[Note: This is the twenty-eighth sample from my rough draft
of a far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy. I don’t plan on reviewing more books for a
while. My blog is home to reviews of 202
books, and you are very welcome to explore them. The Search field on the right side will find
words in the full contents of all rants and reviews, if you are interested in
specific authors, titles, or subjects.]
Sheep
Mouflon are the wild ancestors of sheep, and they still
survive because they are faster than Olympic athletes on steroids. They excel at racing across steep, rocky
landscapes. They also have large curled
horns, capable of rattling the brains of their bloodthirsty foes. Long ago, folks sometimes discovered mouflon
youngsters, brought them back to camp, and raised them. Unlike rowdy aurochs, the young lambs were
less challenging to raise in captivity.
Paul Shepard
noted that wild animals have a stable genome.
Thus, the genes of today’s mouflon are likely much the same as their
ancestors 800+ thousand years ago. But
during the process of domestication, breeders deliberately selected for
characteristics more beneficial for milk production, wool quality, and ease of
control. Bye-bye stable genes.
After dogs, sheep were among the first critters to be
domesticated, maybe 11,000 years ago.
During this tragic demotion, their brains eventually became 24 percent
smaller than their wild ancestors. They
lost a lot of their survival skills.
I’ve seen several reports of wolves killing dozens of sheep, and only eating
one or two. When wolves ran into large
prey that acted so abnormally helpless, it was surreal and mystifying. The sacred kill is usually a more dignified
ceremony.
In the old days, sheep shed their winter wool when springtime
brought warmer temperatures. Over the
centuries, clever humans have “improved” the sheep they own and exploit. Because of selective breeding, modern sheep
are more likely to retain their wool, rather than scatter it all over the
countryside. This makes it easier for
herders to collect as much of their precious wool as possible.
In Australia, folks discovered one domesticated sheep who had
managed to escape six years earlier, and enjoy a life of freedom. Unfortunately, the miserable critter had
never been sheared, and was carrying around 93 pounds (42 kg) of filthy wool. This beat the previous record of another
sheep found in New Zealand that carried so much wool it could barely walk. It was blind, crippled, and near death. Unshorn sheep are vulnerable to dying from
heat stroke in warm weather.
Domesticated sheep are also vulnerable to pests like scab
mites, that thrive in herds of confined prisoners. The mites multiply and cause skin lesions,
which lead to wool loss and open bleeding wounds. Complications include hypothermia,
infections, and death. Mites are spread
via the herder’s clothing, sheering tools, fence posts, and bits of wool
hanging from bushes.
Mouflon manage their own lives, and fully take care of
themselves. Enslaved sheep require a lot
of human assistance. Shepherds are
needed to protect them from bloodthirsty predators — noxious pests that must be
aggressively exterminated whenever possible.
Smart shepherds are careful to avoid overgrazing. Sometimes sheep also need to be provided with
hay, water, salt, and shelter.
Kassia
St Clair noted that some types of sheep were selectively bred to produce
white wool, which is easier to dye. This
would be a vulnerability for wild ones, because it would make them far more
visible to predators. I learned about St
Clair’s book when I read Claire Eamer’s fascinating essay, No Wool, No
Vikings.
Viking
Sheep
For the first 250,000 years, our ancestors ran around naked
in the tropics. With the colonization of
snow country, folks were confronted with the new possibility of freezing to
death. In the early days, it was
fashionable to wear clothing made of animal skins and pelts, ideally cut and
sewn into stylish tailor made active wear.
This clothing kept folks fairly warm, until it got wet. Much later, innovation provided colonists
with wool clothing, which stayed fairly warm even when wet. The adaptation of clothing was another
radical transition in the human saga. It
opened up vast regions of uninhabited land for exploration and colonization.
St Clair wrote that Vikings used wool to make their clothing,
mittens, blankets, and sails. A blanket
required the wool of 17 sheep. It took
two highly skilled women more than a year to make a typical square sail. To outfit an average Viking cargo ship and
crew, making the clothing, bedding, and sails would require 440 pounds (200 kg)
of wool, and ten person years of labor for producing, shearing, carding,
spinning, weaving, and finishing the products.
