Darwin in Old Age

I have just posted a video about what Darwin might have thought about old age. He walked on his thinking-path (the sandwalk) every day that he could even in old age. He was pretty much an invalid when he died, but not as much of an invalid as he would have been had he not walked on his thinking path so often.

First, in the video, Darwin speculates on why walking improved his thinking. I have already summarized this in an earlier essay. Gentle walking increases blood flow to the brain. Also, thinking, like walking, is a series of steps.

Second, in the video, Darwin speculates on why old age evolved. Humans are unique among animals in having decades of post-reproductive life span. One explanation is that natural selection has provided us with whatever we need to be young, but not whatever we need to be old. But if old age is just the dumping ground of bad genes and defective body parts, why hasn’t evolution gotten rid of it?

The more likely reason that humans grow old, rather than just dying, is that old people provide important benefits to their offspring and to their tribe. Old people are repositories of knowledge and wisdom (well, knowledge, anyway) especially before books and AI. Us old people know things that young people haven’t even thought to ask about. Also, old people help to take care of the grandkids while the parents are searching for food or status. This is also the time when old people can pass on a lot of culturally important information to later generations. Finally, old people may not travel very far but they can forage for food near the camp.

Old age doesn’t seem quite so bad when Darwin explains it to you.

The Thinking, Walking Biped, part eight. Famous Nature Walks: Henry David Thoreau

Probably every American student has had to read something by Henry David Thoreau. His literary immortality is thus guaranteed forever. Pretty good for a man who never had a steady job. He published a few books, gave a few talks, and walked for (he says) four hours every day as he lived out his life in Concord, Massachusetts during the middle nineteenth century. He was one of many writers who walked a lot; Thoreau mentions William Wordsworth as a writer who walked. He was a friend of (and, I suspect, a dependent upon) Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Thoreau is most famous for living out in the woods (on Emerson’s land) in a little hut that he built himself, at very little expense near the shore of Walden Pond. In case you think he lived in the hut all of his life, this is not true: he only lived there a couple of years. He just wanted to prove that it could be done.

I thought I would find a well-thought-out explanation of how and why he walked in his essay Walking. Given the essay title, it was not an unreasonable thing to expect. But in this essay, Thoreau actually had very little to say about walking other than that he would start off with no clear destination in mind and usually find himself heading southwest “toward Oregon” (which is not southwest of Concord).

But maybe this is the point. He would start walking with no particular topic to think about or problem on his mind. He would wait until he saw something that made him think, and then he would write about it later. That’s what I do, only I do not have a very good memory, so I make notes on my cell phone to remind me what I was supposed to write about. Thoreau was very observant, although (or because) he did not know what to observe.

He noticed patterns that others overlooked, especially Emerson. Emerson thought in big brush strokes and ignored details (or, in some cases, made them up). It was the details that mattered to Thoreau. As I walk around in French forests, I notice that the wild cherries ripen first, then the wild blackberries a couple of weeks later, and the wild dewberries last of all. Blackberries and dewberries look enough alike that it is easy to mistake one for the other. Thoreau had to notice the seasonal patterns of flowers and fruits, as he was passionate about eating wild fruits, especially huckleberries. I also eat wild fruits on my walks, cherries first in the summer, then blackberries, then dewberries toward autumn. Thoreau said that young people can learn more about the world in a day of huckle-berrying than a year of learning Latin.

One major example of Thoreau’s attention to detail was that many people assumed the pine woods had always been pine woods and the hardwood forests had always been hardwood forests. But Thoreau saw birds in pine trees dropping hardwood seeds onto the ground. Apparently pine woods became hardwood forests, which, when they burned or were cut, reverted to being pine woods. Thoreau may not have been the first to come up with this ecological observation, but he certainly came up with it himself. He even reconstructed the population history of pine woods by counting tree rings.

