style balanced Bolden’s brashness with Ro- of instrumentation inspired groups across the coun- bichaux’s professionalism. “[Ory] real- plantation. try—and ushered Ory and his signature sound into ized that the way to get the good jobs the Hollywood party circuit while also furnishing and get the money—read: get the jobs gigs down the coast in San Diego and Tijuana. with the white folks—was to show up, look good, be on time, do all the stuff Following invitations from Armstrong, Morton that John Robichaux did to lock up all and Joseph “King” Oliver, in 1925 Ory moved to that white audience, but play the hot Chicago, where jazz had recently taken off. Ory re- stuff,” says McCusker. Ory would show corded sides with Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five other musicians in New Orleans how and gigged across Chicago for a couple of years, in- to make a living playing hot music. cluding at mob haunts like the Plantation, where he rubbed shoulders with Al Capone. But recording op- When Ory permanently moved portunities slowed in the late 1920s, and the trend to- his six-piece band to New Orleans, ward big-band swing arrangements didn’t favor the in 1910, he had a new weapon, which music Ory had spent the previous decade and a half became a defining part of his sound: playing; he returned to Los Angeles just before the a slide trombone. As you can hear on the 1922 hit stock market crash of 1929. Paying gigs were scarce “Ory’s Creole Trombone” and innumerable other during the Great Depression, and in 1933 one of the songs throughout his catalog, the slide enabled him most important American musicians of the early to play glissando and “smear” between notes, which 20th century put down his trombone and picked up gave his music the boozy sound still associated with a mop, working as a janitor for the Sante Fe Railway. New Orleans jazz. Ory was not the first to play a glis- sando on a trombone, but he was surely one of the In the 1940s, jazz fans, turned off by the less most dazzling—and influential. danceable bebop style gaining popularity, brought In 1913, a teenage Armstrong began showing up at New Orleans jazz back into vogue. Crucially, in 1942, Ory’s performances, much as Ory had followed Bold- Ory received $8,000 in back royalties for “Muskrat en’s shows eight years earlier, and earned a spot in 1811 / KID ORY HISTORIC HOUSE Ory’s band playing cornet in 1918. But the prohibition of alcohol in Louisiana in 1919, preceded by enforcement of the Wartime Prohibition Act in 1918 and the closing of the Storyville red-light district in 1917, changed the landscape for jazz musicians in New Orleans. Moving to Los Angeles, where the police seemed less determined to crack down on nightclubs, Ory made history. In 1922, he recorded “Ory’s Creole Trombone” with a new band he’d assembled of fel- low displaced New Orleanians. It was the first jazz re- cording made by black musicians from New Orleans, and it’s an ensemble piece from beginning to end, a burst of polyphony rather than a band supporting a soloist, with Ory’s glissando touches delivering the hook. The tune “offers a rare glimpse into the origins of New Orleans jazz and a remarkable insight to this January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  19

prologue New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which now MARTHA HOLMES / THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION / GET TY IMAGES; ALAMY; SMITHSONIAN NMAAHC; MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES / GET TY IMAGES; ST EVE SCHAPIRO / CORBIS VIA GET TY IMAGES attracts half a million people to the city each spring. MUSIC He died of pneumonia in 1973 at age 86 in Honolulu. Ramble”—a tune he’d written and recorded with More than a century after his birth, the world Ory Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five in 1926. (Ory’s grew up in isn’t hard to spot if you know where to friend and fellow jazzman Barney Bigard, who had look. A neighborhood of modest wood-frame and experience dealing with rights and royalties, helped mobile homes called Woodland Quarters sits on the him track down the publisher.) The windfall helped site of the former slave dwellings where Ory lived as a ease him back into the Los Angeles music scene. boy in Louisiana. Ory’s new sextet, based on his classic-era bands, Across U.S. Highway 61, green stalks of ripe sugar dazzled critics and fans, including Orson Welles, cane tower six feet high in fields that had once been who hired Ory to lead the band on his CBS radio part of the plantation. The derelict buildings around show, “The Orson Welles Almanac,” in 1944. Music the corner from Woodland on LaPlace’s Main Street writers rhapsodized about Ory’s comeback. “The are what’s left of the overseer’s house and the ware- most important event of 1945 in jazz—speaking of house for the plantation store, where Ory once or- public rather than recorded performance—is the ex- dered a banjo. And on the wall of a barn behind the tended run of Kid Ory’s Band in Hollywood,” Rudi house, a stark reminder of the world Ory escaped Blesh wrote in The Jazz Record in October 1945. “Ory is the Ory of old—he is an artist, the greatest hot remains crudely painted on trombone of all time.” the wall: Notice. No loafers allowed in here. Ory continued to perform in Los Angeles clubs until retiring in 1966. He visited New Orleans one last time, in 1971, to perform at the second annual Fascinating Women DYER JONES C. 1890-UNKNOWN THEY MAY NOT BE HOUSEHOLD NAMES, BUT Though she was never THEY WERE TRUE JAZZ PIONEERS recorded, and many of the details of her life are By Ted Scheinman lost to history, Jones, who played the trumpet, ERNESTINE “TINY” DAVIS exerted a major influence C. 1909-1994 on early jazz, Grantham The Memphis-born vocalist says. In the 1910s, she led and trumpeter enjoyed a a circus band around the decades-long career, touring country. Among the aspir- with many bands during the ing female musicians she golden age of jazz and leading mentored were runaways the International Sweethearts from a Charleston, South of Rhythm, a racially inte- Carolina, orphanage, grated band of 17 women that the future “Queen of the defied Jim Crow laws to tour Trumpet” Valaida Snow the South in the 1940s. Louis and Jones’ own daughter Armstrong was so impressed Dolly, who made history with Davis’ playing that he re- in 1926 as the first female portedly tried to hire her away trumpeter to record a jazz from the Sweethearts; Davis record. Jones even formed turned him down. a family trio, with her hus- band on saxophone and DOROTHY DONEGAN Dolly on trumpet. 1922-1998 CORA “LOVIE” AUSTIN UNA MAE CARLISLE The Chicago native, 1887-1972 1915-1956 who studied at the Born in Tennessee, Austin The brilliant singer and pia- Chicago Conservato- led the studio band at Par- nist toured Europe in the late ry, could play boogie, amount Records in Chicago 1930s, “charming the aristoc- bebop and classical. In throughout the 1920s. A racy with her witty stylings,” 1943, Donegan was the virtuoso of jazz arranging, says Hannah Grantham, a first black performer she orchestrated, performed Smithsonian musicologist. Of to hold a concert bill at and conducted for more African and Native American Chicago’s Orchestra than 100 recordings by the descent, Carlisle was the Hall, performing Rach- likes of Bessie Smith, Alberta first black woman to have maninoff and Grieg in Hunter, Louis Armstrong and a composition appear on a the first act and jazz in Kid Ory. “She was a greater Billboard chart (“Walkin’ by the second. talent than many of the men the River,” 1941) and the first of this period,” the pianist black American to host a Mary Lou Williams, who was national radio show (“The deeply influenced by Austin, Una Mae Carlisle Radio once said. Show” on WJZ-ABC). 20  SMITHSONIAN | January February 2021

