Notes

All reported dialogue is from my tapes or notes taken at the time. For the history herein I relied on a number of secondary sources in addition to the archival research and interviews I conducted. The texts I found most useful are cited below; referenced passages are identified by the page on which they appear and their key words.

PROLOGUE: 1898

1 That much is certain This reimagining of the hunt that yielded the Kilimanjaro tusks is based on the most reliable accounts, primarily those found in W. D. M. Bell, The Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter (London: Neville Spearman & The Holland Press, 1958, reprint of 1923), pp. 38–39; George Frederick Kunz, Ivory and the Elephant (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1916), pp. 410–11; and E. D. Moore, Ivory: Scourge of Africa (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1931), pp. 216–18.

3 worn smooth from ripping tree bark and gouging water holes Elephants use their tusks for digging, prying open trees, smashing bush, and lifting branches and trees; they are also important in display and can be formidable weapons. See Joyce Poole, Elephants (Stillwater, Minn.: Voyageur Press, 1997), p. 35.

1. MAMMOTH TEETH

Among recent texts on prehistory, Claudine Cohen’s The Fate of the Mammoth: Fossils, Myth, and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002; translated by William Rodarmor) and Richard Stone’s Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2001) supplied much valuable material.

9 According to paleoanthropologist Randall White My account of early ivory usage leans heavily on White’s research; see his “Ivory Personal Ornaments of Aurignacian Age: Technological, Social and Symbolic Perspectives,” in Le Travail et L’Usage de L’Ivoire au Paléolithique Supérieur, ed. J. Hahn et al. (Ravello: Centro Universitario Europeo Per I Beni Culturali, 1995), and “The Dawn of Adornment,” Natural History (May 1993).

10 oldest ivory find yet “Excavations at Vogelherd Cave in Southwestern Germany Produce Spectacular New Artworks from the Ice Age,” University of Tübingen press release, June 19, 2007.

11 a clutch of similar small carved ivories N. J. Conard, “Palaeolithic Ivory Sculptures from Southwestern Germany and the Origins of Figurative Art,” Nature 426 (2003), pp. 830–32.

11 modern man … set out to colonize the world F. E. Grine et al., “Late Pleistocene Human Skull from Hofmeyr, South Africa, and Modern Human Origins,” Science 13, no. 5809 (12 January 2007), pp. 226–29.

11 pierced fox teeth Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103: 12643–48 (2006).

13 their nimbus of meaning R. Dale Guthrie makes a similar suggestion in his The Nature of Paleolithic Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 371.

14 carefully observed and delicately crafted Notably the splendid ivory horse from Vogelherd in south Germany shown in Alexander Marshack, The Roots of Civilization (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), pp. 250–51.

14 so-called Venus figures Some two hundred have been unearthed. See Randall White, “The Women of Brassempouy: A Century of Research and Interpretation,” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 13, no. 4 (December 2006). White suggests that “Brassempouy served as a kind of atelier for ivory-sculpting.”

14 La Poire In the collection of the Musée des Antiquités Nationales, Saint-Germain-en-Laye; shown in Massimo Carrà, Ivories of the West (London: Hamlyn, 1970; translation of 1966), plate 2.

15 Whacking a fresh tusk Ivory is relatively soft, ranking up to only number 3 on Mohs’ field scale of hardness, used by mineralogists—i.e., the hardness of calcite. But a fresh tusk, which is 30 percent collagen and 70 percent inorganic matter (mostly calcium and phosphate), also has a certain amount of elasticity and toughness, making it difficult to crack.

15 more careful methods … were devised Jeffrey J. Saunders et al., “A Mammoth-Ivory Semifabricate from Blackwater Locality No. 1, New Mexico,” American Antiquity 55, no. 1 (January 1990), pp. 112–19.

15 Ivory is dentin More precisely, “Ivory is a mineralized collagenous matrix consisting mainly of calcium phosphate hydroxide 3Ca3 (PO4)2 • Ca(OH)2. Depending on its age and state of preservation, ivory contains varying amounts of organic material, mainly the fibrous protein collagen, with small amounts of elastin, mucopolysaccharides and lipids.” Terry Drayman Weisser, “A Method for Reinforcing Fragile Ivory,” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 17, no. 2, (1978), pp. 44–47.

15 Teeth are not bones This overview follows Simon Hillson, Teeth, 2d edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

16 The exceedingly compact, uniform structure of ivory See T. K. Penniman, Pictures of Ivory and Other Animal Teeth, Bone and Antler (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 1952), p. 13.

16 incisors grow some seven inches a year Poole, Elephants, p. 31.

17 Norris and I were standing in the Childs Frick building November 14, 2006.

18 All have disappeared See Jeheskel Shoshani and Daniel C. Fisher, “Extinction of the Elephant’s ‘Ancestors,’” in Shoshani, ed., Elephants: Majestic Creatures of the Wild (New York: Checkmark Books, 1992; revised edition, 2000), and Alfred L. Roca et al., “Genetic Evidence for Two Species of Elephant in Africa,” Science 293 (August 24, 2001), pp. 1473–77. The woolly mammoth is now thought to be more closely related to Asian elephants than to African elephants. All three had a common ancestor up to 6 million years ago, when the African elephant split off into a separate species; less than half a million years later Asian elephants and mammoths diverged.

19 Charles R. Knight Knight (1874–1953) was associated with the American Museum of Natural History for fifty years. He was the first artist to make a serious study of the appearance of extinct animals and painted the mural series “Life in the Ice Ages” between 1911 and 1921.

19 slaying from a safer distance There is considerable debate over the issue of bow-and-arrow technology; some believe there is no clear evidence for its use prior to the Mesolithic era (12,000 to 3,200 BCE).

20 drying up of their food supply alone can’t account See Todd Surovell et al., “Global Archaeological Evidence for Proboscidean Overkill,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102, no. 17 (April 26, 2005), pp. 6231–36. The authors examined forty-one kill/scavenge sites on five continents and determined that woolly mammoths and elephants disappeared from the fossil record once a region became colonized by humans.

21 “overkill” or “blitzkrieg” This hypothesis is associated with Paul Martin, who observed that late Pleistocene extinctions in the Americas largely affected megafauna, the presumed targets of human hunting. See P. S. Martin, ed., Quaternary Extinctions (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1984). R. Dale Guthrie argues that “hypotheses of a subtler human impact … are more consistent with the data,” at least in Alaska. See his “New Carbon Dates Link Climatic Change with Human Colonization and Pleistocene Extinctions,” Nature 441, May 11, 2006, pp. 207–9.

21 Ross MacPhee … has his office January 24, 2005; and November 14, 2006.

22 “losses of this kind” See MacPhee and Clare Flemming, “Requiem Aeternam: The Last Five Hundred Years of Mammalian Species Extinctions,” in MacPhee, ed., Extinctions in Near Time (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 1999), pp. 333–71.

22 “Musk oxen pulled through” Ross D. E. MacPhee et al., “Late Quaternary Loss of Genetic Diversity in Musk Ox (Ovibos),” BMC Evolutionary Biology 6, October 2005.

22 On a 1998 expedition Clare Flemming, “Mammoth Prospecting,” Natural History 107, no. 10, December 1998/January 1999, pp. 78–79. At first, it was reported that the Wrangel specimens all came from a “dwarfed” island population, but apparently this was more a case of large variability in body size. See Don Alan Hall, “Explaining Pleistocene Extinctions,” Mammoth Trumpet 14, no. 1 (January 1999).

23 our capacity for snuffing out entire species Some examples: about 1,700 years ago on Madagascar, Malaysian sailors did in pigmy hippos, various flightless birds, giant tortoises, and more; some 750 years ago, the ancestors of the modern Maori apparently knocked off all eleven species of the ostrich-like moa, a slow-breeding, flightless bird, in under than a century. See Richard Ellis, No Turning Back (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).

24 the Schreger pattern Schreger lines are also known as the “lines of Retzius,” after another scientist, but as the term “Schreger lines” “appears to be the earliest known and accepted scientific appellation for the probiscidean ivory pattern,” it is widely used. See Edgard O’Neil Espinoza and Mary-Jacque Mann, “The History and Significance of the Schreger Pattern in Proboscidean Ivory Characterization,” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 32, no. 3 (1993).

2. TRIBUTE AND TREASURE

Three authoritative works in particular were of much use: Anthony Cutler’s The Craft of Ivory: Sources, Techniques, and Uses in the Mediterranean World: A.D. 200–1400 (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Libarary and Collection, 1985); H. H. Scullard’s The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974); and Olga Krzyszkowska’s Ivory and Related Materials: An Illustrated Guide (London: Institute of Classical Studies, Bulletin Supplement 59, 1990).

25 The exquisitely carved ivory neck rest From Thebes, ca. 1325 BCE. Now in the Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England.

25 so-called concubine figures Carrà (in Ivories of the West) calls them “concubines of death.” For an indication of their variety, see Peter J. Ucko, “Anthropomorphic Ivory Figurines from Egypt,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 95, no. 2 (July–December, 1965), pp. 214–39.

26 important sources of ivory As hippo populations persisted for some time in the Middle East, notably in Syro-Palestine, the animals’ teeth would remain an important source of ivory in the ancient world. See the wide-ranging study by Kathryn A. Lafrenz, “Tracing the Source of the Elephant and Hippopotamus Ivory from the 14th century B.C. Uluburn Shipwreck: The Archaeological, Historical and Isotopic Evidence,” unpublished master’s thesis, University of South Florida, 2003, pp. 29–31.

26 different hieroglyphs Martin Meredith, Elephant Destiny: Biography of an Endangered Species in Africa (New York: PublicAffairs, 2001), p. 7. The English word “ivory” comes (through Old French and Middle English) from the Latin word for ivory, ebur, which itself derives itself from the Egyptian hieroglyph “abu,” used for elephant and ivory.

26 As historian Edward A. Alpers puts it Edward A. Alpers, “The Ivory Trade in Africa: An Historical Overview,” in Doran H. Ross, Elephant: The Animal and Its Ivory in African Culture (Los Angeles: University of California, 1992), pp. 349–50. My account of early and later African ivory history is drawn largely from Alpers’ concise summary.

27 Thutmose III took time out to conduct a hunt Scullard, Elephant in the Greek and Roman World, p. 27

29 a commercial treaty with King Hiram Derek Wilson and Peter Ayerst, White Gold: The Story of African Ivory (New York: Taplinger, 1976), p. 20. Tyre was the largest sea power in the Mediterranean at the time, with a number of trade links.

29 “ivory, and apes, and peacocks” King James translation. Tharshish (or Tarshish) is obscure; it may refer to the port of Tartessus in southern Spain, which had Phoenician trade links. The tiny ivory pomegranate thought to have topped a high priest’s scepter in the temple in Jerusalem—the only original artifact from the site and the Israel Museum’s most important item—was discovered in 2004 to be a fake.

30 “Woe to them … that lie upon beds of ivory” Amos, 6–4, 3–15

30 thousands of ivory carvings See the analysis in Richard D. Barnett, Ancient Ivories in the Middle East (Jerusalem: Qedem, Monographs of the Institute of Archaeology 14, 1982), pp. 50–52.

30 In his memoirs Max Mallowan, Mallowan’s Memoirs (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1977), p. 260.

31 “I had my own favorite tools” Agatha Christie, An Autobiography (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1977), p. 443.

31 Mallowan reflected Mallowan, Memoirs, p. 270.

32 a Cretan is shown with a tusk Cretans exported timber, and probably olive oil, and imported precious metals and ivory. See Krzyszkowska, Ivory and Related Materials, p. 19.

32 free-form ivory acrobat Now in the archaeological museum, Iràklion (Candia). Plate 16 in Carrà, Ivories of the West.

33 hippopotamus that once flourished Hippos might have reached certain islands in the late Pleistocene by swimming. See Wilhelm Schüle, “Mammals, Vegetation and the Initial Human Settlement of the Mediterranean Islands: A Palaeoecological Approach,” Journal of Biogeography 20 (1993), 399–412.

