The Audubon Guy Was A Monster

Robert sits down with David Bell to discuss John Audubon, namesake for the birdwatching society, naturalist and racist monster

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Oh boy, I'm the podcast man here to deliver pods
to your ear cast. Beautiful, beautiful, Thanks David. You know
what they say about being a professional is you should
never learn how to do even the basic parts of
your job at any point and just kind of muddle through.

(00:24):
And that is the key to success, right because when
you do like a fraction of it, then everybody is like,
oh my god, they did it. That's amazing. You keep
everybody's expectations, you keep everybody's look exactly. It's like when
I'm when I'm um, you know, driving, you know, I'm
not gonna use turn signals. I'm not going to turn
my headlights on, you know, because that way, when I

(00:48):
eventually slam on my brakes and narrowly miss running through
a crosswalk, people are like, wow, pretty good guy, he
didn't he didn't hit that crosswalk. Didn't hit that crosswalk.
Yeah people, Yeah, they're all ready for death there. Yeah. Yeah,
they were like, wow he was he was pretty drunk,

(01:08):
but he wasn't so drunk that he blew through that crosswalk.
That's that's the way in which I approached my career. Um, David,
you have podcasts, You're David Bell this is behind the
bastards by the way. Um, but you have a podcast
network called game Fully Unemployed where you you talk about
movies and in media and stuff. I got a bunch

(01:28):
of shows on there, that's true. But I mean I
feel like the plug. I think we did it. I
think we're all set ready to go. Yeah, I'll plug.
I'll plug our patreon, Patreon, dot com, slash gamefully Unemployed.
But really just like search for gamefully Unemployed whatever wherever
you game podcast, uh and check us out. We have

(01:51):
we have a bunch of exclusive ones on our patreon. Uh. Yeah,
pop it, yeah it, pull it twisted, tug it is
tug one tuget. Absolutely treat it like a nipple. General
rule of advice, Burnett, It's like a nipple, Dave. How
do you like birds? Um? Lukewarm? Lukewarm on birds? Depends

(02:15):
on the bird, to be honest. Um, I like the
I like them in theory against them, you know, but
again it's really is going to depend on the bird. Yeah.
I don't have anything against birds. Categorically, I will say
the animals I have most often had negative relationships with
have been birds, particularly chickens. Yeah. Monstrous creatures, Oh, Yeah.

(02:41):
When I was a child, I apparently brought a chicken
into my house like holding it, and I still think
back at that, like, how did I not get attacked
by that chicken? Well, they're bad at that if you
if you pick them upright, so would you must have done? Yeah,
you may be a savant a chicken Savanah. You know

(03:01):
much about the Audubon Society. No, okay, Well, today's episode
is called John James Audubon Bird Monster, um. And we're
gonna talk about the namesake, not the founder, it was
founded years and years after his death, um, but the
namesake of the Audubon Society. And this guy sucks a
lot more than than you would expect, dave a lot

(03:24):
more than you would expect. Okay, I mean I don't
know who this is. Yeah, you know. The Audbon Society
is like people who like birds a bunch, you know,
bird watchers. That's their group, is the Audubon Society, Like
the n r A is for guns, and the Audubon
Societies for people who like going into the woods and
being like, look I saw a bird and then telling
other people like I found this bird here. That's their

(03:45):
whole thing. I think it's just no matter what my
view of birds are, I do find bird watchers highly sinister.
It is it is. It is unsettling right, like they
could be doing anything with those binoculars. You know. It
feels like when someone says what are you doing and
they say bird watching, that sounds like an you're the FBI,
Like we I already know right away you're you're doing

(04:07):
some skullduggery, right, because the one thing I do know
about birds who they're not fun to watch like that's
but there's like a lot of people like to watch birds.
I mean, I don't get it. But also I will
spend like hours just watching my cats live their lives.
So everybody's got animals they like to they like to
stare at like a creep. Yeah, and that Autubon society

(04:29):
likes to do that with birds, which is fine broadly speaking,
not not a bad but the guy they're named after
real shitty. So John James Audubon was born gen I
Bean like you know French John, like spelled like Jeans
but without the S, but not like Sean Luke Jean No,
no that one yeah j e a n gene Yeah.

(04:52):
In san domain, which is modern Haiti right, Like he's
born in what is today Haiti was then the slave colony.
That right, Yeah, yeah, I did, I did. I did
a video for some it was it's bleak. So he's
born seventy five, which is not all that long before

(05:14):
well before the cool thing happens, which is like the
Haitians Haitian slaves are like, yeah, let's kill everybody who's
want slaves to exist. Um, but that's not a great
time to be the illegitimate son of a French sea captain. Um,
you know, a mixed time and like slave trader. His
dad is, who is also named John is a is

(05:35):
a slave trader and a sea captain and owns a plantation. Now,
depending on who you believe, Jen Rabine's mother is either
a sugar plantation owner who died in the slave uprising
that led to the creation of Haiti, or a mixed
race chambermaid named Katherine Bouffard or a French chambermaid named
gen iban Um, which is basically the same as his name.

(05:56):
So there's a couple of different theories and and one
of them is that he's a mixed he's kid, that
he that he has black ancestry um and that's going
to become very relevant later because of some of the
things this guy chooses to do with his life. Um,
whoever his mother was and whether or not he was
mixed race, he was born able to pass as white,
so if he is, if he is mixed race, he

(06:17):
like white people in like the U. S And Europe
don't notice that when they look at him, right, which
is handy in this period of time. Right, Why why
are we not sure who his mother is? Well, because
he's he's a legitimate like his dad is a pretty
well off guy, and he has a wife back in France,
and he's just whoever he has his son with. It's

(06:38):
not his wife, you know. Um. It's also the seventeen eighties,
so it's not like it's not like if he'd wanted
to know who his mom was, he could have gotte
and done a DNA test at some point, but there's
really not many options. Um, So the most likely cases
that his mom was was J. E. A. N N. E.

(07:00):
Rabine as opposed to gen Rabine. I'm sorry, they're French,
so this this part is going to be kind of confusing. Um.
And she died of an infection basically as soon as
her baby came into the world, probably as a result
of having a baby, not an uncommon story in se
um So, James's dad, Geen Audubon, decided to leave the
island shortly thereafter. He was not a dumb man, and

(07:22):
he saw that tensions in Haiti, and by tensions I
mean all of the angry people freeing themselves from plantations
and getting weapons were on the rise. Right, So, as
a rich white guy looking at Haiti in the late
seventeen eighties and like, probably how to get out of here,
but probably ain't gonna be. This ain't gonna be good
for me anymore. Yeah, they're not gonna be. They're gonna
not gonna be nice to him. Yeah, I probably don't

(07:44):
want to be hanging around Haiti too much longer. Um So,
the rumors that Jean may have been mixed race are
mainly significant again for things that come up later. It's
worth noting that his father, if he was mixed race,
his father may not necessarily have seen this as a
big deal. Well, this would have been like a thing
in the United States as a time. Again, if you
have like one drop of blood that isn't white, and

(08:06):
kind of the parlance of the time in the US
in this period, it can be a huge issue for you,
right if if I remember correctly, Not not to say
Haiti is progressive during this time, but like the revolution
that happens oh sorry France, yeah, but like also the
revolution that happens in Haiti, like they pretend it doesn't happen,

(08:27):
right in a lot of places, France does and for
a long time that's basically their policy. But within kind
of the France itself and and France outside of the
islands where they own a lot of slaves. The late
seventeen hundreds are a period in which, again you've had
this revolution, there's all of these kind of radical ideas
about equality. Um it is starting to become normalized for

(08:49):
people who are not white to get the rights of
citizens in the French Empire. Okay, so there, and there's
this period where like there's still slavery, but also people
who are mixed race are getting their citizenship. Um. I
am thinking of the US because the US it was
like they didn't want to talk about what was going
on in Haiti because well the French did either, Like
again they don't once Haiti rebels, France doesn't really want

(09:12):
to acknowledge it. Right, they invaded a couple of times,
and the US doesn't want. No one wants to acknowledge
it because the idea of a slave rebellion is very
frightening to everybody. But you have in the same period,
because it's post revolutionary France, all these discussions about well,
mixed race people in black people should be citizens to like,
if we're gonna say everybody's equal, then these people have
to be equal as well. And it's like this process

(09:33):
going on. And this not to like whitewash the horrible
colonial crimes of the French government, but this process does
happen in France, and there are rights for people who
are not white but are French citizens in France. That
does not happen in the United States for like another
seventy years, you know, um, and arguably a lot longer
than that, right obviously, um. Whereas in France they do

(09:54):
actually start to get functional citizenship. All mixed race Frenchmen
received citizenship in sevent ninety too. UM. So the fact
that like jeen uh Rabine may have been kind of
mixed race would not have been a huge issue growing
up in France, as it would have been in the
United States. Now his dad does buy a farm in
the United States, two four acres outside of Philadelphia. Um.