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prologue By Lydia Wilson LANGUAGE Hieroglyphs line the walls in a shrine to the god- dess Hathor at Serabit el-Khadim. Inventing C ENTURIES BEFORE MOSES wandered the in the “great and terrible wilderness” of Alphabet the Sinai Peninsula, this triangle of des- ert wedged between Africa and Asia at- New scholarship points to a tracted speculators, drawn by rich min- paradox of historic scope: Our writing system was devised by eral deposits hidden in the rocks. And it people who couldn’t read was on one of these expeditions, around 22  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021 4,000 years ago, that some mysterious person or group took a bold step that, in retrospect, was truly COURTESY LYDIA WILSON revolutionary. Scratched on the wall of a mine is the very first attempt at something we use every day: the alphabet. The evidence, which continues to be examined and rein- terpreted 116 years after its discovery, is on a windswept pla- teau in Egypt called Serabit el-Khadim, a remote spot even by Sinai standards. Yet it wasn’t too difficult for even ancient

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LANGUAGE Egyptians to reach, as the presence of a temple right The Flinders Petries brought many of the prizes at the top shows. When I visited in 2019, I looked out they had unearthed back to London, including a over the desolate, beautiful landscape from the sum- small, red sandstone sphinx with the same hand- mit and realized I was seeing the same view the in- ful of letters on its side as those seen in the mines. ventors of the alphabet had seen every day. The tem- After ten years of studying the inscriptions, in 1916 ple is built into the living rock, dedicated to Hathor, the Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner published his the goddess of turquoise (among many other things); transcription of the letters and their translation: An stelae chiseled with hieroglyphs line the paths to inscription on the little sphinx, written in a Semitic the shrine, where archaeological evidence indicates dialect, read “Beloved of Ba’alat,” referring to the there was once an extensive temple complex. A mile Canaanite goddess, consort of Ba’al, the powerful or so southwest of the temple is the source of all an- Canaanite god. cient interest in this area: embedded in the rock are “For me, it’s worth all the gold in Egypt,” the Is- nodules of turquoise, a stone that symbolized re- raeli Egyptologist Orly Goldwasser said of this little birth, a vital motif in Egyptian culture sphinx when we viewed it at the British and the color that decorated the walls Museum in late 2018. She had come to of their lavish tombs. Turquoise is why London to be interviewed for a BBC Egyptian elites sent expeditions from IT IS CLEAR THAT documentary about the history of writ- the mainland here, a project that began WHOEVER WROTE ing. In the high-ceilinged Egypt and Su- around 2,800 B.C. and lasted for over a THESE INSCRIPTIONS dan study room lined with bookcases, thousand years. Expeditions made of- IN THE SINAI DID NOT separated from the crowds in the public ferings to Hathor in hopes of a rich haul KNOW HIEROGLYPHS. galleries by locked doors and iron stair- to take home. cases, a curator brought the sphinx out In 1905, a couple of Egyptologists, of its basket and placed it on a table, Sir William and Hilda Flinders Petrie, where Goldwasser and I marveled at it. who were married, first excavated the “Every word we read and write started temple, documenting thousands of votive offerings with him and his friends.” She explained how min- there. The pair also discovered curious signs on the ers on Sinai would have gone about transforming a side of a mine, and began to notice them elsewhere, hieroglyph into a letter: “Call the picture by name, on walls and small statues. Some signs were clearly pick up only the first sound and discard the picture related to hieroglyphs, yet they were simpler than from your mind.” Thus, the hieroglyph for an ox, the beautiful pictorial Egyptian script on the tem- Goldwasser aleph, helped give a shape to the letter “a,” while the ple walls. The Flinders Petries recognized the signs calls the sphinx alphabet’s inventors derived “b” from the hieroglyph as an alphabet, though decoding the letters would discovered at for “house,” bêt. These first two signs came to form take another decade, and tracing the source of the the name of the system itself: alphabet. Some letters invention far longer. Serabit “the were borrowed from hieroglyphs, others drawn from Rosetta stone of the alphabet.” life, until all the sounds of the language they spoke could be represented in written form. The temple complex detailed evidence of the peo- ple who worked on these Egyptian turquoise excava- tions in the Sinai. The stelae that line the paths re- cord each expedition, including the names and jobs of every person working on the site. The bureaucrat- ic nature of Egyptian society yields, today, a clear picture of the immigrant labor that flocked to Egypt seeking work four millennia ago. As Goldwasser puts it, Egypt was “the America of the old world.” We can read about this arrangement in Genesis, when Jacob, “who dwelt in the land of Canaan”—that is, along the Levant coast, east of Egypt—traveled to Egypt to seek his fortune. Along with farmers like BRITISH MUSEUM Jacob, other Canaanites ended up mining for the Egyptian elites in Serabit, some 210 miles southeast by land from Memphis, the seat of pharaonic power. Religious ritual played a central role in inspiring 24  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021