33 Both hippo ivory and elephant ivory were utilized See Krzyszkowska, “Aegean Ivory Carving: Towards an Evaluation of Late Bronze Age Workshop Material,” in J. Lesley Fitton, ed., Ivory in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Period (London: British Museum Occasional Paper 85, 1992), p. 28.

33 rip into the groins of hunters In Greek myth, Odysseus was gored in the thigh and Adonis gored in the groin by their respective boar quarry. The animal is associated with Artemis, the goddess of hunting, especially her violent side; out of vengeance she sent the monstrous Calydonian boar to a king who had failed to offer her the pick of his harvest. The future emperor Augustus thought he had plundered the tusks of the legendary boar from a temple near Tegea on the mainland of Greece in 31 BCE, but what he found was in all probability fossilized mammoth tusks. See Naomi J. Norman, “Asklepios and Hygieia and the Cult Statue at Tegea,” American Journal of Archaeology 90, no. 4 (October 1986), pp. 425–30

34 a distracting mosiac effect Alfred Maskell, however, thinks the height would have made the joins “imperceptible”; see his Ivories (Tokyo and Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1966; reprint of 1905), p. 478. Albizzati agrees (see his “Two Ivory Fragments of a Statue of Athena,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 36 [1916], p. 398). But both these authors may be led to this opinion by having to account for Pheidia’s effective use of the material while dismissing the possibility that larger sheets of ivory were used.

35 some now forgotten method of peeling a tusk Kenneth Lapatin, “Pheidias elefantourgos,” American Journal of Archaeology 101, no. 4 (October 1997), pp. 663–82. Kunz, Ivory and the Elephant, argues similarly, p. 23; see also Maskell, Ivories, on this subject, p. 477.

35 “a tangle of bars and struts” Quoted in Lapatin, “Pheidias elefantourgos,” pp. 667–68.

36 the full-scale use of elephants in battle See Scullard, The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World, chapter 3, for a detailed analysis of Alexander’s use of elephants.

37 the military historian Arrian Lucius Flavius Arrianus (ca. 95–175 CE) served under the Romans and wrote the Anabasis of Alexander; quoted in Karl Gröning, ed., Elephants: A Cultural and Natural History (Cologne: Könemann, 1998; English translation 1999), p. 201.

39 “beasts fresh from the wild” … one scholar wrote Lionel Casson, “Ptolemy II and the Hunting of African Elephants,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 123 (1993), p. 254. The description of Ptolemy II’s elephant program here largely follows Casson’s account.

39 “they immediately run away” Quoted in Meredith, Elephant Destiny, p. 16. On the species of elephant used by the Ptolemies, see William Gowers, “African Elephants and Ancient Authors,” African Affairs 47, no. 188 (July 1948), pp. 173–80.

40 an elephant wearing a saddle blanket Illustrated in Gröning, Elephants, p. 110.

41 “Asia preferred its elephants alive and Africa, dead” Robert Delort, The Life and Lore of the Elephant (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992; translation of 1990) p. 43.

41 the death penalty for anyone killing an elephant See Bist et al., “The Domesticated Asian Elephant in India,” in Baker and Kashio, eds., Giants on Our Hands: Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Domesticated Asian Elephant, Bangkok, Thailand, February 5–10, 2001.

42 one Indian ivory statuette Mirella Levi D’Ancona, “An Indian Statuette from Pompeii,” Artibus Asiae 13, no. 3 (1950), pp. 166–80.

42 intricately carved ivory handle Jessica Rawson, ed., The British Museum Book of Chinese Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), fig. 133. See also Craig S. Korr, “A Note on the Geographical Distribution of Carved Ivory in the Late Second Millennium B.C.,” American Journal of Archaeology 88, no. 3 (July 1984), 402–403.

42 used for work and for war Edward H. Schafer, “War Elephants in Ancient and Medieval China,” Oriens 10, no. 2 (December 31, 1957), pp. 290–291.

42 China’s growing human population diminished the herds through habitat loss “The retreat of the elephants maps in reverse, both in space and time, the growth of the Chinese farm economy”; Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 17.

43 second only to jade Jade was so highly regarded it was imbued with moral qualities.

43 an entire bed Later poets such as Ku Hsiung (Gu Xiong) would employ the imagery of an ivory bed (literally, “elephant bed”) as befitting “a royal or divine bedroom.” See Suzanne Cahill, “Sex and the Supernatural in Medieval China: Cantos on the Transcendent Who Presides over the River,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 105, no. 2 (April–January 1985), pp. 197–220.

43 a Roman embassy to Emperor Huan These Romans may have been adventurous merchants masquerading as ambassadors.

43 Romans thought silk grew on trees Silkworm culture remained a near monopoly of the Chinese until silkworm eggs were brought to Byzantium during the reign of Justinian, in 530 ce.

43 Seneca … sniffed Declamations, vol. 1.

44 an ivory chair It had the form of a curule chair, the traditional low-armed, backless, folding seat from which Roman authorities ruled.

44 it was a fixture in triumphs See Peter J. Holliday, “Roman Triumphal Painting: Its Function, Development, and Reception,” Art Bulletin (March 1, 1997), pp. 130–47.

44 Chariots, couches … and the useful strigil During Constantine’s reign there were said to be seventy ivory statues in Rome; Albizzati, “Two Ivory Fragments,” p. 401. On use of ivory in furniture, see Dorothy Kent Hill, “Ivory Ornaments of Hellenistic Couches,” Hesperia 32, no. 3 (July–September 1963), pp. 292–300.

44 “The flesh, or what so seems” Book X, Metamorphoses (1 ce). English translation by Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, et al. (1713).

45 Historian Anthony Cutler Cutler, The Craft of Ivory, p. 22. This section closely follows Cutler’s detailed analysis of ivory trade routes and craft.

46 the famous Symmachi panel At one point the panel came under suspicion as a forgery, but the evidence in support of its authenticity is clearly defensible. See Dale Kinney, “A Late Antique Ivory Plaque and Modern Response,” American Journal of Archaeology 98, no. 3 (July 1994), pp. 457–80, with a postscript by Anthony Cutler.

46 the tradition for Roman consuls The common iconography of sixth-century diptychs is discussed in Nancy Netzer, “Redating the Consular Ivory of Orestes,” Burlington Magazine 125, no. 962 (May 1983), pp. 265–71. See also Kim Bowes, “Ivory Lists: Consular Diptychs, Christian Appropriation and Polemics of Time in Late Antiquity,” Art History 24, no. 3 (June 2001), pp. 338–57.

46 laws had to be passed In 384 ce; Cutler, The Craft of Ivory, p. 52. See also Alan Cameron, “A Note on Ivory Carving in Fourth Century Constantinople,” American Journal of Archaeology 86, no. 1 (January 1982), pp. 126–29.

47 “many an elephant go shorn of the glory of his tusks” Book III, On the Consulship of Stilico, from the 1922 Loeb Classical Library translation.

47 Pliny the Elder contemplated the eradication Pliny devoted thirteen chapters of his Historia Naturalis to elephants. He claimed, in chapter 4 of Book 8 of that text, that “Large teeth, in fact, are now rarely found, except in India, the demands of luxury having exhausted all those in our part of the world.”

48 “showered curses on Pompey” Book 8, chapter 7, Historia Naturalis, translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley, 1855.

48 Cutler soberly concludes Cutler, The Craft of Ivory, p. 24.

3. THE MASTER CARVERS’ MEDIUM

Archer St. Clair and Elizabeth Parker McLachlan, eds., The Carver’s Art: Medieval Sculpture in Ivory, Bone, and Horn (New Brunswick, N.J.: Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, 1989); Paul Williamson, An Introduction to Medieval Ivory Carvings (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1982); Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar (London: James Currey et al., 1987); Edward Alpers, Ivory and Slaves (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975); and Klaus Maurice, Sovereigns as Turners: Materials on a Machine Art by Princes, translated by Dorothy Ann Schade (Zurich: Verlag Ineichen, 1985), were invaluable guides to this period.

49 colorful, elaborate chart Reproduced in Oscar I. Norwich, Maps of Southern Africa (Johannesburg: AD. Donker [Pty] Ltd., 1993), pp. 44–45.

49 Arab geographer al-Masudi Quoted in Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory, p. 78.

50 “In the days of sati” Ibid. After the sixth century, India was not able to produce enough ivory from local sources for its own needs; demand for African ivory persisted into the the twentieth century. See also Alpers, Ivory and Slaves, pp. 86–87.

50 Chinese officials … used ivory tablets Much the way consuls of Byzantium did; Cutler, The Craft of Ivory, p. 53, citing J. Needham, Science and Civilization in China, IV.i (Cambridge University Press, 1959), p. 321. The evidence for use of ivory tablets in China is complex and not always clear (Mark Elvin, pers. comm.).

51 “eight thousand pounds” Cutler, The Craft of Ivory, p. 51.

51 and caskets to hold perfumes Mariam Rosser-Owen, “Ivories from Spain,” in Tim Stanley et al., Palace and Mosque (London: Victoria and Albert Publications, 2004), pp. 80–81.

51 A pyxis … shows a seated figure This container (Victoria and Albert: 368–1880) dates from 970; reproduced ibid., p. 80.

51 an inscription on the lid Quoted ibid., p. 78. This pyxis (ca. 968) is reproduced in Francisco Prado-Vilar, “Circular Visions of Fertility and Punishment: Caliphal Ivory Caskets from Al-Andalus,” Muqarnas XIV (1997), p. 22. Many of these Muslim ivories from Spain owe their survival to their being put to use as reliquaries in Spanish cathedrals, sometimes with their Arabic inscriptions erased.

52 lingered on in the secular art The survival of classicism in Byzantine art has been evidenced by finds from twentieth-century excavations in Russia. See Robin Cormack et al., The Road to Byzantium: Luxury Arts of Antiquity (London: Fontanka, 2006).

53 a demanding craft whose traditions and skills were centuries old Ivory workers in Constantinople had even been exempted by edict from civil obligations in order to perfect their craft. For more detail on methods, see Anthony Cutler, “The Making of the Justinian Diptychs,” Byzantion 54 (1984), pp. 79 and 81.

54 when there wasn’t enough costlier ivory See the discussion in St. Clair and McLachlan, The Carver’s Art, pp. 7–10.

54 gyrfalcons and walrus ivory Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (London: Allen Lane, 2005), p. 241.

54 walrus tusks provided … nearly all the ivory Williamson, Introduction to Medieval Ivory Carvings, p. 17.

55 carved ivory plaques … now in the Louvre These elephant ivory plaques were used as book covers; MR 372–3 Louvre.

56 The Lewis chessmen The tallest pieces are about four inches in height. Virtually all are made of walrus ivory, a few from whale teeth. The majority are now in the British Museum; the Hebrides were subject to Norway in the 1200s.

56 “By turning to the art of the ivory carver” Williamson, Introduction to Medieval Ivory Carving, p. 5.

56 “ivory was a synonym for the chastity” Aleksander Pluskowski, “Narwhals or Unicorns? Exotic Animals as Material Culture in Medieval Europe,” European Journal of Archaeology vol. 7, no. 3 (2004), p. 305.

57 “The richer the patron, the grander the object” Williamson, Introduction to Medieval Ivory Carving, p. 18.

57 a kind of Gothic contrapposto This sinuous line or S-curve has also been called the “Gothic sway.”

57 Fancy ones were made of ivory See Richard H. Randall, “A Group of Gothic Ivory Boxes,” Burlington Magazine 127, no. 990 (September 1985), pp. 577–81, 583.

57 visual cat-and-mouse game All this implies self-conscious artistry. See C. Jean Campbell, “Courting, Harlotery and the Art of Gothic Ivory Carving,” Gesta 34, no. 1 (1995), pp. 11–19.