(10:18):
And at this point, again I I normally we would
call it something else. It's not Philly yet, you know
it's Philadelphia. It's not it's not the gritty city that
we we know and love. At this point, UM, I
wanted to make a joke about the first sports related
riot in US history here, like and that being the
thing that made it Philly, because I was gonna be
I was pretty sure the four first U s sports

(10:40):
riot would have happened in Philadelphia, but I was I
was wrong about that. Um yeah there was. Yeah, it
was the Johnson Jeffreys riots of nineteen ten. Um. And
those happened in a bunch of cities, but not Philadelphia.
There's like a shipload of US cities that have riots
in nineteen ten over this it's a boxing match. None

(11:01):
of them are Philly. Um. And yeah, it's what you'd expect.
Jack Johnson becomes the first black world heavyweight champion, and
then they so he becomes heavyweight champion, and all the
white people in America are really pissed, and so they
like find this white boxer to come out of retirement
to fight him in nineteen ten. That's um, that's Jeffreys,

(11:21):
who they call the Great White Hope. And then he
gets his ass kicked. Yes, so there's I mean, it's
not I mean there's horrible, horrible race riots where after
it's a nightmare. But yes, the basic story is kind
of funny. Um. Anyway, this was all because I wanted
to make a joke about Philadelphia and sports riots, which
wound up not being at all relevant. Uh So, sorry

(11:44):
for the digression. But back to Jean. So in his
dad takes him away from Haiti, they go to France. Um,
and you know, they buy this farm in Philadelphia. It's
mainly an investment farm, you know, so that they can
make money. So that's kind of where the family money
is coming from. While while Jean and his dad and
his dad's wife who's not his mom raise him in

(12:08):
Nantes in France. Um. And I should say that like
his dad's wife, Anne Moynette Audubon, isn't like biologically his mom.
I do think she like agrees, she is basically his mom,
like she raises him and stuff, So credit to her
for that. She seems to not as far as I know,
doesn't take out on him the fact that his dad
was just sleeping around with whoever the fuck, you know, Haiti,

(12:30):
So that maybe maybe they had had a thing, you know,
maybe they had a thing. Maybe she's who knows, Um
they were French, you know, anything's possible. Uh. Yeah, So
Anne was a pretty attentive mother as far as we knew.
Jean Jacques, which is what he starts to become known as.
So he's born gen Ibane, he starts to be known
when they moved to France. They just treat him as

(12:52):
their normal son and call him Jean Jacques audubon Um.
So that's his name. Now he goes through a couple
of names at this point. I know, it's kind of confusing.
He is a pretty pampered upbringing. He's able to explore
a wide variety of interests. He becomes fascinated by nature
and spends long hours hiking through the countryside, drawing increasingly
detailed depictions of landscapes and wildlife. And he had a

(13:14):
particular fascination with birds. So he just loves hiking and
drawing birds. So yeah, Vine, so far fine, Yeah, I mean,
hiking is great. Hiking is wonderful being in nature. It's
one of those things not enough people get to do anymore.
And it really does like it, uh, it like resets you,

(13:34):
you know, it balances you. I don't know why you
look at a bunch of stupid birds and not, I
don't know, get high or something. But like, good for him, Yeah,
good for him. He's he's he's he's doing fine. So
in eighteen o three, some dude named Napoleon gets all
like Empiry and kind of gets into all these fights
with basically everybody. You know, he's one of these one
of these guys you get every now and then in

(13:55):
Europe every eighty years or so. Who's like, you know what,
I want to start a fight with everyone, every everybody
in Europe? You know what? Yeah, I wanna try. I'm gonna,
I'm gonna, I'm gonna go for it. I'm just gonna
go for it for a little. For a while, he
got closer than most. Yeah, it does usually work out

(14:18):
for a while. Um So during the period while it's
working out, in order to make it keep working out,
Napoleon's like, well, I got a conscript people, right, I
need more young men to throw a Prussian guns and
to eventually leave starving in the snow outside of Moscow. Right,
it's as standard as we've all been there, you know
where Napoleon is. I can't blame him for it, um.
But John's father is like, well, I don't really want

(14:41):
my son to die a pointless death in the snow
outside of Moscow fighting for a dictator. So I'm gonna
just send him to the US. It seems like a
better place for him right now. It's a little bit yeah, yeah,
it's fine. Like I support draft dodging as a general rule,
and that's yeah. I can see him looking at his
son outside drawn birds. Yeah, he's gonna he's gonna die immediately.

(15:05):
He's not gonna do well in this war thing. I've
got a sensitive boy here. I'm not really I'm not
feeling like the steps of Russia are a good spot
for him. So Jean Jack lives on the family farm
that you know. He moves to Pennsylvania and he lives
on the family farm in mill Grove, Um And he's

(15:25):
essentially a child of the aristocracy. Right. His family is
not crazy rich, but they're well off, and he does
not need to work for a living as a young man,
he's like eighteen at this point, and so he takes
up hiking and hunting with Gusto. He gets real into
hunting when he moves to the US, and he becomes
an excellent shot, which is not easy. The guns at
the time are not rifled, which is like rifling are

(15:45):
these little lines that they have going down the inside
of a barrel that makes the bullet spin and it's
like with a a football. The spin makes it so straight.
They don't know how to do that yet, So shooting
stuff is not easy. Um right, It's just like a
stupid musket with a ball in it that you have
to like take fifteen minutes to load and fires like

(16:09):
feet maybe explodes in your face. Suck at this point.
And yeah, but he's good with them. So he's he's
good with them. I mean, they have enough money for
the better guns at the time, so that's probably a factor.
So he starts drawing the birds. He starts both shooting
and then drawing birds, and he's using a shotgun for this,
so it's it's easier to hit. Um. But yeah, so
he'll he'll shoot birds and then he'll sketch them, and

(16:30):
this becomes like his hobby, which is I don't know
that a little creepy, right, I was about to say,
that's a bird serial killer Jude Lan road to perdition
taking photographs of his kills. It is one of those
things because he gets very scientific about it and he
has a huge impact on like the development of biology
is a science because of what he does here, and

(16:52):
it's worth acknowledging that, and it's also worth being like,
but this is also like pretty close to stuff we
get like serial killers do. He's not torturing them to
his credit, like he's not extending their suffering, but having
known people with interest in medical stuff. Um, there is
a very fine line between a serial killer and a

(17:13):
doctor or something who's interested in anatomy or like nature
or a biologist, where it's like they're they're kind of
doing it's the ven diagram. Yeah, Like there's some similar things.
If if his parents had hit him a couple of
times more, he probably would have been a lot worse
to those birds, and then we might have gotten a
real different story. Got a bond, you know, Yeah, Yeah,

(17:36):
Like I feel like if Jeffrey Dahmer was doing what
he was doing to like monkeys in a labe. We
wouldn't have even thought twice about it, well, some of it,
because he was off probably probably wouldn't have been okay,
although it depends like look, it depends on what kind
of lab. If it's like a lab that likes to party, right,
if if it's if it's one of those like fucking uh,

(17:59):
I don't know enough about colog is to make a
good joke here, actually, Arizona State. Oh that's solid. Yeah, yeah,
I mean we don't know what goes on in those labs.
Nobody does. Nobody does break into a lab film them secretly,
you know, to see what happens. So white people in
this period of time no very little about North American wildlife. Right, Obviously,

