Working The Trapline — Photographs, Amusettes, and Captain N.

Lynda Sanchez scouted up a remarkable photographic odyssey undertaken by Pacific Northwest photographer Matika Wilbur, whose 562 Project seeks to photograph members of every federally recognized Native tribe in North America.

From her website:

Photographs are captured on traditional black and white film and shot in the zone system. Once developed, they are printed on silver gelatin fiber and hand-colored by Matika with oil paints. The craftsmanship of each image is a time-honored process that, in keeping with her shooting method, honors the traditional artisanship of black and white photography.

To capture the spirit and essence of her portrait sitters, Matika spends several hours or even days with a participant, often even residing in their homes. She honors traditional potlatch protocol, bringing gifts to honor traditional trade culture, and shares songs and prayers. Sitters choose their portrait locations, most frequently geographically remote reservations, but also urban settings. An oral history accompanies each portrait, capturing the subject’s unique experience, and fully bringing an individual to life. These relationships and approaches reveal an intimacy in her portraits unlike popular street photography or classic journalism, an approach Matika describes as “an indigenous photography method.”

Explore the gallery at http://www.project562.com/.

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A while back, while trailing some Hessian Jaegers, my eye was caught by a painting by Pamela Patrick White of Hessians Crossing the Brandywine.

Note the Jaeger firing the massive musket off of a monopod brace at the left of the painting. What the hell is that? thought I. That is an amusette. From Military History Now:

Pioneered as far back as the late Middle Ages, amusettes, wall guns and rampart guns eventually found their way into the arsenals of most 18th Century European armies, albeit in limited numbers. During the War of Independence, at least one Continental armouryfurnished the rebellion with several of the jumbo long arms – both smooth-bore and rifled. Another source shows that they were used by the King’s forces in North America as well. They quickly proved their value on rugged landscapes of the North American frontier, particularly in environments where traditional artillery couldn’t go.

I was familiar with the concept of the wall gun, and the punt gun used for commercial bird slaughter, but I did not know of the amusette. Here it is in action:

You know me and my fetish for Continuity & Persistence. It pleased me to note that the amusette’s heritage can be found in the World War I Mauser Tankgwehr 1918, whose job was just what it sounds like. found a photo of some New Zealand troops inspecting a captured specimen in the trenches.

Here is this happy young Lady Mae putting it through its paces.

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Thanks to HP over at Hillbilly Highways, I belong to a Facebook group called Gravel and Guts: Grit Lit and Country Noir Books. One of the readers there mentioned a book I feel like I should have known about but didn’t:

Set on the Niagara frontier in the final days of the American Revolution, The Life and Times of Captain N. sees the revolutionary new world order from the standpoint of the losers. Hendrick Nellis, a Tory guerrilla, has also been a redeemer of whites abducted by Indians. His son Oskar finds himself sometimes allied with the Indians, sometimes at war with them. Hendrick kidnaps Oskar for King George’s army, and Oskar, haunted by dreams and by books, is the teller of the tale. The book he intends to write is sketched out in his letters to George Washington and in the signs tattooed on his skin as mementos of his personal Indian wars.

The Life and Times of Captain N. trespasses into the no-man’s-land where the delirium of combat drives races, genders, languages, and ideas into a primeval frenzy. Master of the psyche’s primitive depths, Douglas Glover draws the reader into a violent and erotic emotional whirlpool. Some of the incidents in The Life and Times of Captain N. are based on the lives of the real Hendrick Nellis and his family, and, says Glover, “I have no doubt their descendents and relatives on both sides of the border will find much to complain of.”

Seems that this could go a couple of different ways. Could be a literary feast like Three Day Road, could be pretentious, self-indulgent dreck, or could be, like Red Dog,  a weird literary trek where I’m thinking, This is brilliant one minute and What the hell am I reading? the next.

I took the zero-risk option and ordered it through interlibrary loan. If it’s good, I’ll pick it up and stick it in the TBR pile. If not, back it goes. Anybody here know this novel?