Smithsonian - August 2020

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WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE
Smithsonian
I Vol. 51 I No. 04
July • August 2020
30
The Divide
72
The Way of
A noted researcher -the Shogun
spent 30 years studying Step into Japan's feudal
and at times living with past via ancient trails
bonobos. But then pri once tread by poets,
matologists questioned artists and samurai
the wisdom of probing by Tony Perrottet
the inner lives of apes
90
by Lindsay Stern
50
American
◄ Freedom Fignter
A photographer recre
ates a famed suffragist's
f
Descendants whistle-stop tour
A British photographer Photographs by
finds striking simi Jeanine Michna-Bales
larities between his Text by Amy Crawford
portrait subjects and
102
their famous forebears
Photographs by
Drew Gardner
Sen. McCarthy's
56
Nazi Problem
The year before he
Inez Milholland, depicted by re-enactor Dana Altman, began his Communist,
The Virus Hunters pulls into Chicago in the photograph Arrival. witch hunts, "Low-Blow
The scientists who trav Joe" took an equally
el the world looking for controversial stand on
pathogens in animals German war crimes
that might pose a dead 25 Origins: Fire poles by Larry Tye
ly threat to humans 26 National Treasure:
prologue
09
by Maryn McKenna Lucretia Mott's bonnet '
28 Crossword: Get your fill
68
09 American Icon:
Good Humor truck
• Monticello ice cream
03 Discussion
English Gothic 12 Art: America in 1981
06 Institutional Knowledge
Beautiful altered by Lonnie G. Bunch Ill
9
16 Civil Rights:
photographs of familiar 116 Ask Smithsonian
Mory McLeod Bethune
objects and scenes You've got questions.
• Leadership on display We've got experts
evoke the disruption to
our lives in 2020 22 Innovation:
Photographs and text The TR-808 drum machine Cover: Teco, photographed
by Kevin Miyazaki, at the Ape
by Nicola Muirhead • Beat boxes Initiative.
July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN
· ·-
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2 SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020

discussion Smithsonian I
W@IJ
TWITTER: @SmithsonianMag
INSTAGRAM: @smithsonianmagazine
FACEBOOK: smithsonianmagazine
ing." In the mid-1960s, my friends and I bought our

beer-making materials and supplies in Berkeley, Cal
ifornia. The local beer gum then was Bill Owens, a
professional photographer and homebrew pioneer
who lobbied to legalize the serving of beer made
on-site. His 1981 book, How to Build a Small Brew
ery, described the method for replicating traditional
brewpubs in England and he opened Buffalo Bill's
Brewery in Hayward, California, which claims to be
America's first modern brewpub.
- Jeffery Luhn I Avery, California
Virtually Preserved
"Is it cultural imperialism "Return to the Sacred" (June 2020) is an important

article, especially in light of the rising anti-Semitism
to keep declarinQ Alexander seen over the past five to eight years. I like to believe
that as more information is circulated regarding our
'great'?" collective human past, we have the power to develop
more caring and understanding between humans.
- Ira Smith I Arvada, Colorado
Alexander Not So Great

Precious Land .... I would like to toss in my two cents about your June
Smithsonian
One thing left out of "Hallowed Ground" (June 2020) thanks you for cover ("The King and the Conqueror," June 2020). Is
was how national monuments often are precursors your subscrip it cultural imperialism to keep declaring Alexander
tion, which
to national parks. Teddy Roosevelt was the first pres supports the "great"? I'm sure that's how he thought of himself
ident to use the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create na Smithsonian and how we in the same cultural victory chair see
Institution's
tional monuments. One of those was Grand Canyon unique mission him, but probably not so much the people he subju
to explore the
National Monument (later a national park). Just as natural world,
gated, pillaged, raped and destroyed. Why are Attila
author Rahawa Haile described cuts to Bears Ears celebrate the the Hun and Genghis Khan invading savages, but Al
arts and con-
National Monument today, back then a local news nect Americans exander is great for doing the same thing?
paper called protection of the canyon "a fiendish to their history. - Roger Ziegler I New York City
.....
and diabolical scheme," one "limiting development
of [Arizona's] mineral resources." History, especially Don't Forget Australia
that involving exploitation of natural resources, of Thank you for "The Search for Life on Kangaroo Is
ten repeats itself. land" (June 2020), describing the tme horror of the
- Thomas J. Straka I Pendleton, South Carolina Australian bushfires and the brave souls who worked
to rescue injured wildlife under extraordinary con
Beer Pioneers ditions. Sadly, the Covid-19 pandemic has relegated
I enjoyed your beer-making article featuring Char this disaster to all but faint memory. It is important to
lie Papazian ("Home Brew Hero," June 2020). Papa keep the plight of our unique wildlife in focus. Thank
zian's influence was certainly great, but he was just you from a grateful Australian.
one of many regional "Godfathers of Craft Brew- - Robina Bamforth I Smithsonianmag.com
� Send letters to LettersEd@sl.edu or to Letters, Smithsonian, MRC 513, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, D.C. 20013.
CONTACT Include a telephone number and address. Letters may be edited for clarity or space. Because of the high volume of
us mail we receive, we cannot respond to all letters. Send queries about the Smithsonian Institution to info@si.edu or to
� OVS, Public Inquiry Mail Service, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, D.C. 20013.
July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN 3

Institutional knowledge Smithsonian I
LONNIE G. BUNCH Ill, SECRETARY
compelling journalism that contextualizes the

current moment. Your membership, in turn, provides
essential support to the Institution's exhibitions,
research, education, and outreach.
As America recovers from Covid-19, the Smithsonian
continues to adapt. We are finding creative ways to
engage audiences online, sharing trusted expertise
to untangle our new normal, and asking Americans
to confront the country's grim racial past. Through
resources like "Talking About Race" from the National
Museum of African American History and Culture,
we are helping audiences better understand our
differences and bridge the chasm of race.
In large part, this work happens because of you.
Through the building closures of the past few
Recovery and Resilience months, through periods of social distance and
social upheaval, you have been with us every step of
HOW LEARNING FROM AMERICANS' the way. We aount on you now, as we steer a careful
PAST ORDEALS CAN HELP US FIND
HEALING AND HOPE course toward reopening in the wake of Covid-19 and
renew our service to a nation looking for healing.
In this difficult time, the Smithsonian community
has been where I look to find resilience and optimism.
Our staff, our volunteers, and you-our community
E VEN BEFORE I CHOSE HISTORY as

a profession, one of the things that
of readers, longstanding and new-remind me every
day why we continue to do what we do. Thank you.♦
drew me to the past was the clarity it
provides. History can ground us, in
form us, and inspire us in the face of
great challenge.
We find ourselves in a period of profound social
change, grappling with the dual pandemics of
Covid-19 and deep-rooted racism. We find ourselves
balancing unfamiliar new health guidelines with the
all-too-familiar anguish of inequality and injustice.
We find ourselves struggling to move forward, James
Baldwin's proverbial "people trapped in history."
To me, one of the great strengths of the Smithsonian
is that we understand that we are trapped in history
only if we fail to learn from it. In the nearly 175
years since the Smithsonian was founded, we have
weathered a civil war and two world wars; epidemics
of influenza, typhoid, cholera and AIDS; the turmoil
>i and transformation of the '60s. And in each of these
After George moments, the Smithsonian community rose to the
Floyd's death,
Jason Allende, occasion to do what we have always done: to provide
13, and his expertise, insight, and hope. To serve our public.
family joined
protesters in Since 1970, Smithsonian magazine has been vital
Junction City,
Kansas, on
to this mission. Its goal has always been to nourish
May 29, 2020. and challenge curious minds. To offer thoughtful,
6 SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020 Portrait illustration by Jurell Cayetano

pro ague
THE PAST IS
By
Colin Dickey
Illustration by
Jason Raish
•U•Mi¥Uiii-H•
Just Desserts
As innovations go, the ice cream truck might seem merel !:J
nutt!:J. But summer would never be the same
prologue
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ELICIOUS, but too messy to handle," was how Ruth
Burt described the new ice cream treat her father,
Harry Burt, concocted in 1920-a brick of vanilla ice
cream encased in chocolate. So her brother, Harry
Jr., offered a suggestion: Why not give it a handle?
The idea was hardly revolutionary in the world of
sweets, of course. Harry Burt Sr. himself, a confec
tioner based in Youngstown, Ohio, had previously drivers (all men, until 1967) dress in crisp, white uni
A 1938 truck
developed what he called the Jolly Boy, a hard-candy that once rolled forms reminiscent of those worn by hospital order
lollipop on a wooden stick. But ice cream on a stick through the lies. And of course the men were taught to tip their
Boston area dis
was so novel that the process of making it earned Burt pensing "Good caps to the ladies.
two U.S. patents, thus launching his invention, the Humors" -the In 1932, some 14 million Good Humor bars were
company's name
Good Humor bar, into an epic battle against the pre for its various sold in New York and Chicago alone, and even
viously developed I Scream bar, a.k.a. the Eskimo Pie, frozen treats. during the Great Depression, a Good Humor driv
a worthy rival to this day. er working on commission could clear a whopping
Burt's contribution to the culture was bigger than $100 a week-over $1,800 in today's money. Driv
a sliver of wood. When he became the first ice cream ers became a welcome, personable neighborhood
vendor to move from pushcarts to motorized trucks, presence. A Good Humor truck had no door on the
''
giving his salesmen the freedom to roam the streets, passenger side, so the driver could pull up to a curb,
his firm greatly expanded his business hop onto the sidewalk with a smile
(and those of his many imitators) and and quickly distribute iced treats from
would change how countless Americans the freezer unit in the back. Thanks to
eat-and how they experience summer. Burt's canny idea to equip the trucks
By the end of the 1920s, Good Humor SLEEPOVERS AND with bells, children were guaranteed
settled on its signature vehicle: a gleam BIRTHDAY PARTIES to hear them coming. Consumers gave
ing white pickup truck outfitted with a WERE OFTEN PLANNED the bells a (ringing) endorsement, and
''
refrigeration unit. Burt's mobile freez RIGHT AT THE summer days could now be organized
ers offered a sanitary alternative to the TRUCK'S WHEELS. around the arrival of the Good Humor
street ice cream sold from pushcarts, a man. Joan S. Lewis, a New York jour·
number of which had been the source nalist, would recall in a 1979 essay how
of food poisoning and were known to "new friends were made while purchas
peddle fare of dubious quality. An 1878 ing that delicious ice cream," while
article in the Confectioners' Journal complained that "sleepovers, birthday parties and picnics were often
street ice cream was "apt to be adulterated with in planned right at the truck's wheels."
gredients which sacrifice health to cheapness." To Good Humor expanded in the postwar years, and
assuage consumer concerns, Good Humor had its by the 1950s the company had some 2,000 trucks op-

erating across the country, with
the majority of their customers Post-Colonial Custard
under 12 years old. Acquired by THE CO-AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF
conglomerate Unilever in 1961, INDEPENDENCE ALSO DRAFTED A RADICAL RECIPE
By Anna Diamond
the company began to see in
T
creasing competition from Mis
HE FOUNDERS shared a love of ice cream, but none was
ter Softee and other rivals. Sig
more devoted than Thomas Jefferson. In 1789 he returned
nificantly, Mister Softee sold its from France with his chef-newly trained in making frozen
products from step vans, which desserts-and a resolve to keep enjoying it. In Philadelphia
allow the driver to walk right in 1791, he sent to France for 50 vanilla bean pods, which,
back into the freezer area and dis he later wrote, are "much used in seasoning ice creams."
He built an ice house at Monticello in 1802. And at Jefferson's White
pense items directly from a side House that year, Senator Samuel Latham Mitchill recalled eating ice
window. It didn't take a brain cream in warm pastry-"a curious contrast, as if the ice had just been
storm to see that was an innova taken from the oven."♦
tion, and Good Humor stopped
ordering pickup trucks and tran
sitioned to step vans.
But it wasn't all sweetness
and light in the mobile frozen
goodies business. In 1975, New
York City authorities charged the
company with 244 counts of fal
sifying records to hide evidence
of excessive coliform bacteria in
its products. According to the
indictment, 10 percent of Good Humor's ice cream
sold between 1972 and 1975 was tainted, and prod
ucts from the company's Queens production facil
ities were "not securely protected from dirt, dust,
insects and parts thereof, and from all injurious con S,veet Re,rolution
tamination." The company was fined $85,000 and The process for making ice cream was
forced to modernize its plants and improve quality not self-evident, so Jefferson wrote it
control. By the end of the decade, Good Humor had down. Here it is, slightly condensed.
gotten out of the mobile ice cream business altogeth 2 bottles of good cream
er, turning to grocery store distribution. 6 yolks of eggs
Yet some drivers continued to make their rounds ½lb.sugar
under the Good Humor banner on their own, to the Mix the yolks & sugar; put the cream
delight of generations of children. In White Plains, on a fire in a casserole, first putting in
New York, Joseph Villardi, to cite one diehard, a stick of Vanilla. When near boiling
bought his truck from Good Humor in 1976 and kept take it off & pour it gently into the
mixture of eggs & sugar. Stir it well.
the same route he'd had since the early 1950s. By the
Put it on the fire again stirring it
time he died in 2012, he had become such a beloved thoroughly with a spoon. When near
fixture that the town declared August 6, 2012, "Good boiling take it off and strain it thro'
Humor Joe Day." a towel. Put it in the Sabottiere [the
In introducing America to the ice cream truck and canister within an ice poi!) then set it in ice an hour
before it is to be served. Put into the ice a handful The Sage of
its mobile refrigeration unit, Harry Burt Sr. helped of salt. Put salt on the coverlid of the Sabottiere Monticello's
instructions,
launch a revolution that we are still enjoying. In & cover the whole with ice. Leave it still half a undated,
0 deed, our mobile food options have never been more quarter of an hour. in his own
Turn the Sabottiere in the ice 10 minutes; open it hand.
plentiful than they are today: Food trucks now offer
everything from kimchi tacos to fancy French fries from time to time to detach the ice from the sides.
Stir it well with the Spatula. Put it in moulds, jus
to high-end Spam cuisine. In doing so, they carry on tling it well down on the knee; then put the mould
Burt's legacy of combining several American obses into the same bucket of ice. Leave it there to the
sions-mobility, novelty, instant gratification, con moment of serving it.
venience-to change the taste of summer. •

.. . �◄--- ,. -
'
. �- . :
· *.
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::· -:-f<i:;,_.r.:
By
Terence Monmaney
FREE TIME
The n1agic of a young at1isfs
carefree trip across the country
four decades ago
H
ISTORY ZEROES IN on exciting, revolutionary events
disruptions, today's disruptors like to say-but it's a
fair bet that ordinary people, when we look back, are
fondest of unremarkable times. A new book of photo-
graphs revisits a year within living memory that now
seems enviable in that way: 1981.
Simone Kappeler, a Swiss photographer, then 29 years old and
fresh out of art school, spent three months traveling from New
York City to Los Angeles in a used Gran Torino station wagon
with a friend and a suitcase full of cameras. Her book, Simone
Kappeler-America 1981, published by Scheidegger and Spiess,
is a captivating album of horizons glimpsed and encounters
chanced across a vast, open, easygoing country that you might
have some trouble recognizing right now.
Her visit happened to take place during a lull in the socio
political action: after the '60s, the Vietnam War and Watergate,
but before the chronic turmoil of the decades to come. Before
AIDS, before computers, the internet and smartphones, before
the Gulf War, 9/11 and the War on Terror, before the Great Re
cession and the violence leading to Black Lives Matter, before
Covid-19.
Kappeler had no itinerary other than seeing Niagara Falls and
the Grand Canyon and reaching the West Coast, and she recalls
often pulling over, reclining the seats and sleeping among the big
rigs. The appeal of her photographs, created with technical sophis
tication in a variety of formats, isn't so much the subjects, which
include some pretty standard roadtrip fare-motel pools, tourist
spots, neon-lit streets-but her smiling regard forth is astonishing
land and its people. It's impossible not to enjoy these pictures 0
◄
Sunset Drive In,
Son Luis Obispo 7/25/1981
"Let's hope young people

today can get fascinated
by the aura of that time,"
Kappeler says.

prologue
Rolfer Skating, Manhattan 5/17/1981
"I wanted to photograph in a new,

spontaneous way," the artist recalls.
"I think America was the perfect
place at that time for me."
11t SMITHSONIAN I Juld • August 2020

because she was so clearly enjoying herself.
"I not only discovered America, but also my
own self and friendship and living inde
pendently," Kappeler says from her home in
Frauenfeld, Switzerland. "And I discovered
all the potential of photography."
I wouldn't call it nostalgia, this affection
for the uneventful past. It's not about pin
ing for traditional values or the phony sim
plicity of limited options. On the contrary,
in those less demanding times, things open
up. History loosens its grip. Imagination
roams. Isn't that a kind of freedom? Look at
Kappeler's spirited pictures and decide. ♦
◄
Clockwise, from below,
Lake Erie 6/10/1981
Elk City, Oklahoma 6/23/1981
Disneyland 7/15/1981
By the end of her adventure, Kappeler was

carrying about 20 cameras, from a Hasselblad
to a Brownie to a Polaroid Swinger. Thus she
captured "the richness and beauty of all the
new discoveries on this trip."

prologue
-➔hil;i@H►• By
Martha S. Jones
Beyon HE 19TH AMENDMENT, ratified in August
the Ballot
1920, paved the way for American women
to vote, but the educator and activist Mary
McLeod Bethune knew the work had only
just begun: The amendment alone would
not guarantee political power to black
Winning the vote for women women. Thanks to Bethune's work that
was a mighty struggle. year to register and mobilize black voters
Securing full liberation for in her hometown of Daytona, Florida, new black voters soon
women of color was no less outnumbered new white voters in the city. But a reign of terror
followed. That fall, the Ku Klux Klan marched on Bethune's
daunting
boarding school for black girls; two years later, ahead of the
1922 elections, the Klan paid another threatening visit, as
over 100 robed figures carrying banners emblazoned with
the words "white supremacy" marched on the school in 0

prologue
--➔liiliiA=i❖-
retaliation against Bethune's continued efforts to get tives, to Jonathan J. Wright, who sat on the state's
black women to the polls. Informed of the incoming Supreme Court. Yet this period of tenuous equality
nightriders, Bethune took charge: "Get the students was soon crushed, and by 1895, a white-led regime
into the dormitory," she told the teachers, "get them had used intimidation and violence to retake control
into bed, do not share what is happening right now." of lawmaking in South Carolina, as it had in other
''
The students safely tucked in, Bethune directed her Southern states, and a new state constitution kept
black citizens from the polls by imposing literacy
tests and property qualifications.
Bethune's political education began at home. Her
MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE WAS mother and grandmother had been born enslaved;
''
THE MOST POWERFUL WOMAN Mary, born a decade after slavery's abolition, was
I CAN REMEMBER. the 15th of 17 children and was sent to school while
some of her siblings continued to work on the family
farm. After completing studies at Scotia Seminary
and, in 1895, at the Moody Bible Institute in Chica
faculty: "The Ku Klux Klan is marching on our cam go, Bethune took a teaching post in Augusta, Georgia,
pus, and they intend to bum some buildings." and dedicated herself to educating black children in
The faculty fanned out across the campus; spite of the barriers that Jim Crow set in their way.
Bethune stood in the center of the quadrangle and In 1898, Mary married Albertus Bethune, a former
held her head high as the parade entered the cam teacher; the following year she gave birth to their son
pus by one entrance-and promptly exited by an Bethune bids Albert. By 1904, the family had moved to Daytona,
farewell to stu-.
other. The Klansmen were on campus for just a few dents on the doy Florida, where Bethune founded the Educational and
minutes. Perhaps they knew an armed cadre of local of her retirement Industrial Training School for Negro Girls; originally
as president of
black men had decided to lie in wait nearby, ready to Bethune-Cook a boarding school, in 1923 it merged with the nearby
man College in
fight back if the Klansmen turned violent. Perhaps 1943.
Cookman Institute, and in 1941, Bethune-Cookman
they assumed the sight of a procession would be College was accredited as a four-year liberal arts 0
enough to keep black citizens from voting.
If nightriders thought they could fright
en Bethune, they were wrong: That week,
she showed up at the Daytona polls along
with over 100 other black citizens who
had come out to vote. That summer, pro
Jim Crow Democratic candidates swept
the state, dashing the hopes of black vot
ers who had battled to win a modicum of
political influence. Yet Bethune's unshak
able devotion to equality would eventual
ly outlast the mobs that stood in her way.
Bethune's resolve was a legacy of black
Americans' rise to political power during
Reconstruction. Bethune was born in 1875
in South Carolina, where the state's 1868
constitution guaranteed equal rights to
black citizens, many of them formerly en
slaved people. Black men joined political
parties, voted and held public office, from
Richard H. Cain, who served in the State
Senate and the U.S. House of Representa-
READ MORE about the achievements

of extraordinary American women at
womenshistory.si.edu
18 SMITHSONIAN I July• August 2020

prologue
college. The state's neglect of public education for ►

black youngsters left a void, and Bethune-Cookman Bethune and
Eleanor Roos
filled it by training students to assume the dual re evelt in 1940.
sponsibilities of black womanhood and citizenship, The close friends
were aware of
as Mary Bethune explained in a 1920 speech: "Negro the symbolic
women have always known struggle. This heritage value of being
seen together.
is just as much to be desired as any other. Our girls
should be taught to appreciate it and welcome it."
Bethune had many roles at the school: teacher, ad
ministrator, fund-raiser and civil rights advocate.
In 1911, she opened the region's first hospital for
black citizens, McLeod Hospital, named for her par
ents. Aspiring nurses received hands-on training
and provided care to the needy, not least during the
1918 influenza pandemic. Bethune's close friend and
biographer Frances Reynolds Keyser, who served as
a dean at her school for 12 years, later wrote: "When
the hospital was filled to overflowing, cots were
stretched in our large new auditorium and everyone
who was on her feet cheerfully enlisted in the service fairs, unofficially known as the "Black Cabinet."
of caring for the sick. The Institution spared neither Bethune, seeing how desperately black Americans
pains nor money in the discharge of this important needed their share of the benefits of Roosevelt's New
duty .. . and the spread of the disease was checked." Deal, solidified her influence as a counselor to the
Through such life-saving efforts, Bethune ensured president and the only black woman in his inner cir
that many white city officials and philanthropists cle.In 1936, FDR named her head of the new Office of
would remain loyal to her for decades to come. Minority Affairs in the National Youth Administra
By the 1920s, Bethune had discovered the limits of tion, making Bethune the most highly placed black
local politics and began to seek a national platform. woman in the administration.Black Americans had
In 1924 she assumed the presidency of the largest been largely excluded from political appointments
black women's political organization in the country, since the end of Reconstruction; Bethune resurrect
Bethune with
the National Association of Colored Women. By 1935, her pupils ed this chance for black Americans to hold sway at
she was working in Washington, D.C., and the follow in Doytono, the national level and ushered a generation of black
Florida, around
ing year played a major role in organizing President policymakers into federal service, including Crys
...
1905.
Franklin Roosevelt's Federal Council on Negro Af- tal Bird Fauset, who would become the first black
woman in the country to be elect
ed to a state legislature when she
joined the Pennsylvania House of
Representatives in 1938. Bethune
was aided by the close friendship
she'd forged with first lady Elea
nor Roosevelt, who saw eye to eye
with Bethune on civil rights and
women's issues. The two went out
of their way to appear together in
public, in a conspicuous rejoinder
to Jim Crow.
During World War II, Bethune
thought that the struggles of black
women in the United States mir
rored fights against colonialism
being waged elsewhere in the
Americas, Asia and Africa. Lead
ing the National Council of Ne
gro Women (NCNW), which she'd