Thoreau was also a man of scientific faith. That is, he wrote down observations in his voluminous notebooks for which he had no use, but which he thought might be useful to somebody someday. Among his observations were the dates on which various species of wildflowers bloomed in the spring. He was not the first person to keep such records, which we today call phenology; in Japan, some records of cherry blossoms go back for centuries. But Thoreau’s records came in very handy when modern botanists such as Richard Primack and Abe Miller-Rushing compared Thoreau’s data with recent data. The flowers bloom much earlier today than they did in Thoreau’s time, consistent with global warming. Many other scientists, including me, have come up with similar results based on entirely separate sets of plants.

Another thing about Thoreau’s scientific faith. He kept walking because you never know what you might see, and if you are not out walking you might miss it.

And us modern scientists acknowledge the details that Thoreau noticed on his nature walks, even though he did not set out with the intention of noticing them.

Elizabeth's Exile, a Novel of a Cherokee Refugee, by Stan Rice, part one. Let Their Blood Be Upon Us

Author Stan Rice has just published the second of three novels (Elizabeth’s Exile) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This second novel is about a Cherokee woman, Elizabeth Hilderbrand Pettit who, in middle age, walked with a contingent of other Cherokees on the infamous Trail of Tears from the Appalachians to what is now Oklahoma, after losing their land and possessions. As Rice’s novel explains, this was totally illegal, as the law under which Andrew Jackson prosecuted this Trail of Tears was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

 

The Trail of Tears was, indeed, grim, and there was a lot of suffering, something you will also find in Diane Glancy's Pushing the Bear. But Rice makes it clear in this novel that the United States Army, which was in charge of this forced deportation, was trying to make things easier for the Cherokees. They provided horses, wagons, and tents. They even vaccinated all the Cherokees against smallpox, using a procedure that had been developed in Europe only a couple of decades earlier.

It was not the federal troops who were abusive of the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears. It was the citizens and militia of the state of Georgia. It was Georgia that profited from expropriating Cherokee land and fortunes, which included gold mines, agricultural lands, orchards, and livestock, and the federal government that footed the bill for transporting, feeding, and (at least a little bit) caring for the Cherokees. It was the Georgia militia who conducted raids into Tennessee—which was illegal—to grab whatever they could of value.

This was most graphically illustrated by the way the citizens and militia of Georgia grabbed the land and property of Cherokees even before they had left to join the westward march. The Georgians would dig up fresh graves and take jewelry from the corpses. This much is historical fact; Rice did not invent this. The federal troops were wrong, but the Georgians were evil.

In this novel, Chief John Ross denounced the evil of the Georgians. Their response was, “Let their blood be upon us and on our children.” I am fairly sure this did not actually happen, but Rice was making a clear reference to the mob of Jews who called for the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. These are the words that, according to the Bible, they used. Some fundamentalist preachers and churches have said that this is the reason that the Jews were persecuted in the millennia after Jesus’ crucifixion. This cannot possibly be true. But Rice was making an important point. The Georgians were raping and pillaging the Cherokees in 1838. A few decades later, it was the Georgians who were being pillaged by the Union Army in the Civil War.

The Trail of Tears was racially motivated, but race did not matter. Elizabeth was seven-eighths white, but she was forced on the Trail anyway, because of her association with the Cherokee tribe.

Some people at the time made the argument that the Trail of Tears was necessary in order to placate the Southerners so that they would not secede from the Union. I heard a historian make exactly this claim at a Native American symposium at which I gave a presentation. If Andrew Jackson’s successor, Martin Van Buren, had told Georgia they could not take Cherokee lands and goods, they would have seceded right then and there. But history has clearly shown that Georgia was insatiable and giving them what they wanted in 1838 did not placate them in 1861.

The Cherokee leaders—including the man who eventually became Chief, John Ross—fought alongside Andrew Jackson in his war against the Creek tribe in the war of 1812. They naturally assumed Jackson would remember this and look upon the Cherokees as allies, not as enemies. But Jackson did not show any gratitude to the Cherokees.

The point is that if we make compromises today—such as a very old Henry Kissinger suggesting that the Ukraine give up its fight against Russia a couple of years ago, or most famously Neville Chamberlain giving into Hitler’s demands in 1939—in the hopes of placating the powers of evil, it will ultimately prove futile.