Some believe that, in the old days, folks in snow country might have
spent more hours making cloth than acquiring food.
Viking long ships were yet another radical transition. Sailing boats were not a new idea. Folks used them in other regions, like the
Mediterranean. Coastal regions of
Scandinavia were not home to many sheltered, deep water harbors, so Viking
ships were built with a shallow draft, so they could be landed on beaches. This made them great for surprise attacks and
fast getaways. The use of sail power was
enabled by keels that could be lowered in deep water, and raised when beaching.
These new boats allowed Vikings to raid communities that had
formerly been safe and secure for centuries.
In A.D. 98, Tacitus
wrote about the Suiones, who lived along the Swedish coastline. For them, the sea provided an invincible
defensive barrier. It was impossible for
enemies to attack them by water. But the
new boats set the stage for the Viking era — several centuries of raiding,
pillaging, bloodshed, and colonizing that rocked northern Europe.
Remarkably, the design of longboats also made them capable of
travelling on the open ocean. Rugged
woolen sails allowed them to cross the Atlantic and build an outpost at L’Anse
aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada. In
those days, most of humankind spent their entire lives fairly close to their
place of birth. Imagine gaining the
ability to sail to unknown lands more than a thousand miles away. This was a mind-blowing possibility. It rubbished the traditional perception of
space and limits.
Long distance sea travel flung open a ghastly Pandora’s
Box. Sailing ships enabled aggressive
conquerors to colonize vast regions around the world. Environmental history is loaded with horror
stories of pathogens delivered by long distance sea travel — potato blight,
anthrax, Dutch elm disease, chestnut blight, white-nose fungus, bubonic plague,
smallpox, cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, influenza, and countless others. Millions of unlucky indigenous people have
been conquered, enslaved, and/or killed by alien invaders from distant lands.
Anyway, wool was big juju.
Prior to the nineteenth century, clothing was the product of extremely
labor-intensive processes. For
hardworking common folks, clothing was precious, carefully mended and patched,
and passed on to the next generation.
When someone died in a hospital, the clothing of the deceased had to be
removed and given to the lawful inheritors.
Many folks owned little more than what they were wearing. Like moon explorers, wool space suits enabled
tropical primates to survive in frigid life-threatening environments.
White
Gold
St Clair also discussed English wool. The Normans were Vikings who colonized the
north coast of France and smelled like sheep.
In 1066, they conquered England.
By the thirteenth century, England had become famous for its high
quality wool. Regions that produced the
softest, richest wool could sell it for very high prices. Most of the cloth makers that bought the wool
were not English, many were Flemish or Florentine. Ships that carried the wool to buyers were
prime targets for pirates, eager to snatch the precious white gold, and get
rich quick.
On the manors of wealthy aristocrats, the peasant tenants
were given rights to use specific strips of cropland. Assignments would change from year to year,
because some cropland was regularly allowed to lie fallow and recharge. Beside cropland, there were also common
pastures, and common forests, which the whole community could use. Tenants raised livestock, hunted, foraged,
grew vegetables, and cut firewood and timber.
The survival of the peasant community was dependent on always having
access to the commons. Even with access,
the lives of most were brutally harsh and marginal, compared to modern couch
potatoes.
By 1297, half of the total English economy was generated by
the wool industry. Before long,
ambitious aristocrats realized that they could make far more money from raising
sheep than by collecting rents from their dirt-poor tenant farmers. This deep hunger for wealth slowly led to a
process known as the enclosure movement.
Fences and hedgerows were created to prohibit tenants from entering the
commons. They were not amused, they were
doomed.
Graham
Harvey wrote that the enclosures began in England, during the fourteenth
century. They gradually spread over the
passage of several centuries, and then surged from 1750 to 1860. Simon
Fairlie noted that between 1760 and 1870, about 7 million acres (2.8
million ha), about a sixth the area of England, was changed from common land to
enclosed land.
One source estimated that, in Scotland alone, a half million
peasants were driven off the land by the enclosures. No food, no home, no future. Across the U.K., the dispossessed were forced
into filthy, disease ridden cities, where there were no social safety
nets. Rioting became popular, as did
infant mortality.
