Anthropology of the Colusa of Florida

 North American Indians

The Calusa of what is now Florida, USA

                A great people who deserve more talk and understanding.

                I haven't yet written much of the early peoples of North America, but if I live long enough I intend to write much more.

                    

            The words I now write of the Calusa are few. Even so I expect that will be sufficient to fix the Calusa  people and the name Calusa in the minds of a few our readers.

                    In the 1500s the Calusa still controlled much of  the southwest of Florida. They defended their land against the aggression  of other peoples including European explorers.  The Spaniards knew them as fierce. The Caloosahatchee River, with its mouth on the southwest of  Florida, was theirs.

                They lived mostly along the inland waterways and developed them for transportation and food production. The sea was also a source of food for them. They left middens of seashells large enough in size to compete with their great mounds and other earthworks. The fished with nets and tapped fish.

                The Calusa had a strong influence on the tribes around them. That influence may be because of their wide trading. They typically used dugouts for use at sea and along their inland waterways. They also built  and used larger vessels. They visited Cuba regularly and probably sailed much farther into the Caribbean.

                Their homes were built on platforms on pilings over the water. Their buildings had particularly handsome roofing of palmetto leaves. It is said that some of their 'houses' were large enough to easily accommodate 2000 persons!

                They were excellent wood workers and they also did some fine wood carving. They were excellent farmers, sailors, fishermen, and traders, They are probably responsible for the construction of what we have called bayous.

                The apex of their culture probably dates well before 100 BC. Their middens and and earth works have been dated to that time.

                We have much to learn from and about the Calusa. Please feel free to extend and correct our knowledge of them.

                What is your interest in American Indians? Help me write to your interests.

                Thank you for reading.

                


                                                                                by R.C.S.

Acupuncture: history and scientific observation

 Acupuncture: history notes
 

                Are we too superior in our conceits to recognize the ability we ought to see in others?

               

             I write here in hope that we may more enjoy the fruits of acupuncture. The French and Russians began to enjoy those fruits of the acupuncture part of Chinese Health Care many years ago. Our AMA has not pointed us to a legal road to making acupuncture an active part of our health care system. It  that seems finding and setting up that road is up us, we the people. 

               

                 The people of some countries have struggled a bit with deciding how to regulate acupuncture, bur most have allowed it legal practice. Russian elites have demanded it. Chinese demand that extensive education and careful oversight of the the practice be established and maintained. European countries have demanded that all acupuncturists be medical doctors as well. Some of them have neglected the supervision of its teaching.

 

                Some knowledge of the history of acupuncture may prove of help to to us. Allow me to pass on some of that history which have begun to learn.

 

                A medical school was established in China during the Tang dynasty before 900 AD. Its name, translated to English can be, the Imperial Institute of Physicians. The college trained 350 students at a time in herbal medicine and surgery. Herbal medicine seems to have been the more important part of the instruction. Surgery was mainly limited to fractures, skin diseases, and wounds.

 

                Tang emperors also organized the nation's doctors into the grand Medical Service. It will be great when we can organize our healthcare to include the best of the kinds available in other countries. The development of organized healthcare in China began at least as early as 600 AD. Certainly we ought to be able to improve and extend our healthcare in the near future.

 

                 Chinese health care was regulated and delivery improved beginning in about 700 AD. Prospective doctors underwent rigorous examinations. Future doctors were examined on their familiarity with the principles of acupuncture and its diagnosis and techniques, also on the best written works. 

 

                Chinese controlled the quality of their health care then and now. There were and are laws prohibiting the practice of healthcare and cure without licenses.

 

                According to surviving healthcare books and documents from as far back as the Tang, a variety of maladies were treated. their practice dealt with tuberculosis, goiter, rickets, beriberi, dropsy, Cholera, dysentery, measles, smallpox, and leprosy.

            As we begin to use our choice of the very best European and Asiatic healthcare, we can learn from and adopt some of their methods of  control and safety. There  is much of value we can learn if we would. We can learn to benefit from acupuncture as have the French, and Russians, and others. Our healthcare professionals have much to teach others.