{')
I
i
founded in 1935, Bethune worked to ensure that the in Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Park; the sculpture
Women's Army Corps included black women. In faces Abraham Lincoln, whose figure was installed
1945, delegates from 50 Allied nations met to draft there a century before. The president who issued
the United Nations Charter at a conference in San the Emancipation Proclamation now stands directly
Francisco; Bethune lobbied Eleanor Roosevelt for a facing a daughter of enslaved people who spent her
seat at the table-and got one. Working with Vijaya life promoting black women's liberation.
Lakshmi Pandit of India and Eslanda Robeson, an In 2021, Bethune will be enshrined in the U.S. Cap
unofficial observer for the Council on African Affairs, itol, when her likeness will replace that of Confeder
Bethune helped solidify the U.N. Charter's commit ate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith to represent Florida
ment to human rights without regard to race, sex or in the National Statuary Hall. Bethune continues to
religion. As she wrote in an open letter, "Through galvanize black women, as Florida Representative
this Conference the Negro becomes closely allied Val Demings explained in celebrating Bethune's
with the darker races of the world, but more impor selection for the Capitol: "Mary McLeod Bethune
tantly he becomes integrated into the structure of was the most powerful woman I can remember as
the peace and freedom of all people everywhere." a child. She has been an inspiration throughout my
For half a century, Mary McLeod Bethune led a whole life."♦
vanguard of black American women who pointed
'-._ Martha S. Janes is the author of Vanguard: How
the nation toward its best ideals. In 1974, the NCNW BYLINES Block Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and
'-.. Insisted on Equality for All, due out in September.
raised funds to install a bronze likeness of Bethune
''Nobody's Free Until Everybody's Free"

AFTER SUFFRAGE, WOMEN SECURED FURTHER POLITICAL WINS.
THESE WOMEN LED THE CHARGE
By Anna Diamond
A brilliant legal mind, Mur An impassioned activist In 1961t, Hawaii gained a Born to sharecroppers in
ray was on ardent advocate and lawyer educated at Co second seat in Congress; Mink Mississippi, Hamer was moved
for women's and civil rights. lumbia Low School, Kennedy ran for it and won, becom- to become on activist ofter a
Thurgood Marshall admired took an coses to advance ing the first woman of color white doctor forcibly sterilized
the lawyer's work and referred civil and reproductive rights. elected to Congress. Over 13 her in 1961. The following
to her 1951 book, States' She helped organize the 196B terms, she was a fierce pro year, Homer tried to register
Lows on Race and Color, as protest against misogyny in ponent of gender and racial to vote-and was summarily
the bible of the civil rights the Miss America Pageant, equality. She co-authored and fired from the plantation
movement. In 1966, Murray toured the country giving championed Title IX, which where she picked cotton.
helped found the National lectures with Gloria Steinem prohibits sex discrimination In 1971, she co-founded the
Organization for Women in 1970 and founded the in federally funded education Notional Women's Political
and, in 1977, become the first Feminist Party in 1971, which programs. After her death in Caucus, which advanced
African-American woman or nominated Shirley Chisholm 2002, Congress renamed the women's involvement in all
dained as on Episcopal priest. for president in 1972. law in her honor. areas of political life.

prologue
Tick,
Tick,
Boom
In the whimsical world
of pop music, sometimes
technolog� has more
impact after it's obsolete
VEN IF YOU DON'T know the Ro drums, creating catchy percussion patterns. Unlike ...
Tadeo Kikumoto,
land TR-808 drum machine by most drum machines at the time, the 808 gave mu with an early
name, you've almost certainly sicians remarkable freedom: You weren't limited to prototype of
the legendary
heard it. If you're familiar with pre-programmed rhythms or orchestrations, which TR-808drum
the percussion on Marvin Gaye's meant you could fashion sounds and stack them on machine.
1982 hit "Sexual Healing"-those top of one another until you'd created something
bursts of bass and snare drums that had never been heard before. The TR-808 was in
amid robotic ticks and claps that many ways a living and breathing studio unto itself.
collapse atop one another-then During the two years that Roland kept the 808 in
you understand how the machine can form a kind production, the machine created memorable mo
of bridge from one moment of breathless desire to ments. The influential Japanese synth-pop band Yel
the next. That's the magic of the TR-808, which was low Magic Orchestra played live shows with an 808 to
released 40 years ago and played a major role in enthusiastic audiences in Tokyo, and the producer
propelling "Sexual Healing" to the top of the charts. Arthur Baker experimented with an 808 in a New York
Less than a year after the song flooded American studio in the early 1980s and ended up producing the
airwaves, the 808 was no longer in production, but single "Planet Rock," a hip-hop collaboration by Afri
it would not be forgotten for long: Appearing at the ka Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force that reached
dawn of remix culture, the 808 and its successors No. 48 on the Billboard charts in 1982 and became one
soon helped tum the curation of machine-generated of the most influential records of the decade, helping
beats into its own art form. inspire the first golden era of hip-hop.
In the late 1970s, no one knew how to get realis But the 808's initial heyday was short-lived and
tic-sounding drums out of a machine, so a team of beset with naysaying: The machine was expensive.
engineers at the Japanese company Roland, led by Critics complained that the malleable analog sounds
Tadao Kikurnoto, began using analog synthesis-a didn't sound like real drums-though they did
process that manipulates electrical currents to sound enough like drums that an artist with an 808
generate sounds-to create and store sounds that could forgo hiring a drummer for a studio session, so
mimicked hand-claps and bass notes and in-studio musicians feared the 808 might put drummers out of
22- SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020

By
Honif Abdurroqib
business. Moreover, the semicon where it is now nearly ubiquitous,

ductors used in the 808 became thanks to the machine's thunder
difficult and finally impossible to ing bass, which comes alive in songs
stock. After about 12,000 units sold, Roland ceased such as OutKast's 2003 "The Way You Move."
The sequencer
production, and it seemed as though the era of the on the 808,
The 808 briefly sounded like the future, then
808 had come to an abrupt and unceremonious end. a row of 16 briefly seemed to have no future. But it has provided
color-coded
Ironically, it was the commercial failure of the 808 buttons, offered beats for hundreds of hits, from Whitney Houston's
that would fuel its popularity: As established mu ortists a way to 1987 "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" to Drake's
store beats they
sicians began to unload their 808s at secondhand programmed. 2018 "God's Plan," winning the affections of beat
stores, the machine dipped below its initial $1,200 makers across genres and generations, many of
sticker price; by the mid-1980s, used 808s were whom build their beats with 808s, or by remixing
selling for $100 or less, and the 808 became more older 808-driven songs. If you want to get that clas
accessible to young musicians, just as hip-hop and sic 808 feel without buying the machine, just use the
electronic dance music were preparing to make im web-based software i0-808, released in 2016. With a
portant leaps in their respective evolutions. Today, few keystrokes, you can summon those analog 808
the 808's legacy is most entrenched in Southern rap, sounds that changed the world. •
Status Cymbals
A SELECTION OF TOP ANSWERS TO THE CENTURIES-OLD
MUSICAL QUESTION, HOW DO YOU GET BY
WITHOUT AN ACTUAL DRUMMER?
By Ted Scheinmon
◄ THE WURLITZER SIDEMAN LEON THEREMIN'S RHYTHMICON ►

Released in 1959, the Side Russian inventor Leon Theremin
man gave users 12 electronic worked with American composer Hen
imitations of popular rhythms ry Cowell to create the first electronic
on a rotating disc, including drum machine in 1931. The Rhyth
tangos, fox trots and waltzes. micon let a musician program beats
The machine's populority drew using a keyboard that controlled a
criticism from the American series of rotating wheels. Cowell de
Association of Musicians, who buted it in 1932 at the New School in
feared it would put percussion Manhattan. One of the few ever built
ists out of business. resides at the Smithsonian.
11111I I I11 11I I 11C l!-C-C--D-1- f--1--1-L- HJ f--C- re-

HARRY CHAMBERLIN'S..,. ISMAIL AL-JAZARl'S MECHANICAL BANDS ..,. LINN LM-1 DRUM COMPU TER
RHYTHMATE The 12th-century Anatolian inventor, often considered Designed by the American Rog
The inventor developed this the father of robotics, devised all manner of automatons, er Linn and introduced by his
machine, meant to accompany including elaborate clocks. He also created mechanical company in 1980, this was the
orgons in family sing-alongs, in musical ensembles powered by water, with figurines of first drum machine to include
his California studio in 19 4 9. The musicians: As water flowed through the mechanism, it ex digitally recorded snippets
Rhythmate depended on a loop erted pressure on the valves of the flutist figurines to cre of real drums. It drives John
of magnetic tape ate melody, and on the wooden pegs of the drums Mellencamp's 1982 hit "Jack and
that contained and cymbals to regulate rhythm. These creations Diane," and Prince used an LM-1
recordings of a provided entertainment at royal parties. on "When Doves Cry" in 1984.
drummer playing
14 different
rhythms from
which a user
could select.
Though Cham
berlin built just a
few, the Rhyth
mate's tape-loop
technology would
prove integral to
electric key boards
in the 1960s.
July • Au gust 2020 I SMITHSONIAN 23

prologue
Text and photography by

Alex Potter
POST HASTE
Hovv an African-American firehouse discovered
the fastest vvay to the ground floor
I
N THE 19TH CENTURY, American firefight
.... in firehouses across the nation, and later in Canada,
At the base of
ers had two ways of descending from their this historic Britain and beyond.
brass pole is a
sleeping quarters to their horse-and-buggy crucial addition: Dekalb Walcott, former chief of Chicago's 23rd
conveyances on the ground floor: either padding to Battalion, says that in Kenyon's day, there was a
cushion a fire
by spiral staircase-installed to keep way fighter's landing. competitiveness between firehouses to arrive first at
ward horses from wandering upstairs a blaze-and a particular need for newly formed all
or through a tube chute, similar to the enclosed black firehouses to prove themselves. "There was an
slides you see at playgrounds today. The stairs were esprit de corps that came from beating other compa
cumbersome and the slides were slow, and in the nies to a fire," says Walcott.
1870s, David Kenyon of Company 21, an all-African In the American imagination, the appeal of fire
American firehouse in Chicago, had an epiphany. fighters-with their clanging engines and, of course,
One day, Kenyon and a colleague got a call about a their poles-seems to be evergreen; many children
fire, and his fellow firefighter reached the ground by still list "firefighter" as one thing they'd like to be
sliding down a wooden pole normally used to bale when they grow up. The Occupational Safety and
hay for horses. That made Kenyon wonder: Why not Health Administration no longer considers poles an
place a permanent pole leading directly from the approved means of egress, calling them "inherently
upstairs sleeping quarters to the ground floor, thus dangerous," and some departments, like those in
avoiding stairs or chutes? When Kenyon installed Washington State, are outlawing their construction
his pole in 1878, other firefighters in the city thought as a result. But many firefighters themselves still
the idea was crazy-until they saw that Company 21 consider the pole essential. "It's a major part of fire
was now often the first to arrive on scene. In 1880 the fighting," says Sean Colby, a lieutenant on Engine 10
Boston Fire Department installed a brass pole, the in Boston. "I enjoy using it and believe it's an iconic
type still used today. Within a decade, poles stood tradition we shouldn't let go." ♦

''
SHE WASN'T AFRAID
TO G O ANYWHERE,
SAY ANYTHING, DO
''
ANYTHING TO END
SLAVERY.

prologue
By Photograph by
Kate Wheeling Richard Strauss
Modesty
Isn't
Weakness
A humble Quaker was one of the angry mobs that picketed her speeches and, on
her era's fiercest opponents at least one occasion, marched on her home.
of slaver!:! and sexism Mott espoused causes that extended far beyond
feminism and emancipation, including religious tol
erance and Native American rights. "Every humane
movement for the last 40 years has known some
thing of her aid," the New York Herald wrote in 1872.
For Mott, equality was a birthright. She was born
Lucretia Coffin on Nantucket Island in 1793 to Quak
ers who preached equality, regardless of race or sex.
Women had independence on the island for practi
cal as well as spiritual reasons: Most men, including
Lucretia's father, Thomas Coffin Jr., were mariners
who spent months or years away from home, leav
FTER THE CLOSE of the 1840 ing the women behind to run the island. After one
World Anti-Slavery Convention particularly long voyage, during which the family
in London, some 500 people believed him to be lost at sea, Thomas moved the
gathered at the Crown & An family to the mainland. In 1806, 13-year-old Lucretia
chor Meeting Hall in the city's went to a Quaker boarding school in rural New York,
West End to drink tea and hear where she received an education on a par with any
speeches from renowned abo man's. By 1808, the bright young pupil had become
litionists such as William Lloyd an assistant teacher at the school.
Garrison. Lucretia Mott, already the most famous Here, Lucretia learned the limits of her religion's
white woman abolitionist in America, was present egalitarianism: She was aggrieved to find that female
but had been barred from participating in the official teachers made less than half the salary of their male
convention because of her sex. But now the crowd colleagues-including her future husband, James
began to chant her name. Mott. "The injustice of this was so apparent, that I
Mott gave a speech, urging the friendly audience early resolved to claim for my sex all that an impar
to boycott goods made with slave labor. Her own tial Creator had bestowed," Lucretia Mott later said.
clothes that day, including her signature Quaker Once married, the Motts moved to Philadelphia,
bonnet-hand-sewn green silk with a stiff cotton where they became founding members of William
brim-were no doubt made from materials pro Lloyd Garrison's Anti-Slavery Society. In 1821 Mott
duced without slave labor, and this characteristical became a Quaker minister, and in 1833 she founded
◄ ly plain style of dress provided a contrast with the her own woman-led, interracial anti-slavery group,
FROM THE
SMITHSONIAN
radical demands of her speeches. At a time when the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Mott
NATIONAL white women were largely bound to domestic work, saw the anti-slavery and women's movements as
MUSEUM OF
AMERICAN
Mott preached about progressive causes in cities "kindred" crusades, as she said when she delivered
HISTORY across the United States and beyond, undeterred by the keynote speech at the first Women's Rights 0

prologue
Convention, in Seneca Falls in 1848.

Yet while the right to vote became the
Fill 'er Up
central cause of the 1848 convention, Mott COULD ALSO REFER TO ILLUSTRATJON SUBJECT, P. 9
had no plans to cast a ballot herself. In By Sam Ezersky
deed, she was generally uninterested in

American electoral politics, which she be
lieved had been corrupted by the govern
ment's continuing support of slavery. "Far
be it from me to encourage women to vote
or to take an active part in politics in the
present state of our government," Mott said
in 1849. "Her right to the elective franchise,
however, is the same [as man's], and should
be yielded to her whether she exercises
that right or not." As the Civil War erupted,
Mott called President Abraham Lincoln a
"miserable compromiser" because he was
reluctant at first to emancipate slaves in
Southern states, and even punished Union
military leaders-including Mott's son-in
law-who freed slaves in the Southern ter
ritories over which they had taken control.
Through her speeches and organizing,
Mott established a template for women's
rights long before that struggle coalesced
into a formal movement and radicalized
generations of women-including Alice
Paul, author of the first version of the Equal
Rights Amendment in 1923-who would
work to achieve Mott's vision of equality.
"When I first heard from the lips of Lu Across 37 Something McCarthy tried
cretia Mott that I had the same right to 1 Romana to "detect"
It Good _, pioneering company 38 Alternative to a Roland
think for myself that Luther, Calvin and behind the ice cream truck TR-808 machine
John Knox had," Elizabeth Cady Stanton 9 Prefix with propyl or thermal 39 Make a goof
said in 1881, the year after Mott's death, "it 10 "Fingers crossed!"
11 23-Across, in Romon numerals Down
was like suddenly coming into the rays of 12 What Thomas Jefferson once 1 Screen resolution unit
the noon-day sun, after wandering with a hod personally imported from 2 Parenthetical remarks
Fronce 3 Letters in a love letter
rushlight in the caves of the earth." 13 Old name of Tokyo It Civic-minded company?
Unlike many of her contemporaries, Mott 11t _ ol-Fitr (end of Ramadan) 5 Longtime inits. in newswires
was never willing to sacrifice racial equality 15 Government org. for Anno 6 Blend together
Rosenberg in the 1950s 7 Norway's capitol
for women's rights-or even for her fami 16 Bit of communication used 8 The Tokoido, for one
ly's livelihood. When her husband found by Konzi the bonobo 10 Much debris in o house with pets
19 Konzi, to Motato 12 Meatless, informally
success as a cotton merchant after years of 20 Earth Day mo. 17 Quaint place to spend the night
struggling to provide for their five children, 23 Amendment associated with 18 Word that's appropriately
Elizabeth Cady Stanton hidden backward in "tatami"
Mott convinced him to swap cotton for wool, 21 To whom language is unique,
28 Port of a keyboard shortcut
a textile that wasn't made with slave labor. combo per Noam Chomsky
"I do not want to show my faith by my 31 Doc's field of study 22 Impressionist Pierre-Auguste _
32 Any nonzero number to the 21t "Did _ something?" (confused
words, or by my Quaker bonnet," Mott once power of zero query)
said. "I want that we may all show our faith 33 What the five highways facilitat- 25 Home in the wood
by our works." ♦ ed in shogun-era Japan 26 Modern D.J.'s genre, briefly
35 Many a U.S. soldier of the 27 More recent
Molmedy Massacre, far short 28 Not very much
36 Bear witness (to) 29 J.R.R. Tolkien series, for short
READ MORE about the centennial 30 Bit of ballet attire
ofthe 19th Amendment's passage at 31+ Sleep state in which dreams
Smithsonia11mag.com/s1,jfrage See the solution on Page 111+. occur

Kanzi, 39, hos
used lexigroms to
communicate with
researchers since
age 2. The symbol
for "vegetable" is
at right; beneath
it, a painting Konzi
mode resembling
the lexigrom-forhis-
_
name; at bottom isJ....
the word •not.•
by
LINDSAY STERN
phoiographs by
KEVIN MIYAZAKI
NE SPRING DAY IN 2005, a ycllo,,v school bus car
rying six passengers turned onto a freshly paved
drivewav seven miles soulheasl of do'1vntown Des
Nloines. lo,va. Passing beneath a tunnel of cotton-
vvood trees listing in the vvind, it rumbled past a life
size sculpture of an elephant before pulling up beside
a new building. T'1vo glass towers loomed over Lhe
13.000-squarc-foot laboratory, framed on three sides
by a glittering blue lake. Sunlight glanced off the
vvestern tower, scrunching the faces pressed to the
windows of the bus. Only three of them '1Verc human.
When the back door swung open, out climbed Sue machine for snacks, and select
Savage-Rumbaugh, her sister and collaborator Liz DVDs to watch on a television. A
Pugh, a man named William Fields, and three bonobo monitor connected to a camera
apes, who were joining a group of five bonobos who had outside allowed the bonobos to
recently arrived at the facility. The $10 million, 18-room screen human visitors who rang
compound, known then as the Great Ape Trust, bore lit the doorbell; pressing a button,
tle resemblance to a traditional research center. Instead they granted or denied visitors
of in conventional cages, the apes, who ranged in age access to a viewing area secured
from 4 to 35, lived in rooms, linked by elevated walk by laminated glass. But the center's signature feature r-
ln his painting,
ways and hydraulic doors they could open themselves. was the keyboard of pictorial symbols accessible on from 2013, Kanzi
There was a music room with drums and a keyboard, computerized touchscreens and packets placed in ev- used green for
his name-the
chalk for drawing, an indoor waterfall, and a sun ery room and even printed on researchers' T-shirts. It same color as in
washed greenhouse stocked with bananas and sugar consisted of more than 300 "lexigrams" corresponding his lexigram. The
symbol is derived
cane. Every feature of the facility was designed to en to English words-a lingua franca that Savage-Rum from a Chinese
courage the apes' agency: They could help prepare food baugh had developed over many years to enable the character.
in a specialized kitchen, press the buttons of a vending bonobos to communicate with human beings.
32 SMITHSONIAN.C0!,1 I July • August 2020