John Reader noted that the enclosure movement led to the
breakdown of a long standing culture of land-based subsistence living for
many. Tenant communities had benefitted
from the mutual support of extended families.
They were replaced by a small number of shepherds. With the tenants gone, there were fewer
horses and oxen on the manor, so more grass was available for sheep. Tennant cottages and outbuildings were
demolished. Several hundred villages
disappeared, except for their churches.
Aristocrats enjoyed getting higher income from their manors, and raising
sheep was more dependable than agriculture.
From year to year, grain harvests were quite vulnerable to the mood swings
of weather and luck.
Harvey wrote that in the Black Death era (1340s), Britain was
a backwater. Three centuries later, it
was Europe’s most advanced country. Wool
flooded the U.K. with cash, and for 200 years it was the world’s richest
country. Millions of hungry dirty people
in cities were willing to work insane hours, in miserable conditions, for
peanuts. This nourished the emergence of
a powerful industrial state. By 1832,
the medieval peasant community had been completely destroyed. Like I said, wool was big juju. The gentle sheep had eaten many lives and
villages.
My
Ancestors
My great-great-grandmother was Sarah Cleaton, who married
Edward Rees in 1838. They were born and
raised in the village of Cwmbelan, Wales, where a small stream passing through
the village powered a waterwheel at the flannel factory. Sheep grazed on the surrounding hillsides
(formerly lush forest). Cwmbelan was in
the parish of Llangurig. In 1836, the
49,600 acre (20,000 ha) parish had 37,000 acres of commons. By 1875, “large quantities of the common land
have been enclosed.”
Edward and Sarah had three sons before he died at 23 from
“decline.” Sarah was a handloom weaver,
as was her mother Mary, and her sister Catherine. So were her sister-in-laws, Mary, Elizabeth,
Margaret, and Jane Rees. Handloom
weaving was a skilled profession. It
apparently provided something like a respectable middle class income for that
era.
With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution and its power mills,
500,000 weavers lost their source of income, according to Clive Ponting. Many were forced to move to filthy
cities. By 1861, Sarah and her three
sons had moved south to Merthyr Tydfil, home to an iron mining district,
Dowlais. She was a barkeep at the Green
Dragon pub, and her two older sons mined iron.
Merthyr Tydfil had four ironworks, and a slum known as Little
Hell, where a super-poor population of “unhappy and lawless” folks were piled
together in conditions of squalor that were at least as bad as Liverpool or
Nottingham. The district had no
toilets. Open sewers encouraged the
spread of cholera and typhoid. Millions
of friendly lice thrived on folks who rarely if ever bathed.
Unfortunately, for Sarah and sons, by 1861, the ironworks
industry in Merthyr Tydfil got blindsided by new technology, the Bessemer
process, and local prosperity was fading fast.
In 1863 they moved to Pennsylvania.
In 1919, her son Richard E. Rees, celebrated his fiftieth
anniversary in Columbus, Ohio. To
commemorate the event, he sent a story to a Welsh newspaper. In it he wrote, “I have worked underground for 65 years; ten in the Old Country, two in
Pennsylvania, and 53 in Ohio.” He
was 75 years old, and lived another ten years.
Australian
Sheep
Elinore
Melville wrote about the introduction of sheep in Australia, where the
firestick farming by Aborigines maintained expansive regions of grassland. Unfortunately, this excellent grassland was
supporting the existence of useless vermin called kangaroos. Britain wasn’t interested in buying kangaroo
meat, but they would pay good money for wool.
So, colonists worked hard to exterminate as many kangaroos as possible,
as they rapidly expanded the sheep ranching industry. By 1845 there were 9 million sheep, and in
1854 there were 12 million.
The British colonists came from a moist land that had
reliable rainfall. Australia was
different. When a herd had stripped the
vegetation from an area, shepherds moved the herd to a greener pasture. The vegetation they devoured had been storing
moisture, which slowed evaporation. The
land dried out, and groundwater was not replenished. Drought followed drought. Overgrazing often rubbished grassland regions
within 7 to 20 years.
Bill
Gammage noted that the native kangaroo grass was excellent (“caviar for
grazers”). It was a deep-rooted, drought
tolerant perennial that held the soil in place, retained soil moisture,
survived fire, and was highly nutritious.