(18:21):
Indigenous people knew quite a bit about North American wildlife,
but white people it's all this gigantic mystery too. So
Jean ja Jean Jack decides that he's gonna he's gonna
study wildlife a lot more than anyone has before. And
one of the things he's curious about he keeps seeing
these birds and he notices that, like, oh, these eastern phoebees,

(18:41):
which is a type of bird, Like, there's birds here
of that type every year at this time, I wonder
if they're the same birds, right, because people don't know
these white people don't know that, like migration is a
thing in detail, right. I think there's people theorizing Yeah, yeah,
why because you just see, like who knows if it's
the same birds, maybe they all die and then I

(19:02):
don't know. There's a bunch of things that are possible.
So he's certain marking the Well, that's exactly what he decides.
He's like, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna tie strings to
the legs of a couple of different examples of this bird.
And then if next year any birds with strings on
their legs come back, Oh no, it's the same birds,
and they're migrating in a set pattern. UM. And this
this is what he does, and it works out great,

(19:22):
Like they come back the next year and he's like, oh, ship,
these are the same birds. You know, I have done
a science UM and this is a huge step forward.
He's the first person to ever do this, at least
that we have any kind of documentation of. UM. And
this is a massive like basically all modern like Avian
science is pretty much descended from this experiment. UM. It's
a big deal. You know, like establishing just like how

(19:44):
birds work, kind of for the first time in a
systemic way. Let me tell you right now, this guy,
he seems to be fine right now, this is so
far yeah, learning about birds. He's very curious to know
how this goes horribly wrong. Well, it it does. It
does because he's a terrible person, but not he's also
a terrible person that does a bunch of Broadly speaking,

(20:08):
his impact is more positive than negative, although that's quite debatable.
We'll see where you how we feel about you know what,
we'll have that conversation at how much you give a
about birds. But you know who's you know whose impact
on the world is definitely more positive than negative, Dave,
it's me. Oh well yeah, for sure. Absolutely well, so
far no one's and and you, Dave, are the primary

(20:32):
sponsor of behind the Bastards. So we're gonna we're gonna
cut to these ads from companies you own, companies like
Hello Fresh and the Washington State Highway patrol um all
all the personal property of David Bell. Uh uh, we're back.

(20:58):
We're back, and we're having a great time time. Everything's fine,
I'm performing perfectly. So he certainly agrees with that, all right,
So you know he's doing good. He bands these birds,
he figures out that migration is a thing. Um. But
he's also you know, he keeps shooting and drawing birds,
painting birds, and this time and he's frustrated by something, um,

(21:19):
which is that he would love to like. So there's
other naturalists who are like drawing and sketching birds, but
like the thing that they have to do is they
have to kill them because you can't you don't have
a great goggles are like glasses, and it's not easy
to get a good look at a bird to draw
it while it's alive. Yeah, I get it. So you
shoot it. And then what bird nerds are doing at

(21:42):
this period of time is they shoot the birds and
then they're like preserving their corpses with arsenic and stuffing
them with frayed rope and then trying to sketch them.
And they don't look great when you do that to him.
I don't know if you've ever stuff to corpse with ropes,
but it doesn't quite look like it does what it's alive.
Probably not know what bird nerds are called, right, birds? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(22:04):
I'm man, Okay, sorry, I'm waiting for you to get
to the part where he's like, you know what, I
could also shooting stuff like that's not as far from
what winds up happening as but he's not shooting them,
so I don't know. Um, but yeah, so he's he's
he's like, the dead birds here look like shit that
I have to sketch from. And that's that's why kind

(22:27):
of all anatomical sketches of birds look like ship like
they all look gross and like fucked up and not
like actual birds. Um. So he decides, well, the best thing,
like what you gotta do is you've got to sketch
them right away as soon as you shoot them. You
can't like waste the time to preserve to like preserve them.
But if you do that, they're just kind of like
limp and flopping around because they're dead. So he builds this,

(22:51):
oh yeah, he builds what he calls a wire armature
in order to pose the corpses of birds so that
he can draw the looking like they did before he
shot them. Amazing, and he does this at age twenty,
which again very important for biology, leads to the people
who are like into birds will say to this day

(23:12):
he's still maybe the best at at drawing avian wildlife
there's ever been. And again, if you're if you're into
medical stuff, this isn't that unusual. It's not unusual. And
he's like, I had a friend who's into survivalism and
he would do stuff like tan hides. Tanning hides in

(23:32):
my garage right now, I have a bunch of like
pieces of animals that i've Yeah, it's still it's what
you gotta do. But the building an armature to pose
their corpses to pay it is a little like, Okay,
so that's where your head goes. Huh, and I guess
good in this case, it's good. He draws some really
pretty birds. Um he does this when he's twenty So again,

(23:54):
you know, that's just where this guy's head is. Um. So,
he falls in love around the same time a woman
named Lucy Bakewell, which is like the most fifties wife
name you could possibly have. It's it's it's incredible. Um
she's the daughter of an English dude who owned a
nearby estate called fat land Ford. It's pretty funny. It

(24:17):
sounds like a dealership. Yeah, it does, sounds like a dealership.
Um So, before her family moved to North America. She'd
spent some of her childhood in England, cared for by
a friend of the family who happened to be Erasimus Darwin,
the grandfather of Charles Darwin, which does not really have
much impact on the story. It's just kind of weird
that there's this connection between Audubon. It's like a cinematic universe. Yeah. Yeah,

(24:40):
it's the the guys who figured out how to do
science on animals. Cinematic universe, and Darwin and Audubon will
have one very specific thing in common, but we're building
to that. Um So, the Bakewells are a lot wealthier
than the Audubons, and their family farm featured one of
the first experiments and steam powered agricultural machines, so they're rich,
they're into science. Obviously, she falls for for Jehan Jack Audubon,

(25:03):
who is now going by John James Audubon because he
he americanizes his name right. I don't want to be
too French in the United Jean Jack, I think Autoban.
If your last name is Autobon, I don't think it
matters what you do with the first part. It's always
gonna sound like, you know, for European Yeah. Yeah, so
both families seem to have been pretty happy. When when

(25:25):
Lucy and and John get hitched, her brother Will writes
this about his future in law at the time. So
this is like one of the earliest writings we have
about John James Audubon. Upon entering his room, I was
astonished and delighted to find that it was turned into
a museum. The walls were fistooned with all kinds of birds,
eggs carefully blown out and strung on a thread. The
chimney piece was covered with stuffed squirrels, raccoons, and a possums,

(25:48):
and the shelves around were likewise crowded with specimens, among
which were fishes, frogs, snakes, lizards, and other reptiles. Besides
these stuffed varieties, many paintings were raid on the walls,
chiefly of birds. He was an admirable marksman and spirit swimmer,
a clever writer, possessed of great activity in prodigious strength,
and was notable for the elegance of his figure and
the beauty of his features. And he hated nature by
a careful attendance to his dress behind. Besides other accomplishments,

(26:12):
he was musical, a good fencer, danced well and had
some acquaintance with Ledger Main tricks, worked in hair and
complete willow baskets. So he's a he's doing fine. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, so he's complimenting his like collection of stuffed animals, Yes,
bacon baskets and stuff and corpses. I feel like these
days that's the equivalent of like a DVD collection, right,

(26:33):
Like that's what these guys would be doing these days.
You go over to John James's house to like watch
his dead animals. Yeah, yeah, which we put on tonight
just you know, man, I've had a rough week. Just
put on I know, we watched Fox last week, but
just put Fox up again. Yeah why not? I mean,
I know, I know every part part of Fox, but

(26:54):
like yeah, yeah, it's just nice to fall asleep too. Yeah.
So after marrying in eight the couple decide to leave
the family farm and strike out for a mysterious and
untrod land, Kentucky. M Yeah, it's good. Yeah, this is
where the problems start, Dave, as they always do in Kentucky.