"'
Sue Savage-
Rumbaugh was
"A lot of scientists don't want that
among the first
psychologists to
study bonobo
kind of study done. Because if the answer
were y e s ..." Her eyes sparkled. "Then,
cognition; for
more than three
decades, she
was immersed
within one
group.
oh my god-who are we?"
Before Savage-Rumbaugh began her research, the bonobo, an brilliant but polarizing psychologist named Sue Savage-Rum
endangered cousin of the chimpanzee, was little known outside baugh, and he gave me her contact information.
the Congo River Basin. Savage-Rumbaugh's seven books and I emailed Savage-Rumbaugh.By then I'd read about the nu
merous awards she had received, and about the fiery debates
close to 170 articles about their cognitive abilities played a signif
icant role in introducing them to the wider world. Her relation her research had sparked in fields as far-flung as linguistics
ship with a bonobo named Kanzi, in particular, had made the and philosophy. So I was surprised when she replied to say
pair something of a legend.Kanzi's aptitude for understanding that her 30-year experiment had ended. Kanzi and his rela
spoken English and for communicating with humans using the tives were still living at the center, she told me.She could hear
lexigrams had shown that our hominid kin were far more sophis them from her cottage next door.
ticated than most people had dared to imagine. We arranged to meet for lunch. Because I didn't have a car,
By the time Kanzi arrived at the Great Ape Trust that day in we serried on a diner in Iowa City, two hours from Savage-Rum
2005, his name had appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica.In baugh's home in Des Moines.When I arrived, Savage-Rumbaugh
20ll, Time magazine named Savage-Rumbaugh one of the world's was already seated at a booth in the back corner, wearing a
100 most influential people on the basis of her work with Kanzi stained button-down shirt, purple pants and a safari hat.Half of
her right forefinger was missing: bit
ten off, she later said, by a frightened
More than 80 percent of Kanzi's multi- chimp she'd met in graduate school.
"I hope you don't mind," she said
word statements were spontaneous, in a silvery voice, indicating her
Caesar salad.She was 69 but looked
suggesting that he was not "aping" younger, her warm green eyes peer
ing out cautiously from underneath
the gestures of humans. a mop of straight white hair.
I asked Savage-Rumbaugh what
made her experiment different from
and his family.None other than Frans de Waal, the world's pre-em other studies of ape intelligence."Experimental psychologists
inent prirnatologist, lauded her unique experiment.Her research typically assume that there is a major difference between our
had "punched holes in the wall separating" humans from apes, selves and apes that is not attributable to environmental fac
he wrote-a wall built upon the longstanding scientific consensus tors," she said. "The difference in my work is that I never made
that language was humanity's unique and distinguishing gift. that assumption."
In November 2013, eight years after she opened the Trust, Like renowned field primatologists Dian Fossey and Jane
and having made plans for a phased retirement, Savage-Rum Goodall, Savage-Rumbaugh interacted with the apes that she
baugh returned to Des Moines from a medical absence to care studied, but she'd done so in the confines of a lab, where scien
for Teco, Kanzi's 3-year-old nephew, who had injured his leg. tists typically maintain an emotional distance from their animal
The atmosphere was unusually tense. After a strained email subjects. And unlike Fossey and Goodall, Savage-Rumbaugh
exchange that continued for several days, the chair of the fa had gone so far as to integrate into the group, co-rearing a fam
cility's board finally told her that she could no longer stay at ily of bonobos over the course of several decades and engaging
the Trust. Still concerned about Teco, Savage-Rumbaugh re them in human ways of life. In 2015, her findings-that the apes
fused to leave, but, the next day, she complied once the young in her care could recognize their own shadows, learn to enter
bonobo was in the hands of another caretaker."When you de into contractual agreements, signal intent, assume duties and
part, please leave your access card and any keys with whom responsibilities, distinguish between the concepts of good and
ever is on duty right now," the chairman wrote to her. bad, and deceive-were used in a historic lawsuit that helped
Bewildered, Savage-Rumbaugh retreated to the cottage she curtail biomedical testing on great apes in the United States.The
rented next door. Then she contacted a lawyer.What followed was findings also raised a fascinating, provocative and deeply trou
a prolonged-and ongoing-custody battle unique in the history bling question: Can an animal develop a human mind?
of animal research and in the movement for animal rights. At its "It's a question you don't ask," Savage-Rumbaugh said."A lot
heart is a question that continues to divide prirnatologists: What of people, a lot of scienciscs, don't want that kind of study done.
constitutes legitimate research into the inner lives of apes? Because if the answer were yes ... " Her eyes sparkled. "Then,
I learned about the bonobos by accident. I was an MFA oh my god-who are we?"
student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, in Iowa City, writing
a novel that featured a scientist who studied birdsong. One
afternoon my teacher, the novelist Benjamin Hale, called me
into his office. If! was interested in language and animals, he
said, there was a place in nearby Des Moines that I needed to
see.He had visited several years earlier, while researching his SHE NEVER PLANNED TO STUDY BONOBOS. The oldest of
novel The Evolution of Bruno Lictlemore, about a chimpanzee seven children born to a homemaker and a real estate develop
who learns to speak. He told me that the place was run by a er in Springfield, Missouri, Sue Savage became fascinated by
31+ SMITHSONIAN.COM I July • August 2020

,,
Po intin g to O k eybo ord of

!"o re than 300 symbo ls
,n 2019, Kon zi apparently
�elected th I exigrom
chose"-o: mmon woy
i
o� in itiatin g game of tog
with O coreg·,ver o r visitor.
AT HOME IN IOWA
Clockwise from top, circa 2009-
2013: Konzi blowing soap bubbles,
demonstrating voluntary breath
control, which opes were long
said to lock; Konzi learning to
knop stone, o skill once thought
unique to humans; Konzi building
o Tinkertoy structure; Ponbon
isho, Kanzi's sister; Liz Pugh,
Sovage-Rumbaugh's sister and
collaborator, with Teco ot age 1.
how children acquire language

while she was teaching her
siblings to read. At Southwest
Missouri University, she stud
ied Freudian psychology and
its counterpoint, behaviorism, the psychologist who had invited her
B.F. Skinner's theory that be to speak at the symposium. A position
havior is determined by one's had opened up at Georgia State Uni-
environment rather than by versity, he said, with connections to
internal states such as thinking and feeling. She won a fellow the Yerkes Primate Research Center, in Atlanta, the oldest insti
ship to study toward a doctorate at Harvard with Skinner him tute in the United States for the study of nonhuman primates.
self, but turned it down to work with apes at the University of The center was acquiring several chimplike hominids called
Oklahoma's Institute for Primate Studies, where the field of bonobos from the forests of the Congo River Basin, in what was
"ape language" was enjoying its heyday. She wrote her doctor then Zaire. Was Savage-Rumbaugh interested?
al dissertation on nonverbal communication between mother She didn't have to think twice. Very little had appeared about
and infant chimpanzees. At a symposium in 1974, she deliv bonobos in the scientific literature, but some researchers re
ered a paper critiquing colleagues' attempts to teach Ameri garded them as a close living model of early humans. In their
can Sign Language to chimps. By focusing on what the apes gait and facial structure, they resembled Australopithecus, a
signed, she argued, researchers were neglecting what they group of apes that went extinct about two million years ago
were already "saying" through their gestures and vocaliza and are believed to be among the ancestors of humankind. In
tions, a view that earned her the nickname "the Unbeliever." time, research on free-living bonobos would reveal that they
Six months later, her phone rang. It was Duane Rumbaugh, have a matriarchal social structure and that-unlike chimps and
38 SMITHSONIAN.cm.1 I July • August 2020

humans-they almost never kill one another. Savage-Rumbaugh gesting that he was not "aping" the gestures of humans but was
accepted the position and packed her bags for Atlanta. using the symbols to express internal states of mind.
Sure enough, the bonobos were eerily humanlike. They By Kanzi's fifth birthday, he had made the front page of the
often rose up to walk on two legs, and responded to subtle New York Times. Most startling to the parade of scientists who
changes in human caretakers' facial expressions. While the came to Georgia to evaluate him was his comprehension of some
chimpanzees used their feeding pails as props in aggressive spoken English. Kanzi not only correctly matched spoken En
displays, the bonobos found a variety of nonviolent uses for glish words to their corresponding lexigrams-even while placed
them: a toilet, a container for drinking water, a hat. On one in a separate room from the person speaking, hearing the words
occasion, Savage-Rumbaugh observed Kanzi's father carry through headphones-but he also appeared to grasp some basic
his pail to the corner of his cage from which he could see the grammar. Pointing to "chase," then "hide," and then to the name
shrieking chimps. He turned it over and sat there with his el of a human being or bonobo, he would initiate those activities
bows on his knees, watching them. with his interlocutor in that order.
In the spring of 1981, the Rumbaughs, now married, ne In a landmark study in the rnid-1990s, Savage-Rumbaugh ex
gotiated the transfer of 6-month-old Kanzi and his adoptive posed Kanzi to 660 novel English sentences including "Put on
mother, Matata, away from planned
biomedical studies at Yerkes to live
at the nearby Language Research "My world changed. I realized that
Center, a facility they had estab
lished in collaboration with Geor a nonhuman life form experienced
gia State University to explore the
apes' cognitive abilities. There, Sav !a concept. That was not supposed
age-Rumbaugh introduced Matata
to be possible."
-
to an early version of the lexigram
keyboard, which had helped enable
some developmentally challenged
children to communicate. While Kanzi frolicked around the the monster mask and scare Linda" and "Go get the ball that's
lab, Savage-Rumbaugh would sit beside his mother, hold up an outside [as opposed to the ball sitting beside you)." In 72 per
object such as a sweet potato or a banana, and touch the corre cent of the trials, Kanzi completed the request, outcompeting a
sponding symbol on a keyboard, indicating that Matata should 2½-year-old child. Yet his most memorable behavior emerged
press it herself. The training went nowhere. After two years, outside the context of replicable trials. Sampling kale for the first
researchers temporarily called Matata back to Yerkes for breed time, he called it "slow lettuce." When his mother once bit him
ing. By then Savage-Rumbaugh had despaired of collecting any in frustration, he looked mournfully at Savage-Rumbaugh and
publishable data on Matata, but she suspected she'd have more pressed, "Matata bite." When Savage-Rumbaugh added symbols
luck with the infant. for the words "good" and "bad" to the keyboard, he seized on
Matata's absence consumed Kanzi. "For three days, the only these abstract concepts, often pointing to "bad" before grabbing
thing he wanted to do was to look for Matata," Savage-Rumbaugh something from a caregiver-a kind of prank. Once, when Sav
recalled. "We looked-was she under this bush, was she under age-Rumbaugh's sister Liz Pugh, who worked at the Language
there? After looking in the forest, he looked every place in the lab Research Center as a caregiver, was napping, Kanzi snatched the
that she could possibly hide." Exhausted, little Kanzi wandered balled-up blanket she'd been using as a pillow. When Pugh jolted
over to a keyboard. Extending a finger, he pressed the key for awake, Kanzi pressed the symbols for "bad surprise."
"apple," then the key for "chase." Then he looked at Savage-Rum
baugh, picked up an apple lying on the floor, and ran away from
her with a grin on his face. "I was hesitant to believe what I was
seeing," Savage-Rumbaugh told me. Kanzi had evidently ab
sorbed what his mother had not. He used the keyboard to commu
nicate with researchers on more than 120 occasions that first day. TO SOME SCIENTISTS, Kanzi's intellectual feats demonstrat
Savage-Rumbaugh rapidly adjusted her framework to encour ed clearly that language was not unique to human beings. But
age this capacity in Kanzi. She expanded the lexigram keyboard others were unimpressed. "In my mind this kind of research
to 256 symbols, adding novel words for places, things and activi is more analogous to the bears in the Moscow circus who are
ties that seemed to interest him, such as "lookout point," "hide" trained to ride unicycles," said the Harvard psychologist Ste
and "surprise." Rather than engage him in structured training ven Pinker. To him, the fact that Kanzi had learned to produce
sessions, she began using the lexigrams with him continually elements of human communication didn't imply that he had
throughout the day, labeling objects and places all over the 55- the capacity for language. Thomas Sebeok, a prominent lin
� acre property and recording what he "said" while out exploring. guist who organized a conference in 1980 that helped squelch
�,_w Seventeen months later, the young bonobo had acquired a vo public funding for animal language research, had a similar
....a
:, cabulary of 50 words. One study in 1986 showed that more than take. "It has nothing to do with language, and nothing to do
0
(J 80 percent of his multi-word statements were spontaneous, sug- with words," he said, when asked to comment on Savage-
July • August 2020 [ SMITHSONIAN.COM 39

Rumbaugh's work. "It has to do with communication." icry or of making requests. By the early 2000s, Savage-Rum
The controversy masked an uncomfortable truth: No one baugh published images of geometric figures drawn in chalk
agreed on what the difference between language and commu by Panbanisha, each corresponding roughly to a lexigram.
nication actually was. The distinction goes back to Aristotle. Even more startlingly, however, the bonobos were exhib
While animals could exchange information about what they iting the ability to lie. "A common strategy was to send me
felt, he wrote, only humans could articulate what was just out of the room on an errand," Savage-Rumbaugh wrote in
and unjust, and this made their vocalizations "speech." In the the book Machiavellian Intelligence, a collection of academic
1600s, the philosopher Rene Descartes echoed this idea: While papers about the role of social experience in the evolution of
animals jabbered nonsensically, he wrote, God had gifted human intellect, "then while I was gone she [Matata] would
human beings with souls, and with souls language and con grab hold of something that was in someone else's hands and
sciousness. In the modern era, the influential linguist Noam scream as though she were being attacked. When I rushed
Chomsky theorized that human be-
ings possess a unique "language or
gan" in the brain. While human lan "We need to acknowledge that they
guages might sound and look differ
ent from one another, Chomsky wrote are keenly intelligent animals without
in the 1960s, all of them are united by
universal rules that no other animal forcing them to be what they are not:-
communication system shares. Ac
cording to Chomsky's early work, this capable of discussing these issues."
set of rules distinguishes the sounds
and gestures we make when we talk
from the dances of bees, the twittering of birds and the spec back in, she would look at me with a pleading expression
tral keening of whales. It's the magic ingredient that makes our on her face and make threatening sounds at the other party.
languages uniquely capable of reflecting reality. She acted as though they had taken something from her or
Today, many contemporary experts trace speech not to a hurt her, and solicited my support in attacking them. Had
pattern common to all human languages, but rather to what they not been able to explain that they did nothing to her
the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein called a "form of life" - in my absence, I would have tended to side with Matata and
the combination of vocalizations and rituals that overlap to support her as she always managed to appear to have been
produce a shared culture. That Kanzi began to use the lexi grievously wronged." Deception in primates had been re
grams to communicate without previous direct training sug ported before, but this was something new. Matata was doing
gested that he was building a novel "form of life" with the re more than lying to Savage-Rumbaugh. She was attempting to
searchers studying him. Their interactions, which grew more manipulate her into a false belief that a colleague had done
complex with time, implied to many researchers that lan something "wrong."
guage was not a biological endowment but a dynamic social
instrument, accessible by brains that weren't human.
Kanzi's aptitudes raised a tantalizing question: Had sus
tained exposure to human culture since infancy physical
ly transformed his brain, or had it tapped into a capacity
free-living bonobos were already exercising among them IN THE EARLY 2000S, DUANE RUMBAUGH got a call from a
selves, unbeknownst to us? To explore this possibility, in 1994 man named Ted Townsend, an Iowa meat processing magnate
Savage-Rumbaugh spent several months studying bonobos and wildlife enthusiast who had read about the bonobos and
in the Luo Scientific Reserve in the Democratic Republic of wanted to visit the Language Research Center. Savage-Rum
Congo. "I almost didn't come back," she told me. "If it hadn't baugh, who was director of the center's bonobo project, agreed
been for my attachment to Duane and Kanzi and Panbanisha to host him. When he arrived, Kanzi looked at him and gestured
[Kanzi's younger sister], I would have happily stayed." at the woods, indicating that he wanted to play a game of chase.
Back in Georgia, the bonobos were growing more sophis They did, and then Kanzi went to the keyboard and asked for
ticated. Panbanisha was starting to exhibit capabilities that grape juice. Townsend tossed him a bottle, at which point Kanzi
equaled Kanzi's, confirming that he wasn't simply an ape touched the symbol for "thank you."
savant. Savage-Rumbaugh spent most of her time in their "My world changed," Townsend told the Des Moines Regis
quarters. She increasingly communicated with them via high ter in 2011. "I realized that a nonhuman life form experienced
pitched vocalizations and gestures in addition to the lexigrarn a concept. That was not supposed to be possible."
keyboards, and when the bonobo females needed help with Townsend had a proposal for Savage-Rumbaugh. How
a newborn, she slept alongside them. The bonobos' behavior would she feel about a state-of-the-art sanctuary designed
changed. They began making more declarative statements specifically for her research? He would recruit top architects
comments and remarks-contradicting previous research to execute her vision. They would build it on a 230-acre prop
suggesting that captive great apes were capable only of mim- erty outside Des Moines, on the grounds of a former quarry.
lt2 SMITHSONIAN.COM I July • August 2020

It was a windfall. Funding was precarious at the Language always copacetic. One afternoon, Kanzi entered the viewing
Research Center, where Savage-Rumbaugh had to reapply for area and saw an unfamiliar woman on the other side of the
grants every few years. She wanted to study bonobos across sound-permeable glass window. The stranger, a scientist,
generations. and Townsend was promising long-term sup was arguing with Savage-Rumbaugh about how best to ar
port for her work. In addition, her marriage had ended. So she chive video footage.
abandoned her tenured professorship at Georgia State Uni Kanzi, evidently upset, banged on the glass. Noticing this,
versity and accepted Townsend's offer. Fields, who had been working in his office nearby, came over to
That was how Savage-Rumbaugh came to live in Des Moines ask him what was wrong.
with eight bonobos, her sister Liz Pugh, and William Fields, a "He wanted me to go over there and stop her [the visiting
custodian and student in anthropology at the Georgia State scientist] from doing this," Fields told the public radio pro
lab who had developed a close bond with the apes and would gram "Radiolab" in 2010. Kanzi used his lexigram keyboard
later author 14 papers and one book with Savage-Rumbaugh. to say that it was Fields' responsibility to "take care of things,
As she had at the Language Research Center, Savage-Rum and if I didn't do it, he was going to bite me."
baugh slept at the sanctuary from time to time. In 2010, she "I said, 'Kanzi, I really can't go argue, I can't interfere.' I de
moved in with the bonobos full time. helping Panbanisha faulted to the way things would happen in the human world."
soothe her infants when they woke in the night and writing The following day, when Savage-Rumbaugh was leaving
her papers on a laptop as they dozed. the bonobos' enclosure, Kanzi made good on his promise. He
It was in this unique environment, where Savage-Rum slipped past her. ran down the hall to Fields' office, and sank
baugh worked until 2013, that the foundations of her experi his teeth into his hand.
ment began to shift. "It developed spontaneously as we tried Fields didn't interact with Kanzi for eight months. until fi
to live together during the past two decades," she wrote of nally another staff member approached Fields and said, "Kan
what she called a hybrid "Pan/Homo" culture shared by the zi wants to tell you he's sorry."
apes and their human caretakers. ("Pan" referred to the ape Kanzi was outside at the time. Fields recalled leaving the
genus comprised of bonobos and chimps, while "Homo" re building, keyboard in hand, and approaching the mesh en
ferred to the genus including modern Homo sapiens as well as closure where Kanzi was sitting. "As soon as I got down there
extinct' human species such as Neanderthals.) While outsiders he threw his body up against the wire, and he screamed and
perceived the apes' vocalizations as inarticulate peeps. the hu screamed a very submissive scream. It was clear he was sorry,
man members of this "culture" began to hear them as words. and he was trying to make up with me. I asked him on the key
Acoustic analyses of the bonobos' vocalizations suggested that board if he was sorry, and he told me yes."
the people weren't hearing things: The vocalizations varied
systematically depending on which lexigram the bonobo was
pressing. In effect, the apes were manipulating their vocaliza
tions into a form of speech.
The bonobos grew impatient with the tests. "Each visi
tor wants a practical demonstration of the apes' language," WAKING UP DAY AFTER DAY to light slanting onto the bono
Savage-Rumbaugh wrote in the book Kanzi's Primal Lan bos, asleep in their nests of carpets, Savage-Rumbaugh faced
guage, authored with Fields and the Swedish bioethicist Par an uncomfortable truth. No matter how she looked at it, the
Segerdahl, "and therefore we often have to treat the apes, in apes' autonomy at the Iowa facility was a sham. A fence pre
their own home, as if they were trained circus performers." vented them from traveling beyond their makeshift outdoor
In the book Segerdahl recounts how, when he failed to heed "forest." The button she had installed so they could screen
a staff member's request that he lower his voice in the pres incoming visitors was ultimately for show; human employ
ence of the apes, Panbanisha pressed the lexigram for "qui ees could override it. She could leave when she wanted-to
et." That same day, Panbanisha's young son Nathan poked shop, to travel, to spend a night in the cottage she rented next
his arm through a tube in the glass wall separating the visi door. But when evening fell, the apes were ushered into their
tors' area from the apes' quarters, and Segerdahl reached out quarters and locked in. Outside was a planet dominated by
and touched his hand. After the bonobo fled to his mother, a species that viewed them as curiosities-close enough to
Segerdahl writes, Panbanisha charged up to the glass where human beings to act as our biological proxies in medical re
he was sitting, keyboard in hand, and held her finger over search, but not close enough to warrant meaningful rights.
the symbol for "monster." "It was a bit like being struck by And she was complicit.
the mystery of your own life," Segerdahl told me in an email "They're always going to be discriminated against every mo
about the encounter. "Panbanisha made me realize that she ment of their lives, and I allowed them to be born in a situation
was alive, as mysteriously alive as my own human aliveness." which created that," Savage-Rumbaugh said in a 2018 interview
Even for insiders, however, the "Pan/Homo" world wasn't archived at Cornell University. "And then they grew up to know
that I created that. How can one cope with that? There's no cop
Lindsay Stern, o PhD candidate in comparative literature ot
"-
Yale, is the author of o novel, The Study of Animal Languages. ing. There's no intellectual way to make it right."
BYLINES
Milwaukee-based Kevin Miyazaki used on BOO-millimeter She contacted officials in Congo, hoping to return the apes
"- telephoto lens to photograph the opes from the facility's roof.
to a sanctuary not far from where Matata had been captured.
July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN.COM lt3