foreign workers to learn to write. After a day’s work The sweeping Pierre Tallet, former president of the French So- was done, Canaanite workers would have observed view from the ciety of Egyptology, supports Goldwasser’s theory: their Egyptian counterparts’ rituals in the beautiful “Of course [the theory] makes sense, as it is clear that temple complex to Hathor, and they would have mar- plateau at whoever wrote these inscriptions in the Sinai did not veled at the thousands of hieroglyphs used to ded- Serabit know hieroglyphs,” he told me. “And the words they icate gifts to the goddess. In Goldwasser’s account, are writing are in a Semitic language, so they must they were not daunted by being unable to read the hi- el-Khadim, have been Canaanites, who we know were there from eroglyphs around them; instead, they began writing turquoise cap- the Egyptians’ own written record here in the temple.” things their own way, inventing a simpler, more ver- ital of ancient satile system to offer their own religious invocations. There are doubters, though. Christopher Rollston, Egypt. a Hebrew scholar at George Washington Universi- The alphabet remained on the cultural periphery ty, argues that the mysterious writers likely knew of the Mediterranean until six centuries or more af- hieroglyphs. “It would be improbable that illiterate ter its invention, seen only in words scratched on ob- miners were capable of, or responsible for, the in- jects found across the Middle East, such as daggers vention of the alphabet,” he says. But this objection and pottery, not in any bureaucracy or literature. seems less persuasive than Goldwasser’s account—if But then, around 1200 B.C., came huge political up- Egyptian scribes invented the alphabet, why did it heavals, known as the late Bronze Age collapse. The promptly disappear from their literature for roughly major empires of the near east—the Mycenaean Em- 600 years? pire in Greece, the Hittite Empire in Turkey and the ancient Egyptian Empire—all disintegrated amid Besides, as Goldwasser points out, the close con- internal civil strife, invasions and droughts. With nection between pictograms and text would seem to the emergence of smaller city-states, local leaders be evident all around us, even in our hyper-literate began to use local languages to govern. In the land age, in the form of emojis. She uses emojis liberal- of Canaan, these were Semitic dialects, written down ly in her emails and text messages, and has argued using alphabets derived from the Sinai mines. that they fulfill a social need the ancient Egyptians would have understood. “Emojis actually brought These Canaanite city-states flourished, and a bus- modern society something important: We feel the tling sea trade spread their alphabet along with their loss of images, we long for them, and with emojis wares. Variations of the alphabet—now known as we have brought a little bit of the ancient Egyptian Phoenician, from the Greek word for the Canaanite games into our lives.” region—have been found from Turkey to Spain, and survive until today in the form of the letters used and passed on by the Greeks and the Romans. In the century since the discovery of those first scratched letters in the Sinai mines, the reigning academic consensus has been that highly edu- cated people must have created the alphabet. But EVERY WORD WE READ AND WRITE STARTED WITH HIM AND HIS FRIENDS. COURTESY LYDIA WILSON Goldwasser’s research is upending that notion. She suggests that it was actually a group of illiterate Canaanite miners who made the breakthrough, un- versed in hieroglyphs and unable to speak Egyptian but inspired by the pictorial writing they saw around them. In this view, one of civilization’s most pro- found and most revolutionary intellectual creations came not from an educated elite but from illiterate laborers, who usually get written out of history. January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  25

