Dunmail Raise, between Grasmere and Thirlmere (Wiki)
North of Grasmere and south of Thirlmere, beside today’s A591, there is a large cairn of stones, known as Dunmail Raise – the name also applied to the watershed between those two lakes. It turns out that there is a considerable collection of history and storytelling around this cairn, and I thought today I’d relate a little of that.
Cumbrian flag (http://www.englishcountyflags.com/)
It seems broadly agreed that Dunmail (probably the same as Dyfnwal ap Owain, to give him his Cumbrian name) was a king who was defeated by the Saxon king Edmund, who had allied himself with the Scottish king Malcolm. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle comments “A.D. 945. This year King Edmund overran all Cumberland; and let it all to Malcolm king of the Scots, on the condition that he became his ally, both by sea and land“. This was just one among the endless shifts of allegiance along the borders – a generation earlier, Malcolm’s father Constantine had joined with Owain against Saxon king Athelstan. They lost that battle – Brunanburh, 937AD – and Owain himself was reputedly buried at Penrith.
Grizedale Tarn from Dollywaggon
In the repeated telling of this basic tale, Dunmail attained almost Arthurian status. In one version, his sons were blinded by the victorious Edmund. In another, his loyal followers took his crown – to ensure that the Saxons would not claim it and the kingship – and nipped up the track to Grizedale Tarn (following today’s Coast to Coast trail) and cast the crown into the depths. When the time was right, he and it would be reunited and the ancient kingdom restored.
Another interesting source of variation is in the meaning of the cairn itself. One version simply holds that it was a boundary marker between the old regions of Cumberland and Westmoreland. Another reckons that it marks the burial place of Dunmail himself. But the version I find most appealing is that it recalls an old military tradition, in which soldiers going into battle would pile up “soul stones” as a safeguard. If they survived, they retrieved the stone from the pile… if not, well the number of stones in the pile was the number of casualties.
Observed in the light of archaeology and historical research, there are a great many uncertainties. Did Dunmail actually die as stated? (There is a separate tradition that he died later while on pilgrimage to Rome). What nationality was he? (Contenders include Norse or Celtic as well as Briton). But to elevate his romantic and literary status, I am going for the idea that he was the last king of the British… as William Wordsworth expressed it in The Waggoner,
The horses cautiously pursue Their way, without mishap or fault; And now have reached that pile of stones, Heaped over brave King Dunmail’s bones; His who had once supreme command, Last king of rocky Cumberland; His bones, and those of all his Power Slain here in a disastrous hour!
Today’s basic element is communication, and thousands of years of human development has shown that this indeed is a crucial feature in building society.
Before that, though, a quick mention of some author readings for Far from the Spaceports – whether you like YouTube, Daily Motion or Vimeo, you’ll be able to find them.
c.2400BC cuneiform tablet from the high-priest Luenna to the king of Lagash, relating the news of his son’s death (Wiki)
So, communication. It’s fair to say that as a species we have been quite obsessive in extending the scope and accuracy of our attempts to communicate. What began as an immediate interpersonal exchange has grown in range, variety, and diversity over the years. Nowadays, many people find themselves disoriented and frustrated when they cannot, virtually instantaneously, access the information they want.
Wind back to the Late Bronze Age, and things were very different. The majority of people stayed within a short distance of their birthplace, and had direct contact only with the towns and villages in the neighbourhood. There were exceptions, and we do know that some people were well-travelled. Messengers, envoys, scribes, and traders would all be acquainted with a much wider scale of vision.
Egyptian topographical list
An army commander or religious leader might be called upon to travel to, or describe, remote locations, and the accuracy with which they could do this might make a world of difference to the outcome. We have topographical records and route lists from the ancient world, itemising the important features of a strange land, and how to navigate from the familiar into the unknown. And “travellers’ tales”, with vivid and usually speculative descriptions of other lands, have been a favourite story-teller’s ploy throughout history. I sometimes wonder if this accounts for today’s popularity of science fiction and fantasy – with so few unknown places left on the planet we know, we are easily persuaded to look into other realms.
Greatest extent of Persian (Achmaenid) empire, c.350BC (Wiki)
There was, essentially, no way to send a message to some distant place other than making a physical journey, either in person or by proxy. On a battlefield, some orders might be signalled by horns or other instruments, or by flags and banners, but the intent had to be simple and easily understood. Right through until the modern era, the dust and confusion of battlefields has led to endless confusion and lost opportunities. On the political scale, the various empires of the ancient world struggled to keep a balance between the expansionist mindset of rulers, and the sheer practical difficulty of keeping hold of territories once acquired. The Persian empire – which would be swept away by Alexander the Great – had a complex and largely effective system of messengers and roads, but an independently-minded ruler of a remote city-state would still enjoy a very large degree of freedom.
