South Carolina and the Red Bird. Now and then.

“Red bird came…firing up the landscape…as nothing else could.”

Painted Bunting

A poet friend sent me a book this week called Red Bird. It is a book of delectable poems by Mary Oliver, who also lives by the sea. On Edisto Island, we catch glimpses of red, blue and yellow feathers, in the quick sparrowed flight of the painted bunting, rare jewels of this jungle. But Red Bird also carries another, historical story of this place. It’s a story in our South Carolina history that talks of the Red Bird’s legendary role in Native American culture. In 1675, a letter went out from our eden shores to England, on a wooden ship like this one, from Dr. Henry Woodward, to John Locke, the philosopher, who was curious about the religion of the Native American or Amerindian. John Locke at the time was physician and secretary to Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, whose legend continues in Charleston to this day, for our two major rivers are named Ashley and Cooper. Dr. Henry Woodward had been left with the Amerindians in 1666 by Captain Robert Sandford when his expedition came from Barbados to Edisto Island. Woodward was to eager to learn the culture and language of the Port Royall Indians, the Cusabo, and establish trade for the colony.

Henry Woodward was my grandfather many generations ago, and because it was the habit of South Carolinians to know their family history by heart, I heard of him at an early age. His intriguing story includes priests and pirates, kings and Indians, and it fueled my early interest in South Carolina’s colonial history. He is considered the first English settler in South Carolina, and it is no small thing that I have come to live in near these old creeks that beckon me to tell these stories. The following letter about the Red Bird exists in the journals of John Locke.

John Locke (1632-1704)

Dr. Henry Woodward to John Locke, 12 November 1675

Sir,
I have made the best inquiry that I can concerneing the religion and worship. Originall, and customes of our natives. especeally among the Port Royall Indians amongst whom I am best accquainted. they worship the Sun and … acknowledge the sun to bee the immedeate cause of the groth and increse of all things whom likewise they suppose to be the cause of all deseases. to whom every year they have severall feast and dances particularly appointed. they have some notions of the deluge, and say that two onely were saved in a cave, who after the flood found a red bird dead: the which as the pulled of his feathers between their fingers they blew them from them of which came Indians. each time a severall tribe and of a severall speech. which they severally named as they still were formed. and they say these two knew the waters to bee dried up by the singing of the said red bird and to my knowledg let them bee in the woods at any distance from the river they can by the varying of the said birds note tell whether the water ebbeth or floweth.

Yours to command,
Henry Woodward

Hmmm. So the Red bird knows the ebb and flow of the tide. Surrounded by the lush green marsh of these curving tidal creeks, I think I will and listen more carefully to this red bird’s note as I drop my new cobalt blue kayak into the ancient tributary. One of my friends on this island swears he sees canoes at times, at dawn, paddling silently out in the marsh. Perhaps it is they. Listening for the song of the Red Bird.

Pearls of Great Price

“But the pearls were accidents, and the finding of one was luck, a little pat on the back by God or the gods both.”
- John Steinbeck, The Pearl

Vermeer's The Girl With the Pearl Earring

Yesterday I wrote of swine, er, ‘fine swine’, those heirloom hogs that are being served up in fine restaurants in town and carved into art by our local “rock star butchers” who are relearning the lost art of making charcuterie. It seems only fitting to follow up with a piece about Pearls. Having grown up in the very religious South it is hard for me even to say the word, “Swine”, without hearing that Bible verse about throwing pearls, “Do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” Ironically, I was just this week standing in the middle of a herd of Edisto Island Swine (Yorkshire White variety) photographing the eager breakfast event when my host and darling Edisto Island hog wrangler, Scott Dantzler, said the very same thing to me, “They’ll even eat fish heads….they’d even turn and eat you up.” He paused, and added “all but the bones.” Biblical indeed.

Genuine pearls are rare and unusual. They also are used as metaphor in much religious writing, and are interwoven into art and in literature, like in John Steinbeck’s book, The Pearl. They are accidental gifts. Treasure. Luck. Blessing. The prize. They symbolize redemption, love, constancy, and purity. They are also multicolored, and they shimmer with irredescence. And they are round, with no beginning and no end. “When (God) inscribed a circle on the face of the deep, I (wisdom) was there.” – from the book of Proverbs.

Growing up in the 1960’s in the South, proper young women were expected to embrace certain traditions, those passed down from generations before us. One of them is wearing pearls. Pearls are worn around the neck for all proper occasions. Little baby girls are given a necklace that we add pearls to every year so that when she is grown, she will have her own strand. At weddings and funerals, we pull out our good pearls to wrap around our necks. They have even made their appearance in some of my earlier figurative paintings about family, and they always stood for the way things were done and I poked a little fun at those traditions, at the rigidity, perhaps, of my Cotillion days of white gloved dances and perfect little shoes.

My own drawing after John White 1585

Not until I became a serious student of South Carolina history did I understand how very local a tradition is, how it goes back to the earliest stories of Carolina, and of the Native Americans even of Edisto Island, who buried their dead adorned with pearls, and who decorated their bodies with these jewels that used to be abundant and local. Some of the Earl of Shaftsbury’s favorite items were those made of Mother of Pearl.

