Kublai Khan
In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kublai heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“I say that Auschwitz is an extreme manifestation of an attitude that still thrives in our midst. It shows itself in the treatment of minorities in industrial democracies; in education, education to a humanitarian point of view included, which most of the time consists of turning wonderful young people into colourless and self-righteous copies of their teachers; it becomes manifest in the nuclear threat, the constant increase in the number and power of deadly weapons and the readiness of some so-called patriots to start a war compared with which the holocaust will shrink into insignificance. It shows itself in the killing of nature and of “primitive” cultures with never a thought spent on those thus deprived of meaning in their lives; in the colossal conceit of our intellectuals, their belief that they know precisely what humanity needs and their relentless efforts to recreate people in their own sorry image; in the infantile megalomania of some of our physicians who blackmail their patients with fear, mutilate them and them persecute them with large bills; in the lack of feeling of many so-called searchers for truth who systematically torture animals, study their discomfort and receive prizes for their cruelty. As far as I am concerned there exists no difference between the henchmen of Auschwitz and these “benefactors of mankind.”
-Paul Feyerabend from Farewell To Reason, 1987
Here is my math quiz for the 21st Century:
X = (∞ - 1) + (∞ + 1), where the term (∞ - 1) may be substituted by the poem Kublai Khan and the term (∞ + 1), may be substituted by the quote from Feyerabend. Solve for X.
OK, let's simplify: ∞ + ∞ = ∞ thus ∞ = X.
Expressed in words I would say that we are solving for what came before never and adding it to what came after forever. We should find some very interesting things by way of our inquiries. If we conduct this research in the realms of what we today call History, Religion, Science and Politics I venture that we would we wind up on what resembles a chessboard constructed from a Möbius strip.
Wow! Should we attempt that? By all means. We are humans, so saddle up. The exchequered landscape we shall gallop across is, after all, the very ground we stand our questions on and have our brief experience of life upon. Your roof is also your floor and your room is the world at large, while the world at large is very surely, your room.
I have heard that Mr. Coleridge was being visited by some literary friends who suggested they take a walk. He was feeling poorly due to some medical problems and had taken some medication, quite possibly, an opiate. He stayed behind on a chair in the garden while the others went for a stroll. The poem he wrote upon waking from his brief chemical escape from the pain of his existence has now become a classic.
When I think of Kublai Khan, I think of Genghis and I think of horses. Open prairie, taiga, tundra, savanna, steppes, llanos and deserts. Two legs astride four is one of our most ancient symbols for power, triumph, freedom and mobility. Man and beast appear combined at first glance. Looked at another way, we may perceive two animals acting together for the greater benefit of one of them. I cannot see the benefit to the horse in an open grassland setting for making an alliance with man. I could write an entire book on the benefits garnered by man up to my own day by this heavily one-sided partnership.
Let us canter along behind Genghis and his Mongols to see some of the fruits of this hoofed extension of man's power. Let us stop for seven days in 732 AD, at the confluence of the Clain and Vienne Rivers between Poitiers and Tours and watch Charles Martel turn back the massive armoured cavalry of Emir Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi Abd al Rahman with a vastly smaller infantry force.
Four years later let us ride over to Narbonne and watch the same Charles Martel crush a further Muslim invasion, this time headed by Rahman's son and arriving by sea. Again we see Charles using a smaller force but now incorporating heavy cavalry with the chain-mail and stirrups that his enemy had been equipped with on their first encounter.
After watering our mounts let us ship out to the New World with the Spaniards, do some conquering and get the silver and gold mines running at full slave powered capacity. As we watch this drama, let us see some of those introduced horses become lost or stolen and subsequently become huge roaming herds of wild mustangs ranging North.
Several of the tribes in what are today Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado will go on to utilize those animals both for their survival and for the domination over and expansion of Prairie Empires. Their particular approach to the already well-ingrained old World methods of domestication and training of horses will seem uncanny to us as we watch them become one with the caballos.
None more than the Comanche tribe. A newly mounted force of armed men operating in an economy based upon a migratory food source of behemoth proportions in a harsh environment will evoke a familiar play as we observe them from Kansas to the Gulf of Mexico. Natural selection may be readily observed here whether one subscribes in toto to Darwin's theory or not.
Like any creature suffering great persecution through history, it is the superlative specimens that live to breed. This holds true for both admirable and for dishonourable traits. Aggression, cunning and what Feyerabend calls "colossal conceit” and what may be called psychopathy are as readily passed on as are large hands, tallness or an abundance or lack of body hair.