It is hard for us to comprehend just how vast the world has seemed throughout history, if you think in terms of sending a message. Less than a century ago, some of my family members were posted to Singapore for a time. The rest of the family treated the event as though it was a permanent goodbye. True, there was surface mail, but it was extremely slow, and erratic at best. So it was safest to assume that this could be a one-way journey. Fast forward to 2015, and I was able to use my mobile phone to call my parents in England, from a hotel room near Delhi, India, to make sure that they had made a safe transition from place to another. The worst problem I faced was that the connection was a bit crackly.
Pluto at close range (NASA)
Moving on again, into the time of Far from the Spaceports, we have again lost the possibility of talking real-time to people. Even when the Apollo spacecraft were going to our moon, we had to learn to get used to about a second and a half lag in the signal. As we go further out, the lag gets longer, as signals travel at the speed of light back from the craft. When the New Horizons probe was passing Pluto and sending images back, the signal lag was about 4 1/2 hours. The corresponding time for Voyager, much further out again, is about 18 hours. Even the relatively modest distances that Mitnash and Slate have travelled out to the asteroid belt mean that they have somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 hour delay each way, depending on the relative positions in their orbits. It can take an hour for Mit to get an answer to a simple query.
How will we readjust to a lifestyle where almost instant communication is no longer possible? It’s a strange middling position between our present day, when we can chat in real time without hindrance to a person anywhere in the world, and where we were before radio, when carrying a message to another country could take weeks or months. It is clearly a limitation that science fiction film makers find frustrating.
Cover – Rocannon’s World
The universe of Star Trek, while acknowledging that physically going from place to place takes time, tends to show instantaneous real-time chat between the ships concerned and the headquarters back on Earth. For Trek geeks, there is a lot of online chatter about how this might happen, most of which seems to me to simply push the problem around without solving it. The basic idea that moving objects takes time, but moving information happens without delay, seems to go back (at least in fiction) to Ursula LeGuin’s Rocannon’s World, when Rocannon sends an instantaneous message back to Earth with the coordinates of the enemy base: “They can send death at once, but life is slower…” (it’s a fine book, and well worth reading for lots of reasons).
Mitnash and Slate, however, work within the constraints of what we know. I have not assumed that some extraordinary scientific breakthrough will change all this just yet (though I aware of, and intrigued by, current ideas for using quantum mechanical entangling to send instantaneous signals). So their world is one that has to manage with chat lag – and this affects their personal relationships as well as the simple acquisition of information. What kind of friendship and intimacy is possible when every communication is frustrated by long gaps? People – and I suppose artificial intelligences – can handle enforced separation for long periods of time and remain loyal to each other. But what about situations where you can almost have a conversation, but not quite?
Earthrise, from the Moon, taken from Apollo 8 (NASA)
A slightly different angle on basic elements today, partly inspired by the fact that it was Valentine’s Day last weekend.
But before that, quick mention of a fine review that appeared for Far from the Spaceports this week: “lots of believable futuristic technology… a futuristic crime thriller. A science fiction whodunnit if you will… Mitnash and Slate are developed into characters you really care for – and want to learn more about… I can’t wait for the next one in the series…”
Back to basic elements. Up until now, the series has focused on some of the physical necessities of life. But as human beings, we need more than the physical to sustain us. We need the metaphysical as well, in order to give lives meaning as well as substance. So for today we are going to look at celebrations – special times and seasons around which we drape our lives.
Maslow hierarchy of human needs (Wiki)
To set some basis for this, here is a diagram of Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of needs’, which he published in 1943 under the title ‘A theory of Human Motivation’. In his scheme, a person could not effectively progress to higher levels of the pyramid, until the lower ones were secure. Now, this scheme can seem artificial, in that people have been known to be highly creative in the most unpromising situations,but broadly speaking it makes sense. According to this, a sense of belonging ranks only just above provision of food, water, and a safe place.
People have throughout history made space for celebrations. As far back as we can tell in the past, there have been events commemorating the natural cycle of the planet – seedtime and harvest, summer and winter. There have also been religious and spiritual special days – fasts and feasts, times to express hope or gratitude, days to commemorate the departed dead or those who lived exemplary lives. Very often we have combined the natural and the sacred together.
Image of Qedeshet, stele in the British Museum
My historical writings often feature festival days, particularly In a Milk and Honeyed Land, where events such as the feast of New Wine (in the autumn, marking the start of the new year), midsummer and midwinter ceremonies, and so on, structure the plot. I see them as blending everyday fun with religious devotion, with no particular contradiction between them. The devotions are to the Canaanite pantheon, especially Taliy, who has a high profile in the Four Towns. They are solemn occasions, but they are also (mostly) a lot of fun. They can also be, as such events still are today, a cause for conflict and jealousy.
St Valentine baptising St Lucilla (Wiki)
Today, we have tended to split religious and secular aspects of festivals. Christmas is still a meaningful spiritual event, but for many people the family and friendship aspects of the event have eclipsed any religious meaning. There are, no doubt, people who honour Valentine as a martyred saint, but on the whole his day provides a convenient time for declarations of love, desire and passion… both required and unrequited.