prologue By Joel Oliphint PREHISTORY LAY OF THE LAND In Ohio, a legal battle over access to some of the world’s largest human-made earthworks A BOUT 2,000 YEARS AGO, indigenous people who were part of the 1 Hopewell culture built a series of huge earthen structures in stun- ningly precise shapes. Some of the most celebrated of these works Sometime between the years A.D. 1 and once spanned four-and-a-half-square miles in central Ohio. But 400, indigenous Americans constructed these massive earthworks, one basketful the famous Octagon feature is now home to a private golf course, of dirt at a time. They were more inter- Moundbuilders Country Club, and largely inaccessible to the pub- ested in breadth than height. Each of the Octagon’s eight symmetrical walls lic. Ohio History Connection (OHC), a nonprofit that has owned the full site measures 550 feet long and stands 5 since 1933, asserts eminent domain in a lawsuit to buy back the club’s lease, to 6 feet high. Four Roman Colosseums could fit inside the Octa- which would hold another 57 years. The club disputes OHC’s right to break gon; Stonehenge could fit inside the contract. In January 2020, a state appeals court ruled for OHC; the this seemingly tiny circle. case is headed to the Ohio Supreme Court. 2 4 6 JAMIE DAVIS / GIS & UAS PHOTOGRAMMETRY; SOURCES: BRAD LEPPER AND JENNIFER AULTMAN, OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION; JOHN LOW (POK AGON BAND OF POTAWATOMI INDIANS), NEWARK EARTHWORKS CENTER; WORLD HERITAGE OHIO; THE ANCIENT OHIO TRAIL The Hopewell had a deep 3 1 understanding of geometry and 5 astronomy. They built the Octagon so that every 18.6 years, if you 2 6 stood on Observatory Mound and looked straight across the center 5 The Octagon likely of the complex—through the circle served ceremonial and parallel walls, down to the far The 50-acre Octagon is one of eight sites purposes that drew end of the Octagon—the moon among these earthworks that is vying for a thousands from all would be perfectly aligned with the coveted Unesco World Heritage designation. over—perhaps from earthworks’ main axis while hovering The nomination won’t go forward until the as far as the East in its northernmost rising position. Octagon is accessible to the public—that Coast—for funerals or is, once it’s no longer a private golf course. naming ceremonies. 3 This raised platform is the only place where It may have been the visitors can view the Octagon most days. center of a trade net- This is the largest preserved set work: Among Hopewell of parallel walls from the Hopewell artifacts, archaeolo- world. Long ago, walled paths like gists have found shells from the Gulf Coast, these stretched for miles, most shark teeth from the likely serving as ceremonial walk- Atlantic and obsidian ways that linked earthwork sites. from Yellowstone. (See “The Lost History of 4 Yellowstone,” p. 32.) At the Octagon vertices, the Hopewell made gateways that are visually obstruct- ed by barrier mounds. The purpose of these ancient mounds is unknown, though some historians believe the Hopewell could have used them like admission booths during ceremonial gatherings, with clans entering through respective gateways. 26  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021



prologue NATIONAL TREASURE N AT I O N A L MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND C U LT U R E 28  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021

By Photograph by Jamelle Bouie Walter Larrimore Hail the King of Wakanda The black superhero who hero,” Lee recalled in a 2016 interview. “And I want- changed comics forever ed to get away from a common perception.” Thus, Lee decided to make T’Challa “a brilliant scientist” I T WAS CLEAR FROM the moment living in a secret, underground African techno- WALTER L ARRIMORE / NMA AHC, COLLECTION OF NMA AHC, GIF T OF MARVEL STUDIOS AND THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY, ©MARVEL it reached multiplexes in 2018 that utopia, “and nobody suspects it because on the sur- Black Panther wasn’t just a hit; it face it’s just thatched huts with ordinary ‘natives.’ ” was a phenomenon. The title char- acter, portrayed by the late Chad- But as much as the Black Panther portrayed by wick Boseman, became an inspira- Boseman (under the direction of Ryan Coogler) tion to millions of Americans. Black fits this vision, he is also different from the charac- ter created by a white writer and a white artist for Panther, a.k.a. T’Challa, king of the a white audience more than 50 years ago. Today’s T’Challa is indebted to a generation of black writers fictional African nation of Wakanda, and artists who moved beyond mere representation to build a character with more depth than the one stood as a symbol of strength, honor dismissed in his first appearance by fellow comics crimefighter Ben Grimm, a.k.a. the Thing, as “some and pride in one’s African ancestry. And the char- refugee from a Tarzan movie.” In the evolution of the Black Panther, you can see a clear arc in the acter’s essential qualities—his regal bearing and history of black superheroes—how they’ve become richer, fuller and even inspiring characters. quiet determination—are captured in his costume, Black characters have had a fraught history in designed for the screen by Ruth E. Carter, the film’s comic books from the outset. They were “largely rel- egated to background and secondary roles and char- costume designer, who built on the work of Ryan acterized primarily through their figurative embod- iment of racist stereotypes,” Kevin Strait, a curator Meinerding, a Marvel artist and character designer. at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, says in an interview. Carter embellished some versions of the costume In the 1940s and ’50s, however, depictions began with raised triangles, which she has called “the sa- to change. In 1947, a group of black artists and writ- ers published All-Negro Comics, a collection of sto- cred geometry of Africa,” given the shape’s long ries featuring black characters. In 1965, the now-de- funct Dell Comics published two issues of Lobo, a significance to the continent’s art and culture. Her western starring a heroic black gunslinger. Still, most comics creators of the period—including the emphasis on the essential dignity of the char- two men who launched Lobo—were white, and like the Black Panther, who was something of a token, acter captures the ambition of his originators, most black characters who followed in his path over the next two decades would find themselves the writer Stan Lee and the artist Jack Kirby, in a similar role. Luke Cage, for example, first ap- peared in Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1s in 1972, the who debuted Black Panther for Marvel Comics height of the blaxploitation movement, as a jive- talking hustler who fought crime for money. in Fantastic Four #52 in 1966. Following some of the most important moments of the civil rights move- ment, the comics pioneers wanted Black Panther to break stereotypes and embody black pride. “At that point I felt we really needed a black super- January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  29