58 the tusk is a great curiosity of nature William I. Broad, “It’s Sensitive. Really,” New York Times, December 13, 2005. Some ten million nerve endings connect the outer surface of the tusk to its inner core, making the tusk a sensory organ whose purpose is not yet fully understood.

58 doges of Venice and the Hapsburg emperors “Perhaps the most impressive object to incorporate narwhal tusks is the seventeenth-century royal throne of Denmark, now in Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen.” Arthur MacGregor, Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 43.

59 test the dishes he was served Pluskowski, “Narwhals or Unicorns?” p. 300. The duke’s Ainkhürnschwert (“unicorn sword”), with its hilt of narwhal ivory, is in the Imperial Treasury in Vienna.

59 a “fish’s tooth ‘three palms long’” Charles Nicholl, Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind (New York: Penguin, 2004) p. 326. “Fish-tooth” was a common term for walrus ivory. See Berthold Laufer, Ivory in China (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1925), pp. 48–49.

59 “many I perceive suspect an Imposture” Chapter XXIII, “Of Unicorns Horn,” Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646; 6th edition, 1672).

60 sent an African elephant to Henry III Phillip Drennon Thomas, “The Tower of London’s Royal Menagerie,” History Today 46 (August 1996).

60 ears that unfolded like a lady’s fan “De Elephanto,” p. 410 in Conrad Gesner, Historia animalium (Zurich: Apvd Christ. Froschovervm, 1551–87).

61 a dizzying geometric pattern of ebony and ivory zigzags Notably the 1623 guitar Sellas made for the grand duke of Tuscany’s household, now in the Victoria and Albert museum (no. 7356–1861).

61 Nuremberg … became famous … for its ivory sundials To mention just one: the portable diptych sundial (ca. 1598) by Hans Troschel the Elder in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (03.21.38).

61 Ornate ivory flea traps The first such traps, they were the brainchild of Franz Ernst Brückmann, a German physician.

62 “fingers white as ivory” Nicholl, Leonardo da Vinci, p. 111. Alas, the lower half of the portrait (now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), which presumably would have included the famous hands, was at some point chopped off.

62 mammoth ivory … reached London by 1616 Stone, Mammoth, p. 81.

63 Emperor Kangxi … reminded his audience W. F. Mayers, “The Mammoth in Chinese Records,” China Review VI (July 1877–June 1878), p. 274.

63 evidence of unicorns Leibniz himself considered this idea. See the chapter “Leibniz’s Unicorn” in Cohen, The Fate of the Mammoth, pp. 41–60.

64 trade in tusks from the tundra Some sediments in Siberia may contain six hundred mammoth skeletons per square kilometer; see Stone, Mammoth, p. 69.

65 The trade vastly increased Alpers, “The Ivory Trade in Africa,” pp. 352–53.

65 These riches—gold, ivory, and slaves—traded places in importance See Robert W. Harms, River of Wealth, River of Sorrow: The Central Zaire Basin in the Era of the Slave and Ivory Trade, 1500–1891 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 39–40.

65 tusks … key to obtaining prized European imports Harvey M. Feinberg and Marion Johnson, “The West African Ivory Trade During the Eighteenth Century: The ‘… and Ivory’ Complex,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 15, no. 3 (1982), pp. 435–53, 452.

66 “more elephants in Guinea than … cattle in … Europe” Quoted in Meredith, Elephant Destiny, p. 55.

66 “an urban, and even subtly racist myth” John A. Van Couvering, “Proboscideans, Hominids, and Prehistory,” in Ross, Elephant, p. 75.

67 The late-eighteenth-century Scottish explorer Mungo Park Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (London: Eland, 1983; reprint of 1816 edition), p. 237.

68 Elephants and their ivory were of great importance in … African societies The richness of African ivory traditions is reviewed in considerable detail in Ross, Elephant.

68 Among the African products that the Portuguese took back to Europe See Suzanne Preston Blier’s study, “Imaging Otherness in Ivory: African Portrayals of the Portuguese ca. 1492,” Art Bulletin 75, no. 3 (September, 1993), pp. 375–96.

69 and took so much of it away in ivory and slaves In 1897 a British delegation was ambushed en route to the oba’s palace; in retaliation, the British sent the oba into exile and burned the palaces but not before removing two thousand pieces of art, which can now be seen in many of the world’s museums.

70 “great quantities of English patterns” Quoted in John M. Driggers et al., “Treatment of an Ivory-Inlaid Anglo-Indian Desk Bookcase,” p. 1. See http://aic.stanford.edu/sg/wag/1991/WAG_91_driggers.pdf.

70 exquisitely carved solid ivory chair Given to Warren Hastings by Mani Begum of Murshidabad in the late eighteenth century; in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

70 the leading producer of Christian art in ivory See Power + Faith + Image: Philippine Art in Ivory from the 16th to the 19th Century, catalogue of the 2005 exhibition, Ayala Museum, Makati City, Philippines.

70 the seven extraordinary armadas Jonathan Mirsky, “China at Sea,” Times Literary Supplement, January 24, 2007.

71 crop-ravaging nuisances Up to the Ming period, however, some regarded them as useful in warfare; see Elvin’s The Pattern of the Chinese Past (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1973), p. 93.

72 The Pursuit of Pleasure in the Course of the Seasons See Efrat El-Hanany, “Sex in the Imperial Garden,” Apollo Magazine, March 1, 2005.

72 the Japanese were late to ivory See the detailed acount in Esmond Bradley Martin, The Japanese Ivory Industry (Tokyo: World Wildlife Fund–Japan, 1985).

74 “such a length … of animated ivory!” John Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1963 reprint), p. 85.

76 a treaty The Treaty of Nerchinsk, 1690. The silks are now in the Palazzo Pitti. See Kirsten Aschengreen Piacenti, “Developments in the Textile Collections in Palazzo Pitti,” Burlington Magazine 126, no. 975 (June 1984), p. 340.

77 the later addition of the flywheel Joseph Conners, “Ars Tornandi: Baroque Architecture and the Lathe,” Journal of the Warbourg and Courtauld Institutes 53 (1990), p. 218.

78 lamented a diplomat Friedrich Carl Moser, 1751, quoted in Maurice, Sovereigns as Turners, p. 23–24.

78 an enormous amount of ivory was brought into Europe In the late eighteenth century Tranquebar, a colony founded by the Danish East India Company, supplied the Danish court with ivory. In 1782 the director of the royal art cabinet wrote that “several thousand tusks, some weighing between 100 and 125 pounds, had come to Copenhagen in the past few years.” These weights point to ivory of African origin.

79 pièces excentriques Conners, “Ars Tornàdi,” p. 223.

79 Charles Plumier Plumier was also one of the greatest botanists of his time. He named the begonia, the magnolia, and the fuchia and made three expeditions to the Americas; he died while setting out on a fourth, in 1704; ibid., p. 225.

79 the possibility of the modern factory was born “It is in the nature of things that only after the manufacture of commodities by machinery had attained a certain extent did the need to produce the machinery itself by machines make itself felt.” Karl Marx, Collected Works of Marx and Engels, vol. 33, p. 390 (New York: International Publishers, 1991), p. 390.

4. PIANO KEYS AND BILLIARD BALLS

Much of the material in this chapter is drawn from company records and other materials on the Connecticut ivory industry held at the Connecticut River Museum in Essex and the nearby Ivoryton Library Association, as well as in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Two texts in particular helped flesh out the story: Robbi Storms and Don Malcarne, Around Essex: Elephants and River Gods (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2001); and Don Malcarne, Edith DeForest, and Robbi Storms, Deep River and Ivoryton (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2002).

83 Pratt … was issued a U.S. patent Malcarne et al., Deep River and Ivoryton, pp. 47–49. The first British patent for a comb-cutting machine dates from about 1808. See Fiona St. Aubyn, ed., Ivory: An International History and Illustrated Survey (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987), p. 140.

84 Although very difficult to burn Teeth are often the only recognizable remaining parts of a burned corpse, hence their importance for forensic investigations.

84 a smell the workers described as “animal” That whiff—difficult to elicit but unmistakable—provides one of the tests for genuine ivory: heat a needle until red hot, then stick it into the base of, say, an ivory chess piece and it will barely penetrate; give it a quick sniff it and it says tooth. If it turns out to be a case of mistaken identity and the pawn is pure plastic, the synthetic will curdle and blacken around the needle point and reveal the deception by a telltale chemical stench.

84 Ezra Williams had set up his own comb business George S. Roberts, Historic Towns of the Connecticut River Valley (Schenectady, N.Y.: Robson and Adee, ca. 1906), pp. 56–57.

84 an increasingly steady stream of African tusks Storms and Malcarne, Around Essex, p. 22. Ivory was first brought into the United States in the eighteenth century, perhaps earlier, in the form of personal effects.

84 the world’s largest producers of ivory goods Pratt-Read Corporation Records, 1839–1990, Smithsonian Archives, AC NMAH 320 [296]. See the discussion in Malcarne et al., Deep River and Ivoryton, p. 47.

85 Comstock “was a man of enlarged views” Beers, History of Middlesex County, 1885, p. 363.

86 A photograph from that year Malcarne et al., Deep River and Ivoryton, pp. 28–29.

86 scores of factory houses for workers Storms and Malcarne, Around Essex, pp. 56 and 69. Between 1871 and 1925 the company built 135 small houses for its workers.

86 even the outhouses had ivory doorknobs Moore, Ivory: Scourge, p. 235.

87 the colossi of the ivory-cutting industry worldwide The two firms ended up dwarfing ivory-cutting firms in New York and Buffalo; Wood and Brooks Company in the latter city had also specialized in ivory for piano keys.

87 90 percent of the ivory imported into the United States Malcarne, “Ivoryton, Connecticut: The Ivory Industry and Voluntary and Involuntary Migration in the Late Nineteenth Century,” North American Archaeologist 22, no. 3 (2001), p. 286.

87 the handles of … corkscrews Bernard M. Watney and Homer D. Babbage, Corkscrews for Collectors (London and New York: Sotheby Park Bernet, 1981), pp. 24–25, 153.

88 scrimshaw The practice is thought to have begun on whaling voyages in the Pacific in the 1820s. The smaller teeth of killer whales (orcas) also allow for modest scrimshaw.

88 used to carve sacred figures in Fiji T. T. Barrow, “Human Figures in Wood and Ivory from Western Polynesia,” Man 56 (December 1956), pp. 165–68; Aubrey L. Parke, “The Waimaro Carved Human Figures—Carvings from Cachalot Whale Teeth in Fiji,” Journal of Pacific History (September 1997).

89 Before being sent to the ivory-cutting department This description follows the outline of the process given in Edith DeForest’s “Ivory Cutting Routine” and “Review of Ivory Shop Routine,” unpublished mss. in the Ivoryton Library Association. The exact details of these procedures were considered trade secrets and handed down orally from worker to worker. See also Anne Farrow, “After Africa: The Transformation of a Tusk,” Hartford Courant, Complicity: Northeast Magazine Special Issue, September 29, 2002, p. 64.

89 “each workman actually fondles and caresses it.” Quoted in Richard Conniff, “When the Music in Our Parlors Brought Death to Darkest Africa,” Audubon (July 1987), p. 86.

89 Ivory had become the plastic of its age The staggering variety of ivory goods produced is covered in detail in Benjamin Burack, Ivory and Its Uses (Rutland and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1984).

90 never been a significant tradition of hand-carved ivory Fine crafts firms such as Tiffany’s and Gorham’s employed descendants of European craftsmen for their necessary ivory work; St. Aubyn, Ivory, p. 312.

90 These droll, tiny-footed odalisques Compare the coy figure shown in Kunz, Ivory and the Elephant (opposite p. 125), with the come-hither model in Gröning, Elephants, p. 381.

91 ivory as an insulator of electrical current David H. Shayt, “The Material Culture of Ivory Outside Africa,” in Ross, Elephant, p. 376.