(27:17):
In Kentucky, So they set up a house together and
for a time, they get up every morning and they
swim together across the Ohio River. A right up by
the Audubon Society notes Lucy Bakewell was a tower of
strength to her husband while he struggled to find his calling.
Now this means that she stays home and raises the
two sons that they have together. Well he well, he
tries to make money. Now, despite his clear skill with

(27:39):
all things birds, John James Um first tries his hand
as a businessman. He starts a general store in Louisville,
where they live, and this does well enough that he
expands to a second location on the frontier, which is
just a slightly further west part of Kentucky at this point, right,
that's as far as white people have really gotten on
the East coast. So keeping this bisness stocked keeps him

(28:01):
heavily engaged, and his agreement with his business partner necessitates
that he keeps the cooking pot filled with wild game.
Right up in Smithsonian Magazine explains quote. As he hunted
and traveled, he improved his art on American birds and
kept careful field notes as well. His narrative of an
encounter with a flood of passenger pigeons in Kentucky in
autom eighteen thirteen is legendary. He gave up trying to

(28:21):
count the passing multitudes of the grayish blue, pink breasted
birds that numbered in the billions at the time of
the European discovery of America and are now extinct. The
air was literally filled with pigeons, he wrote of that encounter.
The light of noonday was obscured as buy an eclipse.
The dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow,
and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to
lull my senses to repose my goodness. Yeah, there were

(28:44):
so many of these birds, we killed all of them. Yeah,
that described it's like the classic film burdemic. It is
like the classic film burdemic film about bird attacks I
can think of. And like with bird dimmic, the only
solution to passenger pigeons was it a side Yeah of course. Yeah. Yeah.
So paper pins and like colors and stuff are not

(29:06):
cheap at this time, and and and this is his hobby,
Like he doesn't he's not making enough money to both
take care of his family and take care of his hobby.
So in order to make extra cash, he gets involved
in a vision in the kind of business that's gonna
gonna make him his extra art money. Dave. You know,
we we've all been there, right, Like, you know, you
want to make a small short films or something, but
you need extra cash, so you get a side gig.

(29:27):
Yeah you did that, right, What did what did? What
did you get into? Dave? Did you did you buy
enslaved people and travel with them in order to sell
them elsewhere in the state and market? Did you become
a slave deal Do that? That's interesting? Yeah? Uh, you

(29:49):
were just stuffing birds, You're just drawing and stuff in birds.
Now he's selling human beings. You like surprisingly stayed out
of history because it's like, you know, these aren't great times. Uh.
He delves right into the not great part. It's fun

(30:09):
because like the early biographies of him by like the
Autumn Society will just say that like he did not
have a problem with slavery. It's a little bit more
direct than that. He was neutral slavery um And he's
like he's not just a slave dealer, he's specifically like
an exploiter of uh trends in the slave market, where

(30:33):
he's like traveling to places where the slaves are dying
because it's the frontier, and it's like, look, I brought
some fresh slaves, but because it's far away, you gotta
pay me more. You know. He's he's like, fuck, you
know that's not there's good. There's no situation where this
is good. But the fact that it's too fund a
bird watching, yeah, well it's ship dude. Nice pencils aren't

(30:59):
cheap today, Robert. That's true, they're not. Look, you gotta
we've all done horrible things for good watercolor pencils, you know.
I mean I've at least shoplift at that for sure.
I'll still nice. Um. Have I ever trafficked, you know,
a shipping container filled with human beings um from Canada? Uh,

(31:22):
in order to pay for for for nice pastel markers? No,
but you know I'm glad you got that on record. Yeah,
I'm glad glad you got that. No, I have not. So.
The Audubon Is also kept slaves at home, um, which
allowed Lucy to work part time as a teacher. So
at least, yeah, it's pretty bad. Um. Another right up

(31:46):
by audubon dot Org notes they took a stand for
slavery by choosing to own slaves in the eighteen teens,
when the Audubons lived in Henderson, Kentucky, they had nine
enslaved people working for them in their household, but by
the end of the decade, when faced with financial difficulties,
they had sold them. In early nineteen nineteen, for instance,
Audubon took two enslaved men with him down the Mississippi
to New Orleans on a skiff, and when he got there,

(32:07):
he put the boat and the men up for sale.
So this is like, you know, he he's he's maximizing
his profits. Uh yeah, he's They're just any other commodity
to him. Really, that's the way he treats this. So
that's that's what's so like, I mean, it's insidious about
the entire time and the whole time, right, It's just
like this is a really good like example, like like

(32:30):
this is something I would want kids to learn about,
to show how mundane this horrifying thing was that this
guy is like I'm trying to just make a living
work my do my bird watching hobby, and it's just
like you said, like I'm going to sell the boat
and the slaves like no difference there, and that is yeah,

(32:51):
that's about that's all he thinks about it, um which
again I don't want to separate him from like the
main stream. But there's also like a lot of them
Americans who are saying this is horrible in the time, um,
including like prominent dudes like Ben Franklin. Uh So, it's
it's not like everyone is in agreement that this is
fine either, Like he's picking a side, you know. Um So,

(33:13):
in eighteen nineteen the bottom falls out of the economy
and James businesses business collapses. This is not really his fault.
The Panic of eighteen nineteen, as it was called, was
caused by the end of a century long period of
warfare between France and Great Britain. Like we don't talk
about this that much, but they were at war for
like a hundred years in this period. Like the US
Revolution is kind of a side show in the century

(33:35):
long war between France and Great Britain. And Great Britain
kind of part of why they don't do more to
stop the U S revolutions, Like they got a lot
on their plate, you know, there's a bunch of ship
going on. Um. So, this series of wars had caused
a huge demand for US agricultural products because like they're needed.
Right when you're fighting all these wars, you're getting all

(33:56):
your men can scripted to go fight these wars. You
don't have as many much you can't spend as much
time farming. So the fact that the US is producing
a lot of food, they're able to sell a shipload
of it in Europe um and when these wars end,
it's terrible for the U S. Economy. Right up in Ohio,
History Central explains during the various various British French conflicts,

(34:16):
United States goods, especially agricultural products, were in high demand
in Europe. The U S public had purchased western land
at an extravagant rate. In eighteen fifteen, people in the
U S. Purchased roughly one million acres of land from
the federal government. In eighteen nineteen, the amount of landed
skyrocket into three and a half million acres. Many people
in the United States could not afford to purchase the
land out right. The federal government did allow buying land

(34:38):
on credit. As the economy ground to a halt in
eighteen nineteen, many people in the US did not have
the money to pay off their loans. The Bank of
the United States, as well as state and private banks
began recalling loans demanding immediate payment. The bank's accident actions
resulted in the banking crisis of eighteen nineteen and helped
lead to the panic. So you know, it's like it's
it's a mortgage crisis basically. Yeah, it's this the that

(35:00):
keeps happening. Um. The resulting clusterfuck is particularly devastating in Kentucky,
where the frontier is active and people have been buying
a lot of land. Um. It was also like devastating
in Ohio for the same reasons, and it it destroys
basically anyone with a business, right Like the bottom falls
out of the currency and the audubonds lose everything. James

(35:21):
even goes to jail for his debts and is forced
to declare bankruptcy in order to get out of being
locked up. Um. Yeah, it's rough, rough times. The only
meaningful possessions he has left at the end of this
period are his art supplies and the portfolio of bird
drawings he'd accumulated over the years. So the first stage

(35:41):
of life business doesn't work out, but thanks to all
the slave selling, he has art supplies. UM. I don't
feel bad for him, but like rock bottom does look
a lot like walking around with a bunch of pictures
of birds and nothing else, and that that's rock bottom
for this guy. Yeah, that makes sense. All he's got
is his birds and his pencils. Um. So that's how

(36:03):
he decides to get his family back on his feet.
He starts by drawing portraits for five bucks ahead. Um
of just like, whoever's got five dollars, I'll draw your portraits.
And he's good enough that his friends help him find
work painting museum exhibits and doing taxidermy for a museum
in Cincinnati. Um. He gets a gig at the Peel
Museum in Philadelphia, where he's hired to mountain stuffed birds

(36:24):
on natural backgrounds. And again, he's better at this than
anybody else alive is so he gets connections very quickly
to wealthy and influential naturalists. Everyone notices like, oh wow,
these are the only stuffed birds that don't look like shit.
Um So, a well off young artist related to the
Philly museum keeper tells Audubon that there's a job opportunity

(36:46):
exploring the uncharted by white people lands beyond the Mississippi.
The Cincinnati museum needed more birds specimen samples of the
new species that we're waiting out in the wild. Um.
People have been like, I documenting these animals, but like
all you have his crew drawings really and so he's like, well,
I want some shot and stuffed and and documented and
brought back to the museum. So James goes out into

(37:07):
the frontier and he just starts shooting and documenting a
funckload of birds. He's been sent so many specimens back
to the museum that they owe him twelve hundred dollars,
which is like thirty grand and modern money, um, which
would have been enough to get his family in good
financial health. But Cincinnati is a town full of liars
and cheats, and the museum refuses to pay him. Wow,
scumbag museum. Fucking museums. That's why I don't go in them.

