The Mir Castle - returned from Valhalla

 Salvete Omnes,

a quick late summer entry -  a little posting on the Mir Castle (Zamek w Mirze,  Мірскі замак, Mirski zamak) in the Grodno District.

XV-XVI century Lithuanian Duchy court marshal and starost of Brzesc (Brest) and Kowno (Kaunas) Jerzy Iwanowicz Ilinicz (?-1527) had a Gothic castle with 5 imposing towers built in his manor of Mir. His grandson Jerzy, who was a son of  Zofia nee Radziwill, was the sole heir to the fortune, and having been brought up by Mikolaj Radziwill the Black, he unfortunately died without issue, and thus Jerzy made a testamentary bequest to his cousin Mikolaj Radziwill Sierotka (the Orphan), last will passed the castle and estates  to the Radziwill family. They rebuilt the castle in the Renaissance style, adding a palazzo to the castle complex. 

Unfortunately, the wars - starting with 1655 (the Deluge) through  the Great Northern War, Polish-Russian war of 1792, and Kosciuszko Insurrection of 1794, the Napoleon invasion of Russia 1812 - caused multiple damage to the castle complex.

In 1895 the Swietopelk-Mirski family bought the castle from the descendants of the  Radziwill clan and zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, and started some rebuilding of  the castle ruins. Bolsheviks murdered local Polish patriots in the castle ruins in 1919.

Michal Swiatopelk-Mirski started restoration of the castle in 1923, based on the plans of Teodor Bursche (Bursze). 

Unfortunately the communists, as the Soviet Union, returned in September 1939 (killing and deporting to Siberia our Polish inhabitants of Mir), and the the Nazi Germans in 1941 through 1944 (murdering the Jewish inhabitants of the town of Mir). Stalin's Soviet Union took final possession of the castle until the end of the Soviet Union, in 1991. 

Finally, the castle has returned from Valhalla -  during the early decade of the XXI century the miracle took place, the ruins were rebuilt - below the beautifully rebuilt castle of Mir, by the taxpayers of  Belarus.  They say a fine museum too.

Vivat! 

Enjoy

Valete

Frank Henderson Ledger - Arapaho fame and honor

Salvete Omnes,

the glyph of a rider and horse in the top part of the page gives out the identity of the artist portraying himself astride his war horse

a quick trip to the Great Plains via some free available drawings by an Arapaho artist 'Frank Henderson'(1862-1885) [and his friends] in the collection of Metropolitan Museum.. American anthropologist Alfred Kroeber was the researcher who spent years observing the Arapaho tribe, and observed that the tribal warriors, warrior societies and their families sought martial exploits in war as the means to obtain fame and honor.

As the Nicelle Beauchenne Gallery biography states:  the true Arapaho identity of this artist is unknown, that he came from Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian Agency, Darlington Indian Territory. It was most likely done during the period of post 1874-5 war in the Southern Plains, where US Army units defeated the tribal warriors and forced all the belligerents into the Indian Territory, where they were to create a new reality for themselves, no longer free hunters of bison and horse-cutting raiders, under the goverment agents and their might. 

The researchers concluded that the Henderson Ledger contained drawings by many artists, became a gift for his former teacher, Martha Ker Underwood. The ledger was exhibited in NY (Acevedo Gallery) in 1988, researched, unbound and pages sold off. The Hood Museum at Dartmouth College (Dartmouth, MA) and MET. 

The page 172 from the ledger graces the cover of this book. 
 

the researchers uncovered that at least one of the artists who created images within the Henderson Ledger can be found in Vincent Price Ledger.

Valete

Buffalo wolf - the loafer of the Great Plains

 Salvete Omnes,

back to the Great Plains before the settlement by the European-American settlers, when with the millions of bison and antelopes two kinds of wolves roamed the plains - the coyote and the buffalo [often white or black] wolf (Canis lupus nubilus). Plains Indians, both in the pre-horse and post-horse period,  used the entire hides of these large wolves (more than 4 feet without a tail) to approach as close as possible the grazing bison herd and to hunt that grazing bison with a bow and arrow.  The native scouts on warpath used these pelts to camouflage themselves and to show their special status within a raiding band, including wearing eagle feathers attached at the head of the pelt. 

wolves hunting a bull

American traveler and artist, George Catlin, recorded the wolves in their natural environment, and even used wolf pelt as a disguise to approach and to observe and  sketch bison herds.

Wolf pelt camouflaged native hunters, with bows and arrows, creep up to a grazing herd in order to hunt the beasts up and dangerously close, risking being trampled or gored to death by the bulls 

Catlin and his native companion approaching the buffalo herd

Upper Missouri Bluffs, with a pair of white wolves

wolves attacking a bull

..

the description of the  wolf of the Great Plains (1819-20) -

a rather gruesome photo (by John Grabill) of a band of Wyoming cowboys with a captured-with-lasso wolf 

these wolves were hunted to almost extinction in the Great Plains, most often with poison, but they survived in the north-est, in Minnesota, in the Canadian Prairies and so on.

Hence, they are surviving in Montana and perhaps Colorado - here some photos of the  actual wolves 

and its southern cousin, the Mexican wolf

enjoy

Valete

Chincoteague pony and Caribbean Colonial horse DNA

 Salvete Omnes,

a short entry - links really - but worth exploring I am certain of it. 

some 3 years ago they published this article -  link - Analysis of the earliest complete mtDNA genome of a Caribbean colonial horse (Equus caballus) from 16th-century Haiti, Nicolas Delsol et la. 

Chincoteague Pony came up in this research, as well as the Spanish Andalucia and even Central Asia. 

You can always read the famous American novel - The Misty of Chincoteague. 

especially the one illustrated by Wesley Dennis.

more ponies

enjoy

Valete

American Voyage to Buenos Aires, 1817-8 - gauchos, torros and Indians

 Salvete Omnes,

Gauchos, Malaspina expedition, Renet pinxit

a quick lope to Buenos Aires - H.M. Breckenridge was sent to Buenos Aires in 1817 (via the Portuguese colony of Brasil) - his observations were published in London, in 1820. 

Author made many quick observations  while visiting the capital, Buenos Aires - 

the pampas nomadic Indians:

the people of Buenos Aires

the 'estancias - large  ranchos- 

ox wagons and horse-mounted sellers of fruit and milk

the bull fights

.

gauchos and horses/criollos 

Valete

Horse soldiers of Duchy of Warsaw - prints circa 1831AD

 Salvete Omnes,

a quick entry - Dog days of the summer - 

ad rem, one of my favorite periods in Polish uniform history is the Duchy of Warsaw: 1806-1815AD , during the Napoleonic Wars.

Poniatowski and his staff in Krakow's Sukiennice 1809, Stachowicz pinxit

Stachowicz, Michał (1768-1825) conceived the idea and drawings while a German engraver Sebastian Langer (1772-1841) executed the prints for a publication in Krakow (then a so called Free City of Krakow) in 1831.

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Valete