Valentine’s Day gift (WIki)
These things are worth commemorating at some point in our lives. For many people, the religious times that are remembered are those connected to fun and enjoyment – a secular society is not so eager to remember fasts and times of denial, however meaningful these still are spiritually.
Remembrance event, Arlington Cemetery (NASA)
Looking into the future, my belief is that we will continue to need events and occasions which symbolise meaning. A calendar is not just a succession of days, nor an endless loop of time passing. Rather, it is strung between the key days which impart meaning. About two weeks ago, on January 28th, a great many people around the world remembered the 1986 disaster when the Challenger shuttle blew up – not just a tragedy for the families concerned, but a major setback for the chances of civilians going into space. Positive first events such as the moon landing are also recalled each year – becoming more poignant year by year as the number of living astronauts who have ever walked on another world diminishes.
Suppose in time we are able to colonise the asteroid belt, Mars and its moons, and so on. My guess is that as and when this happens, we will continue to have particular times and seasons which are remembered. Whether or not these are considered religious or social – and I am inclined to think that both will continue hand in hand – seems to me less important than the fact that we need meaning to shape our time-keeping, not just succession.
Phobos passing in front of the sun as seen from Mars (NASA/JPL)
Now, our calendars will become considerably more complicated at this point, with each planet having its own ‘year’, not to mention the vast variety in orbital patterns of the moons around the planets. Will we adopt a Star-Trek style “star date” to enforce uniformity on the system as a whole, or will we need to keep track of any number of local clocks?
Far from the Spaceports did not include any specific festival days, though readers will no doubt remember the concert scene at Frag Rockers Bar. “Special Night” was a regular event there. The in-progress By Default, however, will have some kind of commemorative event – watch this space.
Cover – Encounter with TIber
It’s right to finish with a couple of extracts from Buzz Aldrin’s Encounter with Tiber – one of my favourite science fiction books.
[At the first wedding on Mars, on serving a cake made from soya oil and potato flour, decorated with blue dye] “Something we did today, out of expediency, is going to be fundamental to Martian weddings from now on”… I don’t know if I believed him at the time or not. But twenty years later… that awful cake of Doc C’s has been at every wedding. You can’t get married without having your tongue turn blue…
[Right at the end] This first day on Tiber was more symbol than science, and rightly so, Clio thought. It’s the symbols that we live by.
Here’s the next in the Basic Elements series – this time looking at food. Life needs food – human life just as much as any other kind of life. And for a great deal of humanity’s existence, finding an adequate supply of food has dominated communal needs. Douglas Adams, with his usual flair for insight, wrote of the three phases of every major Galactic civilisation, characterised by the questions “how can we eat?“, “why do we eat?“, and finally, “where shall we have lunch?“. Many readers will probably think of themselves in the third phase, but it’s worth remembering that a huge number of people on Earth are still struggling at phase one.
After the glaciers of the last ice age retreated, about 12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer groups followed the milder weather back north, resettling tracts of land which had been their distant ancestors’ homes long before. They followed not just the warmth, but also the herds and flocks as they migrated, and the seasonal yield of trees and bushes. Small migrant groups could eat off the land tolerably well, so long as they were willing to keep on the move, and retained a good pragmatic understanding of seasonal changes. They were self-sufficient.
The spread of farming through Europe – Eupedia
Then farming came along, spreading across Europe from south east to north west. Farming communities have to stay put, not just season to season but also year to year. Fixed territory, and its ongoing fertility, become crucial. Our remote ancestors must have seen a clear advantage in this way of life, partly no doubt because it could support much greater populations, but it also brought risk. A bad year can signal disaster – and it is no longer possible just to follow the herds elsewhere. Your communal wealth can no longer easily be moved, and a good parcel of land somewhere nearby has probably already been settled. Either you stay put, and try to wait out the famine, or you go to war.
Agra Street Market
But another corollary of settled communities is that they typically have a surplus of some things – and a surplus can be traded for whatever you lack. So you hedge, accepting that you cannot grow or produce some goods, and relying on your neighbours who can. You grow less dependent on your immediate fields to give everything you need, but more dependent on the resources of a wider area.
The historical fiction I write is set in a place and time where the dependence on other places has not become too firmly fixed. Kephrath and her sister towns certainly make use of trade links, but for bulk supplies are largely self-sufficient. Four towns together, and their hinterland, can manage.
The process of increasing specialisation of any one place, and increasing dependence on an ever larger area, has continued largely uninterrupted ever since. In both World War 1 and 2, arguably the biggest threat to the United Kingdom was the U-boat blockade cutting the nation off from resource supplies. There were great efforts to boost the domestic food supply, but a modern nation at war needs a whole array of raw materials which come from many sources – coal, oil, iron ore, rubber, exotic trace minerals, and so on. Without convoys bringing these in, the most abundant supply of food would still have lost the war.