(37:33):
This is why the motto of this show is burn
every museum. That's it's right, it's behind the bastards, every
one of them. I mean, honestly, depending on the museum,
it's like, I mean, it's still have stolen ship. Anyway.
The last the last museum I was in was in

(37:54):
in Brussels, and they had an exhibit of those terra
Cotta soldiers, and I almost got into a fist fight
with those terras. What do you fucking doing in this museum?
Fucking museum, asked, piece of shit? What I said to
the terra Cotta soldier. I got ship faced in the
gunner outside the London Museum and went in drunk. And
that was a blast. Oh, because there's no like, there's

(38:16):
a rule against being You could be as drunk as
you want. No, no, I I They'll serve you alcohol
in the lubra. And well, at least I brought alcohol
into the lubra. In any case, I was drunk in
the in the um, it's liberating. So he gets sucked
over by this ship museum and he has to send

(38:36):
his family to live with relatives while he sets off
into the wild again to try and find make even
more money. And he takes an eighteen year old boy
with him. Um, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Um,
they gather a bunch of specimens. It wasn't fine until
you said it like that. I mean, it's one of
those things. I've never heard any allegations it wasn't. It's just,

(38:57):
you know, it's when you say, what's happened. Yeah, these
were the were like if we existed back in the day,
we'd have like an eighteen year old boy. You have
a boy who doesn't have a podcasting boy. We do
have a podcasting boy here. So with an eighteen year
old he goes into the woods and things are fine.

(39:18):
He gets a lot of specimens to see if he
can sell them to museum that's not run by crooks.
And he shoots and he poses, and he sketches just
thousands of animals. Smithsonian Magazine notes quote After drawing, he
often performed an anatomical dissection. Then, because he usually worked
deep in the wilderness, far from home, he cooked and
ate his specimens. Many of the descriptions in his Ornithological

(39:39):
Biography mentioned how a species tastes, testimony to how quickly
the largely self taught artist drew. The flesh of this
bird is tough and unfit for food, he writes of
the raven. The green winged teal, on the other hand,
has delicious flesh, probably the best of any of its tribe.
And I would readily agree with any epicure in saying
that when it has fed on wild oats at Green
Bay or unsoaked rice in the fields of Georgia and

(40:00):
the Carolinas for a few weeks after its arrival in
those countries. It is much superior to the canvas back
in tenderness, juiciness, and flavor. There's a lot of extinct
birds that we know how they taste because he shot
them and ate them. I love how this episode is
behind the bastards for humans and for birds. Yeah, like,
birds can listen to this episode if they want to. Yeah, yeah,

(40:22):
this is this is all of my content is meant
for human beings and for crows. But I do get.
I do get the use of also noting how tasty
they are because they're like you shouldn't want to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
if you're gonna shoot him, you should also eat their meat.
Like he's not. It's just again more, this guy is
like a hair's breadth away from going serial killer. Yeah no,

(40:46):
no again. It feels like at any second he'll be
like next. This story could turn, and it does turn,
but in a I mean it does turn um even
more than it has so. The mid late night eighteen
twenties is a time in which natural sciences in America
in Europe are undergoing the period of what's called institutionalization. Previously,
the work of documenting and studying animals had been done

(41:07):
by volunteers who are like gentleman scientists. Right, They're they're
rich dilettants with hobbies. Right. And that's what a lout
of on is. He's a rich kid who, because he
doesn't have to like struggle as a as a child
and a young man, is able to just kind of
like spend a lot of his time focusing on naturalism. Right.
And and it feels like during this time it's less
about like academic knowledge and more like who'll go out

(41:30):
and stuff a bunch of birds? Yeah? Yeah, the work.
Who has the time and the relative freedom to be
able to do that? Kind of rich guy? Yeah, stick
your head in all these holes, yeah, and just see
what's in there. Well yeah, and then like write it
down in this notebook, bring it back to us, and
we'll figure out what to do with that information. Yeah.

(41:51):
So that's that's starting to change in the eighteen twenties. Um,
And there's kind of a solidifying body of scientific elites
in this period that increasingly rests contempt for what they
call amateurs um, which is silly because also at this time,
none of the scientists are really that much better than
the amateurs. But in eighteen twenty four, Audubon is rejected

(42:13):
for membership in the Academy of Natural Sciences because they're like, well,
you're an amateur and we um aren't because we've spent
less time in the woods shooting birds. It doesn't make
a lot of sense in this period. So and if
only they knew that, like birds feels like it's keeping
him from you know, yeah, yeah, you really want to

(42:35):
encourage this guy to spend time with birds. Yeah, this
is this feels like his art school, you know. And
it's like, you know, uh, he knows what he has
done if he'd been stopped. But you know who won't
be stopped day, That's right, That's right, you never will
be Um often though we try, Uh, nothing stops David

(43:00):
Bell like a mist. I'm like a fine mist coming
out right doors, like a fog sweeping in through. Yeah,
your doors, mainly mainly the doors. So here's a pot
episode adds We're back and Sophie is complaining about things

(43:27):
that I've done. UM's fine, which is fine. Just just
know that I'm right. You usually are. But it doesn't matter, Sophie. No,
it's like it's like all those people who protested the
invasion of Iraq, but it still happened, just like this podcast.
This is the Iraq of podcasts about the founder of ornithology. Yeah,

(43:50):
that's exactly what it is. She's gonna throw a shoe
at you at some point. Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right.
And Dave, you will form a terrorist group after I
incarceraate you in a prison and take over large chunks
of Syria and Iracta. That's me. You're going to be

(44:10):
the Isis of this story. Yeah, this has gotten away
from me. I'm gonna be honest with you. I mean
I was. I was going to accept like Rumsfeld or something.
I'm perfectly happy with Isis over here. That's better to
be Isis than Donald Rumsfeld. That is the general streuth
about history. So his drawings, he gets rejected kind of

(44:33):
initially by the scientific community, but his drawings are just
so good that he's able to build a solid career.
Like they can't like, they don't like that he's this
kind of dilettante scientist, but nobody's better at at drawing birds.
So he continually builds a name for himself, and eventually
he's able to Yeah, I'm sorry, that's the thing. I realized.
My dad, who's an artist in like the seventies, he

(44:56):
used to like drew schematics and stuff, and you realize
during that time, it's like, yeah, I mean, how else
are they going to get them? Yeah, Like, there's no computers.
You just need to hire someone who can draw ship
and that was important. That was important. And he does
well enough at this that finally, Dave, he's able to
buy more human beings for his wife and children to

(45:17):
he's able to do it. He gets bad, he's able
to finally after you know, it's like pawning, you know,
your car or your TV. He's a that's that's human
beings for him. Finally, Kevin his comic book collection after yeah,
good good not no no no, So this is bad bad.

(45:37):
The fact that he has slaves again allows him to
continue spending the vast majority of his time nowhere near
his family, gunning down and drawing birds in the wilderness,
you know, right up for Audubon dot Org, Gregor Gregory
Nobles notes quote, although never fully acknowledged, people of color,
African Americans, and Native Americans had a part in making
that massive project possible. Audubon occasionally relied on these local

(45:59):
observer for assistance in collecting specimens, and he sometimes accepted
their information about birds and incorporated it into his writings.
But even though Audubon found black and indigenous people scientifically useful,
he never accepted them as socially or racially equal. He
took pains to distinguish himself from them, and writing about
an expedition in Florida in December eighteen thirty one, Audubon
noted that he set out in a boat with sixtens,

(46:21):
with six enslaved black men hands as he called them,
and three white men, his emphasis clearly underscoring the racial
divide in the boat and his place on the white
side of it. So he's he writes in this that
like we we set out with six hands and three
white men. Right. Like, he's very consciously not referring to
the black people as humans. Um, because he's a racist. Um.