'I
I·
!. •
� � r"
-�.�:_ � �
-:.�:. ---=-...:::
r ---:.:
-��-=----..
�---.:...::--
� : {t
��-:-. -.�::::---
::;.c� -.· ""'""':;...;:::.:.::.:-
�
Retired firehoses make
for effective climbing
equipment inside the
facility. From back left:
Elikya, Kanzi's sister and
the clan's matriarch since
Matata's death in 2011+;
Maisha, their brother;
Kanzi; and Teco, Elikya's
son, the only bonobo at
the facility born in Iowa.
But Matata had spent most of her adult life in human custody. said: "They'd always try to calm Sue down, to groom her or
Her children and grandchildren, including Kanzi and Pan- distract her or sit down with them. I think they just wanted
banisha, born in confinement, had never set foot in a rainfor- everybody to get along."
est. The plan never came together.
In an audacious paper in the Journal ofApplied Animal We/- 1
fare Science, Savage-Rumbaugh published a withering critique
of prevailing standards for the thousands of apes kept in zoos
�· . ;
worldwide. "We wish to create good feelings in ourselves by
giving objects, trees, and space to our captive apes," she wrote, . IN 2008, TORRENTIAL RAINS engulfed Des Moines, flooding
"but we continue to take from them all things that promote a the sanctuary. In the wake of that disaster and the global finan
sense of self-worth, self-identity, self-continuity across time, cial crisis, Townsend announced he would reduce his $3 million
and self-imposed morality." annual contribution to the facility by $1 million a year, withdraw
To bolster her case, Savage-Rumbaugh cited a list of condi ing fully by 2012. Staff salaries evaporated. Savage-Rumbaugh
tions that were important to a captive ape's welfare, including used her retirement savings to keep the lights on, while steadi
the ability to explore new places and spend time alone. But her ly alienating the few remaining employees. In 2012, she fired a
boldest act was to describe how she'd constructed the list: by in longtime caretaker. The staff responded ·by releasing a public
terviewing the bonobos in her care, three of whom she listed as letter to the facility's board, alleging that Savage-Rumbaugh was
the paper's co-authors: Kanzi Wamba, Panbanisha Wamba and mentally unfit to care for the apes. Because of her negligence,
Nyota Wamba ("Wamba" is the name of a village in the Luo Sci they claimed, the bonobos had on several occasions been put in
entific Reserve where bonobos were first studied). The choice harm's way: They spent a night locked outdoors without access
was "not a literary technique," Savage-Rumbaugh wrote, "but a to water, had burned themselves with hot water carelessly left in
recognition of their direct verbal input to the article." a mug, and had been exposed to unvaccinated visitors. Once, the
The paper did not go over well. To many primatologists, the staff alleged, Savage-Rumbaugh's carelessness had nearly result
implication that the bonobos could contribute intellectually to ed in the escape ofPanbanisha's son, Nyota, from the facility. The
an academic article strained credulity. "That paper damaged staff also informed the board that biologically related bonobos
her credibility," Robert Seyfarth, an esteemed primatologist had copulated, unnoticed, leading to an unplanned pregnancy
and emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told that resulted in a miscarriage. Savage-Rumbaugh denied the al
me. Barbara King, an emerita professor of anthropology at the legations. An internal investigation cleared her of wrongdoing
College of William and Mary, who has interacted with Kanzi (whether the alleged mishaps actually occurred was never made
and has written books such as How Animals Grieve and Per public), and a subsequent inspection by the U.S. Department of
sonalities on the Plate: The Lives & Minds of Animals We Eat, Agriculture gave the facility itself a clean bill of health.
echoed Seyfarth. 'Tm not skeptical that these bonobos are sen Then one day in spring 2013, Savage-Rumbaugh collapsed
tient. Of course they are, and incredibly intelligent and attuned in her bedroom at the facility. "She was just exhausted, I
to their own needs, and able to communicate with us in fasci think," Steve Boers, who succeeded Savage-Rumbaugh as ex
nating ways. But I don't think the methods in that paper have ecutive director, told me. "Just fell down from exhaustion and
much validity." She added: "I think we need to acknowledge depression. I think she felt like she was on her own there, and
that they are keenly intelligent animals without forcing them everyone was against her."
to be what they are not-capable of discussing these issues." Having sustained a concussion from the fall, Savage-Rum
The bonobos, meanwhile, occasionally used the keyboards baugh flew to New Jersey to discuss a succession plan with Duane
to indicate to Savage-Rumbaugh that they had been harmed Rumbaugh, with whom she remained close. On Rumbaugh's
by a staff member. When this had happened before, the staff suggestion, she contacted one of her former students, Jared Ta
member would defend him- or herself, and Savage-Rumbaugh glialatela, a biologist at Kennesaw State University, to ask if he
would try to de-escalate the conflict. Gradually, however, the would be willing to take over as director of research. The bonobos
staff felt that Savage-Rumbaugh's allegiances began to shift. liked Taglialatela. He and Savage-Rumbaugh had written a dozen
She no longer seized on the conflict as evidence of the bonobos' papers and book chapters together, including one describing the
capacity for Machiavellian behavior. bonobos' spontaneous drawings of lexigrams.
"She started accusing us of things we wouldn't ever do," a for Savage-Rumbaugh says she believed Taglialatela would con
mer caretaker told me. In one such instance, the caretaker said tinue her "research trajectory" when he took up his post. Writ
Savage-Rumbaugh blamed her for cutting Kanzi across the chest ten agreements from 2013 formalizing the Great Ape Trust's
after misinterpreting a conversation she'd had with Kanzi using co-ownership of the bonobos with several other entities de
the lexigrams; in fact, he'd evidently hurt himself on a fence the scribed what the ownership, custody and care of the apes en
caretaker had faultily repaired. tailed, including engaging them with "language and tools" and
When I asked the caretaker (who asked to remain anony exposing them to other "human cultural modes." In addition
mous) how the bonobos behaved during confrontations, she to providing the apes with the life that some of them had
known for 30 years, the protocol had a scientific rationale: It
SEE MORE ofKevin Miyazaki's photographs ofKanzi and his was intended to reveal whether the apes would teach these
cohort at Smitlisonia11mag.com/boriobos behaviors to their offspring, thereby exhibiting an aptitude

for cultural transmission thought unique to humankind. not justified by the benefit you get from the science."
This is why Savage-Rumbaugh says she was blindsided when The judge deliberated for five months. During that time, a New
she returned to the lab in November 2013, after a six-month ab York court denied a case to extend legal "personhood" to great
sence, to find herself ordered off the premises. (Some board mem apes filed in part on the strength of an affidavit written by Sav
bers feared that her return in an active capacity would jeopardize age-Rumbaugh on bonobos' capacities. Then, in November 2015,
several potential new research hires, including Taglialatela.) came the decision in Savage-Rumbaugh's case: "Perhaps the
Savage-Rumbaugh left the building. Not long afterward, her bonobos would be happier and their behavior productively dif
sister, Liz, who continued to work with the bonobos for a time, re ferent with Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh and her direct contact, familial
ported that things were changing at the facility. Derek Wildman, association with them than they are in the current environment
a professor of molecular physiology at the University of Illinois in which staff and researchers do not assume a quasi-parental
who had mapped Kanzi's genome, returned to find what he later role," the judge wrote. "The Court is not in a position to decide
described in court as a "ghost town." From his perspective, the what kind of relationship with humans is best for the bonobos or
new leadership team was more interested in "standard psycho to advance the research on their human-like abilities."
logical experiments" than in the interactive, cultural and familial He denied Savage-Rumbaugh's motion to resume her re
approach pioneered by Savage-Rumbaugh. Laurent Dubreuil, search. While the 2013 agreements described Savage-Rum
a professor of comparative literature and cognitive science at baugh's methods, they did not, owing to the precise language
used in the contracts, oblige
Taglialatela to continue those
"They're bonobos. I'm not trying methods. As for a larger dis
pute over who owned sever
to denigrate them. I'm trying to elevate al of the bonobos, including
Kanzi, the court had no juris
them. This is an animal welfare diction in the matter. For that,
Savage-Rumbaugh would need
mission in my mind." to take her case to state court.
In an email to me, Frans de
Waal, the primatologist, de
Cornell, who had visited the bonobos in Iowa on two occasions scribed the case as emblematic of a deeper conundrum in the
during Savage-Rumbaugh's tenure and returned in 2014, testified study of animal minds: "Work with Kanzi has always lived some
that the apes' access to the keyboards had been reduced. He said where between rigorous science and social closeness and family
that Boers, the new executive director, explained to him that the life," he wrote. "Some scientists would like us to test animals as
staff was aiming to "put the bonobo back in the bonobo." if they are little machines of which we only need to probe the re
In 2015, Savage-Rumbaugh sued for breach of contract. Jane sponses, whereas others argue that apes reveal their full mental
Goodall submitted a letter in support of Savage-Rumbaugh's capacities only in the sort of environment that we also provide
continued involvement with the apes. Even the Democratic for our children, with intellectual encouragement among loving
Republic of Congo, which technically owned Matata accord adults. There is some real tension between these two views, be
ing to the 2013 agreements, wrote on Savage-Rumbaugh's be cause loving adults customarily overestimate what their charges
half: "If for any reason [Savage-Rumbaugh] continues to be are capable of and throw in their own interpretations, which is
banned from access, the DRC will need to assert its ownership why children need to be tested by neutral psychologists and not
interest and take charge of the bonobos," the country's minis the parents. For Kanzi, too, we need this middle ground between
ter of scientific research wrote to the court. him feeling at ease with those around him and being tested in
Taglialatela took the witness stand at a federal courthouse the most objective way. The conflict around Kanzi's custody is a
in Des Moines in May 2015. He testified that while he found fight between both sides in this debate."
Savage-Rumbaugh's discoveries "profound," he had come to
view her experiment as unethical. He compared his former
mentor to Harry Harlow, a psychologist notorious for studying
maternal deprivation in monkeys; in one experiment, Harlow
�
separated infant monkeys from their mothers and used a wire
rack outfitted with a nipple to feed them. "We found out it is I FINALLY GOT THE CHANCE to meet Kanzi last July. A storm
devastating to the emotional and neurological development was gathering. From downtown Des Moines, I drove my rental
of an organism when we do that type of thing," Taglialatela car past vinyl-sided houses and a presbytery, until I reached a
said. "That was his work, and it was really important that we sign printed with a blown-up image of Kanzi's face. As I drove
all learned that. But if a person came to you and said, 'Hey, past it, down the tree-lined driveway, a faded elephant's trunk
could we do that again,' you would probably say no, right?" poked out of the foliage. It was the statue Ted Townsend had
He paused. "I disagree with the idea of taking a bonobo even installed years ago, claimed now by the woods.
for part of the day, rearing it with humans, for any reason, be Four years had passed since the trial. Savage-Rumbaugh's ef
cause I think that the detriment to the individual animal is forts to bring her case to state court hadn't come together and,
July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN.COM '+7

discouraged, she had moved to Missouri to care for
her dying mother. She hadn't been allowed back
into the facility in more than five years, but her law
yer apd a former colleague had both visited a few
years earlier. They told me separately that when
Kanzi appeared in the viewing area, he approached
a keyboard and touched the key for "Sue."
As the first drops of rain pricked my windshield,
a high, clear voice like a screeching tire rose from
the complex up ahead. My stomach dropped. It
was a bonobo. The apes must have been outside,
then, in the snarled greenery between the build
ing and the lake. I looked for motion in the grass
but saw nothing.
Taglialatela emerged as I was getting out of my
car. Wearing sneakers and cargo pants, he seemed
friendly if a little nervous as he shook my hand,
his brown eyes darting between mine. We could
chat for a while, he said, and then he would show
me around. They had just acquired a new bono
bo, Clara, from the Cincinnati Zoo, to help bal
ance the gender dynamics among the apes. She
seemed to be acclimating well.
He opened the heavy metal door leading into
the facility. We entered the lobby, a low-ceilinged
space hung with painted portraits of the bono
bos. A couch in one corner faced an empty room
encircled by laminated glass. Inside was a small
ledge positioned beneath a blank touchscreen I
recognized from a segment on "The Oprah Win
frey Show." In that footage, Kanzi sits on the ledge
beside Savage-Rumbaugh, pressing lexigram
symbols on the screen to communicate.
I asked Taglialatela if it was true that under
his leadership the facility had transitioned away
from Savage-Rumbaugh's interactive approach to A lexigram," Taglialatela explained. "When we play him
Savage-Rum
studying ape cognition. baugh believes an 'alarm' vocalization, we give him three lexigrams to
He nodded. "That kind of getting up close now that Kanzi's choose from-one being 'scare,' and two other random
brain, exposed
adays is considered, like-" He made a slicing mo to human items-to see if he can tell us what kind of information
tion across his throat. "Being in the same space with culture since is encoded in the calls of other bonobos." So far, he said,
infancy, has
them is potentially dangerous. It's risky to them, it's been "rewired" the results are promising.
risky to the person doing it, and I can't think of a sci to function like He pointed at a lexigram keyboard nailed to the
a person's.
entific value that would justify that risk." wall of the greenhouse. "The bonobos have constant
I glanced over his shoulder at the door separating access to permanently mounted lexigram keyboards
the lobby from the corridor leading to the ape wing. in virtually all of their enclosures," he said. Rather
A decorative sign beside it read: "We are all faced than study the "Pan/Homo" cultural implications of
with a series of great opportunities brilliantly dis the bonobos' lexigram use, Taglialatela keeps the key
guised as impossible situations." boards available to enable the apes to request food and
Taglialatela explained that the facility, recently re activities that fall within the bounds of what he de
branded as the Ape Initiative, draws some funding from > scribes as species-appropriate behaviors. He said that
behavioral and cognitive research performed by outside The researcher the quality of the care the apes receive has improved
scientists. One element of Taglialatela's own research cherishes a pic since he came on board. Kanzi, once overweight, has
ture of her late
explores whether Kanzi, trained in the lexigrams, can sister Liz ond a lost 75 pounds, for example, and since 2014 the staff
act as a Rosetta stone, helping researchers decode the chimp named has worn masks and gloves when interacting with the
Austin. Pugh
vocalizations of bonobos in the wild. "We present him had worked apes to reduce the risk of transmitting infections.
with Savage
with a task where we play him a sound-a prerecord Rumbaugh
Kanzi and the other bonobos were outside, root
ed bonobo vocalization-to see if he'll label it with a since 1976. ing around in a tube the staff had installed to mimic

a termite mound.Taglialatela left to confiscate the tube to en nized him from videos and news features, but he was older
courage them to join us. While he was gone, I pulled a chair up now-balding at the crown, more lean. If he noticed me, he
to the transparent wall of the testing room. didn't let on. He hoisted himself up onto the ledge.
Through the greenhouse was the lake, darkened by rain. Taglialatela handed me a laminated keyboard containing
Just beyond it was the length of road where one ofTaglialate 133 lexigrams, including symbols for "Kanzi," "Sue," "Jared,"
la's graduate students told me she used to see Savage-Rum "keyboard," and "hurt." I pressed it up against the glass.
baugh's red pickup truck during the summer after the trial. She Kanzi had his back to me. From an adjoining room, a staff
would drive the truck a little way down the road and park, and member was engaging him in a match-to-sample task to demon
then climb on top of it. From the building, the staff could just strate his vocabulary, speaking a word and waiting to see if he
make out her binoculars, the shock of white hair. would touch the corresponding symbol on the computer screen.
Suddenly Kanzi charged into the testing room. I recog- Each time he did, a major chord echoed through the lobby.
Kanzi finished the task-per
formed, I realized, for my bene
"I started writing and painting to get fit.The screen went blank. As he
climbed down from the ledge, his
my messages across. It was like a door gaze flickered across mine.
Heart pounding, I called out, "Hi
opened, and she smiled. And Kanzi." I held up the lexigrams and
touched the symbol for "keyboard."
some heavy load lifted." Kanzi turned away from me and
knuckled into the greenhouse, but
not before pausing to punch the
glass in front of my face.
My cheeks burned. What had I expected?That Kan
zi would say something to vindicate eitherTaglialate
la or Savage-Rumbaugh? That, by speaking with me,
he would solve the mystery of how "human" he was?
I didn't feel very human at all in that instant. A
wave of queasiness came over me. Kanzi had been
going about his life, and my hunger to interact
with him had disrupted that. He had no reason to
"talk" to me.
The new bonobo, Clara, darted into the green
house, and she and Kanzi played for a while. Then
Kanzi gestured toTaglialatela, walked on two legs to
the keyboard nailed to the wall of the greenhouse,
and touched the symbol for "chase." Taglialatela
obliged, pantomiming to him through the glass.
"A lot of people looked at what Dr. Savage-Rum
baugh was doing with Kanzi and say, Oh my god,
it's terrible to think she can't be here every day,"Ta
glialatela said. ''And I'm like, when we got here, she
had been gone for seven or eight months. And a lot
of the things that were done with Kanzi, in my opin
ion, were not appropriate. I mean, they're bonobos,
and they were not being treated as such. I'm not
trying to denigrate them. I'm trying to elevate them.
This is an animal welfare mission in my mind."
ONE AFfERNOON LAST SUMMER, I drove to Sav

age-Rumbaugh's cabin in Missouri-a one-story
structure perched on the edge of a lake and shaded
by hickory trees. coNT1NuEo oN PAGE""
Jul!,j • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN.COM lt9

"I was really tryin2: to ima2:ine
the pressure she felt.· She1Iad
her life's work ahead of her."
I
OR AS LONG AS HE CAN REMEMBER.
Kenneth Morris has been
told he looks just like his
great-great-great-grandfather,
Frederick Douglass, the escaped
slave, author, orator and social
reformer. Morris has carried on his
ancestor's mission by fighting racial inequity and A PORTRAIT OF ONE'S OWN
human trafficking through the Frederick Douglass One of Gardner's biggest challenges has been
Family Initiatives, which he co-founded. But when finding influential women from earlier centuries
who also have descendants. For most of history, he
he actually dressed up as Douglass-complete with notes, "if you achieved anything as a woman, you
a magnificent gray-streaked wig-a strange feeling didn't have kids." Elizabeth Cody Stanton was a
striking exception-she had seven children and still
came over him. "I looked at myself in the mirror, managed to lead the nascent women's rights move
and it was like I was Frederick Douglass. It just ment. But each time Gardner found a photo of her
as a young woman, she always had at least one
transformed me." child in her arms. To recreate this 1850s portrait,
Morris was taking part in an extraordinary history Gardner had to crop closely around Stanton's face
and photograph her descendant in a tight shot.
experiment by a British photographer named Drew
Gardner. About 15 years ago, Gardner started tracking
down descendants of famous Europeans-Napoleon,
Charles Dickens, Oliver Cromwell-and asking if they
would pose as their famous forebears in portraits he
was recreating. Then he looked across the Atlantic.
"For all its travails, America is the most brilliant
idea," says the Englishman. He especially wanted to
challenge the idea that history is "white and male."
He found Elizabeth Jenkins-Sahlin through an

"I don't consider myself an actor at
all, but it just transformed me."
essay she'd written at age 13 about the suffragist contacted her, she was carving out her own identity,
leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton, her mother's moth and was initially reluctant to take part in his project.
er's mother's mother's mother. Jenkins-Sahlin spent Yet sitting for this recreated photograph of a young
her teen years speaking and writing about Cady Cady Stanton, wearing curls and a bonnet, helped
Stanton; in 1998, she appeared at a 150th anniver her get inside the eminent progressive's psyche in a
sary celebration for the Seneca Falls Convention. "I whole new way. "I was really trying to imagine the
felt like a clear role had been given to me at a young pressure she felt. This was when she was still very
age," she says. By age 34, though, when Gardner young and had her life's work ahead of her."
SEE HOW thefamousportraits are recreated at Smith·
In contrast, Shannon LaNier chose not to wear a
s011ia11111ag.com/desce11da11ts wig while posing as his great-great-great-great-great-
great-grandfather. "I didn't want to
become Jefferson," says LaNier, who
has gone to reunions at Monticello ..
w
and co-authored the book Jefferson's :,:

Children: The Story of One Ameri
can Family. "My ancestor had his "
::,
dreams-and now it's up to all of us

0
()
living in America today to make sure z

no one is excluded from the promise
of life, liberty and the pursuit of hap
piness." -JENNIE ROTHENBERG GRITZ ♦
THE FIRST INFLUENCER