Cover – Foundation
Looking into the future, different authors have predicted different outcomes. In his Foundation series, Asimov reckoned that the trend of reliance on ever bigger areas would continue unchecked. Trantor, the capital planet of his Galactic Empire, grew no food at all, and depended on the agricultural wealth of multiple nearby star systems – an Achilles heel which was to prove fatal. Star Trek, on the other hand, assumes a technological solution in which energy can be converted into food from information templates in a replicator. The only thing you now need is an energy source – such a world is effectively reverting all the way back to hunter-gatherers foraging for supplies as they travel.
Guinea pigs – Wikipedia
The solar system of Far from the Spaceports is more like Asimov’s model, though of course vastly smaller in scale. There are no food replicators or protein resequencers. None of the settlement domes has hinterlands of lush fields able to grow local crops. The best that can be done out in the Scilly Isles of the asteroid belt is hydroponic farming – small scale and energy hungry. Otherwise there’s imported goods, whether carried in fresh or (more compactly) freeze-dried. Or – perhaps amusingly but, I think, credibly – there are very small scale livestock solutions.
“Now, Mister Mitnash, were you wanting the chicken or the fish tonight?”
I hesitated, not being very sure. She laughed.
“No point spending too long deciding. It’s all guinea-pig anyway. I just prepare them a mite differently and you’d never know they’re the same animal. And it’s what you’ve been having everywhere else on Scilly.”
“Truly?”
“To be sure. Tell me now, where did you eat when you arrived on St Mary’s?”
“Taji’s.”
“And what did you have? His Venusian azure duck wrap?”
I nodded, and she carried on, “So did you honestly think he pays to ship real duck all the way out from Earth? Just to cook it and put it in a wrap? No, Mister Mitnash, all his menu is actually guinea-pig, but he’s very good at disguising it. For just me here, I only need one male and half a dozen females. Taji has three males and thirty females. Or something like that. So now, would you like the chicken or the fish?”
I thought about it and wondered if it would make much difference.
Today’s element is energy – a simple word that contains a wide variety of meanings. Long ago, energy meant simply getting enough heat to keep a human community warm through winter. Although humans may well have originated from Africa, they scattered across the face of the Earth at an early stage. A Russian paper just this week in Science strongly suggests that humans were hunting well north of the Arctic Circle around 45,000 years ago – seems we can adapt ourselves to all manner of inhospitable climates!
But as time went by, energy meant other things. We needed energy not just to keep warm or cook food, but also for metal work. The required temperatures steadily rose – around 1000° C or so for copper and bronze, or about 1500° for iron. And as well as that, we wanted energy to extend the day length by giving light to continue tasks past sunset – increasingly important the further we strayed from the equator. All this energy had to come from somewhere, and human societies devoted an increasing proportion of their time to extracting the raw materials – wood, coal, oil and so on, all ultimately from long-dead living things. And at different times and places we have also derived energy from the effort of animals and slaves, the movements of water or wind, steam, the sun, chemical and radioactive changes in matter, and so on.
All of these things have an impact on the environment. We often think about the impact of manufacturing use – like England’s New Forest being cut down to provide raw material for the Royal Navy – but simple generation of energy soaks up a very large amount. We switched from wood to coal here in England partly because it is a more efficient source of heat, but partly also because we were burning trees way faster than they could grow, and were running short of them. Here’s a visual way of looking at our use of energy – this chart tells us that the consumption per person of energy for all purposes is over 100 times what it was for our remote ancestors. When you also factor in the huge numerical increase in the human population, it is clear that we are extremely energy hungry.
Changes in energy use through time
My historical novels are set about half way along this chart – energy was being used for all kinds of purposes, but could be met largely from local sources without need for major imports. Environmental impact was largely for other reasons – for example the hill country of Canaan used to be heavily wooded, but almost all of it was cleared in the early Iron Age to make way for larger settlements.
It’s no secret that managing our demand for energy, and the consequences of that demand in terms of unwanted heat, pollution, exhaustion of natural resources, and so on, is a major problem facing us today. Not only that, but the volumes of raw materials we need, and the limited parts of the earth’s surface which hold them, mean that large parts of our transport network have to be given over just to transporting energy-making materials.
City lights and starry nights – photo by Tim Peake
When you look out into space, and the speculative colonisation of the solar system of Far from the Spaceports, we face a different set of problems, By now, we are all used to the sight of solar panels capturing the sun’s radiation and powering probes and satellites. But as you travel further away from the sun, the quantity of light drops off rapidly. At the orbit of Mars, there is rather less than half the intensity as there is close to Earth. At Jupiter, there is less than 4%. At Pluto’s closest approach, the figure is under 0.1%.