Let us now watch a small group of Cherokees adopting European clothing, farming practices, writing, religion and home building; and steadily working their way West. They have already inter-married for many, many generations. They are led by a half-Scottish Chief, Bowles, who sports freckles and red hair. Some of them are mounted and they use their horses to do plowing and land clearing as well as for transportation. They are seeking a place to practice their hybrid culture and do not trust waiting to see how things work out back East. History proves them right in their pessimism and serves up The Cherokee Trail of Tears some time after their departure.
After an earthquake in 1811 in Missouri compels this group to undertake yet another move farther West, they arrive at the boundary of civilization as practised by the United States of America. They are in today's North East-Texas, which is then under the administration of Spain. To their West and to their North are other tribes on their original lands as their own local histories and struggles have allowed.
Over time, the Comanches and one band in particular, the Quohadi, headed by a half-white war chief named Quanah Parker, have become the dominant force in this part of our planet. Other tribes are also mounted and hostile in the sense of practising a raiding lifestyle such as Apache, Cheyenne, Kickapoo and Arapaho; but all fear and respect the superior Comanche horse warriors.
The Spanish tolerate them as they serve as a buffer against any incursion by other Colonialists. They are the pinnacle of mounted fighting perfection and are only brought to ruin just before getting access to the repeating firearms of their foes. They stand in the way of the formation of the Republic of Texas which itself is but a stepping stone to the United States of America’s expansion to the Pacific Ocean and the tying of the continent’s hands with steel rails and barbed wire.
Let us braid our pony’s tails and watch the Texas Cherokee make a treaty with the future Republic of Texas and agree not to ally with the Comanche or Apache while the Texians fought a rebellion against Mexico. This was done by the Texas Cherokees and their associated tribes in return for obtaining the legal title to their extensive holdings and improvements. A frustratingly mercurial right they had been attempting to legally obtain from a bureaucratically fragmented Mexican Government. The Tsalagi (Cherokee) smelled the wind and picked a horse.
The properly executed and binding treaty was unnecessarily submitted for ratification after the Republic was born by its Texian authors and was ignored until finally being discarded as trash by an incoming racist Texas President. They were then forced off the land at gunpoint. When Texas was succeeded by the United States of America, legal experts argue that the USA succeeded the treaty obligations of the Texan signers of that treaty. Several other attempts to rectify this wrong were made in the 20th century.
I learned in 2023, as I here shall amend this essay to reflect, "that the Coahuila Governor Enrique Martinez y Martinez declared the Cherokee Nation of Mexico including the Tsalagiyi Nvdagi (Texas Cherokee) to be an authentic tribe in Northern Coahuila and on August 31, 2001 signed the recognition document making the recognition of the Cherokee an Official Act."
https://texascherokees.net/official-recognition/#the-republic-of-mexico-2
As well, "On October 10, 2019 the Honorable Governor Greg Abbott on behalf of the State of Texas granted the Tsalagiyi Nvdagi Tribe Official Recognition on the occasion of our 200th Anniversary and permanent settlement in what is now the State of Texas 1819-2019. This Official Recognition comes 180 years after the Republic of Texas forces tried to drive the Texas Cherokee and associated bands from our tribal treaty territory in East Texas by gun and knife on July 16, 1839."
"Governor Greg Abbott signed his name and caused the Seal of the State of Texas to be affixed to the Official Recognition document at the City of Austin, on the 10th day of October, 2019."
"The Official Tribal Recognition was read and presented to all Tsalagiyi Nvdagi Tribal Citizens and Supporters in attendance, on Saturday October 19, 2019 at Tsalagiyi Nvdagi Tribal lands in Troup, Texas." -
https://texascherokees.net/official-recognition/#texas-state-recognition
We see that the Texas Cherokee’s gamble is similar to that of Eudes, The Great Duke Odo of Aquitaine, who in 730 AD, allied himself to Uthman ibn Naissa, the Emir of Catalonia. He picked a horse and that horse picked a fight with Abd Rahman, Emir of Al Andalus who has already been mentioned in this essay.
Eudes’ story begins when he succeeds to the Ducal Throne of Aquitaine around 700 AD. In 711, he fights against the Visigoth, Roderic in Pamplona. In 715, he declares himself independent during a civil war in Gaul. In 718 he raises an army of Basques, allies with Chilperic II of Neustria and Ragenfrid, the Mayor of the Palace.
Ragenfrid probably offers to recognize Eudes as King of Aquitaine, because they are allied against the Austrasian Mayor of the Palace, Charles Martel. Charles Martel defeats their combined forces at Soissons. Everybody retreats and Duke Eudes makes a Peace Treaty with Charles Martel by surrendering Chilperic. Ragenfrid flees to Angers and also negotiates a separate Treaty.