91 even a cosmetic ivory penis George M. Gould, M.D., and Walter L. Pyle, M.D., Anomolies and Curiosities of Medicine (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1896), Chapter XIII, p. 681.

91 nasal implants B. Vilar-Sancho, “An Old Story: An Ivory Nasal Implant,” Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 11, no. 3 (1987), pp. 157–61.

91 an 1864 advertisement for ivory Harvey and Ford, Dealers in Ivory, from an 1864 New York State Business Directory, p. 178; author’s files.

91 the elephant … in U.S. circuses of the period See Shana Alexander, The Astonishing Elephant (New York: Random House, 2000), pp. 105–7, 111.

92 “and trained to wipe its eyes on cue” Ibid., pp. 117, 120–21.

92 A sheet of ivory … fifty-two feet long The figure of fifty-two feet was claimed in J. Pratt, Centennial of Meriden (Meriden, Conn., 1909). Pratt mentioned “scroll-cut ivory” in his specification for U.S. Patent No. 42,507 of April 26, 1864, which described his “improvement in ivory-covered books.”

92 A thin ivory plate … was an ideal “canvas” Caroline Taylor, “Miniature American Portraits on Ivory Embody Feelings of Love, Loss and Separation,” Inside Smithsonian Research, no. 7 (Winter 2005), p. 10.

93 “tones of the ivory to represent the hue of the skin.” Kunz, Ivory and the Elephant, p. 85.

93 ivory veneers made large sheets available In the mid-nineteenth century, two kinds of ivory plates were available: small ones called “leaf” ivory showing “mackerel marks” if not cut close to the center of the tusk and “twist” ivory—“so called from its being cut by a saw working vertically, whilst the tooth or tusk is pressed hard against it at an acute angle; the result is, that by the tooth being made to revolve, a sheet of ivory is obtained, far larger than can be cut transversely from even the largest teeth, and possessing also the important advantage of having no grain or mackerel mark in it. But there is another side of the question; this ivory is so much more expensive than the other, that where only small pictures, say not more than 31¼4 by 41½2, are to be produced, few would incline to pay the price.” Samuel Fry, “Printing on Ivory,” Photographic News (London), April 12, 1861, p.171.

93 Page-sized sheets cut from tusk cylinders also had a tendency to curl Kunz warns that “such ivory flattened never loses its tendency to regain its original shape, and in consequence can only be used when mounted solidly with moisture-proof glue or cement.” Ivory and the Elephant, p. 88.

93 Goya managed to compress onto small plaques of ivory “Goya’s Last Works,” an exhibition at the Frick Museum, New York, February 22 to May 14, 2006; exhibition catalogue of the same name by Jonathan Brown and Susan Grace Galassi (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

93 Sarah Goodridge See Chris Packard, “Self-Fashioning in Sarah Goodridge’s Self-Portraits,” Common-Place 4, no. 1 (October 2003).

93 Her coolly confident Self-Portrait 33¾4 inches × 25⅝8 inches (9.52 × 6.73 cm); collection Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (95.1424).

94 “We are yours for the taking, in all our ivory loveliness” John Updike, “The Revealed and the Concealed,” in his More Matter: Essays and Criticism (New York: Knopf, 1999), p. 715.

94 “like a sugar-drop at the back of his mouth” Ibid., p. 716.

95 some 70 percent … was bought for other markets J. R. McCulloch, Esq., A Dictionary, Practical, Theoretical, and Historical, of Commerce and Commercial Navigation (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, new edition, 1859), pp. 785–86; Kunz, Ivory and the Elephant, p. 458. Some 4,900 tons of raw ivory entered the United States from 1884 through 1911: about 175 tons a year. But the United States reexported only a small amount of worked ivory.

95 its own newly mechanized ivory industry By 1851 comb making was completely industrialized in Aberdeen, Scotland; one firm employed six hundred workers. St. Aubyn, Ivory, p. 140.

95 “ivory generally retains its overall form and finish” Shayt, “Material Culture of Ivory,” p. 373.

95 twenty-six tons of better grade ivory in its vaults Kunz, Ivory and the Elephant, p. 413.

96 Renoir’s favorite formulation of the color Victoria Finlay, Color: A Natural History of the Palette (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 102.

96 “I shall look upon it as an altar” From the letter of February 7, 1818, reproduced in http://www.uk-piano.org/broadwood/lvb_wood.html.

97 “The Piano-Forte is a badge of gentility” Quoted in Gary J. Kornblith, “The Craftsman as Industrialist: Jonas Chickering and the Transformation of American Piano-Making,” Business History Review, 69, no. 3 (Autumn 1985), p. 353; emphases in the original.

97 “The piano in the parlor … helped create it” Conniff, “Music in Our Parlors,” p. 85.

98 “it is yielding to the touch, yet firm” Moore, Ivory: Scourge, p. 222.

98 was only the first stage of the process See David H. Shayt, “Elephant Under Glass: The Piano Key Bleach House of Deep River, Connecticut,” Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology 19, no. 1 (1993).

99 It was critical to know that these pieces came from the same tusk “The matchers essentially sought to create within a single horizontal plane what had existed vertically and in circular form within the tusk.” Ibid., p. 52.

100 Billiards became one of the few important indoor sports Robert Friedel, Pioneer Plastic: The Making and Selling of Celluloid (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), p. 34.

101 billiards was available at fifty-seven licensed locations in Paris These historical details are drawn from William Hendricks’ History of Billiards (Roxana, Ill.: self-published, 1974; revised 1977), p. iv. See also Mike Shamos, “Which Came First?” Billiards Digest (August 1999), pp. 141–44.

101 with a key “that never left her possession” Quoted in Victor Stein and Paul Rubino, The Billiard Encyclopedia: An Illustrated History of the Sport (New York: Billiard Encyclopedia, 1994), p. 230.

101 Phelan won … with a run of forty-six balls Rick Kogan, Brunswick: The Story of an American Company from 1845 to 1985 (Skokie, Ill.: Brunswick Corporation, 1985), pp. 12–13.

102 “The game of billiards has destroyed my naturally sweet disposition” From a speech, April 24, 1906. The house Twain built in Hartford, Connecticut, has a splendid billiards room and study on the third floor, where he wrote many of his best-known works.

102 thirty billiard tables, four of which were reserved for ladies’ use Godfrey Harris, The Fascination of Ivory: Its Place in Our World (Los Angeles: Americas Group, 1991), p. 52.

102 three million people in the United States played the game each day “Wanted—Substitute for Ivory for Billiard Balls,” Illustrated World XXXII, no. 6 (February 1920), p. 926. The Chicago publication states that there were 50,000 “rooms” (pool halls) with an average of half a dozen tables each, which would require 60,000 new balls a year.

102 “ivory was not only preferred, but required” Friedel, Pioneer Plastic, p. 34.

102 George C. Britner … made the balls for a number of championship matches J. G. Davis, “George C. Britner, Billiard Ball Maker,” Montgomery Advertiser, December 1, 1911. Britner worked for Brunswick-Balke-Collender in Chicago from 1878 until his retirement. Comstock, Cheney supplied balls to Brunswick.

103 Each cylinder of ivory was clamped and turned on a lathe T. A. Marchmay, “Making Billiard Balls from Ivory,” Scientific American Monthly (April 1921), pp. 316–68.

103 a “good ball” would “pass muster” Quoting Frank Buckland in Major W. Broadfoot et al., Billiards (London and Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1896), p. 90.

103 the best a billiard ball maker could hope for Compared with the two thousand or more piano keys one might get from a large tusk.

103 “never-ending complaints of members on the subject of balls” Broadfoot, Billiards, p. 88.

105 “Hyatt set out on his experiments” Friedel, Pioneer Plastic, pp. 29–30.

105 which made everyone in the room draw his gun Ibid., p. 35.

105 “the click of them is dull and harsh” Riso Levi, Billiards for the Million (Manchester: Riso Levi, 1920), p. 118.

105 ivory was used for … billiards events until the 1990s In 1991 the Conservatoire Internationale de Billard Artistique (CIBA) stopped requiring ivory balls. Shayt, “Material Culture,” p. 381n.

105 “a long-standing objective of nineteeth-century inventors” Friedel, Pioneer Plastic, p. 29.

106 “the destructive war, carried on of late against elephants” Quoted ibid., pp. 30–31; the dealer was probably H. A. Meyer of Germany.

106 “At first thought, some thin-skinned person” Quoted in Elizabeth Holmes, “On the Tusks of a Dilemma,” Billiards Digest (December 1990), p. 72.

5. “A TOOTH OF IVORY AND A SLAVE TO CARRY IT”

The Ernst D. Moore Collection 1888–1932 in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., includes Moore’s diary, business records, photographs, and other ivory-related material. Anne Farrow’s chapter, “Plunder for Pianos,” in Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank, Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005), is a concise summation of the human cost of Connecticut’s ivory industry.

107 “A Tooth of Ivory and a Slave to Carry It” “It is the custom to buy a tooth of ivory and a slave with it to carry it to the sea shore,” noted Michael W. Shepard, on a trading voyage to Zanzibar in 1844. Conniff, “Music in Our Parlors,” p. 81.

107 “Ivory first, child afterwards!” Alfred J. Swann, Fighting the Slave-Hunters in Central Africa (London: Seeley and Co., 1910), pp. 48–49; emphasis in the original.

107 Swann was not a completely disinterested observer James B. Wolf, review of Fighting the Slave-Hunters in Central Africa by Alfred J. Swann, in African Historical Studies 3, no. 2 (1970), pp. 499–502.

108 “The arrival of Tippoo, with tons and tons of ivory” Moore, Ivory: Scourge, pp. 116–17. Tippu Tip arrived in Zanzibar in 1882; he sold his ivory for £30,000.

109 “Stories of adventures in Africa” “Bwana-Pembi—The Ivory Master,” Hartford Daily Courant, September 21, 1930.

109 the largest ivory importing firm in the United States Arnold, Cheney and Co., established in 1849, had its head office at 158 Water Street (and later 82–92 Beaver Street) in New York. Rufus Greene of Providence carried on East African trade in his own ships, in partnership with two brothers, W. S. and B. R. Arnold; Greene, Arnold and Co. would become Arnold, Hine and Co., and finally Arnold, Cheney.

109 “I dare say I held in my own hands” Moore, Ivory: Scourge, p. xvi.

109 I met Richard Moore October 24, 2004.

111 “Worked hard today” Ernst Moore, diary, October 6, 1907.

111 “pick up the threads of the local business” Letter of D.M. to E.D.M. (“Hans”), September 19, 1907.

111 “I am in the midst of historical scenes” Moore, diary, November 5, 1907.

112 “We get the stuff away tomorrow all right” Moore, diary, October 26/27, 1907.

112 “throw that million dollars a year sales into the rear” J. Jones to G. L. Cheney, September 4, 1907; Cheney-Downing Collection Archive, Connecticut River Museum.

112 “We ought to buy at least 20,000 lbs.” Ibid., October 5, 1907.

113 “Everybody seems to like it here” Moore, diary, December 17 to 20, 1908.

113 “rubbing the varnish off the chairs at the Club” Moore, diary, April 7, 1908.

113 “It has a more compact texture within the tusk” E. D. Moore, “Jewels of the Noble Elephant,” Asia (November 1931), p. 720.

114 “If I don’t have a nightmare with a long prehensile nose tonight” Moore, diary, March 2, 1909.

114 “the art of juggling prices, grades, and proportions” Moore, Ivory: Scourge, p.238.

114 had spies count the tusks Ibid., p. 239.

114 “there was a trick to be uncovered” Ibid., p. 238.

114 British East African government ivory auctions Moore, diary, May 26, 1909. An entry of August 18, 1909, reads, “Ivory auction on today. The way the BEA [British East African] Govt. corrals it is a caution. They simply take it from the native, whether he likes it or not, but soften the confiscation at the rate of four rupees a pound. I wish we could get it for that figure. 100% in ivory makes a nice little profit.”