“On Friday, the last day of April (1540)…the Governor took some on horseback and went toward Cofitachequi (a large and sophisticated Native American chiefdom near Camden). On the way there Indians were captured who declared that the chieftainess of that land had already heard of the Christians and was awaiting them in her towns. He sent (Captain) Juan de Anasco with some on horseback to try to have some interpreters and canoes ready in order to cross the river. “Cofitachique (or “Eupaha” according to the Indian boy, Perico, was on the bank of a river. Some Indians brought (the Lady of) Cofitachequi on a litter with much prestige. And she sent a message to us that she was delighted that we had come to her land, and that she would give us whatever she could, and she sent a string of pearls of five or six strands to the Governor. Another account says, “She was young and of fine appearance, and she removed a string of pearls that she wore about her neck and put it on the Governor’s neck.”

Seeing with fresh eyes is the gift, and I am delighted being able to connect the tradition that stands today to the Lady of Coftachique. Can’t you just picture that Governor on horseback with his neck laden with pearls? (Think Mark Sandford with a necklace of five or six strands of fat shiny pearls around his neck about now.)

Today, I can’t wait to adorn my newest little grand daughter with her own, like the ones I gave my first born, older grand daughter, last Christmas. Traditions in the South carry resonance if you get to the real beginning of the story. The Lady of Cofitachique’s tale involving such an early history of pearls in South Carolina is a rich and deep one that I can’t wait to retell when that little girl gets her first strand.

Edisto Indians, religion and the natural world

“What we can know with any confidence derives from the experience of the senses.”
- John Locke (1632-1704) from “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”

Carolina's Natural Shore, State Park Edisto Island

I am an artist, not a formal historian, philosopher, or genealogist. My take on the world is primarily through my senses, those visual ones of color and value, but also those of taste, touch, smell, and spirit. But I love this history of the ancestors and like the great poet Robert Frost said, “yet knowing how way leads to way” it has led me to a fascination with the early days of Carolina’s written history.

Imagine my delight this morning, reading online (yay, googlebooks!) about what the English philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704) wrote in his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690). He argues that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience. I can only imagine that this caused a stir in England at the time of its writing, but looking at this thought simply, as an artist, I think he may have been considering the perspective of the Native Americans, who were being described to him in letters from the new English colony of Carolina, by Dr. Henry Woodward. The Native Americans, who did not have the written histories that we have, had, instead, a deep understanding of the natural world in which they lived, one that depended on the rivers and forests and oceans, a dependence we are only beginning to take very seriously as Americans, now that the world\’s ice caps are melting.

A year or so ago, I received an enthusiastic email from Jim Farr, Chair of the department of Political Science of Northwestern University. He is a John Locke scholar who was writing a new paper, and he had stumbled upon my little family history web page about Henry Woodward and the native from Edisto Island, named Shadoo. He was the Native who served as the exchange when Woodward stayed onshore after the Robert Sandford Expedition from Barbados, in 1666. Apparently there is some written correspondence about two more Natives, simply called “Honest” and “Just” who visited England. Professor Farr graciously sent me a copy of a letter that my ancestor Henry Woodward wrote to John Locke, in 1675. From what I understand of John Locke, he was insatiably curious, about not only philosophy, but science, education, religion, medicine, and much else.

Excerpts from this letter are below. The Natives he found in Carolina are so attuned to the sensual world that they can tell the tides from the songs of birds. He reveals, too, that the Natives tell the story of “the deluge,” replacing the dove with a red bird, in the story we know as The Great Flood of Noah. It is an archetypal story that appears in many cultures from Gilgamesh to the Bible.

305. Dr. Henry Woodward to Locke, 12 November 1675
The letter is mentioned by Locke in his Journal, 7 June 1679 (p. 99). The writer was active as a surgeon and explorer between 1666 and 1686.

Sir, I have made the best inquiry that I can concerneing the religion and worship. Originall, and customes of our natives. especeally among the Port Royall Indians amongst whom I am best accquainted. they worship the Sun and say they have knowledge of Spirits who appeare often to them… they acknowledge the sun to bee the immedeate cause of the groth and increse of all things …every year they have severall feast and dances particularly appointed. they have some notions of the deluge, and say that two onely were saved in a cave, who after the flood found a red bird dead: the which as the pulled of his feathers between their fingers they blew them from them of which came Indians. each time a severall tribe and of a severall speech. which they severally named as they still were formed. and they say these two knew the waters to bee dried up by the singing of the said red bird. and to my knowledg let them bee in the woods at any distance from the river they can by the varying of the said birds note tell whether the water ebbeth or floweth…
Yours to command,
HENRY WOODWARD

The Circular Church

“When God inscribed a circle on the face of the deep, I (wisdom) was there.” – Proverbs 8:27

The Circular Church

More about Circles. I am practically jumping with excitement over the book that arrived in today’s mail. It is called The Circular Church, Three Centuries of Charleston History by Joanne Calhoun. It was printed by The History Press a local press that prints regional history books. Their books are a visual and sensual delight, beautifully designed and carefully printed. This book is no exception; it is loaded with quality photographs and visuals. And a whole chapter on the graveyard! I am so interested in details about the sculptors, the mysterious stonecutters who rarely signed their art.

The White Meeting House, as it was called then (because of its color, according to McCrady’s History) was organized in 1681 as a dissenter church which meant “not” Anglican. It promised religious freedom, and set out to attract nonconforming settlers. The round design is said to be the idea of Martha Laurens, wife of the great physican and historian, Dr. David Ramsay. An intellectual equal to her husband who could read fluently by the age of three, she is credited by her husband for a the idea of a circular design for the new church building in 1806.

There is so much to say about the art, the architect, the stone sculptors, the congregants (masters and slaves, who were, indeed, members here, and that whole complicated arrangement) the buried, the ministers, one of whom was, of course, the interesting actor turned pastor, William Hutson, my ancestor. Today I will simply begin to draw this circle.