(46:43):
He sucks. Yeah. So by eighteen twenty six, John James
had realized that he had a purpose on this earth.
His great work, which is what he calls it, would
be to decisively identify name and sketch every single bird
species and the parts of North America controlled by the
US government. He called this book the Birds of America,
and it was to be a four volume massive work
of art and science. There would be engraved images of

(47:05):
four nineties species, each drawing the actual size of life
of the bird itself. This is like a massive massively.
You can see some of them in like museums like
it's it's the size like a person sized book um.
Most experts agree that even today he has not been
surpassed in depicting birds in this manner. He's like the
best there's ever been at drawn birds. So no one

(47:28):
in the US cares to fund his ridiculous giant bird book.
So he leaves his family behind and he sails to
Europe for several years, and he brings with him a plan.
He knew Europeans were obsessed with big new animals no
one had seen before, so Audubon brought with him a
drawing of a brand new species of North American eagle
he called the bird of Washington, which he claimed to
have sketched in the Pacific Northwest. Now this bird didn't exist,

(47:52):
it never has. He made it up, So yes, I
can get behind behind. He have been doing this from
day one. He should have been lying way more about birds.
You didn't even nego shoot anything, Just make draw some
fake birds, man, fake no human suffering. Just draw fake birds,
claim you saw them. We would have believed, We would

(48:13):
be believing him. Now. There would be people if he
had just like been like, oh, yeah, there's like a
four winged bird in uh in a in Michigan. Yeah,
a ton of them. There would be people whose whole
life would revolve around finding hiding in the like waiting
in the woods for that bird. There card stone statues
of them out in front of like rest stops in
the middle of nowhere. We just assumed that we like

(48:34):
killed them all, you know, we just assumed, like, oh,
I guess our pollution or whatever like you could have
this is the time. He doesn't Maybe he doesn't know it,
but this is the time to invent birds. It's a
shame bird invent We could have so many more cryptids
if he had really, if he'd gone really gone for it.
So you know, there is some debate over whether or

(48:54):
not he made a mistake or lied, but most experts
seemed to agree that he was just kind of forging
a bird in order to m up more excitement about
his book. Um. For one thing, by this point, it
was the standard scientifically that when you proposed the existence
of a new species, you provided physical evidence. You would
like shoot it and and preserve it and be like,
look here's this, Like there's a new bird, and here's
the pieces of it. Um. And he did this for

(49:16):
a lot of other birds, like he was doing this
for hundreds of animals. He doesn't do this for the
bird of Washington. Um. And so a lot of people
will note that, like, well, maybe that's evidence that he
was just this was just a con from the beginning. Um.
So yeah, And this, the bird of Washington is the
first bird that Audubon would display when he would like
sit in front of gatherings of wealthy people to try

(49:38):
to get him to pay money. Um. And he succeeds.
He drums up a lot of huge amounts of money,
enough to fund the Birds of America. That's good God,
it's just this. Everything everything sucks about this time, like
mostly the slavery mostly, but also the fact that like
you could commit bird forgery to get funding from wealthy

(50:01):
people who are like, yes, I will fund your bird
exposition to like, like, we're still at that point in
the world where it's just like I would like to
know about all the birds that's around my god damn motherfucker.
Again to your point earlier, if it's that easy to
con rich people out of money by making up birds,
why didn't you make up more birds? Come on, come on,

(50:23):
man it from the start. As a lover of think
of the X Files episodes we could have gotten if
he'd made up like a bird with with claw went
after the Jersey Devil episode was pretty damn good. We
could have had like two or three more. They would
have been amazing. We could have got the whole more
other season out of just birds. Yeah, they could have
been a spinoff called Agent Mulder bird Hunter. Yeah. And

(50:46):
he just he just fights man size birds all the time.
What a tragedy inc he makes. He gets people give
him a bunch of money. Uh, and he returns to
North America and he finishes his great work. And while
he's doing this, he's able to mix his two passions
at this point, which you should know are lying in racism.

(51:06):
And I'm gonna quote from Gregory Nobles again. Audubon also
through his writing manipulated racial tensions to enhance his notoriety.
The Tale of the Runaway, one of the episodes about
American life he inserted into his three thousand page five
volume Ornithological Biography, A companion to Birds of America, spins
the tale of an encounter with a black man in

(51:27):
a Louisiana swamp. Audubon, who had been hunting wood storks
with his dog Plato, had a gun, but so did
the black man. After a brief face off, both men
put down their weapons. Even as he described the tension easing,
Audubon had already hooked into the fears of his readers.
Published three years after Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion in eighteen
thirty one, The Runaway presented the most menacing image of

(51:47):
imaginable for many white people, the sudden specter of an
armed black man. Audubon knew how to get people's attention.
He also knew how to put himself in the most
favorable light. The man and his family had escaped slavery,
and we're living in the s As the and as
the tail unfolds, Audubon spent the night at the family's encampment.
Companion of believe it also quite at their mercy. It

(52:07):
was the fugitives, however, who were really the most vulnerable.
The next morning, Audubon took them back to the plantation
of their first master and convinced the planter to buy
the enslaved people back from the masters, to which the
family had been divided and sold. And that was that.
Reunited but still enslaved, the black family was rendered as
happy as slaves generally are in that country. That's Audubon's words,

(52:28):
exactly what happiness. Audubon did not say in the span
of a single story, true or not, and many of
Audubon's episodes were not. Audubon portrayed himself as both the
savior of a fugitive family and a defender of slaveholders
claims to human property rights. Because bleak, that's a really
bleak story. It's bleak if he made it all up.
It's also bleak if he took this family who had

(52:51):
like freed themselves after getting split up back to a
slave owner where they were surely split up again, right
to quote unquote like save them. Ah, it's pretty bad.
That's a that's that's that's a blique story. Um. The
Birds of America and the works that followed made Audubon
a household name among people who liked birds. He traveled

(53:13):
back and forth to Europe, where he was a celebrity,
and he doubled and trebled down on his racism. In
eighteen thirty four, he wrote his wife to complain when
the British government made slavery illegal, arguing they had quote
acted imprudently and to precipitously. Now, in his later life,
Audubon seems to have taken personal umbrage at the idea
of enslaved people, some of whom may well have been

(53:33):
his ancestors, freeing themselves. In a letter written for his sons,
he described his birth mother, who he had never known,
as a lady of Spanish extraction from Louisiana, which is
not true. He claimed she had gone back to San
Domain with his father and become quote one of the
victims during the ever to be limited period of Negro
insurrection on that island. So he lies and claims that

(53:55):
his mom had been murdered during a slave uprising, when
the reality is that his mom may have been in uh,
if not just mixed race, that possibly even an enslaved person. Yeah,
involved in something. Yea, it is unclear what the truth
is of his parentage, but we know that he is
lying about this. Um and Gregory Nobles, who is He's

(54:15):
writing for the Audubon Society. Nobles is a is a
a black member of the Audubon Society, and suspects that
Audubon may have made this claim because quote having a
European mother killed by black rebels reinforced a white identity
and in an American society where whiteness proved and still
proves the safest form of social identity, which you know,
it makes sense. Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense overall.

(54:39):
The story. It just shows like, yeah, I just think
it's a it's an amazing example of how slavery and
racism is just was fucking like you can put an
asterisk like under basically any invention that started during this
time and saying like yeah, and it was built upon
the suffering of a bunch of people, like fucking bird watching.