Juno mission to Jupiter
So, even with perfect capture, the area needed increases to rather ridiculous proportions as you travel further from the sun. The current record-holder for most distant spacecraft still using solar power is NASAs Juno vessel, in its closing stages of approaching Jupiter. Juno has 3 massive solar panels, with a combined area of about 50 square meters (roughly the front face of a house) which in Jupiter orbit will generate a mere 400 watts – a handful of light bulbs. The same area in Earth’s orbit would generate about 14 kilowatts. Further out – Saturn and the still more distant planets – we would have to rely on other kinds of generator since the intensity of sunlight is too weak. Or, to put the same matter a different way, the area of solar panels required would be prohibitively large. Right now, the favoured method is a nifty gadget called an RTG, which uses the heat generated by radioactive decay (quite different from a nuclear power plant, which uses the decay products themselves). The RTG units on Voyager 1 and 2 started life in 1977 at just short of 40kg (about what you might carry onto a plane), and are expected to drop below feasible operating levels by about 2025.
Basically, energy is always going to be a problem, wherever we go. The things we like, and that we like to do, are hungry for energy. Another of those top-of-the-list items, as and when we settle out among the asteroids, the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, or anywhere else, will be to secure a reliable source of energy.
Blog readers will know all about tonight’s Facebook celebration of the release of Far from the Spaceports: a Facebook launch event for Far from the Spaceports, 7pm-9pm UK time (banner below).
But alongside that I have set up Amazon countdown offers on the Kindle versions of Scenes from a Life and The Flame Before Us, so that historical fiction readers can enjoy the season too. Prices are at 99 pence / 99 cents just now, and slowly rise until getting back to normal price in a week’s time.
A quick reminder about the Facebook celebration event for the launch of Far from the Spaceports. There’ll be giveaways at various times during the session, so come along, try your chance at winning, ask questions and generally join in the fun…
Details: a Facebook launch event for Far from the Spaceports next Monday, December 7th, 7pm-9pm UK time.
Today is another author interview day, this time with Trish Cox. I read her book Chasm Creek earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed it. Chasm Creek is a western – a genre I have hardly ever read since school days long ago. Most of my acquaintance with westerns comes from old television series like The Virginian and The High Chapparal, with a smattering of more recent films.
Trish has also published a collection of short stories and flash fiction, and her writing career extends well beyond that into magazine and newspaper articles, guide books, and memoirs.
2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards finalist badge
As a bonus “stop press” note for this interview, Trish just told me:
On September 25, the New Mexico Book Coop announced finalists in many fiction and nonfiction categories for the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. Chasm Creek by Patricia Grady Cox is nominated in the Historical Fiction category. Winners will be announced at an awards banquet to be held on November 20 in Albuquerque NM.
Congratulations! Now on with the interview…
Q.Trish, the western is a genre not much practiced here in the UK, though I guess it is more popular in the States. What drew you to write in this genre, and specifically to write Chasm Creek?
A. Hi Richard. It’s an honor to be interviewed for your blog; thank you! I can’t say that I chose to write this story. It was more that the story grew within me and had to be told and Arizona was where it happened. When I first moved here 25 years ago, I lived in a little town north of Phoenix. I visited the local historical society’s museum and discovered the town was established in territorial days and originally was a gold mining camp. That led to reading about gold mining in Arizona. Then, in my travels around my new home state, I visited Monument Valley on the Navajo reservation. It was here I first heard of The Long Walk. It’s a shameful part of our history that is not widely known: in 1863 thousands of Navajo were rounded up, after being starved and slaughtered into submission, and marched over 300 miles to Fort Sumner in New Mexico where they were held captive for five years. Thousands perished on the Walk, and more at the Bosque Redondo. I wanted to work that into my story.
Q.I was very struck by your frequent and very evocative descriptions of the natural beauty of Arizona. It’s a part of the world I don’t know at all. Do you think that the magnificence of the surroundings is an important feature of the western in general?
A. Thank you, Richard. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that the setting has resonated with so many people. I believe what is coming through is my absolute love of this geographical area. I moved here because I wanted to live in this setting. In 25 years I have not tired of it. I like stories in which the setting becomes a character, something that is almost required if you’re writing about the historical American west. I tried, in Chasm Creek, to paint a picture of the harshness and isolation of life then as well as the beauty. It gives the characters one more obstacle to deal with.
Full moon shines on the Three Sisters, Monument Valley Tribal Park, Navajo Nation, Utah, Photo by Patricia Grady Cox
Q.You have lived in both Arizona and on the US Eastern seaboard, as indeed have some of your characters in Chasm Creek. Tell us something about the differences between them, and how this affects your writing.