Frederick Douglass was likely the
most photographed American of the M
<>
19th century-there are 168 known a,
photographs of him, compared with
around 130 of Abraham Lincoln. This was
no coincidence: Douglass had noticed
the way white cartoonists tended to
"distort and exaggerate" black features,
and he saw photography's verisimilitude
as an antidote. "He was a fashionista,"
says his descendant Kenneth Marris,
who helped compile the 2015 illustrated
biography Picturing Frederick Doug/oss.
"He shaped his public image the way
people do when they 'brand' themselves
on /nstagram. He was one of the first to
understand the power of that."
N
M
a,
THE
by MARYN MCKENNA
illustration by CHRIS BUZELLI
Even before the Covid-19

andemic, scientists were
se rchin!! for o.otential human
pat of!ens' 1n Wild ao1tna1s.
q,l'hev've founct thousands.
A special report
It wasJanuaryin New York City,
►.+....►►►►►►►►► ►.+ ►►►►►►►►►►►► t+t+►►►►►►►....
drizzly and gray. At the northvvest corner of J\llanhattan.
through the arched doorvvay of Columbia University's
J\llailman School of Public Health. a virologist named
Simon Anthony vvas writing a grant proposal, asking
agencies to fund his vvork on a family of pathogens
called coronaviruses. These viruses�named for their
crovvnlike arrays of spiky outer proteins�had caused
the vvorldwide SARS epidemic in 2003, and another
epidemic called J\IIERS that began in 2012.
For more than a decade, Anthonv had been discover
ing nevv viruses, trying to understand vvhich changes
in their makeup transformed them from quiescent in
habitants of bats to ferocious threats to human beings.
He'd also been reading the nevvs. and almost as an af
terthought, he added a sentence to his grant proposal:
At that mon1ent, he said� China vvas reporting that one person
had died from an infection caused bv a coronavirus that had
never been reported before.
up, and then they jumped up," he re
called to me. "And there was a moment
when I thought, Oh my God. This really
could be it. The thing we've been talking
about for the last ten years."
Anthony, who is an assistant professor
at Columbia's Center for Infection and
Immunity, has long been aware that the
animal world is teeming with pathogens
our immune systems have never expe
rienced-and that one of these might
trickle unnoticed into the human world
and spark a conflagration. But Anthony is
also part of a small, influential cadre of re
searchers who believe that such epidem
ics can be prevented-if viruses can be
detected before they make the fatal leap.
ALMOST TWO-THIRDS of human dis

eases originate in animals. Measles, first
described in the ninth century, is thought
to have come from cattle. HIV most like
ly leapt into our world via monkeys and
apes in the 20th century. The most terri
fying epidemics of the past generation
West Nile virus, SARS, MERS, Ebola-be
gan when an animal pathogen found its
way into a human.
Once or twice a year, a "spillover" of
an animal pathogen into people ignites a
new infectious human disease. It's possi
ble there are many more such eruptions in
which an animal pathogen flares briefly to
life in one or several people and then dies
out-either because the virus isn't well
adapted for human- spread, or because
the infected people live in isolated places 0
and don't have high levels of contact with �
0
others. By one estimate, there are more :
than 827,000 viruses in the animal world �
that have the potential to infect humans. u
We encourage these spillovers whenever �
we cut roads through the wilderness, clear �
forests to grow crops, catch wildlife to sell �
as trophies or butcher for food, or pen ;
chickens and swine in places where bats �
and wild birds can mingle with them. �
One spillover that caused interna- ::i
�
tional alarm at the time was the HSN! i
The next day, he was reading the news on his "' avian influenza. It jumped to humans from poultry i!i;
Simon Anthony f='
phone as he walked the six blocks between his apart has studied sold alive in Hong Kong markets in 1997, infecting �
ment and his lab, and learned that there had been pathogens in
animals as
18 people and killing-six. Hong Kong squelched the .,
more than one death. He changed the number in wide-ranging as outbreak by killing every one of the 1.3 million chick- 5
his proposal. A day later, he had to change it again. apes, penguins, �
seals and killer
ens in the territory. But in 2004, a new strain of the · �
"Over the course of a week, the deaths went up, and whales. HSNl virus spread outward from Southeast Asia. By ;:

"You have all these millions and millions
of sequences, and you have to find the
little pieces and stitch them together."
►.,.�►►►►►►►►►►► waterfowl, which pass it to domesticated and wild
birds as they migrate across the world. This made
Carroll wonder: What if someone had pinpointed
which groups of wild birds carried the virus? Could
farmers along those migratory routes have been per
suaded to alter their methods-for instance, raising
their chickens in closed sheds? More broadly, could
detecting pathogens before they spilled over from
the wild help humans prevent the next pandemic?
So Carroll created a project called Predict, a coa
lition of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology In
stitute, the One Health Institute at the University of
California at Davis, the EcoHealth Alliance and the
Wildlife Conservation Society (both in New York
City) and the San Francisco risk-modeling firm Me
tabiota. The five organizations had all been working
at the intersection of animal science, conservation
and human health. Under Carroll's leadership, the
coalition applied for USAID funding, and received
the first grant to launch their work in 2009.
"I really credit Dennis," says Jonna Mazet, a vet
erinarian who directs the UC Davis One Health In
stitute and served as Predict's principal investigator.
"At the time it was disputed whether emerging infec
the end of 2005, it had sickened 142 people as far A tious diseases really were one of the world's biggest
west as Romania, killing more than half of them, and A scientist
at Columbia
problems. Now everyone knows that."
prompted the slaughter of millions of birds. University's
Mailman School
The global spread of bird flu-and the agricultural of Public Health
destruction it wrought-made a deep impression on isolates and
studies a new
a federal infectious-disease specialist named Dennis coronavirus FINDING VIRUSES IN THE WILD is hot, messy, risky
Carroll. Carroll worked at the U.S. Agency for Interna using a tissue work. The scientists working with Predict work with lo
culture of human
tional Development (USAID). Until that point, most cells. cal governments and nonprofits to pinpoint the places
of his work on outbreaks-malaria, tuberculosis, riv where those animals' worlds intersect most with hu
er blindness-had involved teaming up with national man society. Then they go out into the field to collect
ministries of health. The HSN! flu made him see what < samples, without confining or killing the animals.
such partnerships missed. "If you're concerned about U.S. scientists Between May 2016 and August 2018, for instance,
a virus killing off people, but it's principally circulating have ventured
into caves in
researchers working with Smithsonian's National Zoo
in poultry, you don't go to the public health or medical Myanmar like looked for novel viruses in bats in Myanmar. They
this one (the
professionals," he says. "You go to the veterinarians." popular Sadan spent muggy nights trooping through jungles in per
Carroll started working with animal-health ex Cave) in search sonal protective gear: Tyvek suits and footwear cov
of potential hu
perts across the developing world, who taught farm man pathogens ers, gloves and masks and aprons, head lamps and
ers and live-animal sellers how to reduce exposures carried by bats. face shields. Sometimes they scooped bat feces and
and risks. The effort did what the agency had hoped: urine from tarps they'd laid by crawling into caves
It suppressed the spread of the HSN! bird flu, forcing where bats nest during the day. Other times they
it back from more than 50 countries into just a few. caught bats in mist nets-long, loose nets of ultra-fine
But HSN! wasn't gone yet. The virus inhabits wild filaments that they had strung between poles before
the sun went down. The researchers disentangled the
"- Maryn McKenna is a journalist and author who
covers disease outbreaks, antibiotics and animals. bats, took blood samples from their veins, swabbed
BYLINES
, Gaia Squarci photographed this story remotely. their mouths and rectums-being careful not to get
"- She lives in Milan and New York.
bitten-and then let the animals go, unharmed.

During the day, the reruns spoke to people who viruses and kept it as a form of national intellectual
lived nearby, asking about their everyday habits property. When those labs found something worth
farming, trapping, forestry. With permission, they scrutinizing further, the other portion crune back to
acquired srunples from these humans as well, to look the United States, to labs including Anthony's.
for evidence-immunologic signals in blood, for in Anthony is originally from Britain, but after finish
stance-that viruses found locally might already have ing his PhD at Oxford in 2007, he took a post-doctoral
jumped to humans without being recognized. position at the San Diego Zoo's Institute for Conser
Working this way in 31 countries over the vation Research, studying wildlife diseases. This put
course of ten years, Predict collected him in California's conservation and virology com
srunples from more than 164,000 an- munity at a key moment, just as Predict was coming
imals and people. Each srunple was together. He began talking to researchers in Davis
split and frozen. One portion re and San Francisco, and when he moved to his current
mained at labs in the home coun position at Columbia, he started working for Predict
try, where scientists tested it for from New York. He now serves as one of two U.S. lead-
Encountering Infectious Disease

Covid-19, the newl \:j emergent
virus behind the current
pandemic, is onl \:j the latest
pathogen to leap from an
animal carrier or host to
afflict human beings. Here
ore other notable outbreaks.
Research by Sonya Maynard
900s
Dengue
Deaths: Unknown
Animal: Mosquito
Pathogen: Dengue virus
A Chinese text described
A.D. 165-180 the disease In 992, call
Smallpox ing it a '"water poison,.
Deaths: 5 million linked to winged insects.
Animal: Rodents
Pathogen: Voriola virus
Crowded cropical pores
would spread cite disease
Soldiers returning from
globally.
the Near East brought
smallpox to Rome; it
ravaged � generatio�: 1519-1520
· - New World smallpox
�farcus Aurelius reigned
Deaths: 5-8 million
i11 the "Plag11e ofGa/e11."
Animal: Rodents
Pathogen: Voriolo virus
Passed from Europeans initially to
welcoming Taina Indians, the disease
C... - I
widely devastated the Americas.
. - ---
All 1878 pai11ti11gofTa/110 I11dia11s we/·
coming CltristopherCo/11111bus' brother.
i
•-
1 ,,oo
�. ------131t7-1352
Bubonic plague 1616-1619
Deaths: More than 25 million Massachusetts
BOOs Animal: Rodents plague
Measles
Pathogen: Yersinio pestis Deaths: Unknown
Deaths: Unknown
Animal: Cottle (likely) The deadliest pandemic in recorded his Animal: Rodents,
Pathogen: Measles virus tory, the "Block Death" originated in Asia livestock or other
and reached Europe via the Silk Road. Pathogen: Leptospiro,
A Persian doctor first
voriolo or other
described this highly A 14JJ 111i11ia111re depicli11g plag11e sufferers.
Historians ore still divided
51t1-51t2 contagious childhood
Bubonic plague over which virus the
illness in the 9th century.
Deaths: 25 million colonists harbored, but it
Animal: Black rat
Vaccines began to thwart wiped out as much
1/te virus (below) i111963. as 90% of the never
Pathogen: Yersinio pestis
before-exposed Indians 1665-1666
One of the deadliest
in the territory. Bubonic plague
pandemics, it raged
Deaths: Up to 100,000
through Asia, North Afri-
ca. Arabia and Europe. Animal: Rodents
Pathogen: Yersinio pestis
Emperor J11s1/11la11 (above) In the "Great Plague of
was stricken bm sun,ived. London, .. almost a quarter
of the city's population
succumbed.
A plag11e b11r/a/ tre11ch 1111der
excavation in London. 2005.
"If you wait until a virus is killing �eople,
you'll lose hundreds of thousands of human
lives, and billions, trillions of dollars."
◄◄◄◄◄◄◄◄�◄◄◄◄◄◄
ers on Predict's laboratory side. (The other is at UC Davis.) sequence. You can think of it as a fishing expedition, except the
Here is how his role works: The samples that come from the bait is something like a piece of Velcro. Instead of hooks and
field, frozen to minus-SO degrees Celsius, contain a chaotic mix loops, the Velcro has the nucleotides that make up DNA: ade
of materials: cells from the bats' saliva and blood, along with nine, cytosine, guanine and thymine.
bacteria and, possibly, viruses that might turn out to be inter That method-called polymerase chain reaction-is a cheap
esting. Following a complex set of steps, Anthony isolates all the and simple way to do a broad sweep for viruses, but it brings
genetic material within the sample. Then he embarks on a hunt, up limited information. Once Anthony finds that a sample has
using tiny bits of genetic code-the technical term is "primer" - a virus in it, he tests it with another, more complicated process
that match with and bind to specific points in a virus's unique called deep sequencing. This generates millions of fragments of
1793
Yellow fever, Philadelphia
Deaths: 5,000
Animal: Mosquito
Pathogen: Flavivirus
Ships bearing refugees from a slave
revolution in Haiti likely carried the
Insects that started this outbreak.
A pai1i'ii11g c,/acorpse ;,�rage i1ouse 2009-2010
011 the Schuylkill River. Swine flu
Deaths: 200,000
Animal: Pigs
Pathogen: H1N1
Arose in Mexico
and affected
mostly children
and young adults
worldwide.
Disinfecting a
pigfarm. 2012
MERS
1918-1919 1997 2002-2003 Deaths:85B
Influenza Influenza SARS Animal: Bots
Dea1hs: 50 million Deaths: 6 Deaths:774 to camels
Animal: Birds, swine Animal: Birds Animal: Bots (likely) Pathogen:
or other Pathogen: H5N1 Pathogen: SARS-CoV MERS-CoV
Pathogen: H1N1 virus After it killed This earlier corona The virus
Europe, Asia, even a child in Hong virus was less conta originated in
Kansas; scientists Kong, authorities gious and more the Arabian
aren't sure where it slaughtered successfully con Peninsula; it
first infected humans. millions of birds. tained than Covid-19. now spreads
mostly in
Red Cross workers in A contaminated hospitals.
Boston sort face masks. Hong Kong market.
1 •-•00
_J
1.800
1775-1782 1891+ 1981-present

West Coast smallpox Bubonic plague AIDS
Deaths: Unknown Deaths: 12 million Deaths: 32 milli on
Animal: Rodents Animal: Rodents Animal: Chimpanzee
Pathogen: Voriolo Pathogen: (likely) 2011+-2016
Gold-seekers soiling from Yersinio pestis Pathogen: HIV West African
San Francisco carried the The "Third The virus is transmit Ebola
virus to British Columbia; Plague" battered ted by close contact Deaths:11,325
about one-third of the Chino and Indio. with infected blood Animal: Bots
region's First Nations or body fluids. Pathogen: EBOV
population died. The ratflea spread
che bacterium. HIVyielded lO treat A 2015 vaccine
Illuscration afvariola virus. ment in the 1990s. helped, though 2019-present
many survivors Covld-19
1878 have taken years Deaths: '+12,000
Mississippi Volley yellow fever to recover from at press time
Deaths: Up to 20,000 "post-Ebola Animal: Bots
Animal: Mosquito syndrome." (likely)
Pathogen: Flovivirus Pathogen:
Even ofter sick crew were quarantined in SARS-CoV-2
their boots, the virus hit riverside cities. Test shortages
Woodcut of a New Orleans cemetery. leave most cases
undiagnosed.
Genetically simi·
far viruses inhabit
Timeline credits and sources: p. 111+ horseshoe bats.
genetic material from everything in the sample. The life veterinarian who is the program director of the A
Suzan Murray,
challenge is to fish out all the sequences that belong to National Zoo's Global Health Program, "and then photographed in
the virus he wants to study and stitch them all togeth try to figure out what kind of virus it is, sequence it, Moy vio Skype,
recoils the dread
er. A computer does this by comparing the nucleotide backtrack to figure out what the host might be and she felt when
sequences in the recovered bits with the sequences of then what people might be doing to put themselves in Covid-19 started
appearing in so
known viruses. "We put it together like a puzzle," says harm's way, you'll lose hundreds of thousands of hu many countries
Anthony. "You have all of this data, all these millions man lives, and billions, trillions of dollars." That, of ot once. "That's
when we realized
and millions of sequences, and you have to find the course, is just what the Covid-19 pandemic has done. this is not going
to be contain
little pieces and stitch them together." On his monitor, Anthony was involved in work that established able."
the process looks like building a wall of tiny Legos. bats as major reservoirs for coronaviruses; identified
Once a sequence is assembled, Anthony can com hot spots of SARS-like viruses in Africa and Southeast
pare it to other viruses using what are known as Asia; and identified a previously unknown coronavi
phylogenetic trees-they look like family trees laid rus, found in a bat, that closely resembles the MERS
out horizontally, showing the evolutionary relation virus but lacks a genetic adaptation that would allow
ships. These trees can help scientists spot patterns. it to spread to humans. The group found potentially
For instance, do two closely related viruses come new adenoviruses in rodents in the Democratic Re
from the same part of the world? Or from the same public of Congo; herpes viruses in macaques in Ma
type of bat? laysia; and a novel ebolavirus in bats in Sierra Leone. >
Multiply that process by the thousands of samples Piece by piece, over ten years, Predict researchers and Dennis Carroll,
Predict has collected, and the data set transforms into an partners in the U.S. and abroad had started assem photographed in
Moy vio Facetime
early warning system, a pointer to hot spots and species bling an atlas of risks to humanity-949 newly iden on his boat in
where pandemic pathogens might emerge. "If you wait tified viruses, and 217 known ones found in species Washington, D.C.
In February, he
until a virus is killing people," says Suzan Murray, a wild- they had not been associated with-while also map founded o new
ping the behaviors that made humans vulnerable. research coalition
to screen the wild
READ MORE about the impact ofthe novel In April, researchers at Smithsonian's National Zoo for novel viruses.
coronavirus at Smitlrso11ia11111ag.com/covid19 published a paper announcing the discovery of six
61t SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020

"It's about changing the paradigm. From
waiting and reacting, to ioing where
the viruses are, before they come to us."
new coronaviruses from bats in Myanmar. The paper was writ nal Open Biology. "It is necessary to lower our expectations
ten in 2019 but came out just as the current Covid-19 pandemic about disease emergence as a predictive science."
was shutting down schools and businesses around the world. In 2018, Holmes, Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edin
By that time, the Predict project itself was in the midst of be burgh and Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Insti
ing shut down. tute in California argued in the journal Nature: "Broad genomic
surveys of animal viruses will almost certainly advance our un
derstanding of virus diversity and evolution. In our view, they
will be of little practical value when it comes to understanding
NOW THAT THE NOVEL CORONAVIRUS has demonstrated and mitigating the emergence of disease."
how much havoc a zoonotic pathogen can create, the value of Even as recently as March, when the novel coronavirus was
tracking down viruses before they leap from the animal world already spreading, Colin J. Carlson of Georgetown Universi
might seem obvious. But Predict, and the whole enterprise of ty's Center for Global Health Science and Security, said in The
calculating which pathogens pose the most risk, is still sur Lancet Microbe: "Our field, as currently positioned, is still not
prisingly controversial. The criticism, in brief: It's one thing to ready to stop current or future pandemics."
identify potentially zoonotic pathogens and the animals that These critics argue that there are just too many viruses. By
carry them. It's a much larger task-and so far, not achieved one estimate, 1.6 million animal viruses are yet to be discov
to pinpoint which of them will cause a human epidemic. ered in mammal and bird populations, and there's currently
"There is no simple algorithm that will enable an accu no way to zero in on the estimated 827,000 of them that could
rate prediction of what viruses might emerge in the future," cause disease in humans. Geoghegan and Holmes point out
Jemma L. Geoghegan of Macquarie University and Edward C. that Zika virus was identified in 1947, yet this 68-year head
Holmes of the University of Sydney wrote in 2017 in the jour- start didn't keep it from causing an epidemic in 2015. Some

"These things are out there, waiting
to emerge, and we're doing everything
possible to help tffem emerge."
►►....►►►►►►►....
scientists argue that the federal funding used for Predict money, the Bureau for Global Health. It was part of the current
would have been better spent on shoring up public health pro administration's broader pattern of backing away both from
tections, such as vaccines and antiviral drugs. international agreements and public health defenses: It had
"Predict did important work in basic science with viral sam already disbanded the National Security Council's Directorate
pling and surveillance at the human-animal interface," says for Global Health Security and Biodefense, known informal
Caitlin Rivers, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins ly as the "pandemic response unit," and proposed cuts in the
Center for Health Security who in February criticized the pro global-health divisions of the Centers for Disease Control and
gram on Twitter. "But it's not clear to me how you get from that Prevention and the Department of Homeland Security.
activity to actually predicting and interrupting pandemics." In March. Predict prepared to wind down, holding its final
The people within Predict counter that even though they didn't meeting over Zoom. By that point, the novel coronavirus was
pinpoint the virus that causes Covid-19, the work they did showed transmitting around the world. It had reached every habitable
that bats are the most important hosts of coronaviruses, and that continent before the end of February, and on April 2, passed
viruses closely related to this one come from Rhinolophus and one million cases worldwide.
Hipposideros bats. This information will make it easier to figure What had not been explicitly political suddenly became so.
out where other SARS-like viruses might be circulating. Lab staff Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, while still a pres
in Thailand and Nepal whom Predict had trained also helped idential candidate back in January, had put forward a plan for
identify the first cases in their countries, in travelers from China. countering infectious disease threats that included refunding
Under USAID, Predict was on a five-year grant cycle. At Predict. On March 5, she and Senator Angus King of Maine de
its founding in 2009, it got five years of funds, guaranteeing manded that USAID explain the cancellation to Congress. The
its survival into 2014. In 2014, it got five more years, which attention won Predict a reprieve: an additional $2.26 million
funded it through September 2019. That funding was up for that will let the project continue until the end of September.
renewal in fall 2019. Instead, it was extended for just six more On May 1, USAID posted a "notice of funding opportunity"
months, through March 2020. for a Predict successor-a $100 million project called Strategies
Carroll, who left USAID after the recent nonrenewal, says he to Prevent (STOP) Spillover. The new project will also work with
doesn't think that decision was explicitly political. "It was a bu targeted countries to prevent viruses from jumping from wild
reaucratic response, never elevated to the White House level," to human worlds. But unlike Predict, STOP Spillover plans to
he said. But White House budget plans had already proposed address viruses that scientists already know are out there. It
cutting funds to the section of USAID that granted Predict's isn't looking for new organisms ready to make the leap.
>
Peter Doszok,
photographed in
Moy via Zoom.
In 2018, he and
o group of col-
leagues warned
the WHO of on
upcoming pan-
demic very much
like Covid-19.