(55:01):
I gotta pay for those pencils somehow, Dave, it's ridiculous.
It's like, yeah, it seems like you could have avoided this.
A person could have avoided inventing bird watching without brutalizing.
A bunch of people would have figured out how to
draw birds right like we would have gotten that down

(55:21):
without the slavery. In eighteen forty three, John James set
out on what was to be his last adventure into
the wilds. He went up the Missus. He went up
the Missouri River and out the yellow Stone. At fifty
eight years old, he was just on the verge of
being too old to handle the rigors of the journey.
His project this trip was a catalog of specimens and
engravings to be called Quadrupeds of North America. This was

(55:44):
a worthy scientific undertaking, Yet John James embarked on another,
much less worthy endeavor. The eighteen forties was a period
in which Dr Samuel George Morton was beginning to lay
out the underpinnings of what would become scientific racism. He
believed that cranial capacity and thus, in his belief, intelligence
must mirror his preconceptions about the intelligence of races. Thus, black, indigenous,

(56:06):
Hispanic people, et cetera must have less cranial capacity than
white people. Now this is the branch of science that
becomes phrenology and eventually a punch of even worship. Besides
John James Audubon was super into it, and he was
also way into Morton, who had become his patron right
up and Commonplace Online notes Morton was a generation younger

(56:28):
than Audubon, but the friendship between the two men ran
back through the eighteen thirties. Morton, with his institutional connections,
helped to share Audubon a place in the country's scientific establishment.
He settled some of Audubon's debts when the artist was
in England and soothed his worries about upstart rivals. In return,
Audubon looked for skulls for Morton. European craniologists weren't ready
to share their skulls with the Americans, although Audubon did

(56:49):
find Morton a portfolio of sketches. So while he's shooting
a drawing squirrels, he visits indigenous villages, villages of the
Mandan and sen Boyne, indigenous people's um and these villages
have been like smallpox is like killed most of the
people there, right, So he's he's he's stumbling into these
villages after watching them get wiped out. And I'm gonna

(57:11):
quote from Commonplace Online again about what he does next.
The epidemic had been devastating. Audubon new during the week
spent at Fort Union, he penned an account of the
fearful ravages of smallpox. He must have known that a
people nearly exterminated left few to help bury the dead.
The skulls Audubon collected for Morton that summer earned casual
mentions in his journal. On June eighteenth, he and his

(57:32):
companions puzzled over when it might be best to take
away the schools, some six or seven in number, all
a sinaboy in Indians. On June twenty two, walking over
the prairie, I found an Indian skull and put it
in my game pouch. And on July two he and
a companion walked off with a bag of instruments to
take off the head of a three year old dead
Indian chief called the White Cow. They tumbled the coffin

(57:54):
out of a tree burial and found a body wrapped
into buffalo ropes and enveloped in an American flag. They
took the head, Audubon wrote, and left the rest on
the ground. Morton's catalog also credited Audubon with contributing the
skull of a fifty year old blackfoot man named Bloody Hand,
along with the heads of two Upsaroka men, both about
forty years old, and two schools twelve thirty a centaboy

(58:16):
in Indian of Missouri, woman estimated twenty years old, centa
boy and woman estimated like, yeah, they're eighty five years old.
He gives all these like different that's all they've become,
like numbers twelve thirty and twelve thirty one from J. J.
Audubon Esquire, you know, like a d eighteen forty five,
like the year it's found, the number of the skull,
and the guy who found it no attempts to find

(58:37):
the numbers of the human beings. These these belong to um. Yeah,
and it's it's one of those things. It's also just
like bad anthropology because it's not about anthropology, it's about
proving racism. Because they're there for it's for shitty science. Yeah,
it's grave robbing for bad science. Yeah, because they like
find this cheap. Not that it would have been good
if they had like done what you know Egyptologists do,

(58:58):
and like you find this chief who has been buried
in the specific way with with artifacts, and you like
take the whole thing to a museum like that would
have been bad too, But they're not even doing that.
They're just like ripping the skull out and leaving the
rest on the ground, right, they just need skulls. It's
like even worse than normal gray robbing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's it's none of it's great. Like like you said,

(59:19):
even if it was for a science that like made sense, Yeah,
even if it was getting useful scientific data, it would
be bad. And it's absolutely not. Um So, Audubon was
not quite as prolific at skull stealing as he wasn't
shooting random animals and sketching them, but he was still
pretty prolific. Skull collection is listed in one of his books,

(59:43):
and in eighteen forty it contained a lot of Audubon
stolen skulls um and not all of them him belonged
to indigenous people. I'm gonna quote now from Morton's like
Skull Diary number five five five Mexican soldier with three
sick a tricks gunshot wounds in the right prietal bone,
slain at sand just said to eight thirty six J. J.
Audibon esquire five five six Mexican soldier with Cicatrix Depression

(01:00:06):
of frontal and nasal bones Lane at San Jacinto, eighteen
thirty six. J. J. Audubon est like he goes to
battlefields and he just digs up corpses of Mexican soldiers
and takes their skulls. Look, there are worse ways to
get skulls, but not many, but not like not a lot.
I'm I'm mostly thinking of the one other way. But like, yeah,

(01:00:28):
this is this is pretty scummy. Yeah, it's it's pretty bad.
It's pretty bad, like just go into a battlefield and
digging up dead men and taking their sucking bones to
give to your friend in New York or where Philly.
I think so. Obviously, John Audubon is not the only
racist naturalist who would play a foundational role in White
America's concept of the great outdoors. We will one day

(01:00:49):
to talk about John Muir, who is it plays a
huge positive role in a lot of aspects of the
national park system and stuff. He's got a great park
near San Francisco named after him. Also just the most
racist dude you can like, so, and there's a yeah,
it'd be hard to think that the person who like

(01:01:09):
established parks wasn't like a massive racist right, right, because
there's a lot of that in the idea of like
the idea that develops of the great outdoors, which is
nearly always a place in which like, well it's just
white people who are supposed to be partaking in at
like yeah, um, and obviously it's It's also worth noting
John James Audubon is not even like the only famous

(01:01:31):
bird watcher in this period to steal indigenous people's skulls.
It's it's a it's a way to make extra money.
If if you're a naturalist, is like, well, you can
also steal some skulls, you know. Yeah, it makes sense
in the sense of like, so when you're playing a
video game, they often have the like go collect these
items and this items, and you can do both at once.
So it's like, yeah, I'm out in the woods collecting

(01:01:54):
some extra XP and I can grab grab some skulls
while I'm atic. Right, If they were saying, like, pick
some berries, they would do that, but no, they want skulls,
so there picking picking skulls. John Kirk Townsend was a
pioneering ornithologist. In eighteen thirty four, he won a grant
from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and he

(01:02:16):
crossed over the Pacific coast to gather specimens, many of
which were then sketched by Audubon, so he and Audubon
would work together. Researcher Matthew Holly recently discovered a letter
from Townsend to Morton which gives good insight and how
he and Audubon went about their grim work. Quote. I
was enjoying the society of civilized beings again. And believe me,
my dear doctor, that this was no small treat to me,

(01:02:38):
after having been compelled to sojourn for such a length
of time amongst savages little better than brutal beasts. I
send you a few skulls, one of a clickitat Indian.
You will observe the characteristic flat also put and some
quadrupeds and birds. It is rather a perilous business to
procure Indian skulls in this country. The natives are so
jealous of you that they watch you very closely while
you are wandering near their mausoleums. An instant to sanguineous

(01:03:00):
vngeance would fall upon the luckless white who should presume
to interfere with the sacred relics. I have succeeded in
hooking one, however, such as it is, and no doubt
in the course of the winter I shall get more.
There's an epidemic raging among them, which carries them off
so fast that the cemeteries will soon lack watchers. I
don't rejoice in the prospect of the death of the
poor creatures, certainly, but then you know, it will be
very convenient for my purposes. Yeah, that's pretty bad. They're

(01:03:24):
poor creatures. Yeah, yeah, he's he's treating them just like animals.
He's like, oh, well, they're all dying, but that's gonna
be good for me. He's treating them like birds. He
also he calls himself a white which is like a ghoule,
like stealing from a graveyard. So he knows kind of
what he's doing, right, Yeah, but it makes sense because

(01:03:45):
he doesn't think of them as people. So it's kind
of like we we talk about animals where we're like, yeah,
we're kind of we're kind of like they're boogeymen, you know, like,
and so he's because he's humanized him them, he could
kind of be like, yeah, I'm kind of an I'm
kind of a little bit of a boogeyman. Yeah, but
they're not people, so it's it doesn't matter. Yeah, that's