A. I think my personal experience leaks into the story a couple of times through Esther. She is the one who considers moving back east at one point, but realizes she would be smothered by the closeness, the buildings, everything paved and cultivated, trees that block the view, the sky. Those who know me commented they saw me coming through in that section, and they were correct. Rhode Island is a beautiful state. It’s green, filled with forests and many small farms, the ocean is not far from any point (it is a tiny state). The coastline is beautiful and ferries abound to take you to various islands off the coast. I loved the ocean. But the time came to say goodbye and head west! No ocean here. Hardly any water. Everything is sharp, ragged, poisonous. But you can hike to the top of a hill, even in the middle of the city, and see for miles. You can drive along the highway and look out on either side of the road and see mountains and buttes and mesas and cactus, maybe a stray cow or a wild burro. There is no closeness (at least once you leave the city which you can do in less than an hour). I never knew that clouds cast shadows on the ground. I never knew that you could see a storm approach, experience the line between no rain and a downpour as it passes over you.
How does this affect my writing? It probably imbues everything I write. My second novel and my third (work in progress) all contain elements of this conflict between safety, closeness, civilization – whether back east or just within a city in the territory – and the wide open spaces which, to me, symbolize freedom, adventure, and opportunity, much as it did during the western expansion in our country. For me it’s on a spiritual and emotional level as well as geographic. I did not write novels until I came here.
ITCAOnline – Tribal Homelands in Arizona
Q.In the older westerns, American Indian groups tended to be presented as simple stereotypes. You depict them as far more nuanced and diverse. Can you say something about American Indian groups living in Arizona at that time? A. It’s unbelievable the way American Indians were portrayed in the past. Actors speaking gibberish or stilted English, casting white actors, no regard for tribal cultural differences. I can’t claim to be an expert in Native American culture. I studied what I needed to study to make my characters historically accurate. I learned that the Apache and Navajo tribes, with common distant ancestors and very similar language, considered each other enemies. I learned there were many subdivisions within tribes – among the Apache were Tonto, Mescalero, Chiracahua, Jicarilla, just to name a few. They were not one big unified group. There is so much to know, and I’m just glad that writers and move-makers are becoming aware of this and showing more respect.
So to answer your question, there were many different Native Americans living here when European settlement spread west in the mid-1800s. Some were pueblo Indians, some agrarian, others hunter/gatherers, and so on. There was no homogenous “Indian” in Arizona. The ones that tried to fight the Europeans suffered the consequences. Others were more peaceful. I tried to stick with just the two groups – Navajo in order to incorporate the Long Walk into my story as it affects two characters, and the Tonto Apache because they lived in the area of the fictional Chasm Creek. According to the InterTribal Council of Arizona, http://itcaonline.com/ there are 21 tribal nations currently living in Arizona.
Patricia Grady Cox at Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. Spider Woman monolith. Photo by Susie Whiting
Q. How did you carry out research for this book, and more generally about the era? Is it easy to uncover documentation about the life and times of people there?
A. It is fairly easy to do research on that time period in Arizona. There was a huge military presence and they kept excellent records. Martha Summerhayes is one famous journal-keeper who recorded her travels around the territory with her Army officer husband. Phoenix, Prescott, Tombstone, and other big towns were publishing newspapers regularly. Almost every town has a historical society and some kind of museum, although not all go back to my favorite territorial period. My preferred way to do research is to travel to the actual locations. I drove the 300 miles from the Navajo reservation to the Bosque Redondo, where the Navajos built a memorial and museum. I walked the grounds of what was once Fort Sumner, looked at the slimy, slow-moving creek that is called the Pecos River and thought about 10,000 people having to use that as their sole source of water. I’m sure the river looked different back then, but I could get an idea. I also had to picture the area devoid of trees because the prisoners quickly cut down all the trees for firewood and shelter; now there are trees along the banks. I was able to visit every setting that was used in the novel, take notes and photographs, then research what it would have been like 130 years ago (much different). Oh, and I read a lot.
Pioneer Arizona Living History Museum
Q.Your website (http://www.patriciagradycox.com/) mentions that for a few years you volunteered at the Pioneer Arizona Living History Museum, portraying an 1800s ranch wife (several other interviewees this year have taken part in re-enactments, so this is clearly an appealing activity for authors!). Tell us a little about your experiences doing this. A. There are many groups that do reenactments, and many of them pride themselves on their authenticity and their knowledge of the period. Working at the museum was similar except one was assigned to a particular building, and you took care of it (swept, dusted, tended the fire, hauled water). The novel I’m working on now is on three levels that incorporates modern time, the living history museum, and 1879 Arizona. My characters are shocked at the difference between what they thought was an authentic representation and the reality of life then. Some of my blogs address this issue. It was not romantic or easy or fun (unless, of course, one was wealthy—same as today).
Q.Your web site indicates that you have another novel in progress, Hellgate. Can you tell us a little about that, and when we might be able to enjoy it?
A.Hellgate is finished and has been with an agent for a year and a half. It’s a problem because it’s a western historical novel with two female protagonists. One is a young woman who has been kidnapped and is being held captive in an outlaw lair run by an Irish madman. The other is her aunt who lives in the territorial capital, a lady with servants and a Victorian home, but she has her own problems (addictions). I am considering whether to give traditional publishing any more time or to self-publish it.