Meanwhile, the virus behind Covid-19 became the center ofand we're doing everything possible to help them emerge," says
conspiracy theories,some of them promoted by political leadPeter Daszak, a disease ecologist who is the EcoHealth Alliance's
ers. These theories contended that the virus was not part of a
president."We're going into bat caves,sheltering from the rain.
natural spillover, but a bioweapon created in a Chinese lab.We're digging out bat feces, spreading it on vegetable plots
On April 3 0,the U.S.Office of the Director of National Intelli
across Southeast Asia, selling it online as medicine.We're hunt
ing bats to take them home, and chop them up and eat them
gence tried to put the matter to rest: "The entire Intelligence
Community ... concurs with the wide scientific consensus or sell them,getting bitten, getting scratched.That's happening
that the Covid-19 virus was not manmade or genetically mod millions of times a year. And we're connected to where that hap
ified." Still,politicians continued to express suspicion toward
pens by less than a day's travel. It's just the perfect storm."
scientists in Wuhan,China,where the pandemic originated. Throughout the early months of the pandemic, Anthony
This had repercussions for the EcoHealth Alliance, one ofkept going to work. Part of his role at Columbia is to manage the
the Predict partners. At the end of April, the National Insti
secure laboratory where viruses can be analyzed without pos
tutes of Health canceled a longstanding, peer-reviewed $3.7 ing a hazard,and that was considered essential. As he walked
million grant to the EcoHealth Alliance because it had sent through the emptied city, he thought about the lessons posed
$76,000of the grant money to the Wuhan Institute of Virologyby the many viruses he has examined."It's critically important
to support joint work on bat coronaviruses. The cancellationthat we try to identify where this virus came from,so that we
came after a reporter mischaracterized the grant in a question
can have some idea whether this will happen again," he says.
to President Trump,and it sparked a furious reaction,includ Last summer,Anthony and his partner,Andrew,bought an
English setter puppy,a reminder of Anthony's home that they
ing letters of protest sent to the National Institutes of Health.
One of these letters was signed by 77 Nobel laureates, and named Argus, after a creature in Greek mythology that could
another came from the membership of 31 scientific societies,see in every direction because it was covered with 100 eyes.
totaling several hundred thousand scientists. Being an English setter,Argus the dog is covered in spots. ("I
Meanwhile, Carroll is moving on. In February, he incorpo
wish I had the seeing power of Argus when it comes to predict
rated a new nonprofit called the Global Virome Project. The ing emerging infectious diseases," Anthony says.) In the eve
project is still in its infancy and seeking out funding, but it
nings after Anthony left the lab, scientist and dog would walk
aims to massively scale up the work of Predict, recruiting the empty streets together. Argus trotted dutifully on a leash
national laboratories across the globe. The goal is to create a
at his heels, but every time they passed a fenced dog park,
shared atlas and surveillance network for the still-unidentified
locked to keep people from congregating unsafely, Anthony
viruses believed to exist in mammals and birds. could feel the puppy yearning for freedom.
"It's about changing the paradigm," Carroll says. "From He shares the dog's longing for things to return to normal.
waiting and reacting, to going where the viruses are, beforeBut he hopes,when that comes,that we don't Jose the insight
they come to us." we have painfully gained.
"I hope it is a wake-up call," he tells me. "We have to be
more prepared.We have to understand this risk better." When
the current pandemic is contained, it will be essential to re
IN THE MEANTIME, the risks of new virus spillovers are not member how quickly the entire world can be shut down by a
decreasing. "These things are out there, waiting to emerge, single virus-and how everyone's lives can change.•

Photographs and text by
NICOLA MUIRHEAD
as cold to ANNA DIAMOND

A QUARANTINED PHOTOGRAPHER MAKES
THE MOST OF THE HARSH MATERIALS
AT HAND TO CREATE A FRAGILE PORTRAIT

OF HER STRANGELY ALTERED LIFE

-
Surprisingly beautiful pictures
evoke the transformed nature
of Muirhead's daily life in
London during Covid-19 re-
strictions. Clockwise, from top,
Financial District buildings
rendered abstract by soap
solutions; faded bedside tu
lips; a self-portrait, doused in
bleach; the couple's clasping
hands; a bleach-washed
portrait of her husband.
I
N MID-MARCH, days before Britain
instituted a lockdown, I flew from my
native Bermuda, where I'd been doc
umenting the island's diverse identi-
ty in a personal photo project, to my
home in the London neighborhood of
Bermondsey. My husband and I began to self-isolate. So I started applying the chemicals that now seem
Suddenly confined to our house and worried about to define our days to the images themselves. While
the worsening Covid-19 outbreak, I picked up my the Polaroids develop, or soon after, I pour bleach,
camera and started taking Polaroid photographs-of dishwashing liquid, hand sanitizer and other disin
my husband, myself and our surroundings. At first, I fectants onto them. Even when I take a photograph
saw capturing these quiet domestic scenes as a way I don't want to alter, I make myself do it as part of
to get my mind off the outside world. recording the surreal time we're living through.
In this new reality, the repetition of unfamiliar This intervention is an effort to visualize the in
-
routines that were intended to keep us safe-disin visible forces that have been permeating our daily
fecting all the groceries when we came home, wash lives-from the lethal, microscopic coronavirus to
ing my hands so much the skin began cracking our unseen, yet acutely felt, unease.
made me feel more anxious and frustrated. But it's also a representation of the new and un
known world that will come out of this moment
perhaps we will emerge more connected and resil
During the pandemic even
a sight as familiar as the
ient than before. ♦
Tower Bridge was exotic-
a feeling captured in a
Polaroid treated with
water and bleach.

rr
Now is the time to visit all the
celebrated places in the countr� J
and fill our heads with what
we hove seen) so that when we
become old and bold we will
hove something to JJ talk about
0Ver the teOCUpS, -Jippenshalkku,1802
THE FOREST TRAIL I WAS HIKING INTO THE KISO "' dangerous, it was thought, as they could be white fox
A feudal proces-
Mountains of Japan had the dreamlike beauty of an sion sets out from es who would lure the unwary into disaster.
anime fantasy. Curtains of gentle rain, the tail-end of the Nihonbashi in Modern Japan seemed even more distant when
Edo in this 1833-
a typhoon in the South China Sea, were drifting across 34 woodblock I emerged from the woods into the hamlet of Otsu
worn cobblestones that had been laid four centuries print from the se mago. Not a soul could be seen in the only laneway.
ries "Fifty-three
ago, swelling the river rushing below and waterfalls Stations of the The carved wooden balconies of antique houses
that burbled in dense bamboo groves. And yet, ev Tokaido Road" leaned protectively above, each one garlanded with
by Utagawa
ery hundred yards or so, a brass bell was hung with Hiroshige. chrysanthemums, persimmons and mandarin trees,
an alarming sign: "Ring Hard Against Bears." Only a and adorned with glowing lanterns. I identified my
PREVIOUS PAGE:
few hours earlier, I had been in Tokyo among futuris The historic lodgings, the Maruya Inn. from a lacquered sign. It
tic skyscrapers bathed in pulsing neon. Now I had to village of Mag had first opened its doors in 1789, the year Europe
ome, the 43rd of
worry about encounters with carnivorous beasts? It 69 stations an was plunging into the French Revolution, harbin
the Nakasendo ger of decades of chaos in the West. At the same
seemed wildly unlikely, but, then again, travelers have Road. Close-up
for centuries stayed on their toes in this fairytale land detail of fabric time here in rural Japan-feudal, hermetic, entirely
from the shop of
scape. A Japanese guidebook I was carrying, written fashion designer unique-an era of peace and prosperity was under
in 1810, included dire warnings about supernatural Jun Obora. way in a society as intricate as a mechanical clock,
threats: Solitary wayfarers met on remote trails might and this remote mountain hostelry was welcoming
really be ghosts, or magical animals in human form. a daily parade of traveling samurai, scholars, poets
Beautiful women walking alone were particularly and sightseers.
71+ SMITHSONIAN July • August 2020

There was no answer when I called in the door, < was very lively socially and culturally, with a great
so, taking off my shoes, I followed a corridor of lac The Hoshinoyo deal of freedom and movement within the system."
Hotel in Tokyo
quered wood to an open hearth, where a blackened is designed as It was the Eastern version of the Pax Romana.
iron kettle hung. At the top of creaking stairs were a traditional The new era had begun dramatically in 1600, when
Japanese inn,
three simple guest rooms, each with springy woven or ryokon, with centuries of civil wars between Japan's 250-odd
mats underfoot, sliding paper-screen doors and fu tatami mots, warlords came to an end with a cataclysmic battle
rice-paper
tons. My 1810 guidebook offered travelers advice on screens end hot on the mist-shrouded plains of Sekigahara. The vi
settling in to lodging: After checking in, the author spring baths. sionary, icily cool general Tokugawa Ieyasu-a man
suggests, locate the bathroom, secure your bedroom described in James Clavell's fictionalized account
door, then identify the exits in case of fire. Shogun as being "as clever as a Machiavelli and as
The only sign of the 21st century was the vending ruthless as Attila the Hun"-formally became sho
machine by the front doorway, its soft electric glow gun in 1603 and moved the seat of government from
silhouetting cans of iced coffee, luridly colored fruit Kyoto, where the emperor resided as a figurehead, to
sodas and origami kits. And the antique aura was Edo (now Toyko), thus giving the era its most com
hardly broken when the owners, a young couple with mon name, "the Edo period." (Tokugawa is about to
a toddler and a puppy, emerged with a pot of green receive a renewed burst of fame next year on FX with
tea. Their elderly parents were the inn's cooks, and a new adaptation of Clavell's novel.) He immediately
soon we all gathered for a traditional country dinner set about wiping out all bandits from
of lake fish and wild mushrooms over soba (buck
wheat noodles). Looking out through the shutters
later that night, I saw the clouds part briefly to reveal
the countryside and building
a new communication
system for his domain.
•
a cascade of brilliant stars. It was the same timeless From a bridge in front of
view seen by one of Japan's many travel-loving po his palace in Edo, the five
ets, Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), who had also hiked highways (called the Tokai
this route, known as the Nakasendo Road, and was do, Nakasendo, Nikko Kaido,
inspired to compose a haiku: Oshu Kaido and Koshu Kai
do) spread in a web across
Flowing riglu in crescent-shaped Honshu,
to the Kiso Mountains: largest of Japan's four main
the Milky Way. islands.
Expanding in many ar
From 1600 to 1868, a secretive period under the eas on ancient foot trails,
Tokugawa dynasty of shoguns, or military overlords, the arteries were first
Japan would largely cut itself off from the rest of the constructed to secure
world. Foreign traders were isolated like plague-bear
ers; by law, a few uncouth, louse-ridden Dutch "bar
barians" and Jesuits were permitted in the port of Na
gasaki, but none was allowed beyond the town walls.
Any Japanese who tried to leave was executed. A rich Pacific
aura of mystery has hung over the era, with distorted Ocean
visions filtering to the outside world that have en
dured until recently. "There used to be an image
of Japan as an entirely rigid country, with
the people locked in poverty under
an oppressive military system,�
says Andrew Gordon of Har
vard University, author of
A Modern History of Ja-
pan: from Tokugawa
Times to the Present.
But the 270-year 100miles
long time capsule
MI M
is now regarded as
more fluid and rich,
he says. "A lot of the -OshuKaido
harshest feudal laws -Nikko Kaido
were not enforced. It -Koshu Kaido
--Nakasendo
-Tokaido
�rst built in 1617
e elaborate
toshogu Shnne
. .
com" PIex 1n
N 1kko includes
the mausoleum
bel.,eved to con
tain th e remains
of Tokugawa
I ey <;isu, the Ed
period's first a
shogun .
Tokugawa's power, allowing easy transit for officials and a way Japan's thriving publishing industry catered to the trend
to monitor the populace. Although beautifully engineered with the likes of my 1810 volume, Ryoko Yojinshu, roughly,
and referred to as "highways," the tree-lined paths, which Travel Tips (and published in a translation by Wilson as Afoot
were mostly of stone, were all designed for foot traffic, since in Japan). Written by a little-known figure named Yasumi
wheeled transport was banned and only top-ranking samu Roan, the guide offers 61 pieces of advice, plus "Instructional
rai, the elite warrior class, were legally permitted to travel on Poems" for beginners on the Japanese road, covering every
horseback. An elaborate infrastructure was created along the thing from etiquette to how to treat sore feet.
routes, with carved road markers placed every ri, 2.44 miles, There were best-selling collections of haikus by celebrated
and 248 "post stations" constructed every five or six miles, poets who caught the travel bug, pioneered by Matsuo Basho
each with a luxurious inn and a relay center for fresh porters. (1644-94), who was wont to disappear for months at a time
Travelers were forbidden to stray from the set routes and were "roughing it," begging and scribbling as he went. His shoe
issued wooden passports that would be examined at regular string classics include Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones
security checkpoints, kneeling in the sand before local magis and The Knapsack Notebook, both titles that Jack Kerouac
trates while their luggage was searched for firearms. might have chosen. Even famous artists hit the road, captur
Among the first beneficiaries of the highway system were ing postcard-like scenes of daily life at every stop-travelers
the daimyo, feudal lords, who were required by the shogun to enjoying hot baths, or being ferried across rivers by near
spend every second year with their entourages in Edo, creat naked oarsmen-then binding them into souvenir volumes
ing regular spasms of traffic around the provinces. But the side of polychrome woodblock prints with tourist-friendly titles
effect was to usher in one of history's golden ages of tourism. like The Sixty Nine Stations of the Kisokaido Road or One Hun
"The shoguns were not trying to promote leisure travel," says dred Famous Views of Edo. Many later filtered to Europe and
Laura Nenzi, professor of history at the University of Tennes the United States. The works of the master Utagawa Hiroshige
see and author of Excursions in Identity: Travel and the Inter (1797-1858) were so highly regarded that they were copied by
section of Place, Gender, and Status in Edo Japan. "But as a the young Vincent van Gogh and collected by Frank Lloyd
means of social control, the highway system backfired. It was Wright. For travelers. following the remains of the shogun
so efficient that everyone could take advantage of it. By the late age provides a tantalizing doorway into a world rarely seen
1700s, Japan had a whole travel industry in place." Japan was by outsiders. The fiye ancient highways still exist. Like the
by then teeming with 30 million people, many of them highly pagan roads of Europe, most have been paved over, but a few
cultured-the era also consolidated such quintessential arts isolated sections have survived, weaving through remote ru
as kabuki theater, jujutsu, haiku poetry and bonsai trees-and ral landscapes that have remained unchanged for centuries.
taking advantage of the economic good times, it became fash They promise an immersion into a distant era that remains
ionable to hit the road. "Now is the time to visit all the celebrat laden with romance-and a surprising key to understanding
ed places in the country," the author Jippensha Ikku declared modern Japan.
in 1802, "and fill our heads with what we have seen, so that
when we become old and bald we will have something to talk
about over the teacups." Like the sophisticated British aristo
crats on grand tours of Europe, these Japanese sightseers trav
eled first as a form of education, seeking out renowned histor
ical sites, beloved shrines and scenery. They visited volcanic
hot baths for their health. And they went on culinary tours, MY JOURNEY BEGAN AS IT DID CENTURIES AGO, IN TOKYO,
savoring specialties like yuba, tofu skin prepared by monks a famously overwhelming megalopolis of 24-hour light and
a dozen different ways in Nikko. "Every strata of society was surging crowds. I felt as disoriented as a shipwrecked 18th-cen
on the road," explains the scholar William Scott Wilson, who tury European sailor as I rode speeding subways through the
translated much of the poetry from the period now available in alien cityscape. "Japan is still very isolated from the rest of the
English. "Samurai, priests, prostitutes, kids out for a lark, and world," noted Pico Iyer, a resident for over 30 years and the
people who just wanted to get the hell out of town." author, most recently, of A Beginner's Guide to Japan: Obser
The coastal highway from Kyoto to Edo, known as the To vations and Provocations, adding that it ranks 29th out of 30
kaido, could be comfortably traveled in 15 days and saw a countries in Asia for proficiency in English, below North Ko
constant stream of traffic. And on all five highways, the infra rea, Indonesia and Cambodia. "To me, it still seems more like
structure expanded to cater to the travel craze, with the post another planet." It was some comfort to recall that travelers
stations attracting armies of souvenir vendors, fast-food cooks have often felt lost in Edo, which by the 18th century was the
and professional guides, and sprouting inns that catered to world's largest city, packed with theaters, markets and teem
every budget. While most were decent, some of the one-star ing red-light districts.
lodgings were noisy and squalid, as described by one haiku: Luckily, the Japanese have a passion for history, with their
television full of splendid period dramas and anime depictions
Fleas and lice, of ancient stories, complete with passionate love affairs, betray
the horse pissing als, murder plots and seppuku, ritual suicides. To facilitate my
next to my pillow. own transition to the past, I checked into the Hoshinoya Hotel,

An open-hearth
fireplace at o for
mer honjin, on inn
for elite govern
ment officials, in
the post town of
Ouchi✓uku. The
entire village hos
been preserved t o
appear a s it did
in the Edo period.
a 17-story skyscraper sheathed in leaf-shaped latticework, ere·
ating a contemporary update of a traditional inn in the heart of
the city. The automatic entrance doors were crafted from raw,
knotted wood, and opened onto a lobby of polished cedar. Staff
swapped my street shoes for cool slippers and secured them in
bamboo lockers, then suggested I change into a kimono. The
rooms were decorated with the classic mat floors. futons and
paper screens to diffuse the city's neon glow, and there was
even a communal, open-air bathhouse on the skyscraper's roof·
top that uses thermal waters pumped from deep under Tokyo.
Stepping outside the doors, I navigated the ancient capital
with an app called Oedo Konjaku Monogatari, "Tales From
Edo Times Past." It takes the street map of wherever the user is
standing in Tokyo and shows how it looked in the 1800s, 1700s,
then 1600s. Clutching my iPhone, I wove past the moat-lined
Imperial Palace to the official starting point of the five Tokuga·
wa-era highways, the Nihonbashi. "Japan Bridge." First built in
1603, it was a favorite subject for artists, who loved the colorful
throngs of travelers, merchants and fishmongers. The elegant
wooden span was replaced in 1911 by a stolid granite bridge,
and is now overshadowed by a very unpicturesque concrete
expressway, although its "zero milestone" plaque is still used
for all road measurements in Japan. To reimagine the original
travel experience, I dashed to the cavernous Edo-Tokyo Mu·
seum, where the northern half of the original bridge has been
recreated in 1:1 scale. Standing on the polished wooden crest,
jostled by Japanese schoolkids, I recalled my guidebook's
210-year-old advice: "On the first day of a journey, step out
firmly but calmly, making sure that your footwear has adapted
itself to your feet." Straw sandals were the norm, so podiatry
was a serious matter: The book includes a diagram on how
to alleviate foot pain, and suggests a folk remedy, a mash of
earthworms and mud, be applied to aching arches.
OF THE FIVE HIGHWAYS, THE NIKKO KAIDO-ROAD TO

Nikko-had special historical status. The serene mountain
aerie 90 miles north of Edo was renowned for its scenery who would shout, "Down! Down!," a warning for common·
and ornate Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. One of the ers to prostrate themselves and avert their eyes, lest samurai
shrines. Toshogu, is traditionally held to house the remains test the sharpness of their swords on their necks.
of the all-conquering shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. who found· Today, travelers generally reach Nikko on the Tobu train,
ed the dynasty. This balance of nature, history and art was although it still has its storybook charm. At the station be·
so idyllic that a Japanese saying went, "Never say the word fore boarding, I picked up a bento box lunch called "golden
'beautiful' until you have seen Nikko." Later shoguns would treasure," inspired by an ancient legend of gold buried by a
travel there to venerate their ancestors in processions that samurai family near the route. It included a tiny shovel to
dwarfed the Elizabethan progresses of Tudor England. Their dig up "bullion"-flecks of boiled egg yolk hidden beneath
samurai entourages could number in the thousands, the layers of rice and vegetables. In Nikko itself, the shogun's
front of their heads shaven and carrying two swords on their enormous temple complex still had military echoes: It had
left hip, one long, one short. These parades were a powerful been taken over by a kendo tournament, where dozens of
martial spectacle, a river of colorful banners and uniforms,
Tony Perrottet is the author of six books on travel history and
glittering spears and halberds, their numbers clogging up "--
the host of a new podcast, "History Unzipped."
BYLINES
mountain passes for days and providing an economic bo· , Photographer Hiroshi Okamoto is based in Tokyo. This is his
"- first assignment for the magazine.
nanza for farmers along the route. They were led by heralds

black-robed combatants were dueling with bamboo "' a short, serene stretch is kept free of cars. Another
A carving of the
sticks while emitting blood-curdling shrieks. Their Three Wise Mon miraculous survivor is the restored post station of
gladiatorial cries followed me around Japan's most keys on the sa Ouchi-Juku, north of Nikko. Its unpaved main street
cred stable at the
lavish shrine, now part of a Unesco World Heritage Nikko Toshogu is lined with whitewashed, thatch-roof structures,
site, whose every inch has been carved and decorat Shrine complex. some of which now contain teahouses where soba
It is thought
ed. The most famous panel, located beneath eaves to be the first noodles are eaten with hook-shaped pieces of leek
dripping with gilt, depicts the Three Wise Monkeys, representation instead of spoons. Its most evocative structure is a
of the pictorial
the original of the maxim "See No Evil, Hear No maxim. honjin (now a museum), one of the luxurious ancient
Evil, Speak No Evil." inns built for VIPs: Behind its ornate ceremonial en
As for the ancient highway, there were tantaliz trance, travelers could luxuriate with private baths,
ing glimpses. A 23-mile stretch to the west of Nikko soft bedding and skilled chefs preparing delicacies
is lined by 12,000 towering cryptomeria trees, or like steamed eel and fermented octopus in vinegar.
sugi, that were planted after the death of the first These were vivid connections to the past, but the
Tokugawa shogun, each nearly 400-year-old elder shogun-era highway itself, I discovered, was gone.
lovingly numbered and. maintained by townsfolk. To follow one on foot, I would have to travel to more
It's the longest avenue of trees in the world, but only remote locales.
83
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July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN
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DURING THE HEIGHT OF THE TRAVEL BOOM, FROM THE
1780s to the 1850s, discerning sightseers followed the advice
of Confucius: "The man of humanity takes pleasure in the
mountains." And so did I, heading into the spine of Japan to
find the last traces of the Nakasendo highway ("central moun
tain route"). Winding 340 miles from Edo to Kyoto, the trail
was long and often rugged, with 69 post stations. Travelers
had to brave high passes along trails that would coil in hair
pin bends nicknamed dako, "snake crawl," and cross rickety
suspension bridges made of planks tied together by vines. But
it was worth every effort for the magical scenery of its core
stretch, the Kiso Valley, where 11 post stations were nestled
among succulent forests, gorges and soaring peaks-all im
mortalized by the era's intrepid poets, who identified, for ex
ample, the most sublime spots to watch the rising moon.
Today, travelers can be thankful for the alpine terrain: By
passed by train lines, two stretches of the Nakasendo Trail
were left to quietly decay until the 1960s, when they were sal
vaged and restored to look much as they did in shogun days.
They are hardly a secret but remain relatively liule visited,
due to the eccentric logistics. And so I set out to hike both
sections over three days, hoping to engage with rural Japan
in a manner that the haiku master Basho himself once ad
vised: "Do not simply follow in the footsteps of the ancients,"
he wrote to his fellow history-lovers; "seek what they sought."
It took two trains and a bus to get from Tokyo to the for
mer post station of Magome, the southern gateway to the Kiso
Valley. Edo-era travelers found it a seedy stopover: Sounding
like cranky TripAdvisor reviewers today, one dismissed it as
"miserable," another as "provincial and loutish," filled with
cheap flophouses where the serving girls doubled as prosti
tutes. In modern Magome, framed by verdant peaks, sleepy
streets have a few teahouses and souvenir stores that have
been selling the same items for generations: Jacquerware box
es, dried fish, mountain herbs and sake from local distilleries.
My guidebook advised: "Do not drink too much. / Yet just a
little from time to time/ is good medicine." Still, I ordered the
ancient energy food for hikers, gohei, rice balls on skewers Some remain today, such as a haiku by Masaoka Shiki (1867-
grilled in sweet chestnut sauce, and then I set off into a forest 1902):
that was dripping from a summer downpour.
Once again, I had heeded the Ryoko Yojinshu's advice for be White clouds,
ginners: Pack light. ("You may think that you need to bring a green leaves, young leaves,
Jot of things, but in fact, they will only become troublesome.") for miles and miles.
In Edo Japan, this did not mean stinting on art: The author's
list of essentials includes ink and brush for drawing and a A modern sign I passed was almost as poetic: "When it sees
journal for poems. For the refined sightseers, one of travel's trash, the mountain cries." Wooden plaques identified sites
great pleasures was to compose their own haikus, inspired with enigmatic names like The Male Waterfall and The Fe
by the glimpse of a deer or the sight of falling autumn leaves, male Waterfall, or advised that I had reached a "lucky point"
often in homage to long-dead poets they admired. Over the in numerology, 777 meters above sea level-"a powerful spot
generations, the layers of literature became a tangible part of of the happiness." Another identified a "baby bearing" tree: A
the landscape as locals engraved the most beloved verse on newborn was once found there, and women travelers still boil
trailside rocks. the bark as a fertility tea.

