NAFA: HISTORY OF US FALCONRY?

[Ben C]

A question for our US counterparts, what is the history of falconry before the arrival of us westerners on Plymouth Rock?

Is there any evidence of any indigenous peoples using native species in hawking, pictures, stories or any such thing.

And does anyone have any addresses that may be useful for me to find out, I.E The American Indian museum, or the NAFA Archives perhaps.

Thanks

Ben

[IAmTheWeasel]

Here is the Addy for the Perigrine funds website. They have the Archives of American Falconry. You should be able to find something out through them about the US history by e-mailing them, but I think that the history in the US is limited to European settlements

http://www.peregrinefund.org/default.asp

[Ben C]

Weasel, thanks for that but I can't believe that this is the case???? Somehow I feel that as most indigenous people have used hawks then why not the US?

Anyway I shall give em a go mate. Thanks a lot. I shall be over in easter to wander around the Texas desert in search of wild Harris Hawks so I will get a bit more hands on research:) :) :)

[IAmTheWeasel]

Hey, let me know when your headed this way and maybe I can help out......at least to have a pint or 5 :lol:

[Ben C]

Easter holidays 2006 (2 weeks). We will fly into San Antonio airport and then drive into the desert following the migratory path of the Harris Hawk.

The aim is to get some shots (DVD and still) of the Harris in the wild performing its god given duty. We reson this will give us a better understanding of 'Cody's' roots and will just be a cool thing to do.
:) :) :)

[IAmTheWeasel]

Absolutely! There are tons of them just south and west of San Antonio. You may be able to get a few hints on where some local family groups are located from falconers in that area. The Harris's tend to keep to a certain area and falconers here trap young from the same families year after year in the same spot. It would of been nice if you could of come during the trapping season as you will get a good chance to see quite a few on the trap as there are at least a dozen falconers here trapping one this season. We can get up to 3-4 harris's on the trap at a time...Just remember...If you see one....chances are that the others are not far off and watching closely.

[Ben C]

When is the trapping season weasel?? Both me and Lucy have the easter pencilled in, we did have the summer but Lance and Jill Morrow said we would MELT TO DEATH in the desert.

This whole journey and the info about native americans will all tie in nicely and will form the basis of some research we are doing for a few articles I want to write. I specifically want to deal with the Harris only. Find out as much as I can and take it from there.

[IAmTheWeasel]

Trapping season is from September 15th to December 31st in Texas and yes, you wouldn't enjoy the heat too much in the middle of summer....It will hit about 43-46c there easily from mid June to September. There is no such thing here as a house or car without A/C in it!
I recorded the heat inside my truck once and it reached 70c down at my ranch in Eldorado Texas.....Bet you didn't know that a car seat buckle could be used as a branding iron....
Spring or fall are the best times to visit the arid west Texas areas when it is no more than 30c.

[Ben C]

I can't make it in the xmas holidays as I am off to fly golden eagles at deer on the german border. We are stuck with easter, a bottle of water and motels I am afraid. We shall do our best with the dates we got weasel. :) :)

I have emailed my quest to the peregrine trust (?) and so I shall wait and see what they say.

Thanks for youe help

Ben

[Shaun Byrne]

Somehow I feel that as most indigenous people have used hawks then why not the US?
:)

Course they use them Ben, for head dresses :twisted:

[Ben C]

:) :)

Bet thats why they didn't catch much, just throwing hats at rabbits doesn't do much good. And I should know its the last thing I do after a sh*t day.

:):)

[IAmTheWeasel]

PMSL!! Your not far off the truth with the head dress thing. The Native Americans used raptors as symbols of worship more than they did for anything else. In my opinion, I would say that somebody at some point had to figure out how to use a wild bird to catch game for them considering that it was done for thousands of years on other continents. The issue is that they never had any form of record keeping like the Europeans or the Chinese aside from a few cave markings, so it is unlikely that anyone will ever know....Unless we find some long lost cave with a dead hooded peregrine stuck in it :lol:

[Ben C]

Or some elders still alive who have never been asked in the right way???? :)

[IAmTheWeasel]

Good luck! You'll drive yourself mad trying to get a straight answer out of them! :wink:

[Ben C]

Wouldn't bother in the time I've got, would seem a bit rude, rocking up and saying.....Hello I am english tell me your secrets!!!

Might be some small dot that I could try and fathom, or maybe some stuff that is just small but interesting in the museums you lot have. I can't imagine that they never did practice falconry though. They were generally very ingenious and did have some very advanced understanding of the land etc etc

I can just see some little kid picking a hawk from a nest and trying it out. It just doesn't make sense that there is no real evidence as such, considering the other stuff they got up to.