prologue Nubia, introduced in Wonder Woman #204 Don’t Be Puzzled in 1973, was just a palette-swapped version of the title character. YOU CAN FIND EIGHT CLUES IN THESE PAGES By Sam Ezersky But in 1993, the black superhero saw a new dawn with the arrival of Milestone 1 2345466789 Media. Founded by black artists and writ- ers, Milestone devoted itself to black and 10 11 12 multicultural stories. The comic Icon, for example, presents a Superman-like alien 13 14 who arrives on Earth to find himself in the antebellum South. There, he takes the form 15 15 13 16 17 of the first person he sees: an enslaved Af- rican American. Milestone set a new stan- 18 19 dard for black characters, while serving as a talent incubator for writers and artists who 19 20 20 21 would go on to influence the entire indus- try. Dwayne McDuffie, one of its founders, 22 23 24 defined traditional characters like Batman for a generation of new audiences and 25 26 27 28 brought original creations like the black superhero Static to the screen. Christopher 29 30 31 32 Priest, who broke barriers as the first black editor at Marvel and was part of the group 33 34 that established Milestone, would go on to rejuvenate Black Panther, writing an ac- 35 36 claimed series from 1998 to 2003 that lifted the character from obscurity to the A-list of Across Down comics. As written by Priest, the Black Pan- 1 Loud, like a crowd 1 Certain radio alerts, for short ther is an enigmatic genius who maintains 6 Little rascals 2 Go back for more a careful remove from the Western world. It 3 Like some high-fiber cereals is Priest who shaped the character for the 10 With 13-Across, food touted 4 Hill worker next 20 years, and whose work (along with as a luxury spread in the 5 Regret that of Ta-Nehisi Coates, who began writing late 19th century 6 Pale color with a “cool” the character for the page in 2016) was the name? foundation for the hero we saw in the film. 12 People of Yellowstone, once 7 The Wind in the Willows 13 See 10-Across amphibian This tradition of representation and 14 Sicily’s Mount ___ 8 Spots for skipping rocks black storytelling continues. Riri Williams, 15 Catch with one’s eye 9 Moves left, right, left, right a young black woman who dons a version of 16 Personify 11 Beech, birch or bonsai Iron Man’s armor to become Ironheart, was 18 Vocational offering in a 2016 creation by Brian Michael Bendis, 17 Exam for doctors-to-be, who is white. But in 2018, she was reimag- school, for short in brief ined by Eve Ewing, an assistant professor at 20 Batman and Robin, e.g. the University of Chicago and a black wom- 21 Sound lead-in to -ible 18 Phenomenon displayed an. Ewing’s Ironheart was a much-praised 22 Trombone-playing style among Imanishi’s take on the character, which, in the words Japanese macaques of one reviewer, “perfectly walks the line used by Kid Ory between classically Marvel and refreshing- 25 Speaker on a soapbox 19 Opposite of “for here” ly new.” Today’s black artists—and the su- 26 ___ Perce (people of 20 Product from Pampers perheroes they boldly create—are standing 22 Refill just a bit, say on the shoulders of Black Panther. Yellowstone, once) 23 Island near Curaçao 29 ___ platter (Chinese food 24 Ancient land for which a WATCH A SLIDESHOW about the history of black superheroes in comics and films at choice) Semitic language is named Smithsonianmag.com/blackpanther 30 Keys on a piano? 26 Long-running TV drama 33 Lyft alternative 30  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021 34 Trade for the Sinai laborers with a “Los Angeles” spinoff who created the first 27 Text-displaying technology alphabet for digital books 35 Trim (down), as costs 28 Some sharp turns 36 Lies in the sun 31 Ad ___ 32 Words before pickle or pile See the solution on Page 117.

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RYBY RICHARD GRANT PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW GEIGER WSTONE DEBUNKING THE MYTH THAT THE GREAT NATIONAL PARK WAS A WILDERNESS UNTOUCHED BY HUMANS January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  33

ORIGINAL ARCHIVAL-IMAGE PHOTOGRAPHER: WILLIAM HENRY JACKSON AFTER 14 SUMMERS EXCAVATING IN Among the Native peoples Yellowstone National Park, Doug MacDonald migrating sea- has a simple rule of thumb. “Pretty much sonally across anywhere you’d want to pitch a tent, there are Yellowstone were artifacts,” he says, holding up a 3,000-year- the Nez Perce, old obsidian projectile point that his team has above left, mov- just dug out of the ground. “Like us, Native ing from Idaho's Americans liked to camp on flat ground, close Snake River east to water, with a beautiful view.” to the Great Plains. We’re standing on a rise near the Yellowstone River, or the Elk River as most Native American tribes called it. A thin wet snow is falling in late June, and a few scattered bison are grazing in the sagebrush across the river. Apart from the road running through it, the valley probably looks much as it did 30 centuries ago, when someone chipped away at this small piece of black glassy stone until it was lethally sharp and symmetrical, then fastened it to a straightened shaft of wood and hurled it at bison with a spear-throwing tool, or atlatl. 34  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021