114 An old photograph of one such auction Moore, Ivory: Scourge, p. 240.

115 “We’re the kingpin ivory wallahs in these parts” Moore, diary, January 28, 1909.

115 “Our score is twenty or more” Ibid., August 27, 1909.

115 he finds they’ve shipped 1,034 tusks of ivory Ibid., February 5, 1910.

115 “if we paid more than Childs & Co. … were offering” Arnold, Cheney to Moore, December 8, 1909.

116 “I traded for ivory in Arabic” “By E. D. Moore,” untitled, undated autobiographical typescript, copy in author’s files, p. 2.

116 TR in jodhpurs, speaking with Moore Smithsonian Archives, 89–4279.

116 “shores are simply lined with the thickest … palms” Moore, diary, February 18, 1909.

117 “Gee whiz, but I am stuck on Zanzibar” Ibid., February 20–24, 1909.

117 Arab merchants shifted much of the ivory trading Alpers, “The Ivory Trade,” p. 356.

117 ivory was for a time transported by camel caravan Marion Johnson, “By Ship or Camel: The Struggle for the Cameroons Ivory Trade in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of African History 19, no. 4 (1978), p. 540.

118 ivory trading links between the Lake Nyasa region … and Indian traders Alpers, “The Ivory Trade,” p. 354; see also his Ivory and Slaves, p. 104.

118 East African coast … the focus of intensified European … demand In the first two decades of the nineteenth century, some 70 percent of British ivory imports came from West Africa; by 1840 the percentage from that region had been cut in half.

118 Ivory trading there was in full swing R. W. Beachey, “The East African Ivory Trade in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of African History 8, no. 2 (1967), p. 270.

118 “the El Dorado of ivory seekers” H. M. Stanley, “Explorations in Central Africa,” reprinted in the Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York 7 (1875), p. 274.

119 This drew … men away from traditional labor Alpers, “The Ivory Trade,” p. 356.

119 one Englishman wrote in his diary “The Zanzibar Diary of John Studdy Leigh, Part II,” edited by James S. Kirkman, International Journal of African Historical Studies 13, no. 3 (1980), entry for April 14, 1839.

119 bestowed on the man who could carry the heaviest tusk Moore, Ivory: Scourge, pp. 232–34

119 “tsetse fly prevented the use of beasts of burden” Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory, p. 104.

120 “one caravan in the 1880s carrying 27,000 yards of merikani” Beachey, “East African Ivory Trade,” p. 273.

120 “The intertwining of ivory porterage and slaving” Alpers, “The Ivory Trade,” p. 356.

121 “some, to ingratiate themselves with the Arabs, became eager slave-hunters” Quoted in Melvin E. Page, “The Manyema Hordes of Tippu Tip: A Case Study in Social Stratification and the Slave Trade in Eastern Africa,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 7, no. 1 (1974), p. 72.

121 One British observer wrote in his journal Captain W. D. Stairs, quoted ibid., pp. 72–73.

121 “These, in turn, make one of the strangers chief” Quoted ibid., p. 73.

122 “some one will eat up yours!” Swann, Fighting the Slave-Hunters, pp. 174–75; emphasis in the original.

122 could not have been ignorant of the use of slaves “They, perhaps, wished to conveniently ignore what was happening, and/or considered it a ‘business’ decision.” Malcarne, “Ivoryton, Connecticut: The Ivory Industry and Voluntary and Involuntary Migration in the Late Nineteeth Century,” North American Archaeologist 22, no. 3 (2001), p. 288.

123 “a fugitive slave was directed from New Haven” See Conniff, “Music in Our Parlors,” pp. 79–81.

123 “Every tusk … has been steeped and dyed in blood” H. M. Stanley, In Darkest Africa (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891), vol. I, p. 240.

123 in 1823 the first U.S. ship landed in Zanzibar Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory, p. 92.

124 “George has never struck one himself” Letter of August 4, 1853, quoted in Harriet Cheney Downing, “Tales of Zanzibar,” unpublished ms. dated January 5, 1942, copy in author’s files. Downing was Sarah Cheney’s granddaughter.

124 Sir Bartle Frere, who had been sent from London Quoted in Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory, p. 205.

125 his uncle … who knew Tippu Tip well Moore, Ivory: Scourge, p. 145.

126 German firms secured nearly a quarter of Zanzibar’s foreign commerce W. O. Henderson, “Germany’s Trade with Her Colonies, 1884–1914,” Economic History Review IX, no. I (November 1938).

126 Stanley was reporting a phalanx of firms H. M. Stanley, “Explorations in Central Africa,” p. 214.

126 orders for twelve thousand pounds of ivory a month Norman Robert Bennett, “Americans in Zanzibar: 1865–1915,” Essex Institute Historical Collections XCVII, no. 1 (January 1962), p. 48.

127 a single huge shipment of 355 tusks Ibid., p. 66. In 1896 Bombay imported more than six thousand tusks from Zanzibar, and sixteen hundred packets of small and broken tusks were exported to New York, London, and Hamburg; Beachey, “East African Ivory Trade,” p. 288. Much ivory sent to India was reexported to London. See Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory, pp. 85–86.

127 ten million pounds of raw ivory Shayt, “Elephant Under Glass,” p. 40.

128 “light-blue hair lines run lengthwise in the tusk” Moore, “Jewels,” p. 720.

128 “We got a little ivory from Champu Bhanjie” Moore, diary, October 22, 1910.

129 overtook Zanzibar in importance as an ivory market Bennett, “Americans in Zanzibar,” p. 61.

129 daguerreotypes of Egyptian antiquities Nicolas Monti, Africa Then: Photographs 1840–1918 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), p. 6.

130 “two valuable bits of dentistry” Moore, diary, December 28, 1908.

130 “the greatest price … paid for the tusks of a single elephant” Moore, Ivory: Scourge, p. 217.

130 purchased by the Natural History Museum Details of how the Kilimanjaro tusks ended up in this collection are given in J. E. Hill, “Record Ivory in the Collection of the British Museum (Natural History),” Tanganyika Notes and Records, no. 46 (January 1957). For their time in New York, see Kunz, Ivory and the Elephant, pp. 410–11. “Abnormal Elephant Tusk for British Museum,” PLA Monthly (September 1933), p. 334, confirms their diminishing weights by noting that the museum had acquired a tusk weighing 214 pounds, which belonged with another of 224 pounds that had been in its possession since 1901.

131 a striking image of an ivory slave coffle The illustration is by George Giguéra; Smithsonian Archives, 89–20434.

131 “we were perfectly content to take what we had” Hartford Daily Courant, September 21, 1930.

132 focuses blame squarely on the Swahili middle man Moore, Ivory: Scourge, p. 247.

132 “just for a couple of jaw ornaments” Moore, diary, November 4, 1907.

133 “bloodstains, dried tissue … could not be overlooked” Moore, “Jewels,” p. 719.

133 “the teeth … they find in the woods” Johnson, “By Ship or Camel,” p. 540.

133 Moore knew better Moore, “Jewels,” p. 719.

134 thirty thousand African elephants had to have been killed Moore, Ivory: Scourge, p. 215.

134 nearly forty-four thousand African elephants were killed annually See Esmond Bradley Martin’s analysis, “The Great White Gold Rush,” BBC History (August 2001), pp. 30–32.

134 He admitted there was no substitute for it Moore, Ivory: Scourge, p. 222.

135 “from the viewpoint of an old ivory man” “By E. D. Moore,” typescript, p. 4.

6. IVORY HUNTERS

There is a substantial literature on ivory hunting. Key titles for this chapter include W. D. M. Bell’s The Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter, cited previously; Richard Tjader, The Big Game of Africa (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1910); H. C. Maydon (ed.), Big Game Shooting in Africa (London: Seeley, Service and Co., 1932); John Taylor, Pondoro: Last of the Ivory Hunters (New York: Simon and Schuster: 1955); J. A. Hunter, Hunter (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952) and Hunter’s Hunter’s Tracks (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957).

136 “in time the space was clear of living elephant” Bell, Elephant Hunter, p. 102–3.

137 the first efforts to regulate hunting See Beachey, “East African Ivory Trade,” p. 285.

137 “now they were forbidden to sell or deliver ivory” Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), p. 118.

137 by backing “penniless adventurers” Beachey, “East African Ivory Trade,” p. 279.

138 a white tusk had the significance of a death’s-head “This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds.” Herman Melville, chapter 42, “The Whiteness of the Whale,” Moby Dick (1851).

138 before the Sudanese could establish effective control See W. Robert Foran, “Edwardian Ivory Poachers over the Nile,” African Affairs 57, no. 227 (April 1958).

138 “Ivory would be almost inexhaustible” Quoted in Beachey, “East African Ivory Trade,” pp. 281–82.

138 top-grade ivory in New York had doubled in price from 1895 to 1905 Friedel, Pioneer Plastic, p. 32. Similarly, prices in London reached $435 per cwt (112 pounds) for whole tusks in 1908; Kunz, Ivory and the Elephant, p. 443.

139 Arthur H. Neumann, another fabled Victorian ivory hunter See Arthur H. Neumann, Elephant-Hunting in East Equatorial Africa (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994; reprint of 1898).

140 it was a high-risk business Foran, “Edwardian Ivory Poachers,” p. 133.

140 “sun and putrefaction” Bell, Elephant Hunter, p. 32.

141 “like the blossoming of a great opalescent flower” John Alfred Jordan, Elephants and Ivory (New York: Rinehart, 1956), p. 41.

141 a two-man saw to split the skull One might find strange things in an elephant skull, such as a coconut-sized ball of ivory—a deformed tusk; Jordan, Elephants and Ivory, p. 22. There are, very rarely, even four-tusked elephants. See Clare Flemming and Ross D. E. MacPhee, “Four-Tusker!” Explorers Journal 83, no. 4 (Winter 2005/2006), p. 48.

142 “quite equal to any animal in creation” See Sir Samuel Baker, “Fifty Years of Rifles,” in Kenneth Kemp (ed.), Tales of the Big Game Hunters, (London: The Sportsman’s Press, 1986), pp. 178–79.

142 Bell preferred to use a .275 Rigby Bell used solid rather than soft-nosed bullets to achieve the required penetration.

142 Bell’s reputation as a crack shot was never questioned “Those who have not had much experience elephant hunting cannot be expected to appreciate what an astounding feat it was to kill eight hundred elephant with a .275 (7-millimeter) rifle. I am thoroughly qualified to appreciate it at its true worth, and in view of it I class Bell as the greatest elephant hunter of all time.” Taylor, Pondoro, p. 41.

143 “So much for the elephant cemeteries” Bell, Elephant Hunter, p. 73.

144 Legalivory hunting on the grand scale In nine months in Lado Bell shot 210 elephants, yielding five tons of ivory. However, he returned to the Sudan in 1912 and in a single day managed to kill nine elephants, collecting 1,463 pounds of ivory worth £900. Meredith, Elephant Destiny, p. 106.

144 “Where are my clothes, boy?” Tjader, Big Game of Africa, pp. 292–93, 324, 339.

145 As the game warden of Kenya put it Captain A. T. A. Ritchie, “Epitome of Kenya Game Laws,” in H. C. Maydon (ed.), Big Game Shooting in Africa (London: Seeley, Service and Co., 1932), p. 412.

145 “I’d take any chance with you behind me, J.A.” Bartle Bull, Safari (New York: Viking, 1988), p. 234.

146 “I was enough of a Scotsman to like a bargain like that” Hunter, Hunter, p. 113.

146 To him it became a familiar story Hunter, Hunter’s Tracks pp. 3–4.

147 When adult elephants go into musth See P. S. Easa, “Musth in Asian Elephants,” in Shoshani, Elephants, pp. 85–86.

147 trainers or bystanders … extinguished by male elephants in musth One particularly ghastly incident occurred on May 5, 1978, when an experienced trainer, Eloise Berchtold, performing with three Asian bulls from the Gatini Circus in Rock Forest, Quebec, tripped in front of Teak, one of the two males in musth. He gored and disemboweled her and hurled her body across the ring in front of horrified spectators. Gröning, Elephants, pp. 286–87.