(01:04:07):
that's exactly his attitude. Now, obviously, Dave, it was not
terribly long before large numbers of people began to consider
the mass theft of indigenous human beings remains to be
evil um and in the article he writes on this process,
Hallie does a good job of summarizing how modern institutions
have protected the collection of these stolen skulls, which both

(01:04:29):
Audubon and towns and contributed towards. The skulls mentioned in
this letter and others stolen by towns in an Audubond
were in the collection of the A n SP until
the mid twentieth century, when they were transferred to the
University of Pennsylvania's Penn Museum. The institutions that were culpable
in the assembly of the Morton collection have not publicly apologized,
to my knowledge, to the tribes that the materials were

(01:04:49):
stolen from. Rather, they have passed the buck of responsibility.
Pin unsurprisingly considers the collection an exceptional historic resource and
has delayed the repatriation of the materials. According to the
Native American Graves Project and Repatriation Act. Institutions that take
federal funding, as pinned it in two thousand five for
the expansion and improvement of the Pin Cranials Database, must

(01:05:11):
repatriot materials with providence at the tribe's request. It is
true that some remains from the Morton Correct collection have
been repatriated, but nearly thirty years have passed since Nagara
was signed into law. PIN is moving at a glacial
pace considering the magnitude of the of the infraction, and
the institutions that helped to assemble the Racist skull collection
are tight lipped. And I have read there's a book

(01:05:32):
I found about the bone trade in in Stolen Bones
UM called Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits by Chip cole Well,
who's like doing part of his job is to like
sit in a museum and put together groups of bones
to send back to the tribes they were stolen from UM.

(01:05:53):
And there's always like he describes in like kind of
in very stirring detail, like what what this process is
like because the kind of a ritual element to it,
because it's essentially kind of a funereal, Right, it's this
whole is this whole thing. It is proceeding slowly now, um,
but it's kind of worth noting how much work different
college is put into like not doing this. Yeah, they're

(01:06:15):
really dragging ass something because they were bones. Yeah, like
what what is? Why do they need the goddamn bones?
How what use could they possibly have now if not
just shame where they're like, we don't want to admit
that we have all these bones. We don't want to
give them up, you know, just give back the bones.
There's only one acceptable way to get a skull, and

(01:06:39):
it is to ask the person, can I have your skull?
If you die before me, and then you put it,
you write it down, you have it written down, and
then you get a skull. And I'm sorry that if
that sounds inconvenient to all you skull collectors, I don't
know what to tell you. That's how. That's the only
way to get a skull. I don't. I feel like
winning them in battle is okay? Yeah, yeah, women in battle.

(01:07:03):
If you take a skull in battle, you get to
keep it. Um. Those are the two ways. Um. But
but it's gotta be like it's gotta be like hand
to hand, you know, you can't be like shooting people
for the skulls. You've gotta be like fist fighting. If
you fist fight a dude and take his skull, you
get to keep it. Yeah, and you better. You got
to take the skull. You're so you gotta take that

(01:07:23):
skull yourself. That's on you. That's you. Yeah, that is
a way to earn a skull. But pretty two ways,
two ways, yeah, although I do feel like you'd want
to because it's two it's two very different skulls, right, Like, uh,
if I have a skull that I just politely asked for,
I don't want to misrepresent how I got that skull

(01:07:47):
because then I feel like a fraud. But yeah, that's
that's it. Yeah. So these give give the bone back,
Give the bones back, that's it, get back, get back. Yeah,
it's not hard. Yeah. So Audubon Society gets formed in
eighteen fifty one, or yeah, sorry, the Audubon Society gets
formed years after John James Audubon dies in eighteen fifty one.

(01:08:10):
M And from a purely scientific standpoint, like obviously he
did a lot for bird watching. Um, and you know,
for a while they try to ignore this. There's biographies
published that really whitewash all the racism and skull stealing.
The Audubon society really didn't start to grapple with it
in a major open way until May. Uh can you

(01:08:34):
guys why? Yeah? And actually a big part is remember
when that that black birdwatcher in New York got like
accosted by a white woman who like called the police
on him. After that was like a big inciting incident
in the Audubon society being like, we should probably deal,
we'd probably acknowledge some of this. Man, Just I don't
think it's another thing. It's like returning the bones. It's like,

(01:08:56):
just acknowledge it. Like it's yeah, if your ancestors or
you're like everything was built upon fucking slavery and racism
in this country, it's not gonna shock anybody. It's like
when Ben Affleck like paid to have that PBS show
ignore that he was like the descendant of slave owners,

(01:09:17):
and it's like, did you think, like you're the only one,
But it's we're built upon shame and we have to
own it because that's the only thing you can do, right. Yeah, Yeah,
it would have ridiculous, it would have been like and
it's like, especially with the Autumn Society. It's a good
comparison because like they were founded after his death. It's

(01:09:37):
not like the Audubon Society is like personally responsible for
John James Audubon, since they just like thought he was
a good dude to name themselves at. You could change
the name and we'd be like, Okay, well, yeah, I
guess bird watching probably isn't complicit in racism much beyond that, right,
it'd be wild if you looked into and you're like, oh,
I guess they're also all racists, Like the the Audubon

(01:10:01):
Society is also like a white supremacy society. That would
be one thing, But no, they're just fucking bird watchers
who named their thing after some racist guy, and it's there.
I recommend the article and Audubon dot org that I've
quoted from by Gregory Noble, which is like he writes
this right after that altercation, where like the woman tries
to have cops kill a blackbird watcher. Like it's probably

(01:10:23):
the best thing they've done in terms of like pivoting
to acknowledging the problematic past. I assume there's a lot
more that could be done. Again, if you want to
read the articles will list of sources you can get
a better idea of like some of the things people
are asking and pushing. Um. But yeah, that's the story.
That's a hell of a story. Yep. Thanks thanks for

(01:10:44):
telling me about it. I'm glad I heard about it. Yeah,
I mean it's yeah, it's it's you know again what
I said it was. It's shocking, but not because it's like,
of course every everything is fucking built upon this ship. Uh,

(01:11:05):
it's more it's like almost more surprising when it's not
it's fucked up. This guy sucks, yea, I will. I'm
gonna go steal his skull. Yeah, look, I do feel
that's something we can do. Dave find where he's buried
and take his bones. Yeah I think I think there's
no shame in that, right, and stealing this guy's bones

(01:11:28):
and then like putting in a contraption and drawing pictures
of it. Yeah, put it in a contraption, but also
like making like a flat Stanley where we just like
mail it around, like you never know when you're gonna
get this guy's fucking bones, but when you get him,
you can do whatever with them, you know, right, It's
like everybody in America has a chance of getting This
guy's getting bones. It's like cherry duty or something where

(01:11:50):
you getta go out this weekend. Now I got the
bones this week right, I gotta I gotta take pictures
of it and figure out who to send it to. Yeah,
oh god, what that's man. We should do that with
all the problematic people. Yes, just just pass their bones
around for whatever, for whatever, for whatever you feel like

(01:12:13):
doing with those bones. My friend got George Washington's bones,
We're gonna do blow off his skull. You want to
come over for a party, like absolutely, Yeah, it sounds dope.
I would do so much. I would die doing cocaine
off with George Washington bones. You've never done coke? If
you haven't done coke off of the stolen skull of

(01:12:34):
George Washington. Yeah, oh yeah, let's do that right now.
You're right, Dave, let's go Grave Robin Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
any bones, yeah, any bones? Suck it? Wait no, no, no, no, Dave,
that's what got everyone into day, damn it. Alright, bones,

(01:12:55):
you gotta plug anything day. I don't know, man, um,
I never plug my Twitter at movie hool again, as
mentioned I have with Tom Or I'm in a podcast network,
and I'm the head writer over at the what's it called,
someone who's so check all those things out, which I
feel like most people know about most of that stuff.

(01:13:16):
So yeah, and grave Rob, but only bad people, Only
bad people steal the corpses of racists, all right,