“WE KICKED NATIVE Hunted nearly “The big myth about Yellowstone is that it’s a AMERICANS OUT OF to extinction by pristine wilderness untouched by humanity,” says white hunters, MacDonald. “Native Americans were hunting and YELLOWSTONE TO bison numbered gathering here for at least 11,000 years. They were MAKE A PARK. NOW only about two pushed out by the government after the park was dozen inside established. The Army was brought in to keep them WE’RE TRYING TO Yellowstone in out, and the public was told that Native Americans FIND OUT HOW THEY 1902. Today the were never here in the first place because they were herd consists afraid of the geysers.” LIVED HERE.” of about 4,800. MacDonald is slim, clean-cut, in his early 50s. Orig- PREVIOUS SPREAD inally from central Maine, he is a professor of anthro- pology at the University of Montana and the author of a The otherworldly terrain dazzled early explorers. In 1827, trapper Daniel Potts not- ed that geysers erupted with a roar like “that of thunder.” January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  35

recent book, Before Yellowstone: Native For more than “THE HOPEWELL PEOPLE American Archaeology in the National 11,000 years, WOULD HAVE LEFT IN Park. Drawing on his own extensive Obsidian Cliff EARLY SPRING AND discoveries in the field, the work of served as an in- previous archaeologists, the historical valuable source FOLLOWED THE RIVERS, record and Native American oral tradi- of volcanic JUST LIKE LEWIS AND tions, MacDonald provides an essential glass, which CLARK, EXCEPT 2,000 account of Yellowstone’s human past. Native Ameri- YEARS EARLIER.” Tobin Roop, chief of cultural resources cans fashioned at Yellowstone, says, “As an archaeol- into razor-sharp ogist, working in partnership with the arrowheads park, MacDonald has really opened up and spear tips. our understanding of the nuances and complexities of the prehistory.” MacDonald sees his work, in part, as a moral necessity. “This is a story that was deliberately covered up and it needs to be told,” he says. “Most visi- tors to the park have no idea that hunt- er-gatherers were an integral part of this landscape for thousands of years.” In the last three decades, the Nation- al Park Service has made substantial ef- forts to research and explain the Native American history and prehistory of Yellowstone, but the virgin-wilderness myth is still promoted in the brochure that every visitor receives at the park entrance: “When you watch animals in Yellowstone, you glimpse the world as it was before humans.” Asked if he considers that sentence absurd, or of- fensive to Native Americans, MacDon- ald answers with a wry smile. “Let’s just say the marketing hasn’t caught up with the research,” he says. “Humans have been in Yellowstone since the time of mammoths and mastodons.” Shane Doyle, a research associate at Montana State University and a mem- ber of the Apsaalooke (Crow) Nation, burst out laughing when I read him that sentence from the brochure. But his laughter had an edge to it. “The park is a slap in the face to Native people,” he said. “There is almost no mention of the dispossession and violence that happened. We have essentially been erased from the park, and that leads to a lot of hard feelings, although we do love to go to Yellowstone and reminisce about our ancestors living there in a good way.” ON THE ROAD BETWEEN the Norris Geyser Basin and Mammoth Hot Springs is a massive outcrop of dark volcanic rock known as Obsidian Cliff, closed to the public to prevent pilfering. This was the most 36  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021

Last summer, archaeologist Doug MacDon- ald (at Yellow- stone Lake) and his team unearthed a Nez Perce encamp- ment from 1877, when they fled the U.S. Cavalry. January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  37

ORIGINAL ARCHIVAL-IMAGE PHOTOGRAPHER: WILLIAM HENRY JACKSON important source in North America for high-quality obsidian, distinctive, fluted points were first discovered in 1929) were a type of volcanic glass that forms when lava cools rapidly. It hardy, fur-clad, highly successful hunters. Their prey includ- yields the sharpest edge of any natural substance on earth, ed woolly mammoths, mastodons and other animals that ten times sharper than a razor blade, and Native Americans would become extinct, including a bison twice the size of our prized it for making knives, hide-scraping tools, projectile modern species. points for spears and atlatl darts, and, after the invention of the bow and arrow 1,500 years ago, for arrowheads. The Clovis point that MacDonald’s team spotted on the beach is one of only two ever found in the park, suggesting For the first people who explored the high geothermal Yel- that the Clovis people were infrequent visitors. They pre- lowstone plateau—the first to see Old Faithful and the other ferred the lower elevation plains of present-day Wyoming scenic wonders—Obsidian Cliff was a crucial discovery and and Montana, where the weather was milder and large herds perhaps the best reason to keep coming back. In that era, af- of megafauna supported them for 1,000 years or more. Mac- ter the rapid melting of half-mile-thick glaciers that had cov- Donald thinks a few bands of Clovis people lived in the val- ered the landscape, Yellowstone was a daunting place to vis- leys below the Yellowstone plateau. They would come up oc- it. Winters were longer and harsher than they are today, and casionally in the summer to harvest plants and hunt and get summers were wet and soggy with flooded valleys, dangerous more obsidian. rivers and a superabundance of mosquitoes. “Native Americans were the first hard-rock miners in Wy- MacDonald made one of the most exciting finds of his ca- oming and it was arduous work,” says MacDonald. “We’ve reer in 2013 on the South Arm of Yellowstone Lake: a broken found more than 50 quarry sites on Obsidian Cliff, and some obsidian projectile point with a flake removed from its base in of them are chest-deep pits where they dug down to get to a telltale fashion. It was a Clovis point, approximately 11,000 the good obsidian, probably using the scapular blade of an years old and made by the earliest visitors to Yellowstone. The elk. Obsidian comes in a cobble [sizable lump]. You have to Clovis people (named after Clovis, New Mexico, where their dig that out of the ground, then break it apart and start knap- 38  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021