Q.Is there anything else you would like to tell readers today? A. I would like ask that people look at my blog posts, and let me know if they like them. Also, I have a page on Facebook which can be “liked”. And there is one blog post from a while ago that your readership might especially enjoy since it’s about an American West reenactment group – in England. The blog is entitled “The British are Coming!” https://pcoxwriter.wordpress.com/2014/07/19/the-british-are-coming/.
Trish Cox
Many thanks Trish for participating in the interview today! Chasm Creek comes warmly recommended by me (see The Review Group or Goodreads) and I look forward to Hellgate as and when it gets published.
Thank you Richard, for the wonderful review and for inviting me onto your webpage. I enjoyed the questions very much!
I’ve had the happy experience of being on the Scilly Isles for the last couple of weeks, surrounded by ancient historical monuments as well as natural beauty, and it set me wondering about how people in the past thought about the older monuments they saw around them.
Bant’s Carn entrance grave above Halangy Village
A couple of examples. On St Mary’s there is an Iron Age village, Halangy (from the early AD period). It now overlooks the stretch of water across towards Tresco, but when the island was first settled, a person standing here would be looking across a wide expanse of cultivated land towards some low hills. But up the hill from the houses, with a space carefully left between, is a much older entrance grave, Bant’s Carn, from either the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age – possibly 2 or 3000 years older. The grave overlooks both the village and the drystone walls marking out ancient field divisions.
How did the Halangy villagers regard that tomb? Was it a place of solace or spiritual protection, either in the ordinary difficulties of life or more specifically from the slow but relentless impact of rising sea levels? Or perhaps a nuisance that called for regular observances but apparently contributed nothing and took up valuable land? Or was its function lost to history by the Iron Age, and it simply stood there as an enigmatic reminder of an older time? Many such old human relics are given names suggesting they were built by giants – apparently their monumental scale made it seem impossible that they could have been built by human ancestors. But at least there would be a sense that whoever built it was living in the same place, sharing something of the same experience of life.
Wayland’s Smithy, beside The Ridgeway
Another example comes from The Ridgeway. The modern national trail follows the middle portion of a very ancient trackway linking the Wash in East Anglia with the Channel coast and River Severn. It was used actively for thousands of years, and scattered along it are all kinds of monuments of the human past. The particular one I want to focus on is Waylands Smithy, a very long Neolithic burial mound beside the track which itself incorporated an older, smaller tomb within it.
Now picture yourself as a person walking the Ridgeway in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1200BC say for definiteness) – perhaps you are carrying trade goods, or going to a festival to celebrate. You camp one night close to Waylands Smithy, and wander over to look at it in the moonlight. What do you make of it? Something like 2000 years separates you from its builders, and presumably the symbolism which was clear when first constructed is obscure to you. Do you even recognise it as a burial place? And if you do, does that recognition bring comfort or anxiety? Unlike the case of Halangy village, you have no possible personal connection with the culture who erected it, and no sense that those people could be your own ancestors.
All this made me think a lot about my own writing, set in the Late Bronze Age in the Levant. Uphill from the town of Kephrath are caves used as family tombs over a number of generations. There is a very direct link between the current occupants of the town and those tombs, and so there is no mystery about them, other than the basic mystery of death. But elsewhere in the land nearby, there are older constructions, to which Kephrath and its occupants have no connection. What would they make of them?
No answers here, but a lot of provocative questions about the past!
Here is the next in the series of character studies from The Flame Before Us, presented in the form of interviews.
Today’s interview is with Labayu, a Kinahny man who grew up in Kephrath, but until recently was living among the northern tribes of the Ibriym, in the Galil region. He has recently moved back to Giybon, largest of the Four Towns.
I had been directed to one of the houses in Giybon, but Labayu was not at home. His wife, Ashtartiy, makes me welcome with mint tea and some raisins, and then settles me outside. The corner of the house shades me from the afternoon sun, and a spreading rose curls above the door lintel. Ashtartiy’s mother is inside, and two children, but it is clear that I am not to join them. Domestic conversation floats intermittently out of the door, and I drift on an autumnal reverie.
Finally I see Labayu approaching from the town gate. He strides up to me, welcomes me enthusiastically, and sits beside me. One of the children runs out to hug him, watching me covertly before dashing in again.
“Have you been here long, sir? I was setting snares along the ridge north from here and forgot the time.”
“Not long, and I have been made welcome.” I remember just in time that in his tradition, the house belongs to Ashtartiy rather than him. “Your lady wife has shown me the hospitality of her home. I was not sure if I would find you here. They told me in Shalem that you were often away from the town for weeks on end.”
“Not so much just now. Until early this year I was living north of here, in Ramath-Galil, west of Kinreth. I led a band of men who protected the northern borders of the Land. The Sons of Anath, they called us.”
“Your family were there as well?”
He nods.
“But Ashtartiy hated it. The Ibriym tribes up there have no respect for our customs, and refused to give her honour as mother of the house. As soon as we heard the first rumours of trouble she came back here to her mother’s house. I persevered and stayed longer, but now here I am, as you see.”