148 Tusko was eventually purchased George “Slim” Lewis and Byron Fish, I Loved Rogues: The Life of an Elephant Tramp (Seattle: Superior Publishing Co., 1978), pp. 120–21.

148 as Robert Friedel explains Robert Friedel, “A Material World: An Exhibition at the National Museum of American History” Smithsonian Institution, 1988, p. 34.

149 cheaper plastics wiped out the tauga trade Anne Underwood, “The Good Fake,” International Wildlife 21, no. 4 (July/August 1991), p. 29.

149 “Only a New Orleans pimp would carry a pearl-handled gun.” Quoted in Massad Ayoob, “Handguns of the Generals,” Guns Magazine (August 2003).

149 “ivory when warmed by body heat” M. G. Shanahan, “Visualizing Africa in Nancy Cunard’s Negro Anthology (1934),” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 6, no. 2 (Fall 2005).

149 “The hollow of my hand was still ivory-full of Lolita” Alfred Appel Jr. (ed.), The Annotated Lolita (New York: Vintage, 1991), p. 67.

150 “99 and 44/100% pure” In 1879, Procter & Gamble cofounder Harley Procter found the perfect name for the soap that his company had invented the year before when he heard a minister in church read from Psalms 45:8: “All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.” Ivory’s long association with purity, underscored in the twentieth century by the soap’s success, has given it a distinctly unsensual overtone; there is even a Christian-oriented “Ivory Club Home Page” (“In Support of Teenage and Young Adult Celibacy and Virginity”) on the Internet, at http://diskbooks.org/ivory.html.

151 Pratt, Read of Deep River could boast sales Malcarne, Legacies of White Gold, program and guide, May 21, 2006, p. 15; author’s files.

152 the possibility of importing mammoth ivory For a description of efforts by UK firms to secure Soviet-era mammoth ivory, see Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, “White Treasure from the Dark Continent,” Saturday Evening Post, November 24, 1951, p. 73.

152 a fascinating account of guiding an Indian maharaja Hunter recounts the adventure in his Hunter’s Tracks, pp. 208–40.

152 the ruler of a southern Indian state Peter Beard mentions J. A. Hunter speaking of guiding the “ample Maharaja of Saguia,” but that may have been a different client of Hunter’s; see Beard’s The End of the Game (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, revised edition, 1988), pp. 135–37.

7. RESEARCHERS AND POACHERS

This chapter draws on the writings of a number of elephant researchers, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Cynthia Moss, and Katy Payne among them; Raymond Bonner’s incisive At the Hand of Man: Peril and Hope for Africa’s Wildlife (New York: Vintage, 1993); as well as the extensive media coverage on the anti-ivory campaigns leading up to the 1989 CITES ivory ban.

159 Drummond fully expected the disappearance of the elephant Quoted in Moore, Ivory: Scourge, pp. 166–67.

159 “the brutal hunting of natives” F. Bley, German administrator in Africa, 1899, quoted ibid., p. 168.

159 clearing entire districts of the troublesome giants Ibid., pp.168–69. Moore cites instances of elephant slaughter during the World War I British invasion of German East Africa (now Tanzania), including bombing by aircraft.

159 ivory accounted for almost half of export earnings Bonner, At the Hand of Man, p. 48.

160 “any difficulties in the way of stock-breeding” Quoted ibid., p. 42.

160 “governments prohibited Africans from owning rifles” Ibid.

161 profiting from their demise where they were not wanted Stuart A. Marks, “On Cake as Metaphor for Elephant Control: Sustainable Development in Northern Rhodesia During the 1930s,” unpublished MS in author’s files, p. 9.

161 “the department earned £16,000 from the sale of ivory” Bonner, At the Hand of Man, p. 50.

161 ivory … reached $32 a pound less than ten years later David Western, “An African Odyssey to Save the Elephant,” Discover (October 1986), p. 60.

162 “blasted out the bass line in a Bach chorale” Katherine Payne, “Elephant Talk,” National Geographic (August 1989), p. 266.

163 “Half measures … could not be tolerated” Marks, “On Cake as Metaphor,” pp. 9–10.

163 “until elephants were trained to read the GAME RESERVE notices” Wilson and Ayerst, White Gold, p. 151.

164 these efficiently laid out ancient elephant trails Richard Despard Estes, The Behavior Guide to African Animals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 260. In fact, elephants avoid energy-wasteful hill climbing; Roxanne Khamsi, “Why Elephants Avoid the High Road,” NewScientist.com., July 24, 2006.

164 stress-related diseases of the cardiovascular system Laws, epilogue in Beard, End of the Game, p. 274.

165 Even the meat was sold Some twenty-five thousand elephants were killed in Zimbabwe between 1981 and 1988, earning over $13 million, a significant sum in a country with seventeen thousand square miles of national park land to protect. Katy Payne, Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants (New York: Penguin, 1998), p. 198.

167 “between 2,000 and 3,000 nursing mother elephants died” Boyce Rensberger, “The ‘Elephant Slums’ of Tsavo National Park” (1973). See http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF001973/Rensberger/Rensberger03/Rensberger03.html.

167 examining the skulls and ivory of their own species K. McComb, L. Baker, and C. Moss, Biology Letters (Royal Society, 2006), pp. 2, 26–28.

167 scientists wondered if what had happened was anything like a natural cycle S.K. Eltringham, Elephants (Poole, Dorset: Blandford Press, 1982), pp. 157–60.

168 “natural tragedy soon obscured by the mists of time” Daphne Sheldrick, “The Elephant Debate,” in The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust newsletter (n.d., after 1992), author’s files.

168 “Mombasa is slowly taking over the role” Quoted in Beachy, “East African Ivory Trade,” p. 289. After World War II, Wilson and Ayerst point out, ivory auctions “came under the control of the Game Department and every tusk legally exported had to carry the Department’s stamp.” In addition, only licensed dealers could bid. White Gold, p. 156.

168 Wilson and Ayerst wrote of their visit there Wilson and Ayerst, White Gold, pp. 156–60.

169 Hong Kong had some three thousand craftsmen Esmond Bradley Martin and Daniel Stiles, The Ivory Markets of East Asia (Nairobi and London: Save the Elephants, 2003), p. 40.

169 forced Japanese traders to turn to African sources Martin, “The Great White Gold Rush,” pp. 31–32. Sri Lanka’s elephant population had been halved by 1914 for land clearances. In the mid-1800s, Martin explains, “a Major Rogers” did his bit by shooting “over 1,300 elephants.”

170 imports swelled to more than two hundred fifty tons a year Martin and Stiles, Ivory Markets, p. 11.

170 “How many got away?” Wilson and Ayerst, White Gold, p. 149.

171 government officials backed poaching in the national parks Iain Douglas-Hamilton, “Back from the Brink,” African Elephant and Rhino Newsletter, no. 1 (January–June 1983).

171 the country’s entire elephant population … had been reduced by 90 percent Meredith, Elephant Destiny, p. 204.

171 the ubiquitous Soviet-designed AK-47 assault rifle Arms imports to Africa increased from $500 million in 1970 to $4.5 billion in 1980; Jeremy Gavron, King Leopold’s Dream (New York: Pantheon, 1993), p. 151.

171 in countries like Angola In 1988 Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi sent Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci a full-sized model of an AK-47 carved from ivory and wood in appreciation for U.S. support of his movement. This appalling memento mori is now in the Smithsonian. For more detail on Savimbi’s vast ivory poaching operations, see the author’s A Certain Curve of Horn (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002), pp. 186–89.

172 long-standing smuggling networks Peter T. Dalleo, “The Somali Role in Organized Poaching in Northeastern Kenya, c. 1909–1939,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 12, no. 3 (1979), pp. 472–82.

172 “poaching of elephants was a temptation to African men” Alpers, “The Ivory Trade,” p. 362. The sharp rise in ivory prices, coupled with the decline in per capita GDP in Africa, made poaching even more attractive. See Tom Pilgram and David Western, “Inferring Hunting Patterns on African Elephants from Tusks in the International Ivory Trade,” Journal of Applied Ecology (1986), p. 512.

172 the government denied there were irregularities “Kenya Denies Scandal in Ivory; Deplores Reports on Kenyattas,” New York Times, June 14, 1975.

172 London’s Sunday Times ran a three-part series Sunday Times, August 10, 17, 24, 1975. See Bonner, At the Hand of Man p. 51; Gavron, King Leopold’s Dream, p. 158. Kenyatta, after receiving five thousand letters in 1972–73 expressing concern for Ahmed, a Marsabit bull carrying perfectly matched 150-pound tusks, issued a presidential decree that the elephant be guarded by soldiers. Ahmed died in 1974.

173 “a blow to many small shopkeepers in Nairobi” Bonner, At the Hand of Man, pp. 51–52.

173 “Two leading authorities … presented diametrically opposed views” Pilgram and Western, “Inferring Hunting Patterns,” p. 503.

174 an exhaustive report on the ivory trade Parker’s 870-page 1979 report to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “The Ivory Trade,” showed how much information on the status of the African elephant was contained in import/export statistics.

174 elephants must be hidden in the central rain forests Western, “An African Odyssey,” p. 60. See also Meredith, Elephant Destiny, p. 207.

175 “The number of tusks … increased more than 100 percent” Pilgram and Western, “Inferring Hunting Patterns,” p. 511.

175 “A considerable portion of the ivory exported from Zanzibar … was stolen” Moore, Ivory: Scourge, p. 177.

176 The most egregious example was that of Burundi Gavron, King Leopold’s Dream, pp. 4–5.

176 “the ivory capital of the moment” I. S. C. Parker and Esmond Bradley Martin, “Further Insight into the International Ivory Trade,” Oryx 17, no. 4 (1983), p. 199.

176 “all that ivory traders had to do to avoid controls” Meredith, Elephant Destiny, p. 213.

176 “Such flow and counter-flow” Parker and Martin, “Further Insight,” p. 194.

177 a new low … 11.4 pounds Western, Discover, p. 62.

178 “carvers will suffer a reduction in the raw material” T. Pilgram and D. Western, “Managing African Elephants for Ivory Production Through Ivory Trade Regulations,” Journal of Applied Ecology 23 (1986), p. 515.

178 “a worldwide campaign to reduce the demand for ivory” Cynthia Moss, Elephant Memories (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 298–300.

179 “not one African country was in favor of a ban” Bonner, At the Hand of Man, p. 114.

179 exposés featuring footage of poached ivory See Allan Thorton and Dave Currey’s highly partisan To Save an Elephant: The Undercover Investigation into the Illegal Ivory Trade (London: Transworld Publishers, 1991). See also Bonner’s cautions on their account; At the Hand of Man, p. 127.

180 It also provided anti-poaching grants Anthony C. Beilenson, “United States Politics and Elephant Conservation,” in Shoshani, Elephants, pp. 210–12. See also Bonner, At the Hand of Man, pp. 147–48.

181 Douglas-Hamilton … described it as “idealistic, imaginative and moral” Bonner, At the Hand of Man, p. 149.

181 sixty tons of firewood and a hundred and forty gallons of gasoline “World Notes Kenya,” Time, July 31, 1989.

182 “we were the rebels and therefore unpopular” Quoted in Kate B. Showers, “The Ivory Story, Africans and Africanists,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion 22, no. 1 (Winter Spring, 1994), p. 44.

8. THE IVORY BAN

Esmond Bradley Martin’s comprehensive ivory trade reports; Kumi Furuyashiki’s Ivory Tales: Policy and Discourse of Wildlife Conservation in Japan, OCEES Research Paper no. 17 (December 1999); and I. J. Whyte, “Headaches and Heartaches—the Elephant Management Dilemma,” in Schidtz and Willot (eds.), Environmental Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press), among other studies, supplemented press reports.