If you look at some of the asian chieftans and older falconers from really odd places who still carry on the tradition, then SURELY these guys had some idea.

I can but give it a go, nothing to lose, eh weasel???

[Kreyenborgi]

Hello,

I´ve been doing some research about that topic in my country. The indigenous people of southern Chile, where the MAPUCHE and the first spanish cronists describe that they have captive aplomado falcons kept in large enclosures facing a similar instalation of southern lapwing (Vanellus chilensis). They were reared for several months in this condition and during an special ritual religious ceremony they where released at the same time...eventually they engaged on aerial persecution very much like heron hunting ...they try to out climb each other. though this lapwing is a strong flyer and is armed with one sharp, 3 cm long spike on each wing..anything could happen when the aplomado eventually reaches the plover, they both come at full speed to the ground , if the falcon grabbs the bird on the air it have chances of victory, but if it grabbs it on the goundm there´s a big fight....depending on the results of this duel the incoming year will be good for war or good for forest fruit or anything else...(I think they just enyoy the flight)...
This mapuches where also hunting birds using the ¨help¨ of chilean hawk (Accipiter chilensis) at the arrival of the spanish colonizers...as described by the cronists.

Bye,

K

[Ben C]

What period where they using Aplomado Falcons? What date and do you have any inscriptions or paintings of this ceremony? Very very interesting.

[IAmTheWeasel]

Indeed!

[Kreyenborgi]

Unfortunately mapuche people where not leaving testimony as painting or rock carving as they had a tribal system of more a pragmatical culture.

They also had totems with Ñamcu (Buteo polyosoma) and Calquin (Geranoaetus melanoleucus).

The narration I quoted above is from a spanish cronist of 1600 when Chile was a lost territory south of Lima virreinato (Peru)...very few people came to this lattitude...This Cronist also made a description of nice falcons to be taken for the king of spain such as bahari and nebli, they nomenclature coincide with the subespecies we know now as Falco peregrinus brookei and Falco peregrinus peregrinus, but certainly what he saw at that time where Falco peregrinus cassini and Falco peregrinus tundrius.

Bye,

K

[Ben C]

What is a Namcu? Do they still exist now. I take it they are a broadwing of some sort?

Do any of the spanish conquestadors have picture of the hawks or falcons that the Cronist flew?

[Bird_Dog]

the Spanish Conquistador Cortes is reported to have introduced falconry to the Aztec ruler Montezuma in the early sixteenth century (Rivera, 1995). However, beyond a few examples, falconry did not existed in North America until the early to mid twentieth. The rise of falconry in the United States can be traced to Louis Agassiz Fuertes’s National Geographic Magazine article titled the Sport of Kings published in 1920. The Rivera citation is from the NAFA Journal. Motezuma kept raptors but didn't use them to hunt. If I recall the article correctly a captain in Cortes's command trained a bird to prove to Montezuma that it could be done..

-- BIRD_DOG

[Ben C]

Bird_dog

This is very interesting....The conquestidors were brutal men and I cannot fathom wether they may have 'missed' some of the more subtle aspects of falconry in the tribes people before they claimed to 'introduce' it to the Aztec?

1600 seems late for such a well developed country.....or maybe they just didn't need falcons and caught enough food in a quicker way.

I have sent emails to most museums and to NAFA and they agree with you, but it still doesn't make sense. I can imagine 'someone' at least finding a hawk fallen from the nest and bringing it up and using it. But perhaps this is just my DESIRE rather than FACT.

None the less its still bloody fascinating. :)

[Kreyenborgi]

A contemporary ¨invention¨ of the falconry...

A farmer took young aplomados from nest, he is from a very isolated part of northern Chile near Ovalle, he fed them with fresh killed birds he finds everywhere at that season, nestlings easy to stone all over!!...

When the aplos satrted to flight they follow him and start chasing birds while he was looking for his goats and sheeps...

2 of them left but one stick around for several months he said... the first time he got a tinamou he fed on the ground and I kept part of the prey for me ...

This person doesnt read or write...he goes once or twice a month to town to buy suplies and sell goats cheese or meat....Something like that could have happened with mapuches and chilean hawks...

Ñamcu , Buteo polyosoma is the red backed hawk or variable hawk.

K

[Ben C]

A farmer took young aplomados from nest, he is from a very isolated part of northern Chile near Ovalle,

K

That is VERY SPECIFIC....how did you get the information about the location???