ping the smaller pieces. We found literally millions A portable of obsidian flakes on the cliff, and we see them all shelter con- over the park, wherever people were sitting in camp structed by making tools.” Shoshone people epitomizes the Each obsidian flow has its own distinctive chem- resourcefulness ical signature, which can be identified by X-ray flu- of hunter-gath- orescence, a technique developed in the 1960s. Ar- erers: lodgepole tifacts made of Yellowstone obsidian from Obsidian pine framing Cliff have been found all over the Rockies and the and bison hide Great Plains, in Alberta, and as far east as Wisconsin, sheathing. Michigan and Ontario. Clearly it was a valuable com- modity and widely traded. For 1,000 years, up until On the Scioto River south of Columbus, Ohio, ar- European Amer- chaeologists identified 300 pounds of Yellowstone obsidian in mounds built by the Hopewell people ican contact 2,000 years ago. It’s possible the obsidian was traded at Yellowstone, there by intermediaries, but MacDonald and some other archaeologists believe that groups of Hopewell the Shoshone made the 4,000-mile round trip, by foot and canoe, hand-shaped to bring back the precious stone. soapstone bowls for cooking and “In 2009, we found a very large ceremonial knife, typical of the Hopewell culture and unlike anything storage. from this region, on a terrace above Yellowstone Lake,” he says. “How did it get there? It’s not far- A 10,000-year- fetched to think that it was lost by Hopewell people old hunting on a trip to Obsidian Cliff. They would have left in spear tip made of obsidian. It was produced by knapping, using hard rocks and antlers to break off flakes. GALLATIN Jardine ABSAROKA Silver Cooke Gate City Gardiner Northeast Mammoth North M O N TA N A Entrance Hot Springs Entrance WYOMING Tower-Roosevelt errn Sheepeater RANGE G aRridv e Lamar River WARSAHNBGE LAMAR V RANGE ALLEY PARK Y E L L O W Obsidian URN S T O NE NA T I O NA L Riwvsteorne Norris Canyon Yello West Geyser Village Artist Point Basin Yellowstone Norris HAYDEN VALL Lower Falls Madison Upper Falls West NCezrePeekrce AClruemek EY Fishing Entrance Bridge Great West MONTANA Black Fountain Thumb Sylvan Sand Geyser Geyser Pass Basin Old Faithful East Geyser West Entrance MAP: 5W INFOGRAPHICS Basin Thumb YelloLwaskt e Eagle Peak IDAHO CONDTIIVNIDENE TA L Sou 11,358 ft WYOMING A P P R OX I M AT E Shoshone theast Arm Highest point RFiivreerholeCALDERA Lake Lewis Sout h Arm in the park BOUNDARY Lake A LewisRERDivMer one B OUNTAINS S A R Heart Lake COD INVTI IDNEENTAL OKA RANGE nake River Yellowstone River South S MILES Entrance N0 5 The caldera is a vast depression formed by the eruption of volcanic magma. January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  39

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In the region of Yellowstone Lake, migrating Native Americans hunted bison, deer, elk, bear and rabbit, and foraged for food- stuffs including bitterroot and pine nuts. January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  41

early spring and followed the rivers, just like Lewis gets really rough in bad weather, much worse than MacDonald and and Clark, except 2,000 years earlier.” you see today, and we nearly got swamped a few colleagues re- times. One of our crew got hypothermia. We had to Another tantalizing relic, found inside a Hopewell build an illegal fire to save his life. Another time my cently unearthed mound in Ohio, is a copper sculpture of a bighorn guys were stalked on the beach by a cougar.” a spear tip, left, ram’s horn. Then as now, there were no bighorn and partially sheep in the Midwest or the Great Plains. But if Grizzlies are his biggest fear. MacDonald always worked obsidian Hopewell people were making epic journeys west to carries bear spray in Yellowstone, never walks alone fragment, right, get obsidian, they would have seen bighorns in the and is careful to make plenty of noise in the woods. roughly 3,000 years old. Northern Rockies, and the animals were particularly One night at the lake, he recalls, he and his crew MacDonald's co- abundant in Yellowstone. were eating steaks around a campfire when they saw workers include a young grizzly bear staring at them from 200 yards. Monte White, TWENTY MILES LONG and 14 miles wide, Yellow- That night they heard his roars and barks echoing who is excavat- stone Lake is the largest natural high-elevation lake across the lake; they surmised that the bear was ing while Scott in North America. MacDonald describes the five frustrated because a bigger grizzly was keeping him Dersam and summers he spent on the remote, roadless south- away from an elk carcass a quarter-mile distant. Bradan Tobin ern and eastern shores of the lake with a small crew sift soil through of graduate students as “the most exciting and also “The next day he attacked our camp,” says Mac- screens to recov- the most frightening experience of my career.” To- Donald. “He peed in my tent, pooped everywhere, er artifacts. day we are standing on the northern shore, which is destroyed the fire pit, licked the grill, just trashed accessible by road. A cold wind is blowing, and the everything. We stayed up all night making noise, National Park water looks like a choppy sea with spray flying off the and thankfully it worked. He didn’t come back. I still archaeologist whitecaps. “We had to use canoes to get there and have that tent and it still reeks of bear pee.” load them with all our gear,” he recalls. “The water Beth Horton They also had trouble from bison and bull elk that tells visitors that occupied their excavation sites and declined to leave. They endured torrential rains and ferocious electric Yellowstone’s “roads and trails here were Native American trails thousands of years ago.” 42  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021