            Let's get back to the Tang dynasty way of dealing with acupuncture. On the second day of their examinations was a demonstration of one's effectiveness of dealing with the needles of acupuncture. A great deal more of Chinese history is becoming available these days and the Chinese share share much of their modern healthcare understanding, knowledge, and techniques. We can learn from them and help them to learn from us.

 

                In 1027 AD the sung dynasty emperor, Je Tsug ordered Wang Wei, a noted acupuncturist and sculpture to cast two hollow figures with the acupuncture points points marked by their names and small holes. The figures were covered with wax and filled with water. These figures were used to train and test students. Similar figures are used by students and teachers and students today, Since the Sung dynasty only about a dozen points have been changed, added, or deleted. I understands that a total of about 365 points are used today. For the interested person there is much historic and present day information available online.

 

                During the reign of Chaing Kai-shek, western medicine was extolled and acupuncture was repressed and schools closed. Still, the Chinese people looked to their traditional medicine. Thousands were killed by quacks and the untrained in the use of traditional medicine. Many came to doubt their ''medicine."

                When the communist consolidated power acupuncturists began to use the needles where they were most likely to be used correctly, on themselves. A graduate from their schools may have pricked himself ten thousand times refining his skills and touch until teachers and testers were sure of his ability. There remained much to be learned of diagnosis.  

 

                Now, acupuncture has been modernized by Chinese doctors also trained in western medicine. Acupuncture is used extensively. Electronic needles are used, and their use has moved into most modern Chinese medicine. 

 

                In 1893 Sir Henry Head, a British nerve specialist, noticed that some patients suffering from diseased gallbladders and kidneys felt pain in parts of the body far from from the stricken organs. The pain was external, on the surface of the skin, and a specific disease always resulted in pain from the same place. Think of the diagnostic possibilities, Some wise doctors have been trained in "Head Zones."

            

            German doctors soon began to use their knowledge of "Head Zones" to deaden areas of the skin to relieve pain in internal organs. Does that remind you of anything in particular?

 

                Some American doctors add to this practice by injecting these surface areas with chemical Anesthesia to get the same result. American doctors were amazed to find that their injections in Head Zones not only relieved pain, but in many cases cure diseases. Head Zones have been too largely forgotten, but there is still a bit of ongoing work being done in the U.S. and elsewhere. 

 

            By the way, the areas of the skin Dr. Head linked with the gallbladder and kidneys are the same ones acupuncturists use today and the same ones they have used for many hundreds of years.

 

                I believe that we can benefit from careful training of good acupuncture practitioners in the U.S. I believe we would benefit even more by good appropriate oversight of those practitioners and of all physicians and health practitioners. For developing appropriate training of acupuncturists in the U.S. we could increase exchange of healthcare practitioners between China and America.

 

                Check RCS Posts for health related posts.

            Thank you for reading

 

 

                                                                    RCS 

The Way of the Great Wagon Road

  The Blue Ridge Mountains

            Help me add to this story. I remember Arthur Godfrey being on the radio. A song he often sang was The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. There was music in those mountains from the earliest days of European settlement. That music was not just in Virginia. It spread around an area of is now several U.S. states. Quite a lot of that music spread into what is now North Carolina.

            I could well have called this piece The Lost Provinces, many others have. The settlers among those rolling hills beyond the ridges were largely separated from the colonies and then from the states. Many did not remember that they were there. Some of the people in that Blue Ridge country didn't keep up much on the rest of the country. They were "The Lost Provinces."

            But there is a lot more to the story, I still have some of it in mind. I remember being told that in a far western corner of what became the state of north Carolina is a rolling plateau separated from the rest of the state by the abrupt slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Families settled there. Some say that they became the heart of those provinces.

            For years the Provinces were isolated from much of the country and even the rest of North Carolina. The isolation was so great that most of their trade and communication was with the neighboring states of Tennessee and Virginia. i suspect that they did not feel their isolation so very much. I some way it is part of the road they chose and much like the road many others were choosing in those days.