“The trouble you mention: that was when the Sherden and their fighting cousins first came into the land?”
“No, no, it was before then. The king of Hatsor heard news of their approach before we did, and set out to scour the land for men to force into his army. Little good it did him, though, for the newcomers swept his troops away with all the rest. But Ashtartiy left at that early stage, in case I needed to escape in haste out into the wilderness.”
He paused, thinking back. Keen to keep the conversation going, I rush on.
“But when these newcomers arrived you were away from that village, I hear.”
“Yes indeed. The headman, Pedayah was his name, he led his people south to avoid the fight. I stayed there to scout what was happening. And because Abiy’el, the warleader of the Ibriym at that time, he wanted me to see if a covenant treaty might be cut. We had no idea who they were, you see, and we had no idea that they were made up of different tribes themselves.”
“Were you able to make peace?”
“Not then. Not ever, with some of their tribes. But we came to an agreement with the Sherden, after a while.”
He pauses, apparently wondering if he should continue, and then rushes on.
“I was the one who was first able to come to peace with them. It was in Shalem. I had pursued a small group of them there with a handful of my men, thinking that they were the enemy. But the people I met wanted peace, and a place to settle quietly on the other side of the River. I spoke with them, and realised that we could find common ground with them. But as for their distant cousins, who fought the Mitsriy along the Sea Road and settled on the coastal plain: with them I fear there will always be hostility.”
“At the village cistern they told me that your men did not all agree with this treaty.”
“They did not. That covenant cost me the friendship of a man I had known all my life. Shimmigar, he was called. He could not forgive these newcomers for an act of cruelty, and he will not accept that they are not all alike. He has not spoken to me since the day we cut the covenant with the Sherden. He stayed in the north of the land, to carry on the fight. I hope he still lives.”
He falls silent for a while, and his face shows the grief of the broken companionship. I let him reminisce for a while before I speak again.
“Tell me of the Sons of Anath.”
“Oh yes. It was Abiy’el’s idea in the first place. He wanted a band of hunters who would protect his people on the fringes of their settled land. North, south and west towards the sea. Not so much east, as many of his kindred still live there. But so few of the Ibriym had any of the necessary talents to fulfil such a task, and so it fell mostly to Kinahny men who were their allies. He called this band the Sons of Anath, so that we would feel that it was our heritage as well as his. I was a hunter and trapper, and my father before me, and he chose me to lead the men in the north.”
“But here you are back in Giybon.”
He grins, and waves a hand at one of the passing village men.
“And very glad to be here. Ashtartiy grew to hate Ramath-Galil quicker than I, but I was not far behind her. It is no place for a man or woman raised in the Four Towns. But that aside, the Sons of Anath had been Abiy’el’s idea, as I said. Now that he has lost his place as warleader, the Ibriym do not know whether to keep the tradition alive or not. Some say one thing and some another, and until they are of one mind I have returned to my traps and snares. And the home of my wife, which I came to miss very greatly in that time out in the wilderness.”
“Would you do it again, if they asked you?”
He pauses for a long time. His two children bring us each another beaker of mint tea. The sun slips down towards the wooded ridges. I look around, knowing that Shalem is away in the distance ahead of me, but unable to see any part of it.
“I maintain my friendship with the Sherden, you know. It was Towanos who first spoke with me, that day in Shalem. I had gone to that room all ready to be their enemy, and to arouse the king of Shalem against them. My heart was changed there by all that I saw and heard. Towanos was the first of the Sherden to take the time to speak with me. We found that we shared a great deal in common.”
We fall silent again. Finally he returns to my question.
“I think not. I was willing to try it for Abiy’el, because I respected him. And he respected us. But the Ibriym cannot agree amongst themselves just now, and I do not know who will emerge as their warleader. We are their covenant allies, and at need we will fight beside them. But just now, I do not think that I would go out into the wilderness again as I did before. My place is here, I think.”
“So these last few months have changed you?”
“Beyond measure. Beyond anything that I imagined at the time. When I was roaming in the north of the land, looking for these strangers who seemed to be invading our land, then when I was rushing south to find Abiy’el and saw the tents and camps of the Ibriym who had fled their homes, something changed for me. There was one night when we saw the signs of a town on fire, my men and I. It was near to Shalem; we feared it might be our homes here in the Four Towns. In fact it was a small village of Shalem, set alight by desperate Ibriym men, and nothing to do with the newcomers. But after that night I decided that I would not leave my home town again except for the most severe need.”
He glances in to where Ashtartiy had come to the door to watch the two of us.
“I am content here, in a way that I never was before. But see, my wife has finished preparing our meal. You will join us, I hope?”
We get up and go inside the house, ducking under the limbs of the rose, heavy with the season’s hips.
This is the last of the current series of interviews – later in the year I hope to do some more with other characters.