[Kreyenborgi]

Because a good friend knows him personally...

The farmer is around 60 years old, and he moves his goats over a vast area on a semi desertic environment.

Mi friend told him about falconry, and he was very surprised that such thing could exist...for him it was so natural and espontaneous that he never thought of the need of training, teaching, manning or any king of management for the falcons he raised...

Cheers,

K

[Ben C]

WOW.............That is amazing. Christ that could make an excellent book. Could you get photographs of him, an interview or something like that? Seriously Krey that is VERY VERY interesting.

Krey: Please contact me via email; bigcarp@hotmail.co.uk, I have need of your information for some publishable articles. Thanks.

[Kreyenborgi]

I have a trip planned to Ovalle first week of august, I hope I can take pictures of him...

saludos.

K

[Bird_Dog]

BenC --

My info agrees with the Archives because that's where I got it from. I think the of the origin of falconry is greatly debated because of the lack of documentation. What's interesting to me is the inter species cooperative behavior. Cooperative hunting and other mutualistic behavior is seen in non human species as well. So it would surprise me that falconry could be traced back to paleo cultures/ before written language ( not sure of the best word here). If certainly could have occurred as the way Kreyenborgi describes in the Chilean farmer, however, wild Candis were thought to exploit man for food before being domesticated. So perhaps there were some example of this kind of behavior in raptors. In Texas, RTs are known to follow farm tractors. Presumably because of the opportunity to catch quarry which is flushed during plowing or harvesting.

I wrote the section below as part of a paper on falconry, which unfortunately was reject for publication. See what you think. Most of the refs are NAFA journal

-- BIRD_DOG


History and Background of Falconry
In a sense, the hunting seen in falconry may be considered another manifestation of symbioses. Falconers have speculated about the means of discovery by humans that wild raptors could be used to pursuit and capture quarry (de Charmerlat, 1987; Jenkins, 1990). The proposed scenarios differ on whether or not the symbiotic interaction between man and raptor is characterized by either a mutualistic relationship in which two opportunistic species learned to hunt cooperatively or a kleptoparasitic interaction in which humans exploited birds of prey. Either way, the crucial insight was to harness the superior hunting ability of birds of prey for the benefit of humans. The exact manor of how wild raptors came into captivity for falconry: either as young, referred to as an ‘eyas’ or as a fully independent immature, referred to as ‘passage’ is yet to be determined. Older raptors in adult plumage that have made more than one annual migration are referred to as ‘haggard’. Unlike younger birds, haggard raptors are considered too wild and difficult to train. Nevertheless, there are examples of ancient cultures keeping raptors in captivity for non-falconry purposes (e.g., Egyptians kept raptors for religious purposes-God of Horus).
Perhaps falconry originated in a similar manor as the formation of cooperative hunting between paleo hunter-gather humans and wild canids which predates falconry. A comparison may also be useful due to the fact that dogs often accompany falconers in the field and contribute to hunting with trained falconry birds. Wolves and other wild canids shared a similar niche with hunter-gather humans. This would naturally lead to interaction between humans and cainids (Clutton-Brock, 1977,1995). Utilization of identical food sources by humans and canids could the precursor for the evolution of cooperative hunting behavior between species. Lorenz (1954,1975) argued that the origin of the domestic dogs began with wild canids that learning to follow human hunt parties to gain opportunities to scavenge food. Gradually, canids entered into a symbiotic relationship with humans when we tamed them and learn to utilize their superior prey-finding ability for hunting. Wild raptors, just as wild canids, are opportunistic hunters and are known to exploit situations that occur as a result of human activity. For example, Red-tailed hawks learn to hunt over agricultural areas in the same way that many birds species learn to follow the plow for feeding opportunities, thus demonstrating the wide spread potential and adaptiveness for cooperative hunting in conjunction with humans.
By most accounts, falconry in a higher form has been practiced for nearly 4,000 years (see Epstein 1943 for a review). Although the exact location and time of the origin of falconry will probably be never known, certain historical facts support the position that falconry emerged in China, the Stepps of Central Asia and Mongolia then spread to Korea and Japan. The practice of falconry moved westerly across India, Persia, Arabia and in to Europe (see Dementiev, 1977 for counter argument). Originally, subsistence falconry (i.e., food on the table), was the probable motivation for early falconers. Over the centuries falconry has risen to an art form that is mainly pursued as a leisure activity. In Middle Eastern cultures, falconry is considered to be an important part of cultural activities as evident by support to the sport by governments (Carnie, 1976; Remple, 1988).