            There were those who came before them, but many to the area throughout the 1700s and after. They became isolated rapidly from a rapidly changing world. They shared little of that world. No Arthur Godfrey on the radio. Many came by way of the Great Wagon Road of the Shenandoah Valley. They had no industry and a barely subsistence agriculture with few of the implements of agriculture. Early arrivals had good hunting. Some arrived with little more than a rifle and an ax. They did feel their independence, I have heard. They may have called it freedom.

            The Cherokee, Shawnee, and Creek had hunted the territory for centuries, it is said. The first recorded visits by Europeans occurred in 1752. Augustus Spangenberg, a Moravian Bishop from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and a handful of men entered the territory. The Bishop was impressed by the mountains. H seems not to have been guided well.

            Those who came, somehow had a great deal of music. Perhaps feelings of freedom and independence helped. They brought their musical culture from Germany, England, and elsewhere. Violins were not the first of the musical instruments to be popular. But in time violins were brought to the land, made there there, and played there. They were popularly called fiddles. They danced to the music of the fiddle.

        In 1799 the North Carolina General Assembly designated the high country as Ashe County, named for Samuel Ash, Revolutionary War patriot and three time governor of the state.

        After the Civil War, more instruments and many kinds of music came and was welcomed in the "Lost Provinces.

        There is much more to this story. The Cherokee, Welsh, and others could tell us that. Help me out and tell us what you can find out about The Blue Ridge Mountains and Lost Provinces territory.

            Thank you for reading.        

                                                                                Richard Sheehan

We Know That a Paradigm Is Not Two Dimes

Poukawa Archaeological Site in New Zealand

        And when we don't remember what an anomaly is we can quickly find out. This video is pleasant to view. It can be seen as an example of how literary exploration can point us to useful exploration of history and prehistory.

What is a Cossack?

Cossack, Ukrainian, and Free

 

                Cossacks have been free men and democratic. They have only been known to history since about 650 AD. They have been mostly an active in self-governing communities for well over a thousand years. They have been open, inclusive, with a Slavic bent. They knew a world from Siberia to Lithuania and up and down for many years, but were drawn to a certain land.

                The Ukrainian Cossack State was formed in about 1650 in what is now central Ukraine. Their leaders were elected.

                Through the years they have been few. Democracy is not easy. They experienced much, and stayed free among strong neighbors such as Poland, Russia, and Lithuania. Among such neighbors they continued to show a strong will for self-governance.

                They formed the Ukrainian Peoples Republic in 1917 to 1921, the western Ukrainian Peoples Republic 1918 to 1919, and the Ukrainian Peoples Republic in exile  from 1920 to 1992.

                They were among the very first members of the Soviet Union with its promise of self-governing citizens. They may have been the first to leave that Union when it showed little will to self-governing citizenship.

                They were among the charter members of the United Nations with its promise of a chance for peace and freedom. They have not given up on their fellow members yet. 

                Ah, yes, I believe that at the breakup of the Soviet Union the were left with one of the greatest stock of atomic weapons on Earth and gave up that stock to the U.N.

                 They are still a mixture of races, nationalities, and religions. They are a free independent people self selected from that mixture.

                We might mention that with the substantial help of viking Norsemen they created Russia. Oh, and they had a modern republic type written constitution in 1710.

                I believe that a history of the cultures most effecting these people could be traced back another 4,000 years. However, before about 650 AD they were little recognized in history as a discrete people. Throughout perhaps a thousand years of their history they stayed freer, more democratic, and inclusive than most. They have had to defend themselves and they have. They have also kept the hope and faith that they could live a free people among free people. They have  seen inclusiveness, freedom, and democracy disappear like smoke again and again. Still they hold a vision of that freedom and self governance closer and dearer than do most.

               Please feel free to correct this work or add to it in the "comments" section below or just to click on a social media button just below.

                A Ukraine. 

                Thank you for reading.

 

                                                                                    rcs 

 

 

Bird and Bear Were Titles Given to the Last Romans in "England"

 Ireland, Irish, Merlin, Revise your history. Celtic people in Main in about 500 AD. A ruler became Merlin the bird. The name of Arthur the bear was Owin. The dead Princess Diana was related to the Stewarts and so, fairly closely related to Arthur and not just bearly.

                                                                                                    Richard Sheehan