Nancy's War, The Last Cherokee Warrior Woman, a novel by Stan Rice, part six. Thomas Jefferson and the Origin of Democracy

Author Stan Rice has just published the first of three novels (Nancy's War) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. The first novel is about the life and struggles of one of the most famous figures of Cherokee history: Nancy Ward. She is so famous that there is an association of her descendants. She lived at the same time as the “founding fathers” of the United States, and was just as important to the Cherokee Nation (which was not part of the United States) as the founding fathers were to the United States. She started off as a war hero, at exactly the same age as Joan of Arc, then she became a lifelong zealous advocate for peace. All her life, the Cherokee tribe revered her, even when they began to disregard her opinions.

 

One of the great white admirers of the Cherokees was Thomas Jefferson, long before he was president, long before he wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence, back when he was a student at the College of William and Mary. He heard the Cherokee leader Ostenaco giving a speech to his tribe. He was a surveyor like his father Peter, and Ostenaco had been a frequent guest at his house. Jefferson was deeply impressed by the way Ostenaco commanded the assent of his tribe without the use of force, but just persuasion. If the Cherokee tribe can do this, why can’t European colonists create a democracy in North America?

Is it too much to say that the Cherokees inspired the concept of democracy in the mind of Thomas Jefferson? Jefferson admitted as much in his writings, and Rice champions this viewpoint in his novel. Jefferson really said most of these things that Rice put into the novel. In particular, I found an almost word-for-word excerpt of an 1810 Jefferson letter to Governor Langston online. I am glad this quotation has been saved from historical obscurity. Apparently Rice just made up the part about Henry VIII, who was so fat that Dr. Newton should have taken his mass into account when calculating the orbit of the Earth; “but I digress,” Jefferson ends. Rice got into Jefferson’s mind.

To Nancy Ward, Thomas Jefferson was just Peter Jefferson’s little boy who had grown up and done something or other, she wasn’t sure what.

Nancy’s War, The Last Cherokee Warrior Woman, a novel by Stan Rice, part five. The Incredible but True Story of Lydia Russell Bean

 

Author Stan Rice has just published the first of three novels, Nancy's War, in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. The first novel is about the life and struggles of one of the most famous figures of Cherokee history: Nancy Ward. She is so famous that there is an association of her descendants. She lived at the same time as the “founding fathers” of the United States, and was just as important to the Cherokee Nation (which was not part of the United States) as the founding fathers were to the United States. She started off as a war hero, at exactly the same age as Joan of Arc, then she became a lifelong zealous advocate for peace. All her life, the Cherokee tribe revered her, even when they began to disregard her opinions.

 

During a raid on a white outpost, The Canoe, the Cherokee war leader, captured Lydia Bean, the wife of the white leader. The Canoe ordered her burned at the stake. Remember that this bit of savagery—burning prisoners at the stake—is something Europeans had long done, only the Cherokees never did it for religious reasons; to them, heresy was an unknown concept. But Nancy Ward was Lydia’s friend. When Nancy saw Lydia starting to burn up, she ran into the fire and stamped it out, then released Lydia.

This story is so outlandish that it would be unacceptable as fiction. But, apparently, it really happened, according to Cherokee accounts.

This reinforced a lifelong friendship not only between Nancy and Lydia but also between whites and Cherokees. Nancy Ward learned a lot about cows, butter, cheese, and textiles from Lydia, and she passed this knowledge on to the other Cherokees. This friendship, saved from the fire, was one of the main ways in which the Cherokee tribe became more and more culturally white. By the early nineteenth century, the Cherokees were mostly white in all ways but the color of their skin, and even this was not a complete difference. Many of the tribe’s important leaders, such as their Chief John Ross, were partly or largely white; Ross was only one-eighth blood quantum Cherokee. He didn’t even speak Cherokee.

Alas, this friendship and others did not allow the Cherokees to stay in their homeland. The postscript to Rice’s novel is written from the viewpoint of a great-granddaughter of Nancy Ward. Elizabeth Hilderbrand Pettit had to give up her land and migrate on the Trail of Tears with the rest of her tribe in 1838. She looked white, was seven-eighths white, but in the eyes of the United States government she was Cherokee, and was forced from her land. At the end of the novel, she sees her great-grandmother’s spirit animal, the white wolf, who now looks defeated, like a bedraggled dog.