183 my meeting with Karen van Rooyen September 28, 2005.

186 “sporadic and infrequent” elephant losses Richard Leakey, “A Wildlife Director’s Perspective,” in Shoshani, Elephants, p. 214.

186 “The only way to … stop poaching is to destroy the ivory market” Ibid., p. 215.

186 “the failure of some states to utilize it constructively” Edward Barbier, Joanne C. Burgess, Timothy M. Swanson, and David W. Pearce, Elephants, Economics and Ivory (London: Earthscan Publications, 1990), pp. 146–47.

187 “in the value of its tusks” “The Ivory Paradox,” Economist, March 2, 1991, p. 16.

187 “where enforcement of bans is imperfect” Rasmus Heltberg, “Elephant Economics, Ivory Trade and Poaching,” 1999, University of Copenhagen working paper; see www.econ.ku.dk/derg/papers/ivory. Heltberg adds, “The conclusion is neither that markets for products from threatened natural resources should be liberalised indiscriminately, nor that trade bans should form the core of conservation efforts. Rather, it should be investigated how legal marketing channels can be set up and safeguarded.”

187 nine African states were holding at least one hundred tons H. T. Dublin, T. Milliken, and R. F. W. Barnes, Four Years after the CITES Ban: Illegal Killing of Elephants, Ivory Trade and Stockpiles, IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group Report (1995).

188 on an equal footing, which is almost equally offensive While acknowledging that when it came to the issue of the ivory ban “there seemed to be no solution that respected all the realities,” Katy Payne goes on to state that, instead of harvesting elephants for the benefit of people, “I would propose that both be allowed to live.” Payne, Silent Thunder, pp. 205, 273.

188 “cast as despoilers when presenting their own views” Showers, “Ivory Story,” p. 42.

189 “the moral imperative for banning the ivory trade” David Harland, “CITES ’92 and Beyond,” Pachyderm, no. 15 (1992), p. 19.

189 “Make Elephant Habitat Viable Against Human Encroachment” Ibid., p. 20.

190 a freighter docked in Toyko Bay Furuyashiki, Ivory Tales, p. 1.

190 5,446 elephant tusks Martin and Stiles, Ivory Markets, p. 9.

190 its adherence was less than enthusiastic In 1984 CITES adopted a resolution criticizing Japan for its poor implementation of the convention. Furuyashiki, Ivory Tales, p. 13n.

191 to police their members better Lucy Vigne and Esmond Bradley Martin, “Japanese Ivory Traders Co-operate,” Pachyderm 4 (July–December 1984), p. 19.

191 the members accounted for 98 percent of total Japanese ivory imports The ivory trade associations in Tokyo and Osaka later formed the Japan Federation of Ivory Art and Craft Associations, or JIA. Furuyashiki, Ivory Tales, p. 15n.

191 more stringent guidelines on ivory imports Tom Milliken, “Recent Developments in the Japanese Ivory Trade and the Implementation of CITES in Japan,” Pachyderm 5 (1985), pp. 15–16.

191 its widely unpopular whaling policy Japan’s position on whaling is a subject beyond the scope of this book, but it should be noted that the cases that can be made for sustainable use of whales and elephants are quite different, as are the politics. For a concise update, see Chris Hogg, “The Forces That Drive Japanese Whaling,” BBC News, June 15, 2006.

192 “When Namibian President Sam Nujoma visited Tokyo” Furuyashiki, Ivory Tales, pp. 16–17.

192 retail sales of ivory would be recorded and checked Martin and Stiles, Ivory Markets, p. 9.

193 upwards of thirty thousand Japanese made their living from ivory Much of the following description of the Japanese ivory industry is drawn from Martin’s various reports, especially Japanese Ivory Industry.

193 half the country’s imports between them Ted Gup, “Cover Stories,” Time, October 16, 1989.

193 kept under the floors of his house in Nagoya Martin and Stiles, Ivory Markets, p. 18.

194 once crafted a cane with an ivory dragon handle Masatoshi [as told to Raymond Bushell], The Art of Netsuke Carving (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1981), pp. 11–15.

194 “I feel as though I were caressing one of my children” Ibid., p. 50.

195 produced in quantity for piano makers Yamaha and Kawai According to Gup, at least two and a half tons of ivory were used for this purpose in 1988. See also Martin, Japanese Ivory Industry, p. 30.

195 two inches long and half an inch wide 1.2 × 6 cm to 1.5 × 6 cm; Martin and Stiles, Ivory Markets, p. 16.

196 some still made entirely by hand Ibid. In the pre-ban days, 80 percent of the hanko finished in the town of Rokugocho were of ivory; by the late 1990s the percentage of ivory hanko had declined to 30 percent.

196 loopholes which could be exploited Masayuki Sakamoto, “Is the Internal Control of Ivory Trade of Japan After 2004 Amendment in Accordance with All Requirements of Resolution Conf. 10.10 (Rev. CoP12)?” Japan Wildlife Conservation Society (JWCS), September 2004; copy in author’s files.

197 mixed in with a shipment of chopsticks Tomo Nishihara, “What’s Wrong with Selling Southern African Ivory to Japan?” Wildlife Conservation 106, no. 6 (November/December 2003), p. 17; Martin and Stiles, Ivory Markets, p. 12.

197 “Japan should be, once again, designated as a trading partner” CITES Secretariat, SC54 Doc. 26.1 (Rev. 1), pp. 8, 11.

198 China was “the single most important influence on … illegal trade” CITES Secretariat, Technical Mission Report, “Verification Mission Related to the Control of Internal Trade in Ivory in China,” 7–11 March 2005, SC53 Doc. 20.1 Annex, p. 2.

198 Chinese contract workers … returned home with illicit ivory Meera Selva, “Chinese Demand for Ivory Threatens African Elephants,” Independent, December 5, 2005.

198 China clearly hoped to “eventually become a legal importer of ivory” CITES Secretariat, Technical Mission Report, SC53 Doc. 20.1 Annex, p. 4.

199 the country boasted seven billionaires See William Mellor and Allen T. Cheng, “China’s Uneasy Billionaires,” Bloomberg Markets (July 2006), p. 35.

199 an ornately carved ivory-cased mobile phone Guangzhou Daily, October 16, 2006.

199 Grace said, swiveling in his chair December 4, 2004.

200 unless it’s a bona fide antique Confusingly, the EU defines “antique” as at least fifty years old.

200 exporters included France, Canada, and Japan Douglas F. Williamson, Tackling the Ivories: The Status of the US Trade in Elephant and Hippo Ivory (Washington, D.C.: TRAFFIC North America, September 2004), pp. 18–19.

200 No raw ivory, including sport-hunted trophies, may be reexported Between 1995 and 2002, 1,328 African elephant trophies (i.e., potentially 2,656 tusks) were brought into the United States. Ibid., p. 2. Sport-hunted trophies may, in certain circumstances, be reexported for personal, noncommercial use.

202 You can purchase museum-quality netsuke The United States is second only to China in the number of ivory items available at retail (Esmond Bradley Martin, pers. comm.).

203 8,325 ivory items for sale in 776 retail outlets in London alone Esmond Martin and Dan Stiles, “Europe’s Ivory Markets,” Swara 28, no. 3 (July–September 2005), p. 54; also, Stiles and Martin, “Agony and Ivory,” BBC Wildlife (November 2005), pp. 54–55.

203 willing accomplices in the deception Cahal Milmo, “From Africa to UK High Streets, via China: Inside Lucrative World of Ivory Smuggling,” Independent, November 27, 2004.

203 “shipments of illegal ivory … were intercepted and seized from more than 80 countries” Williamson, Tackling the Ivories, p. 30.

203 three researchers … studied the question in a 2004 paper Nigel Hunter, Esmond Martin, and Tom Milliken, “Determining the Number of Elephants Required to Supply Current Unregulated Ivory Markets in Africa and Asia,” Pachyderm, no. 36 (January–June 2004), pp. 116–28.

203 elephants are killed each year to supply Africa and Asia Perhaps forty to eighty Indian tuskers are poached each year to supply illegal trade there. Ibid., p. 126.

204 The animal toll in the war-torn Congo S. Blake et al., “Forest Elephant Crisis in the Congo Basin,” PloS Biology 5, no. 4, e111 (April 3, 2007).

204 researchers looked into trace element analysis of tusks N. J. van der Merwe et al., “Source-area Determination of Elephant Ivory by Isotopic Analysis,” Nature 346, 744–746 (August 23, 1990).

204 striking differences in carbon isotope ratios Ruth Flanagan, “Tracing Illegal Ivory,” Earth 4, no. 4 (August 1995), p. 12.

204 a technique … to drill out core samples from tusks for analysis See Menno Schilthuizen, “Squeezing Jumbo Genes from Ivory,” Science Now, December 2, 2003, p. 2.

205 most likely originated from a narrow band of southern Africa Samuel K. Wasser et al., “Using DNA to Track the Origin of the Largest Ivory Seizure Since the 1989 Trade Ban,” PNAS 104, no. 10 (March 6, 2007).

206 hippo ivory … into the United States Williamson, Tackling the Ivories, pp. 40–41, 47–48.

206 Congolese rebel groups … are responsible for the depredation Xan Rice, “Elite Rangers Take on Rebels to End the Slaughter of Congo’s Hippos,” Guardian, December 22, 2006.

206 the remaining nonelephant trade in ivory Hornbill “ivory” isn’t ivory at all; it’s keratin, but it’s still prohibited. And the ivory-billed woodpecker has no such thing; ivory, in this avian context, refers to the color of its beak. Warthog ivory is not regulated.

206 mammoth ivory was going for $300 a pound Barry Newman, “Mammoths May Be Extinct, but They Save the Elephants,” Wall Street Journal, July 16, 1991, p. 1. A decade later these rising prices raised the opposite set of concerns; see Guy Gugliotta, “Ban on Elephant Ivory Could Endanger Fossils,” Washington Post, October 15, 2004, p. A03.

207 A Yakut can make $25 to $50 a pound by turning in the tusks Steven Lee Myers et al., “Old Ways of Life Are Fading as the Arctic Thaws,” New York Times, October 20, 2005; Ryann Connell, “Mammoth Merchants Make No Bones About Pulling Wool over Your Eyes.” Mainichi Daily News, April 18, 2005.

207 mammoth tusk from Sibera’s Tamyr peninsula went for £6,000 September 26, 2006; the tusk was forty inches in length on the outside curve.

207 Hong Kong imported seventy-seven tons of it Ed Stoddard, “Ivory From Extinct Mammoths in Big Demand,” Reuters, October 6, 2004.

207 artificial ivory might be able to be grown in vitro C. S. Young et al., “Tissue Engineering of Complex Tooth Structures on Biodegradable Polymer Scaffolds,” Journal of Dental Research 81 (October, 2002), pp. 695–700.

207 “a satisfactory alternate for the jewels of the noble elephant” Moore, Ivory: Scourge, p. 225.

208 “a deep fear of ivory deprivation” Donal Henahan, “No Tickling the Plastics,” New York Times, April 26, 1981.

208 Bösendorfer … sold 150 pianos with ivory keyboards a year in the United States Conniff, “Music in Our Parlors,” p. 92

209 “I’m relatively insensitive in that respect” Quoted in Malcolm W. Browne, “With Ivory in Short Supply, Pianists Tickle the Polymers,” New York Times, May 25, 1993, p. C1.

266 who paused to listen before the chisels were brought out Alexander Chancellor, “Key Largo” (The Talk of the Town), The New Yorker, February 22, 1993. The argument that confiscated wildlife materials should be available to museums for restoration of objects such as musical instruments—not simply ivory but such materials as crow quills for harpsichord plectra—is made by Laurence Libin, “Materials from Endangered Species in Musical Instruments,” CIMCIM Publications, no. 3, 1994.