But their impact paled beside the urgent yellow A half-hour later, a bamboo grove began to part
Fashion designer
placards warning about bear attacks, accompanied by Jun Obara, at near the trail ahead. I froze, half-expecting to be
the brass bells that were placed every hundred yards his shop in the mauled by angry bears. Instead, a clan of snow
post town of Tsu
or so. Far-fetched as it seemed, locals took the threat mago, finds in monkeys appeared, swinging back and forth on
seriously: A store in Magome had displayed a map cov spiration for his the flexible stalks like trapeze artists. In fact. I soon
mod apparel in
ered with red crosses to mark recent bear sightings, traditional Jap found, the Japanese wilderness was close to Eden
anese designs
and every Japanese hiker I met wore a tinkling "bear and embroidery
ic. The only bugs I encountered were dragonflies
bell" on their pack strap. [t was some consolation to techniques. and tiny spiders in webs garlanded with dew. The
recall that wild animals were far more of a concern only vipers had been drowned by villagers in glass
for hikers in the Edo period. My caution-filled guide jars to make snake wine, a type of sake considered a
book warned that travelers should be on the lookout delicacy. More often, the landscape seemed as ele
for wolves, wild pigs and poisonous snakes called gantly arranged as a temple garden, allowing me to
mamushi, pit vipers. The author recommends strik channel the nature-loving Edo poets, whose hearts
ing the path with a bamboo staff to scare them off, or soared at every step. "The Japanese still have the
smearing the soles of your sandals with cow manure. pantheistic belief that nature is filled with gods,"

Iyer had told me. "Deities inhabit every stream and tree and the routes of railways and freeways for generations to come.
blade of grass." When the country's first "bullet train" opened in 1964, it fol
As the trail zigzagged above the rushing Kiso River, I could lowed the route of the Tokaido. And in the latest sci-fl twist,
finally imagine the ancient "road culture" in all its high the the new maglev (magnetic levitation) superfast train will start
ater. A traveler would pass teams of porters clad only in loin operations from Tokyo to Osaka in 2045 -largely passing un
cloths and groups of pilgrims wearing broad-rimmed straw derground, through the central mountains, following a route
hats adorned with symbols, sometimes lugging portable shadowing the ancient Nakasendo highway.
shrines on their backs. There were wealthy travelers being As for me on the trail, jumping between centuries began to
carried in palanquins, wooden boxes with pillows, decora feel only natural. Hidden among the 18th-century facades of
tions and fine silk curtains. (My guidebook suggests ginger Tsumago, I discovered a tiny clothing store run by a puckish
tea for passengers who suffer from motion sickness.) One villager named Jun Obara, who proudly explained that he
could meet slow processions of zattou, blind masseurs, and only worked with a colorful material inspired by "sashiko,"
goze, women troubadours who played the sarnisen, a three once used for the uniforms of Edo-era firefighters. (He ex
stringed lute, and trilled classical songs. There were monks plained that their coats were reversible-dull on the outside
who banged drums and tossed amulets to bemused passers and luridly colored on the inside, so they could go straight
by; shaven-headed nuns; country doctors in black jackets, from a fire to a festival.) I spent one night at an onsen, an inn
lugging medicine boxes fiUed with potions. Near the post attached to natural hot springs, just as foot-sore Eda-travel
station of Tsumago, travelers would also encounter vendors ers did; men and women today bathe separately, although
selling fresh bear liver, a medicinal treat devoured to gain the still unashamedly naked, in square cedar tubs, watching the
animal's strength. stars through waves of steam. And every meal was a message
Today, Tsumago is the crown jewel of post stations. During from the past, including one 15-course dinner that featured
its restoration, electricity lines were buried, TV antennas re centuries-old specialties like otaguri-"boiled horse's intes
moved and vending machines hidden. Cars cannot enter its tine mixed with miso sauce."
narrow laneways during daylight hours, and its trees have But perhaps the most haunting connection occurred after
been manicured. Even the mailman wears period dress. I took a local train to Yabuhara to reach the second stretch
of the trail and climbed to the 3,600 -foot-high Torii Pass.
At the summit stood a stone Shinto gate framed by chest
nut trees. I climbed the worn stone steps to find an over
grown shrine filled with moss-coated sculptures-images
of Buddhist deities and elderly sages in flowing robes who
had once tended to the site, one wearing a red bib, consid
THE SHOGUNATE'S TIME CAPSULE BEGAN TO CRACK IN ered a protection from demons.The shrine exuded ancient
1853 with the arrival of U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry, who mystery. And yet, through a gap in the trees, was a timeless
cruised into Edo Bay in a battleship and threatened bom view of Mount Ontake, a sacred peak that Basho had once
bardments if Japan did not open its doors to the West. In admired on the same spot:
1867, progressive samurai forced the last shogun to cede his
powers, in theory, to the 122nd emperor, then only 16 years Soaring above
old, beginning a period that would become known as the Mei the skylark:
ji Restoration (after "enlightened rule"). Paradoxically, many the mountain peak!
of the same men who had purportedly "restored" the ancient
imperial institution of the Chrysanthemum Throne became By the time I returned to Tokyo, the layers of tradition and
the force behind modernizing Japan. The Westernization modernity no longer felt at odds; in fact, the most striking
program that foUowed was a cataclysmic shift that would thing was the sense of continuity with the ancient world. "Ja
change Asian history. pan changes on the surface so as not to change on a deeper
The old highway systems had one last cameo in this operat level," Pico Iyer explained. "When I first moved to the coun
ic drama. In 1868, the newly coronated teen emperor traveled try 30 years ago, I was surprised by how Western everything
with 3,300 retainers from Kyoto to Edo along the coastal To looked. But now I am more shocked at how ancient it is, how
kaido road. He became the first emperor in recorded history to rooted its culture and beliefs still are in the eighth century."
see the Pacific Ocean and Mount Fuji, and ordered his court This time. back at the Hoshinoya Hotel. I took the elevator
iers to compose a poem in their honor. But once he arrived, straight to the rooftop baths to watch the night sky, which was
the young ruler made Edo his capital, with a new name he framed by sleek walls as paper lamerns swayed in the summer
had recently chosen, Tokyo, and threw the country into the breeze. Even though Tokyo's electric glow engulfed the stars,
industrialization program that sealed the fate of the old road the great wanderers of the Edo era might still manage to feel
system. Not long after Japan's first train line opened, in 1872, at home in modern Japan, I realized. As Basho wrote in the
woodblock art began to have an elegiac air, depicting locomo poetry collection Narrow Road to the Interior, "The moon and
tives as they trundled past peasants in the rice fields. And yet sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on . .. Every
the highways retained a ghostly grip on the country, shaping day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."♦

A
PHOTOTGRAPH IC
JOURNEY
A COURAGEOUS AMERICAN'S CAMPAIGN TO WIN THE VOTE FOR

WOMEN INSPIRES A DRAMATIC HOMAGE A CENTURY LATER
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
JEANINE MICHNA-BALES
TEXT BY AMY CRAWFORD
()11 ()clohcr L 191(,.

Inez Milholland Boissevain, a 30-year
old lawyer and suffragist, boarded a train
in New York City, bound for Cheyenne,
Wyoming. Capital of the first Western
state to grant women the right to vote, it
would be one stop in a whirlwind, month
long speaking tour scheduled to take her
to roughly 30 cities, including Pocatello, >
Idaho and Sacramento, California. The valiant
Inez Milholland,
Milholland set out at a critical juncture standard-bearer
for the movement. Despite a groundswell in the notion's
struggle for
of support nationwide, President female enfran
Woodrow Wilson, seeking re-election that chisement, is
portrayed here
November, had delayed full endorsement by Isabella
of women's right to vote. Milholland and Serrano.

"I AM PREPARED TO SACRIFI<
"'
Writing to fellow activists, Milholland
described the garb she had worn In a
1911 New York City suffragist parade:
"The star of hope" symbolized "the
free woman of the future."
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Milholland's journey (her route
embroidered onto a 1916 map by L
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photographer Michna-Bales) began
in New York City and covered some
12,000 miles. From Chicago to Los
Angeles, she kept a grueling pace,
delivering more than 50 speeches in
.. ,.
eight states over 28 days, in settings
from railroad cars to grand hotels.
I
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rERY SO-CALLED PRIVILEGE I POSSESS IN ORDER TO HAVE A FEW RIGHTS."
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In Portland, Oregon, Milholland declared: "You women
must assert yourselves, if you are to help reshape the world."
I 111111
91+ SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020

>
A re-enactor
named Tamara
Bridges Rothschild
and a gaggle
of costumed
extras reprise the
suffragist's whistle
stop in Cut Bank,
Montana.
her fellow suffragists were now appealing

INEZ MILHOLLAND directly to women in 11 Western states
.OISSEVAIN where they had already won the ballot,
I
asking them to cast protest votes against
Wilson. "This is the time to demonstrate
-, PALACE THBATBR :: our sisterhood, our spirit, our blithe
courage and our will," Milholland told the
TONICHT audiences that packed theaters and halls
along her route.
8:30 O'clock.
Bringing the last appeal of the east.em women to the "Inez was a spitfire," says Jeanine
West in behalf of the Michna-Bales, who recreated the
NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE. suffragist's journey for a new book
EVERYBODY COME and forthcoming traveling exhibition,
1
Black Eagle Band Standing Together: Photographs of Inez
Milholland's Final C(lmpaign for Women's
Suffrage. "She believed in equal rights for
"' men and women. She was determined not
When she rode into
the heart of Great Falls, to fail."
Montana, from the train
station, Milholland was
met by a "welcoming
committee in twenty
automobiles," one
news report said.

"WHEREVER WOMEN ARE SORROWING AND WORKING AND HOPIN(
>
The Reno theater
where Milholland
addressed a
crowd has been
Before catching demolished. The
a 3 a.m. connec photographer
tion to Reno, Mil staged the scene
holland stopped at a similar
in Winnemucca, historic venue
Nevada. "This in Dallas.
is the time to
fight," she
declared.
V
Dallas-based Michna-Bales combines

documentary photography with historical
re-enactment to make the past feel
more alive. In Milholland, she found the
ideal subject for commemorating the
centennial of the 19th Amendment to the
Constitution, giving American women the
right to vote. During the course of a year,
Michna-Bales retraced Milholland's cross
country odyssey. She found that while
many of the theaters where Milholland
had spoken had long since been torn
down, other locations, where Michna
Bales was able to set up the tableaux
she photographed, were still standing,
including historic hotels and small-town
train depots. And many of the mountain,
prairie and desert landscapes-where the
"sunset splashed the mountains and river

IEY ARE PRAYING FOR OUR SUCCESS."
July • August 2020 ] SMITHSONIAN 97

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Well-wishers Wearied by the pace,
commonly
<
Milholland admitted to
greeted reporters in Oregon:
In Virginia City, Milholland "I cannot see how
Nevada, Milhol with flowers. I keep going, but I
land's arrival A vintage just have to.·
attracted about styled
500 people who bouquet in
were summoned Glenns Ferry,
ta her rousing Idaho.
speech by fire de
partment alarms,
school bells and
whistles that
usually marked
shift changes at
the local mine.
July • Aug ust 2020 I SMITHSONIAN 99

100 SMITHSONIAN j July • August 2020
"MR. PRESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?"
Western
newspapers
documented
what would be
Milholland's final
appearances. In
Los Angeles, she
collapsed-"like
a wilted white
rose" -according
to press reports.
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route to Oregon in letters to her husband J":lE:
in New York City, Eugen Boissevain California Women Uracd to Vote:;::
Apiast,,{)clQ.OCJ"ats for Dcnyiq- §
appeared little changed. Freedom of Sex
But as Milholland maintained
her grueling pace, she was growing
increasingly ill. A chronic condition,
pernicious anemia, was aggravated by
the campaign. Milholland collapsed mid
speech in Los Angeles on October 23 and
died there a month later.
��tr��
Milholland would become a potent
symbol, a martyr to the cause and an
inspiration to the two million members of
the National American Woman Suffrage
Association. They would fight on until
August 1920, when Tennessee became the
final state to ratify the 19th Amendment. ♦

ANNIHILATE THE ENEMY. That ,vas Adolf Hitler"s standing order to
his elite Waffen-SS as the Wehrn1acht sought to break the Allies'
tightening grip in late 1944 by crashing through enemy lines in an
audacious counteroffensive that ,vould becon1e knovvn as the Bat
tle of the Bulge. The Flihrer's edict vvas enforced in the ice-encrust
ed fields outside the Belgian city of Nlaln1edy. On the afternoon of
December 17, a battle group of the arn1ored First SS Panzer Division
ambushed a band of lightly armed U.S. troops. The overvvheln1ed
American Gls' only option vvas to raise vvhite flags.
The I azis accepted their
surrender and assen1bled
SENATOR MCCARTHY'S the An1erican prisoners.
NAZI PROBLEM Most, they mowed down
vvith machine guns. They
used their rifle butts to
crush the skulls of others.
The Wisconsin firebrand sided with the Those seeking refuge in
German military in a war crimes trial,
raising questions about his anti-Semitism. a cafe vvere burned alive
A new look at a nearly forgotten episode or shot. Earlier that day,
outside the nearby tovvn
of Honsfeld, an An1erican
corporal named Johnnie Steglc vvas randomly selected from a line
of captives by an SS soldier vvho summoned his best English to yell,
"Hey, you!" Then he raised a revolver to Stegle·s forehead, killing him
instantly. By day's end, the toll exceeded 150, vvith 84 murdered at
the deadliest of those encounters: the ill-famed Malmcdv Massacre.
The stories of those murdered prisoners of vvar might never have
been told, but 50 Americans played dead or overcame their vvound�
and later recounted the fate of their executed con1patriots. Once
the fighting ,vas done, the Amer
icans tracked down 75 of the cul
prits, from generals to rank-and-tile /Jy Larry Tye
Gcrn1an soldiers. Their trial in the il/11s1 rn1io11 /J\' Chloe Cushman
spring and summer of 1946, held in

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the former concentration camp in Dachau, Germany, was A
among the most intensely followed of the era. The charges in The remains of
American prisoners
cluded 12 alleged war crimes committed in the general area of of war murdered in
December 1944 near
Malmedy over the course of a month, resulting in the deaths the Belgian city of
of 350 unarmed American POWs and 100 Belgian civilians. Malmedy. The bod
ies were identified
In July 1946, all but one of the defendants was pronounced by number for use
guilty, with 43 condemned to death and 22 to life in prison. in war crimes trials
brought against
The Allies saw Malmedy as a metaphor for Nazi heinous more than 70 Nazi
ness and American justice. The frozen corpses of slaugh soldiers by the U.S.
military.
tered POWs had been retrieved and carefully autopsied. In
trepid U.S. investigators gathered evidence and conducted
in-depth interviews of survivors from both sides. Military
>
prosecutors laid out a vivid portrait not just of this act of bar The trial, held from
barity, but of the modus operandi of the SS, the most savage May to July 1946
in the farmer con
of Hitler's war-makers. centration camp at
An alternative telling of the story arose during and after Dachou, Germany,
charged German
the proceedings, however, that made it the most controversial generals along with
war-crimes trial in U.S. history. The new version of the inci rank-and-file sol
diers. All but one of
dent flipped the script, casting as malefactors the Army inves the defendants was
found guilty; within
tigators, prosecution team and military tribunal. In this story, a decade, all
American interrogators cruelly tortured the German defen- walked free.
101t SMITHSONIAN July • August 2020

dants-they were said to have kicked their testicles ''THERE WAS SCARCELY A
and wedged burning matches under their finger
nails-and the German confessions were coerced. PROFESSIONAL AMERICAN
The United States was out for vengeance, this theory ANTI-SEMITE WHO HAD
held, which shouldn't have been surprising given
NOT PUBLICLY ENDORSED
that some of the investigators were Jews. Yes. war
was brutal, but any atrocities committed that De- THE SENATOR."
cember day in 1944 should be laid at the feet of the
Nazi generals who issued the orders, not the troops
who followed them. Yes, America had won the war,
and it was imposing a classic victor's justice. The
primary advocates of this alternative narrative were the chief start, was granted special authorization by the panel to sit in
defense attorney, the convicted perpetrators and their ex-Nazi as an observer.
supporters, some U.S. peace activists and, most surprising, the At the time, McCarthy was less than halfway through his
junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph R. McCarthy. first term in the Senate, and he hadn't yet launched the reck
Three years after the verdicts, the Army appointed a com less crusade against alleged Communists that would turn his
mission to sort out the conflicting interpretations of the name into an "ism." Relegated to the status of a backbencher
Malmedy prosecutions. That probe spawned more lurid after Democrats took control of the Senate in 1949, McCarthy
news accounts of alleged coercion of testimony and mistreat was thirsting for a cause that would let him claim the spot
ment of the German inmates, which led the Army to name light. The cause that this ex-Marine and uber-patriot picked
yet another review panel. With political pressure building, as an apologist for the Nazi perpetrators of the bloodiest
in March 1949 the Senate convened a special investigatory slaughter of American soldiers during World War II-would,
subcommittee made up of Raymond Baldwin of Connecti more than anything he had done previously, define him for
cut, Estes Kefauver of Tennessee and Lester Hunt of Wyo his fellow senators and anybody else paying close attention.
ming. McCarthy, who'd been intensely interested from the But so few were paying him heed that no alarms were sound-
ed, and in short order his Malmedy trickery was over
shadowed by his campaign against those he branded
as un-American, an irony that lends special meaning to
this forgotten chapter in the making of Joe McCarthy.
MCCARTHY'S OBSESSION with Malmedy has been a

mystery to historians. Why would he jeopardize the "'
war-hero reputation that had helped him prevail in his �
bid for the U.S. Senate? Why focus on an episode most "
people were eager to forget? Clues about his behavior ....�
::,
reside in the personal and professional papers the sena-
5
tor's widow left to Marquette University, his alma mater,
60 years ago, but which had been under lock and key '"
D
z
until his family made them available exclusively to this
author. Those records, along with others provided by
the American military, offer insights into the complex �
machinations that drove this senator who recognized �
no restraints and would do anything to win. "':,....
His fascination grew out of a seemingly genuine fear 0
()
that Germans were being mistreated in the wake of the :i

war. It was an unusual posture for a returning GI, although 5�
he'd fought the Japanese as a Marine in the South Pacific, :
never the Nazis. During his 1946 Senate campaign, he'd g
:,;
charged that more than 100,000 German POWs were :,;
dying from "ill treatment and lack of food." And while it �
was a step too far for many to think that the U.S. armed g
services might take revenge on their former enemy, it �
wasn't for the senator who would be dubbed "Low Blow �
Joe." In his wartime diary, which was among the papers __« ....
:
I reviewed, he made clear how little use he had for Amer- �
ica's military brass, whom he called "mental midgets." 3
McCarthy himself never explained why he got entangled in the stand like that, Jean added, that made her fall in love with Joe.
Malmedy affair, but his wife, Jean, seemed to speak for him Those same files show that, while his opponents and some
when she insisted that his intent throughout was noble. "Joe felt journalists had dismissed McCarthy's claims that he was a tail
this was a brand of'justice' that could be turned against us in the gunner and bona fide hero during his World War II service, he
future," she wrote in an unpublished memoir buried in the sena was both, albeit with caveats. Officially, he served as a land
tor's files at Marquette University. "This was not a popular opin based intelligence officer, but he repeatedly volunteered for
ion to hold." It was his willingness to stake out an unpopular combat flights, some fraught with peril. And while he was an

