From: lew@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (lewis.h.mammel..jr)
Subject: Re: Mastodon Poetry (was Deconstructing Angelou)
Organization: AT&T
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 06:19:31 GMT
Summary: The Great American Incognitum

In article <C19Gx1.9LM@panix.com>, jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
> 
> I seem to remember a few paleolithic and earlier references in Kipling
> ("When the Cambrian measures were forming, we were promised perpetual
> peace . . ."), but I don't think he specifically mentions mastodons.
> Can anyone suggest any other examples?

It's interesting ( but not surprising ) that the inaugural poem
alludes to a relic so closely tied to the founding of the U.S.

Thomas Jefferson had an interest in the Natural History of the Mastodon,
and discussed the subject in his Notes_on_the_State_of_Virginia.
Here is his paraphrase of a Delaware chief's discourse on
the "big buffalo" : [ from The_Portable_Thomas_Jefferson ]

	... it was a tradition handed down from their fathers,
	"That in ancient times a herd of these tremendous animals
	came to the Bigbone licks, and began an universal destruction
	of the bear, deer, elks, buffaloes, and other animals, which
	had been created for the use of the Indians: that the Great
	Man above, looking down and seeing this, was so enraged that
	he seized his lightning, descended on the earth, seated
	himself on a neighbouring mountain, on a rock, of which his
	seat and the print of his feet are still to be seen, and
	hurled his bolts among them till the whole were slaughtered,
	except the big bull, who presenting his forehead to the
	shafts, shook them off as they fell; but missing one at
	length, it wounded him in the side; whereon, springing round,
	he bounded over the Ohio, over the Wabash, the Illinois, and
	finally over the great lakes, where he is living at this day."

( The big bull reminds me of Clinton :-)

In 1801 Charles Willson Peale, of Washignton portrait fame, financed
an excavation to recover additional remains of a Mastodon skeleton
found on the farm of John Masten (!) in Ohio, and continued to be
involved with its exhibition. Here is a bit of doggerel celebrating
its appearance in England: [ from a footnote in Charles_Willson_Peale
by Charles Coleman Sellers ] ( CAPS italics in original )

	Of all the sights in Reading town that take the folk's
		attention,

	The mammoth is a wondrous form of monstrous huge
		dimention;

	'Twas brought from North America and on it wags
		are smart sir,

	For as it is a SKELYTON they call it BONYPART, sir.

C.W. Peale painted Exhumation_of_the_Mastodon in 1806. I think
I've seen this in Scientific American.

Finally, in view of the political context of the poem, I just have
to quote this mention ( ibid. ) of a marginal participant in
Peale's negotiations for the rights to the skeleton:

	The Mastens refused to agree, protesting that many times the
	sum could be made if the skeleton where shown from town
	to town. Peale replied sagely that these tavern shows could
	lose as much money in one place as they made at another and
	were, besides, very prejudicial to the morals of the
	showman. His hosts did not seem to be moved by this reasoning.
	He returned to Dr. Graham's that night with little hope
	of striking a bargain. In the morning, on his way back, he met
	a Negro who told him a tale of another stranger in the neighborhood
	who wished to buy the bones. His anxiety thus stimulated, he
	arrived at the farm only to find that Masten had gone to work
	without waiting for him. His offer, it seemed would not be
	accepted, and he went back to work on the drawings with a
	heavy heart. Masten came in while he was so occupied and,
	in reply to Peale's question, returned a favorable answer.

Lew Mammel, Jr.