I am really mad about John James Audubon. He is the one person honored by having birds with his name that I thought deserved the honor. Boy was I in for a schooling….
Most birders know of Audubon, an intrepid explorer of the American wilderness who tried to paint a picture of every single species of American bird. His story is legend. His paintings are beautiful. What’s not to love? Heck there’s even a venerated bird organization (I am a member), museum and a zoo that bear his name. (I’ve been to those, too.) I even learned about Audubon as an elementary school kid in Philadelphia. Audubon knew Benjamin Franklin! So cool….
It turns out that Audubon life was more complicated, and sinister, than the glowing legendary figure I learned about as a kid.
For one thing Audubon was friends with racists who actively tried to promote white supremacy through dubious science. In particular, they espoused phrenology, the study of skull shapes and sizes, the stratify the “races of man.” Guess who’s on top? Hint: These “scientists” were all white. The science was bunk, but the collected specimens for the data used to support this bunk were downright grisly.
The early nineteenth century was a time of great scientific advances. Explorers were traveling all over the world “discovering” all sorts of new organisms for science. Through field work, collecting specimens, and illustrations, scientists were learning, recording, cataloging and analyzing a great deal about the nature in distant lands.
But the enchanting image of the brave explorer conquering the unknown jungles and far away strange lands must be put into perspective. Large expeditions were sponsored by governments in the process of assessing the value of the resources in these “new lands.” These expeditions were a precursor to colonization and the exploitation of land, plants, animals, and native peoples.
What of these native peoples? They were not Europeans. They had cultures, languages, religions, traditions, and physical attributes that very different from the European explorers. Over time, and of necessity for subjugation and exploitation, these native peoples became perceived by the Europeans as somehow less than human; savage and primitive.
Enter Samuel George Morton. Morton was a physician, natural scientist, and proponent of polygenism, the theory that human races were created separately and were at different levels of evolution or development. Some races were primitive, and of course he felt that the “white race” was superior.
Morton believed that the brain is the physical manifestation of the mind and intelligence. Since the brain is housed in the skull, studying skulls from different races will give scientific evidence of the hierarchy of human races. This data will then, or course, prove that the white race is superior, having the biggest skull capacity for the best brains. (or so Morton believed.)
The study of skulls to learn of human mental traits was a new pseudoscience developed by German doctor Franz Joseph Gall in 1796. Morton was a fan, and he wanted as many human skulls as possible, from all races of people, to use phrenological pseudoscience to support his hierarchy of the races of humans. No real science here, but this was a surprisingly popular belief among scientific collectors out in the field. I guess I should not have been surprised as so many of the famous explorers and field collectors had slaves or worked for people who did.
So how does Audubon fit into this evil fake science?
He collected human skulls to send to Morton for his collection.
One particularly gruesome skull collected by Audubon was of a Mexican soldier who died at the Battle of San Jacinto. Audubon went to where the fallen were buried and dug up a Mexican, beheaded it, prepared the skull as a specimen, and shipped it off to Morton. He collected five or six skulls this way. The battle was in 1836 and Audubon collected the skulls in 1837. This was a particularly nasty bit of grave desecration and robbery.
Drawing an image of this act really shook my opinion of John James Audubon. It also made me realize that naming entire species of organisms for an individual person is a bad idea.
Bird Names For Birds 