It remained green after four months without rain, a great asset for
wildlife in drought times. The
colonists’ sheep grazed it down to bare clay, killing the precious grass.
Colonists drained wetlands to expand pastures. Livestock proceeded to compact the soil,
which dried out, and cracked. Springs,
ponds, and creeks evaporated, eliminating the critters that lived in them. When rains returned, rapid runoff encouraged
erosion, landslides, deep gullies, floods, silt chokes, and the spread of
salts. An observer in 1853 commented on
the growing soil destruction: “Ruts, seven, eight, and ten feet deep (2 to 3
m), and as wide, are found for miles, where two years ago it was covered with a
tussocky grass like a land marsh.”
Navajo
Sheep
Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, the Navajo moved
from Alaska and western Canada down into the U.S. southwest, home of the Hopi,
Zuñi, and Pueblo. In the early days, the
Navajo lived as hunter-gatherers. In
1598 Spanish colonists arrived, bringing with them domesticated sheep, cattle,
horses, and goats. The Navajo became
sedentary, and learned sheep herding, weaving, and gardening. They planted fruit orchards. When forage was still adequate, livestock
provided more reliable access to food, so famine times were reduced. This new mode of living led to population
growth.
The Spanish did not allow the Navajo to own or ride horses,
but eventually they acquired them.
Horses made it much easier to hunt, and to raid neighbors. Stealing sheep was much easier than raising
them. Raiding was about making
unannounced visits to neighboring tribes and stealing sheep, horses, women, and
children. Sometimes the defenders were
killed and scalped. Naturally, other
tribes responded by raiding the Navajo.
Raiding was an extremely common practice among pastoral societies around
the world.
Peter Iverson noted that by 1846, the Navajo had 500,000
sheep, 30,000 cattle, and 10,000 horses, mules, and asses. As white settlers moved in, they complained
about the Indians. So, the government
ordered the Navajo to relocate to a reservation, where they could become
farmers and get rich quick. The Indians
preferred to remain on their land, and continue living in their traditional
manner. This was not the proper
response.
So, the government sent Lieutenant Colonel Kit Carson to make
the whites happy. In 1863 his troops
brutally attacked the Navajos and destroyed homes, gardens, orchards,
livestock, and people. The 8,000
surviving natives were forced to march 300 miles (480 km) to the luxurious Fort
Summer facility. In 1868, they were
allowed to return to a portion of their homeland. Each family was given two sheep, one male,
one female.
The railroad arrived in 1881, and trading posts appeared
along its route. This encouraged the
Navajo to weave rugs and make jewelry to be used as trade goods. They raised large herds of Churro sheep,
which produced long, smooth, and less greasy wool that was ideal for hand
spinning.
By the time the Depression began in 1929, the Navajo
population had swelled. Kendall Bailes
wrote that by 1933, two million acres (809,000 ha) of Navajo land was severely
overgrazed, some of it reduced to desert.
There were huge erosion gullies, and large amounts of silt were moving
into Lake Mead, the reservoir at Hoover Dam.
Their herding practices, developed 200 years earlier, when grass was
abundant, didn’t work as well in a dryer climate, when there was far less
grass. Animals were starving. In the western states, the Dust Bowl had
begun.
In 1935, the Bureau of Indian Affairs conducted a survey on
grazing land. They found that the Navajo
sheep flocks contained more than a million animals, and they were kept on land
that could only support 560,000.
The government perceived this to be a very serious problem,
for which the obvious solution was a sharp reduction in herd size. The Navajo, on the other hand, believed that
this was the opposite of a problem, it was a sacred gift. Their livestock were tokens of wealth,
status, and cultural identify. They
loved their goats and sheep almost as much as their own children.
The white authorities moved in, without permission, and by
the 1940’s, the herds were reduced by half.
According to Iverson, at first the sheep were shipped urban centers to
feed poor people. Eventually, the
animals were just taken over the hill, shot, piled up, and left to rot. The government paid the Navajo for every
animal eliminated, but the tribal economy was blindsided. Navajo resentment over this action remains
fierce. The tribe now has a quota system
for herd sizes in grazing ranges.