213 Ian Whyte … is Kruger’s elephant man April 12, 2006.

220 Instances of noncompliance … would be enough to put a stop to the plan Amendments to Appendices I and II of the convention adopted by the COP at its twelfth meeting, Santiago, Chile, November 3–15, 2002, 3f.

9. ELEPHANT DREAMS, ELEPHANT REALITIES

Media reports on human-elephant conflict in the African, European, and North American press supplied much valuable material.

223 The Saggy Baggy Elephant Kathryn and Byron Jackson, The Saggy Baggy Elephant (New York: Golden Press, 1947). Gustaf Tenggren worked for Disney in the 1930s and for Little Golden Books in the 1940s and 1950s. He also illustrated the immortal The Poky Little Puppy.

223 Parker … met me at the door April 15, 2006.

225 a Kenya-based wildlife consultancy Wildlife Services Ltd.; Parker, What I Tell You Three Times Is True: Conservation, Ivory, History and Politics (Kinloss: Librario Publishing, 2004) p. 107. See also his Ivory Crisis (London: Chatto and Windus, 1983).

225 Parker had it down to a science Current thinking on elephant culls is that shooting remains the most humane method. Trials with drugs such as scoline (succinylcholine), which shuts down muscles, proved cruel to elephants; they would stop breathing but be fully conscious.

225 “It doesn’t matter to an elephant … it’s death” Advocates of translocating elephants might want to think about its effect on survivors. “For the ones that are left behind,” Ian Whyte pointed out to me, “what is the difference between a cull and a translocation? All this noise, and some of the elephants disappear. They have the trauma of herds being halved and families broken up.”

226 elephants would been fading out even without the demand Parker points out human population in Africa was increasing 2 to 3 percent annually for most of the twentieth century, roughly the rate at which elephants have lost range. “Human increase and elephant decrease are two poles of the same phenomenon.” Parker, What I Tell You, pp. 365, 368, 371.

227 “she herself went away like a cork” J. H. Williams, Elephant Bill (New York: Bantam Books, 1950), p. 56.

229 “School Closed After Invasion by Elephants” Daily Nation, January 27, 2003.

229 to bury their mangled bodies “Kenya Elephant Buries Its Victims,” BBC News, June 18, 2004.

229 Another elephant seemed to have stepped out of the past Rolf D. Baldus, “Tanzania: Game Scouts Shoot 100-Pound Tusker,” African Sporting Gazette, May 8, 2006.

230 a steady pileup of sad statistics By contrast, if a tourist gets trampled, that’s often news with a global reach (e.g., “Elephant Kills British Man on Honeymoon, Say Officials,” International Herald Tribune, October 2, 2006. One British woman, badly injured by an elephant while jogging at a Kenyan bush lodge, successfully sued the community ranch. “Our people have been killed by wild animals and we only get Sh30,000 per person as compensation,” the local councillor pointed out. “How come we are now required to pay a huge amount of money to a tourist injured by an animal owned by the State?” Mwangi Ndirangu, “Ranchers Pained by Sh150M Bill for Elephant’s Fury,” Nation (Nairobi), July 5, 2007.

230 Elephants … become increasingly boxed in and stressed See Charles Siebert, “An Elephant Crackup?” New York Times, October 8, 2006.

230 Asia’s dwindling population … struggles in its fragmented habitats See Tom Wright, “Pachyderm Patrols Fend Off Elephants Rioting in Sumatra,” Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2007; and Tarquin Hall, To the Elephant Graveyard (New York: Grove Press, 2000).

231 I was catching a flight to Laikipia April 18–21, 2006.

232 Swelling populations of both elephants and humans “If the human population is growing at say 5% per annum, then after 10 years the rate of raiding will have increased to 1.6 times its former level. But if both elephant and human populations are growing at 5%, then after 10 years the rate will be 2.7 times its former level.” R. F. W. Barnes, “Treating Crop-raiding Elephants with Aspirin,” Pachyderm, no. 33 (July–December 2002).

233 grieving relatives of someone killed by an elephant Nicholas Wadhams, “In Kenya, Elephants Are Hated,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 18, 2007.

233 over half the livestock died Marie-Louise Gumuchian, “Millions Still Face Hardship from East Africa Drought,” Reuters, August 17, 2006.

234 “We’ve had to put it up to protect lives and livelihoods” This plan is not without its critics, who regard it as “a ploy to separate white ranchers from peasants.” See John Mbaria, “New Fence to Separate Haves from Have-nots,” East African (www.nationmedia.com), August 28, 2006.

235 “It’s a classic case” See Amos Kareithi, “Stray Wildlife Could Cost Ranchers Farms,” East African Standard, January 21, 2005. Elephant problems in Laikipia are nothing new; see Theodore Roosevelt’s prescient observations in his African Game Trails (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925, reprint of 1910), Vol. I, pp. 295–97.

236 “with the stroke of a pen” Iain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton, Battle for the Elephants (New York: Viking Penguin, 1992), p. 113.

237 “The only ivory I ever sold … was for thirty-five shillings a pound” Other professional hunters made a bit more from the odd hundred-pounder. See Brian Herne, White Hunters: The Golden Age of African Safaris (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), pp. 188–90.

240 local communities who had a stake in wildlife Zimbabwe’s Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources, or CAMPFIRE, pioneered empowering local people to make wildlife decisions, turning poachers into gamekeepers. Although used as a template for successful programs elsewhere in Africa, it has suffered at home in the chaos of the end days of the Mugabe regime. See Peter Godwin, “Wildlife Without Borders,” National Geographic (September 2001), pp. 24–8, and Bonner, At the Hand of Man, pp. 272–78.

242 elephants they would never dare tackle in daylight Damian Whitworth, “The Killing Fields,” TimesOnline, October 4, 2006.

244 what is left of its shrinking glaciers Charles J. Hanley, “On Africa’s Great Peaks, Glaciers Are in Retreat,” Washington Post, December 31, 2006.

244 Martin invited Nigel Hunter … to join us for tea April 21, 2006.

EPILOGUE: 2007

Key CITES documents for the Fourteenth Conference of the Parties, June 3–15, 2007, are available on its Web site, www.cites.org.

251 the foundation’s position statement AWF Position Statement on Proposals on the Fourteenth Meeting of the Conference of Parites to CITES, June 2007, author’s files.

251 Sue Mainka, the head of the IUCN delegation Quoted in “CITES Trade Controls Should Not Increase Poverty,” IUCN News Release, Gland, Switzerland, May 30, 2007.

251 To them, any consumptive wildlife use is suspect Behind the idea that elephants should never be killed for their ivory is an even bigger idea, of course: that elephants shouldn’t be killed for any reason.

252 such stockpiles … should be put “permanently beyond use” Travers has indicated that “a permanent public education display” might be “culturally appropriate” in some countries, presumably to promote an anti-ivory message. See Charlie Furniss, “On the Tusks of a Dilemma,” Geographical (November 2006), p. 53.

252 “Because believe you me, we need the money” Quoted in Nicole Itano, “Old Ivory Ban Faces Fresh Opposition,” Christian Science Monitor, November 12, 2002.

252 crippling legitimate commerce would help stop illegal trade The argument that as long as any trade in ivory is permitted there will always be a black market shadowing it loses some force when it’s acknowledged that ivory isn’t uniquely problematic in that regard. In fact, the list of desirable goods dogged by smuggling is practically endless: art, diamonds, drugs, liquor, tobacco, nuclear technology … Esmond Bradley Martin observes that anti-ivory trade campaigners invariably agree that perfect enforcement of the ivory trade is impossible, but when asked if they would be satisfied if ivory trade controls were 99 percent effective, “they never answer the question.”

252 The extensive database The database is Etis, the Elephant Trade Information System.

253 to gain an undue influence on the wildlife policies See also Richard Black, “African Deal Cut on Ivory Trade,” BBC News, June 14, 2007.

253 Kenya, supported by Mali Tom Milliken, TRAFFIC’s director for eastern and southern Africa, pointed out that some of the countries backing a twenty-year moratorium were themselves guilty of failing to crack down on illegal ivory. “Mali, for example, has reported one seizure in eighteen years,” he said, although it had been implicated in forty-two other incidents of criminal trading.

253 “elephants are dramatically becoming depleted” Quoted in “African States Call for a 20-year Ban on Ivory,” AFP, April 24, 2007.

253 Kipng’etich … told the Standard in Nairobi Beatrice Obwocha and Winnie Chumo, “Birth Control for Elephants to Start,” East African Standard, February 1, 2007.

253 “We want communities to continue benefiting” Quoted in “SADC Parks Authorities to Discuss Ivory Ban Trade,” BuaNews (Tshwane), April 17, 2007.

254 Susan Lieberman, WWF’s Global Species Program director “CITES Permits 60 Tons of Elephant Ivory to Be Sold,” Environmental News Service, June 4, 2007.

254 Travers wrote in disgust on his Born Free blog Posted June 2, 2007, at http:// www.bornfreeusa.org/blog/?cat=5.

254 had lined up nearly two dozen African countries Joe Ageyo, “Kenya Pushes for Total Ban on Ivory Trade,” Nation (Nairobi), June 7, 2007.

255 “illegal killing has been so low as to be insignificant” Quoted in Richard Black, “‘Last Chance’ for Elephant Deal,” BBC News, June 13, 2007.

255 “we do not want to be punished for the wildlife mismanagement in Kenya” Quoted in John Mbaria, “Country May Be Losing Fight to Protect Its Rare Wildlife,” Nation (Nairobi), June 10, 2007.

255 “We really need a practical way out” Arthur Max, “Countries Deadlock over Ivory Trade Ban,” Kansas City Star, June 12, 2007.

256 a “resting period” of nine years However, countries that have elephant populations listed in Appendix I, such as Tanzania, would presumably be able to apply to CITES to downlist their populations to Appendix II during the “resting period.” The decision (Amendment to Proposal COP 14 Prop.4 and Related Draft Decisions) included additional provisions covering trade in hunting trophies, live animals, hides, hair, leather goods, and certain noncommercial carvings in Namibia (ekipas) and Zimbabwe.

256 seizure of a shipment of nearly three tons of illegal ivory in Osaka There are three options under CITES to deal with seizures of illegal ivory: give it to research institutions, return it to the country of origin (if known), or incinerate it. But the prospect of destroying the huge amount of ivory intercepted by the Osaka Customhouse has dismayed the Japanese. “METI Reluctant to Incinerate 3 Tons of Seized Elephant Ivory,” Yomiuri Shimbun, August 9, 2007. Nonetheless, it was destroyed in March, 2008.

256 Iain Douglas-Hamilton said his group Quoted in “CITES Clears Way for One-off Ivory Sale, Extends Ban,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, June 14, 2007.

256 Julius Kipng’etich, the KWS head, did an about-face Quoted in Alister Doyle, “Africa’s Elephants Get a 9-year Ivory Export Break,” Reuters, June 14, 2007. Kipng’etich wrote a muddled editorial about the implications of the decision on July 2, 2007, for the East African Standard.

257 tighten enforcement and border checks for illegal shipments See Peter J. Stephenson, WWF Species Action Plan: African Elephant 2007–2011 (WWF, Gland, Switzerland, 2007), p. 10.

257 fifty tons of stockpiled ivory in Kruger alone South Africa also has additional ivory stockpiles outside Kruger; as a “pro-use country,” it welcomed the sale. Leseho Sello, the environmental affairs, biodiversity, and heritage chief director, told a parlimentary committee, “We don’t believe in preserving or conserving elephants just to watch them.” South Africa would look for ways to benefit from elephants “in any manner possible for the development and upliftment of communities.” “SA Ivory Sales Waits on Provinces,” SAPA, August 14, 2007.

257 “The Secretariat will closely supervise this sale” “Ivory sales get the go–ahead,” CITES press release (Geneva), July 16, 2008.”