Nancy’s War, The Last Cherokee Warrior Woman, a novel by Stan Rice, part four. Bryan Ward, Surprised by Love

 

Author Stan Rice has just published the first of three novels in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity: Nancy's War. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download (https://stanleyrice.org/wp-content/uploads/PDF_manuscripts/Trail-of-Tears-Nancys-War-2026.pdf). The first novel is about the life and struggles of one of the most famous figures of Cherokee history: Nancy Ward. She is so famous that there is an association of her descendants. She lived at the same time as the “founding fathers” of the United States, and was just as important to the Cherokee Nation (which was not part of the United States) as the founding fathers were to the United States. She started off as a war hero, at exactly the same age as Joan of Arc, then she became a lifelong zealous advocate for peace. All her life, the Cherokee tribe revered her, even when they began to disregard her opinions.

Like all frontier traders, Bryan (or Bryant) Ward was a practical man. He knew that, to make deals with tribal villages, he had to not be seen as an outsider. Even the traders who, like Ward, were married to white women outside of the Cherokee Nation, took Native wives. By American law, the Cherokee women were not really wives. This practice continued until the Cherokee government outlawed it.

So Bryan Ward decided he had to have him a squaw. It was just part of business.

He was, in Rice’s novel, astonished when Nanyehi took an interest in him. He was expecting an ordinary, dumpy woman. But Nanyehi was beautiful as well as famous. He fell in love with her, which he was not expecting. He had to earn her trust, which he did by telling her he was an Irishman, not an Englishman, and his people were as much oppressed by the English as hers might soon be. This formed a bridge of empathy between them. This link, sealed by marriage, saved his life when strife became intense between the Cherokees and the whites; in her official capacity, she protected him. This is a love story that Rice presents with great tenderness.

We cannot know if maybe Nanyehi, in becoming Nancy Ward, was also acting in her own interests by marrying Ward. This marriage gave her a connection with the white world that eventually helped her and her tribe survive.

When it became clear that even Nancy could not protect him, Bryan left and returned to his white wife. Rice presents this as a sad resignation on his part. Rice got into Bryan Ward’s head, thinking and talking like an Irishman. As most novelists would do, Rice is probably using wishful thinking about this famous love story.

The Thinking, Walking Biped, part seven. Famous nature walks: Alexander von Humboldt and John Muir

Alexander von Humboldt was one of the great travelers of world history. He went all over the world, hiking in mountains everywhere. His spirit of exploration inspired generations of scholars after him, including Charles Darwin who took Humboldt’s book with him and followed his footsteps in South America.

But Humboldt did not just travel and hike. He made scientific observations which would later prove fundamental in the study of geography, particularly plant geography. Lots of people have noticed that trees tend to be found higher on mountain slopes, but Humboldt was the one who discovered that trees were higher on the south-facing than on the north-facing slopes. This is evidence that temperature and humidity are the important factors: the trees prefer the cooler temperatures and more humid conditions of the north slopes. After Humboldt’s detailed observations, the patterns of nature started to make sense.

Perhaps most famously, Humboldt ascended the slopes of the Andean volcano Chimborazo, in Ecuador. Because the top is covered by a glacier, and because of the crevasses, Humboldt could not actually reach the top of Chimborazo. When I climbed up the slope of Chimborazo in 1989—likewise not reaching the top—I felt inspired not just by the amazing geography but by the fact that almost two hundred years earlier, Humboldt had stood in that very spot.

 

It is particularly inspiring to stand in the exact location of an historical event. I have had this experience numerous times, including when I walked on part of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, but also on a remnant of the Native American trails near Tulsa, Oklahoma, and also a World War One graveyard in the Vosges Mountains of Alsace, France. I walked to these places.

The image of John Muir is inseparable from the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. It seems that he walked practically everywhere in the Sierras, and not just during nice weather the way I did in my Sierra explorations. He would not hesitate to climb a tree during a fierce snowstorm and revel in the forces of the wind. He seemed to need only a blanket for shelter and only bread and tea for nourishment.