Archaeologists at the dig con- sult the Munsell color chart, a reference that standardizes names applied to sediment-lay- er colors. Soil stratification is used in dating finds. “IT WAS EGALITARIAN BECAUSE THERE WAS NO WEALTH. IT WAS A HEALTHY WAY FOR HUMANS TO LIVE AND WE WERE WELL ADAPTED FOR IT BY E V O L U T I O N .” storms. Once they had to evacuate in canoes because of a forest fire. “We all had the feeling that the gods wanted us out of there, and we kept finding amazing stuff. There were basically sites everywhere.” Among their discoveries were a 6,000-year-old hearth, a Late Prehistoric stone circle (or tepee base) lying intact under a foot of dirt, and a wide variety of stone tools and projectile points. Excavating a small boulder with obsidian flakes littered around its base, they knew that someone, man or woman, boy or girl, had sat there making tools 3,000 years ago. “I think both genders knapped stone tools, be- cause they were in such constant use and demand,” says MacDonald. MacDonald’s team found evidence of continu- al human occupation on the lakeshore for 9,500 years, starting with the Cody Culture people, whose square-stemmed projectile points and asymmetrical knives were first discovered in Cody, Wyoming. More than 70 Cody points and knives have been found in January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  43

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With the first organized expe- dition to Yellow- stone in 1869, surveyor David Folsom marveled at “springs filled with mud resembling thick paint, pure white to yellow, pink, red and violet.” January • February 2021 | SMITHSONIAN  45

“THE ORIGINAL The majestic can see the videos on YouTube. Young adult males CROW RESERVATION 308-foot Lower are the only ones stupid enough to do it, and I imag- Falls of the Yel- ine that was the case here too.” IN 1851 WAS OVER lowstone River, 30 MILLION ACRES, WHEN MACDONALD WAS a freshman at Brown AND IT INCLUDED THE as seen from University, in Providence, Rhode Island, he studied ENTIRE EASTERN HALF Artist Point. political economy, international development and OF WHAT WOULD BE finance, and envisioned a career at the World Bank To Native or the International Monetary Fund. Then he spent Y E L L O W S T O N E .” Americans, says a couple of summers in central Mexico with friends Montana State who liked visiting archaeological sites, often travel- Yellowstone, with the greatest concentration at the University's ing on third-class rural “chicken buses” to get there. lake. “The climate was getting hotter and drier and it Shane Doyle, was cool up here in summer. As the bison migrated Yellowstone is “Some of those sites were amazing, and when I got up to the higher elevations, Cody people almost cer- “spectacularly back to Brown, I started taking archaeology classes,” tainly followed them.” diverse, with he says. “One of them was taught by Richard Gould, many climates Over the following millennia, as the climate and cultural who is kind of a famous guy, and it was about hunt- warmed, the modern bison evolved and human zones centered er-gatherers. It made me realize that I didn’t want to populations rose in the Great Plains and Rockies. in one place.” spend my life at the World Bank. I wanted to work on Yellowstone became a favored summer destination, the archaeology of hunter-gatherers instead.” drawing people from hundreds of miles away, and RACHEL LEATHE the lakeshore was an ideal place to camp. There is MacDonald has never killed his own meat and no evidence of conflict among the different tribal knows little about edible and medicinal plants, but groups; MacDonald thinks they probably traded and he believes that hunting and gathering is the most visited with one another. successful way of living that humanity has ever de- vised. “We’re proud of our technological advances, The peak of Native American activity in Yel- but in historical terms our society has lasted a split lowstone was in the Late Archaic period, 3,000 to second,” he says. “We lived as hunter-gatherers for 1,500 years ago, but even in the 19th century it was three million years. We moved around in extended still heavily used, with as many as ten tribes living family groups that took care of each other. It was around the lake, including Crow, Blackfeet, Flat- egalitarian because there was no wealth. It was a head, Shoshone, Nez Perce and Bannock. healthy way for humans to live and we were well adapted for it by evolution.” Today, as sedentary people, we equate “living” in a place with long-term or even permanent settle- He came to Yellowstone because it’s the ideal place ment. But for hunter-gatherers who follow animal to study the archaeology of hunter-gatherers. It has migrations, avoid climate extremes and harvest never been farmed or logged, and most of its archaeo- different plants as they ripen in different areas, the word has a different meaning. They live in a place for part of the year, then leave and come back, generation after generation. One Shoshone group known as the Sheepeaters seldom left the current park boundaries, because they were able to harvest bighorn sheep year-round. But most Native Ameri- cans in Yellowstone moved down to lower, warmer elevations in winter, and returned to the high pla- teau in the spring. A few brave souls returned in late winter to walk on the frozen lake and hunt bears hi- bernating on the islands. “They were probably getting the spiritual power of the animal, and demonstrating their courage, by entering the dens,” says MacDonald. “People have hunted bears that way in Siberia, Northern Europe, anywhere there’s bears. Some people still do. You 46  SMITHSONIAN | January • February 2021

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