In 721, Eudes defeats Al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani at the Battle of Toulouse. It is the first major loss by the Muslim Umayyad forces in their Northerly Campaigns of Conquest. The victory earns Eudes the Pope's political endorsement. In order to help secure his Southern borders he marries his daughter, Lampegia, to a rebel Berber with the title, Lord Uthman ibn Naissa, Deputy Governor of (future) Catalonia.
In 731, Charles Martel denounces Eudes' alliance with Uthman and crosses the river Loire to break their treaty. Martel ransacks Aquitaine twice, seizes Bourges, defeats Eudes then heads home to Francia.
While Eudes has been occupied with Charles, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi attacks Uthman ibn Naissa, kills him and takes his wife Lampegia prisoner to a harem in Damascus. In 732, Al Ghafiqi raids Vasconia and sacks Bordeaux. Eudes engages them but is defeated. He re-organizes his forces, goes North to warn Charles Martel and to seek his alliance. After Eudes submits to formal Frankish Authority, they join forces.
In 732/3, North of Poitiers, between the rivers Vienne and Clain, at the Battle of Tours, the Umayyads are defeated by this Alliance and are expelled from Aquitaine. After the battle, Charles goes North to rule Francia, Neustria and Austrasia. Duke Eudes rules Aquitaine and Vasconia (Basque land) and inside of seven years he is dead.
Yes, the Duke did change his horses in the middle of the stream. He kept his hide for awhile but he had to give up his separate Kingdom and be subsumed into Greater Frankdom. The Texas Cherokees similarly, pick a horse and ally with the Texians. Soon afterwards, while their land title sits in a state of deliberate, perpetual non-ratification on the President's desk of the newly won Republic of Texas, they are approached and given notice that the document has been rejected and nullified.
Allegations are made of captured documents from Southern spies inciting risings against the Texians among the First Nations. As with such things, we will never know the absolute truth. The Cherokees are ordered to leave their crops, houses and farms and be escorted out of Texas by armed soldiers. They choose to fight after much consultation with all involved and lose the ensuing Battle of the Neches. They pick the wrong horse and ride it over the edge. Some few paint their horses and survive the extermination. My Grandmother’s mother did that.
Let us now spur our mounts and head back to the present and our flat screens. On the way we see a lone wolf begging food at the mouth of a cave from a man, a Prince loosing a falcon on a hare and a Pharaoh setting a jaguar onto a fleeing gazelle. Again, we see Muslim turmoil in France and Germany. We see Catalonia separating from Spain. We see a Ukrainian Trail of Tears. We see a businessman in Nevada with an exclusive license to send weapons into space via his private company. We see an ex-CIA drug operative thrown to the wolves during an election year after being purposely empowered for years prior.
Let us stop and check to be sure we are indeed home again and in our own time and to confirm that this is so. We may read that many top scientists and philosophers of science have been of the opinion for over two decades, that there is nothing of any material benefit to humanity left to be discovered. As we munch on a chemical laden biscuit, reading an article about a cougar recently shot in Idaho which had an entire extra set of fangs growing out of the top of its head facing backwards; nuclear capable B-52s wing their way to South Korea. We may sometimes wonder why some of our houses are chilly, why most of our food is substandard, why many people's water is laden with detrimental additives and why too many children are unable to afford post secondary education.
Let us hark back to the Eighteenth Century and realize that yes, taken as a whole, we have become very thick indeed. Many of the benefits and comforts afforded to us by our science are priced out of our reach while we are simultaneously harangued by those who can afford them, to provide those things to everyone on the planet at our own expense, except for those countries that our leaders are currently engaged in destroying.
Finally, let us return our horses to their former wild state and see them carry on nicely without our ministrations on their behalf. Let us notice that our dogs sit at our feet awaiting our orders while our cats keep one eye on the fridge and another on the door. Let us ponder how much water has been converted into ethanol and soda pop.
Let us ponder that every alliance eventually unravels like an old sweater and that betting on horses is just that, gambling. A fifty-fifty shot, when measured over the Möbius strip that is our human story. If something works it is not likely to be abandoned. Those that seek power are never likely to relinquish it. In terms of factual intelligence via the Freedom of Information Act, history has a working depth of fifty years and is constantly being re-written.
Let us ponder a quote which was learned by Prince Henry from his chosen tutor, Sir Walter Raleigh, as that condemned man awaited execution in The Tower of London by order of Henry's father, James. An order fuelled in part by jealousy of Raleigh's writing of a History of the World and dedicating that work to the sensible young Henry.
“All wars of religion are only civil wars, and by civil wars no nation's condition was ever bettered.”
-Henry Prince of Wales circa. 1618
As I light my smudge and wave my prayers skyward in a lazy figure eight, I wonder who bet on Raleigh's horse.
fin