unabashed self-promoter, exaggerating details of "THE CHAIRMAN REGRETS
his missions and the number of them he flew, his
documents and Marine Corps records suggest that THAT THE JUNIOR SENATOR
he deserved each of his 11 medals, commendations FROM WISCONSIN,
and ribbons. All of which makes his siding with the
MA. MCCARTHY, HAS
Malmedy murderers even more perplexing.
With McCarthy, however, nothing was ever simple, LOST HIS TEMPER."
and his political ambitions always factored in. He was
himself one-quarter German, and people with Ger
manic roots made up majorities in 41 of 72 Wiscon
sin counties. While it's unfair to assume those con-
stituents supported those who carried out the massacre, many Malmedy hearings suggested a deeper-seated anti-Semitism.
German-Americans nonetheless believed that not all German Why else would this one senator among 100 crusade to save
soldiers should be tainted as butchers. John Riedl, managing the worst of Hitler's shock troopers? Why single our Jewish
editor of the Appleton Post-Crescent, told friends that he was investigators who, McCarthy claimed during the hearings,
the one who'd talked McCarthy into attacking the Malmedy "intensely hate the German people as a race" and had formed
prosecutors, convincing him that German-American farmers what amounted to a "vengeance team?"
would thank him. But McCarthy, who came from that farm The view that McCarthy's reaction to the Malmedy prosecu
country, didn't need coaxing. tion was partly rooted in anti-Semitism was reinforced the fol
A more troubling theory popular with his critics holds lowing year, when he led a smear campaign against Anna Rosen
that McCarthy's actions regarding Malmedy were driven by berg, a Hungarian-born Jew and WWII heroine who was tapped
anti-Semitism. As evidence, they pointed to his casual and by Defense Secretary George Marshall to raise troops for the
frequent use of anti-Jewish slurs, which even his closest Korean War. McCarthy's allies included the Holocaust-denying
friends acknowledged to biographers. Les Chudakoff, his law- Ku Klux Klansman Wesley Swift, who said the nominee was not
merely a "Jewess" but "an alien from Bu
dapest with Socialistic ideas." In the end,
Republicans on the Armed Services Com
mittee joined Democrats in unanimously
approving the nomination, and McCarthy
himself was forced to do an about-face,
not just ending his bid to defeat Rosen
berg but voting to confirm her.
McCarthy again faced accusations of
an anti-Jewish fixation when, in 1953, he
went after alleged Communist subver
sives at the Army base at Fort Monmouth,
New Jersey. Of 45 civilians suspended
by the Army as possible security risks, 41
were Jews, whereas only 25 percent of the
base's overall civilian workforce was Jew
yer, was "a Hebe." A Jewish businessman McCarthy A ish, according to the Anti-Defamation League. McCar
The members
suspected of cheating him was "a little sheeny." And, of the Senate thy claimed that he was following the military's lead in
according to Army General Counsel John Adams, subcommittee picking his targets, but several witnesses who appeared
investigating the
the senator repeatedly referred to a Jewish staffer Malmedy pros at his hearings said the senator was singling out Jews.
he disdained as a "no good, just a miserable little ecutions. From The senator's defenders, however, pointed out
left, Lester Hunt
Jew." Then there was the support McCarthy got from of Wyoming, that he had Jewish friends and Jewish staffers (most
notorious Jew-haters like radio commentator Up Estes Kefauver notoriously the pugnacious lawyer Roy Cohn), and
of Tennessee
ton Close, and the backing McCarthy gave to fascist and Raymond that he advocated for Israel while decrying Soviet
activist William Dudley Pelley. "There was scarcely Baldwin of Con suppression of Jews. Notorious xenophobe and one-
necticut.
a professional American anti-Semite who had not time presidential candidate Agnes Waters went so
publicly endorsed the senator," said Arnold Forster, far as to accuse the senator of being a "crypto Jew,"
who followed the situation in real time as the general < claiming that "McCarthy" was a pseudonym used
McCarthy, a
counsel at the Anti-Defamation League. decorated WWII to disguise a Jewish surname. His friend Urban Van
For years, friends recounted how McCarthy veteran, was a Susteren called McCarthy out when he thought he
first-term sena
would pull out his copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf. say tor when he ac was wrong, including when he used the slur "Hebe,"
cused U.S. Army but he insisted that McCarthy found anti-Semitism
ing, "That's the way to do it." But, they were quick to prosecutors of
add, that was just Joe being provocative. Now, the malfeasance. personally abhorrent.
Van Susteren, in my view, overstated
the case. Anti-Semitism did factor into
McCarthy's attacks against the Malmedy
prosecutors and his defense of the per
petrators, and so did opportunism. The
incident, after all, put him on the center
stage he coveted, and gained him favor
with the political right that was becoming
his base of support. The Wisconsin sena
tor didn't have it in for Jews specifically
any more than he did gays, "pinkos," East
Coast intellectuals, Wall Street mavens,
Washington insiders, political journalists,
or anyone else he disdained and could vil
ify to score political points. Scapegoating
is part of every bully's playbook, and it's
why McCarthy became the archetype for
demagogues who came after him. It was
a game. He would savage an opponent in
the afternoon and that evening invite him
or her for a drink. He presumed his tar
gets knew the way sport worked.
WHATEVER COMBINATION of incen

tives drew McCarthy to the cause of the
Malmedy killers, once he got involved,
he convinced himself that what he was
saying was not just right, but righteous.
He was standing up not for Nazi assas
sins but against a "shameful episode" of
retributive justice by the U.S. military.
The fuel for his attacks came in letters
air-mailed or hand-delivered from a par
ish priest, an ex-Nazi lawyer, and others
in the American zone of a divided Ger
many, along with friends like Milwaukee
industrialist Walter Harnischfeger. They
laid out allegations of American abuse
and insisted the prisoners get clemency.
McCarthy bought the claims, which also
were sent to, and generally ignored by, other mem "' when the article's bylined author later said that it was
Anna Rosenberg,
bers of Congress. He championed proposed pardons. an assistant in fact written by an antiwar activist, and that much
And once the Senate investigation got underway in secretary of of it was exaggerated? What about McCarthy's other
defense, was the
the spring of 1949, he dominated the proceedings highest-ranking "sources," who, McCarthy said, had witnessed beat
that he was supposed to be merely observing. McCar woman in de ings but who later, on the stand, recanted their tales
partment history,
thy's name turned up in the transcripts of the hear but not before of tortured prisoners and biased investigators? It
ings 2,683 times, compared with 3,143 for Baldwin, facing a smear quickly became clear how ill-prepared the Wisconsin
campaign led by
578 for Hunt and 184 for Kefauver. McCarthy. senator was, in contrast to the thoughtful experts he
While he preferred to be the one asking questions, was challenging. His case in tatters, McCarthy turned
he was himself subjected to grilling by military law > to what would become his default tactic whenever he
yers, investigators and subcommittee senators. How California pastor was cornered: His adversaries were two-faced, he
Wesley Swift, a
could he be so sure about The Progressive magazine's Holocaust denier raged, and a lie detector could prove it.
allegations that Nazi prisoners had been abused and Ku Klux Klan "I think you are lying," he told Lt. William Perl, the
member, became
McCarthy's ally chief Malmedy investigator, a European-born Jew
in the unsuccess
MCCARTHY falsely accused the Army of Communist ful fight against
and a staunch defender of the Army's approach. "I
infiltration. See S111itlrso11ianmag.co111/mccartliy Rosenberg. do not think you can fool the lie detector. You may be

able to fool us." Perl, a psychologist as well as an attor "I AC CUSE IT OF ATTEMPTING
ney who'd helped smuggle 40,000 Jewish refugees to
Palestine before fleeing Vienna for the United States TO WHIT EWASH A
in 1940, made clear he wasn't intimidated by McCar- SHA MEFUL E PISO DE I N
thy. He agreed to subject himself to the polygraph but
THE HISTORY OF OUR
wondered sardonically, "Why [have) a trial at all? Get
the gu ys, and put the lie detector on them. 'Did you GLORIOUS ARMED F ORC ES."
kill this man?' The lie detector says 'Yes.' Go to the
scaffold. If it says, 'No'-back to Bavaria."
McCarthy knew the subcommittee would decline
his lie-detector demand, because members rightly
doubted the machine's accuracy and because fairness would press did care, and so, even before McCarthy addressed his
dictate giving the test not just to the interrogators but to the fellow senators, he was ready with a news release blasting
SS inmates, who were unlikely to accept. His polygraph bluff his colleagu es. "I accuse the subcommittee of being afraid of
gave McCarthy an excuse to storm out of the proceedings. "I the facts," he said. "I accuse it of attempting to whitewash a
feel that the investigation has degenerated to such a shameful shameful episode in the history of our glorious armed forces."
farce that I can no longer take part therein and I am today re Baldwin, a former three-term governor of Connecticut
questing the expenditures subcommittee chairman to relieve who had been talked by colleagues into serving as chairman,
me of the duty to continue," he told Baldwin and the others. responded with characteristic understatement: "The chair
The truth is that neither the subcommittee nor anyone else in man regrets that the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Mc
Congress had pushed him to sit in on the Malmedy proceed Carthy, has lost his temper and with it, the sound impartial
ings or was fazed that he was quitting. But the always-eager judgment which should be exercised in this matter.''
McCarthy was irrepressible. He said
America's treatment of the Malmedy pris
oners made it "guilty of adopting many of
the very same tactics of which we accuse
Hitler and Stalin." He condemned the Army
for "brutalitarianism," and he challenged
the integrity of subcommittee members.
The Armed Services Committee took an
unorthodox action of its own, unanimously
approving a vote of confidence in Baldwin.
We "take this unusual step," they explained,
"because of the most unusual, unfair, and
utterly undeserved comments" made by
Senator McCarthy. Signing the measure
were such lions of the chamber as Lyndon
Johnson, Harry F. Byrd, William F. Knowl
and and Styles Bridges, who would become
one of McCarthy's staunchest allies in the
1950s. Everyone but McCarthy got the point.
The subcommittee, meanwhile, pursued
its mission to determine whether the Army
had been fair in probing the massacre at
Malmedy. The three senators interviewed
108 witnesses, from the SS perpetrators and
their defense team to investigators, prose
cutors, judges, religious leaders and others
on all sides. Everyone McCarthy asked the
panel to talk to it did, and it extended him
the unusual courtesy of letting a non-mem
ber cross-examine witnesses. Prisoners were
checked out by Public Health Service doc
tors and dentists, looking for signs of abuse.
In its final report, issued in October
1949, the subcommittee criticized the mil
itary for using mock trials with a fraction
of the prisoners to elicit confessions or soften up HE EMBRACED CONSPIRACY
suspects ("a grave mistake"), and for the official use
of mass military trials that lumped officers with THEORIES AND OPTED
subordinates ("they should be indicted and tried NOT TO VET PROPAGANDA
separately"). But it was even more plain-spoken
WHEN IT SERVED HIS
in its primary conclusions: There was little if any
beating, kicking or other brutalization of prisoners. PO LITI C AL PURPOSES.
They'd been given plenty of food, water and med
ical attention. Their trials were fair. And, most im
portant in explaining why such charges had been
raised, then re-raised, the subcommittee said they
sprung from a coordinated campaign of misinformation unfairly convicted a group of whiskerless Sunday school boys."
involving ex-Nazis and possibly Communists in Germany, McCarthy's casting of the SS prisoners as the aggrieved, and
along with an "extreme" pacifist organization in America, U.S. military prosecutors as transgressors, had practical conse
the National Council for the Prevention of War. quences. Germany's left-wing press and the Anglo-American
That Senate verdict notwithstanding, the military was already right echoed his rhetoric and used it to inflame readers against
moving to defuse the controversies in West Germany and the U.S. military occupiers. Virgil P. Lary Jr., a U.S. Army lieutenant
United States. Bowing to popular pressure, some of the death who escaped the Malmedy massacre by pretending to be dead,
sentences of the SS murderers had been commuted, and the rest told reporters in 1951. "I have seen persons bent on murdering
would be. By the late 1950s all the former SS prisoners would be me, persons who murdered my companions, defended by a
freed. One of the last to walk out of prison, in December 1956, was United States senator.... I charge that this action of Senator
Joachim Peiper, commander and namesake of the SS unit that McCarthy's became the basis for the Communist propagan
mowed down the surrendering Gls in the fields near Malmedy. da in western Germany, designed to discredit the American
armed forces and American justice."
But Malmedy was a warm-up act. Even as McCarthy mud
THE NARRATIVE THAT America had reason to apologize for died the incident's historical record, he telegraphed the kind of
its handling of those murderers has persisted for three-quar scorched-earth senator he would become. He embraced conspir-
ters of a century not only in history texts acy theories and opted not to vet propa
but also in online platforms, thanks in ganda when it served his political purpos
part to the legitimacy conferred on it es. He dished to the press, instinctively
by the most outspoken member of the grasping its hunger for inflammatory
U.S. Senate. Some McCarthy defenders phraseology like "whitewash" (it appeared
viewed Malmedy as a precursor to U.S. nine times under his name in the hearing
mistreatment of Iraq War detainees half transcripts) and epithets like "moron" or
a century later, and saw the Abu Ghraib "moronic," and he had a knack for gener
whistle-blowers as following in McCar ating headlines by challenging his oppo
thy's footsteps. But in his recent book, nents to submit to a "lie detector" (which
The Malmedy Massacre, which draws on appeared 25 times). He intuited that de
newly declassified documents, and in ploying small-seeming fibs might not'only
my correspondence with him, European go unchallenged but would tilt a narrative
history scholar Steven Remy sets things in his favor, for instance by referring to the
straight. "Both willfully clueless and SS slaughterers as younger than they were
supremely self-confident, McCarthy im and therefore more deserving of sympa
peded but did not derail a truly fair and thy. While the youngest were 18, McCarthy
balanced investigation of the Malmedy went from referring to them as "18 and 19"
affair," Remy told me in an email. Col. to "a 15- or 16- or 17- or 18-year old boy."
Burton Ellis, the chief Malmedy prosecu- Discrediting an accusation might send
tor and one of McCarthy's favorite targets, remained "' him into momentary retreat, but he'd soon resurrect
Joachim Peiper,
incensed at McCarthy's distortions when he looked commander the indictment and claim vindication when there was
back three decades after the hearings: "It beats the of the SS unit none. His favorite targets were Democrats, but Bald
that massacred
hell out of me why everyone tries so hard to show that American POWs win learned that Republicans weren't immune, and
the prosecution[s) were insidious, underhanded, un and Belgian that McCarthy didn't care about the Senate's rules of
civilians near
ethical, immoral and God knows what monsters, that Malmedy, was decorum. The Connecticut lawmaker had decided be-
among the last fore the Malmedy hearings to resign his Senate seat,
Larry Tye's new book is Demagogue: The Life and perpetrators
"
long Shadow �f Senator Joe McCarthy. released from but the verbal abuse he suffered at McCarthy's hands
BYLINES prison, in 1956.
Illustrator Chloe Cushman's work hos appeared in
,, the New Yorker and the Washington Post. made him happier to go, and convinced his biogra
pher that he was "the first victim of'McCarthyism."' ♦

Bonobos In losing spoken language, and falling
back on a nonverbal way of communicat
CONTINUED FROM PAGE �9
ing, had Savage-Rumbaugh's mother be
Savage-Rumbaugh appeared at the door come any less human? I was reminded of
in a denim button-down shirt and pink something Savage-Rumbaugh had once
jeans, her socked feet tucked into slip said to me about our species' signature de
pers. She led me into the makeshift office sire: "Our relationship to nonhuman apes
she'd set up in the center of the house. In is a complex thing," she'd said. "We define
lieu of walls, she had dragged a bookcase humanness mostly by what other beings,
between her desk and the stone fireplace typically apes, are not. So we've always THE FUN SIDE
that opened out into the Jiving room. The
shelves were overflowing. "It was in this
thought apes were not this, not this, not
this. We are special. And it's kind of a need
#1 OFTHE ALL
house that I decided to go back to school humans have-to feel like we are special." NEW
and make a career of psychology," she said. She went on, "Science has challenged that. RELEASE
ava lable at
"I have a clear memory of standing in front
of that fireplace and thinking that if I could
With Darwinian theory, this idea that we
were special because God created us spe amazon
just publish one article in my lifetime, it cially had to be put aside. And so language
would be worth the effort and the money became, in a way, the replacement for re
and that I would have made a contribution ligion. We're special because we have this
to science and not Jet my mind go to waste." ability to speak, and we can create these TRAVIS st&TTIIITH[R
She was not feeling hopeful these days, imagined worlds. So linguists and other
she said. Energized by a conference at MIT scientists put these protective boundaries
where she'd presented on interspecies around language, because we as a species
communication, she had recently sent a feel this need to be unique. And I'm not op THE FUN SIDE OF THE WALi
proposal to collaborate with Taglialatela, posed to that. I just happened to find out it BABY BOOMER RETIREMENT IN MEXICI
but he hadn't accepted it. She hadn't seen wasn't true." •
the bonobos in five years. Meanwhile, the WWW.FUNSIDEBOOK.COM
rainforests in the Congo River Basin that Virus Hunters timeline credits and sources from pp. 62-63
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YOU'VE GOT QUESTIONS. WE'VE GOT EXPERTS
Q: I've heard that the Air Force considered
testing a nuclear bomb on the moon during
the Cold War. What would the ramifications
have been?
Camden Wehrle I Seneca Falls, New York
THERE WOULD HAVE been none for us, because

the distance is so great. Any nuclear weapon on
the moon would carve out a crater, and would con
taminate the area with radiation. But the explosion
would not likely affect Earth or its near-space infra
structure, says Michael Neufeld, senior curator in
the space history department at the National Air and
Space Museum. The Air Force did not follow through
on its 1958 moon proposal, but the United States and
the Soviet Union both detonated nuclear weapons
a couple hundred miles above Earth between then
and 1962. The 1967 United Nations Outer Space Trea
ty banned "weapons of mass destruction" in space
and no major powers have tried to violate it.
Q: Why don't carnivorous mammals choke on

feathers and fur?
Stephen Ross I Rodney, Michigan
EATING SMALL prey means consuming a lot of fur,

feathers and difficult-to-digest tissues. These are
called "animal fiber," explains Mike Maslanka, head
of nutrition sciences at the National Zoo, and, in
some measure, they're actually good for the diges
tive tract of the carnivore. As animal fiber makes its
Q: What n1akes ivory so precious? way through the digestive tract, microbes partially
C.B. I Redwood City, California ferment it. That contributes to the carnivore's di
etary energy and possibly helps create a healthier
digestive system.
T HAS NO intrinsic value, but its cul Q: When did "red" and "blue" get their cur
tural uses make ivory highly prized. rent political connotations?
In Africa, it has been a status sym Patricia Clark I Washington, D.C.
bol for millennia because it comes
from elephants, a highly respected WHILE THOSE terms have clear meanings to us
animal, and because it is fairly easy to carve into now, it's a relatively recent development in Ameri
works of art. Chiefs and elders used it to promote can political history, says Harry Rubenstein, retired
their economic power through control of valued curator of political history at the National Museum
resources and via trade with others, says Christine of American History. In the 1970s, as television news
Mullen Kreamer, deputy director and chief curator started relying more on color graphics, red and blue,
of the National Museum of African Art. The high and once yellow, were used to represent the parties'
point of the African ivory trade was from the 15th victories on the election night map. The broadcasts
through t-he 19th centuries, a.nd expanded to Eu weren't yet standardized, so there are examples from
rope, the Arab world and beyond. In the 19th and the 1970s and 1980 where red stands for Democrats
20th centuries, rncreasiog demand fo r ivory piano and blue for Republicans. By the 1990s, there was
keys, billiard balfs and luxury items led to the pre a trend toward the current party-color connection.
cipitous decline in the elephant population. Since .... The 2000 election is credited as the one that truly
the 1980s, conservation groups and governments Submit your solidified it. •
have implemented regulations to protect the en queries at
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July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN

EXECUTIVE EDITOR CREATIVE DIRECTOR EXECUTIVE EDITOR

SENIOR EDITORSKathleen M. Burke, Arik Gobboi, Jeff MacGregor

SMITHSONIAN ENTERPRISES ADVERTISING CONSUMER MARKETING ONLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

RECRUITING MANAGER Joy Sharp Annie K. Sullivan Jay Yousefzodeh

EDITORIAL OFFICES, MRC 513, WASHINGTON, D.C. 20013·7012. (202) 633-6090

MEMBERS NATIONAL BOARD

2 SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020

ing." In the mid-1960s, my friends and I bought our

"Is it cultural imperialism "Return to the Sacred" (June 2020) is an important

Alexander Not So Great

July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN 3

compelling journalism that contextualizes the

E VEN BEFORE I CHOSE HISTORY as

6 SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020 Portrait illustration by Jurell Cayetano

10 SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020

July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN 11

"Let's hope young people

July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN 13

Rolfer Skating, Manhattan 5/17/1981

"I wanted to photograph in a new,

11t SMITHSONIAN I Juld • August 2020

By the end of her adventure, Kappeler was

July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN 15

Beyon HE 19TH AMENDMENT, ratified in August

16 SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020

READ MORE about the achievements

18 SMITHSONIAN I July• August 2020

college. The state's neglect of public education for ►

20 SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020

''Nobody's Free Until Everybody's Free"

July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN 21

22- SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020

business. Moreover, the semicon­ where it is now nearly ubiquitous,

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Text and photography by

July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN 25

26 SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020

July • August 2020 I SMITHSONIAN 27

Convention, in Seneca Falls in 1848.

deed, she was generally uninterested in

28 SMITHSONIAN I July • August 2020

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Po intin g to O k eybo ord of

how children acquire language

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ONE AFfERNOON LAST SUMMER, I drove to Sav­

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and co-authored the book Jefferson's :,:

dreams-and now it's up to all of us

living in America today to make sure z

THE FIRST INFLUENCER

Even before the Covid-19

business. Moreover, the semicon where it is now nearly ubiquitous,

ONE AFfERNOON LAST SUMMER, I drove to Sav

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