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The Black Horse History They Left Out | Louis Hook | LFRF 60 · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

0:00
Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
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Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
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I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
0:06
The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
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Before I jump in with today's guest, I want to say a huge thank you to you, our
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So now let's jump in.
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Welcome back to Live Free, Ride Free.
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I've got Luis Jock here, who if you were listening to my Equine Assisted World
0:45
podcast, you will know is one of the founding members of the Compton Cowboys.
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One of the ther- it's a therapeutic riding program in Los Angeles in the
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legendary Black neighborhood of Compton.
1:01
Think of all the rap singers that you can think of singing
1:04
about Compton, that's the area.
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And yet they've had this very, very good equestrian program going for some decades.
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And so if you haven't yet heard that, please do go to the link find
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it on YouTube, whatever, of Equine Assisted World and the Compton Cowboys.
1:19
However, Luis Jock, the reason I wanted him to come on this show is he is also
1:24
among many other things, a scholar of the African horse traditions that
1:32
have been left out of the record of history and need to come back in.
1:39
And this is interesting, particularly for me, because m- some of
1:41
those of you who know me a bit know that my family's African.
1:44
My sister and I were the fir- first ones born back in Europe
1:47
in couple of hundred years.
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So colonial family since the earlies And my ancestors writing in their
1:56
diaries and i- their old photographs and pictures and so on, often
2:01
encountered African horse cultures.
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Not in Southern Africa, but certainly up in the Sahel and
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the, which is the belt that goes east to west, south of the Sahara.
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So think from Ethiopia right across to, say, Senegal.
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And in my mother's house, now in my own house, there is a
2:23
surcoat hanging on the wall.
2:26
If you know medieval terminology, a surcoat is the cloth coat that youâ¦
2:32
or tabard or tunic that would be worn over chain mail with bright colors
2:37
on it, but also very thick wool to absorb sword blows, worn on top of
2:41
chain mail by a medieval knight.
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And we always associate this with European knights.
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You think of the Knights Templars with their surcoats with white
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with a red cross or whatever.
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But this was actually universal across the Middle East and down into North and
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East Africa and into West Africa as well.
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There was a famous campaign in the 1890s in which a religious leader who called
3:06
himself the Mahdi organized a large force, basically the whole country of
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the Sudan, to kick the British out.
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And the British in the 1890s, this is the height of empire,
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were difficult to displace.
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However, they broke the British Square, they broke the British
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Army, and pulled down the British flag at a place called Fashoda.
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And in the capital Khartoum, they killed the governor.
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There was a Hollywood movie made about it with Charlton Heston some decades ago.
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The relief force that was sent in was partly commanded by an ancestor
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of mine, George Spotterswood Sparks, who left behind a thing of
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photographs this thick of the campaign.
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Wow.
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And in this campaign, we see mounted soldiers from the Sudan on very, very
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good collected war horses wearing these surcoats and chain mail.
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And at the Battle of Omdurman, which was where they brought in the Maxim
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guns and heavy artillery and, you know- Put the British Empire back.
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What?
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Mass dead.
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One of these dead knights my ancestor pulled off his chain mail, his surcoat,
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his helmet, and his sword, and these have been hanging on our family
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walls for as long as I can remember.
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So I am very familiar with the fact that Africa has a very fine horse tradition,
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and you cannot go into battle hand-to-hand with swords if you can't collect a horse.
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You can't do that unless you are a fine rider.
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This is not something introduced by the Europeans that then was being taken
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on in a ham-fisted way by the locals.
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No, no, no, no, no.
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It was there when the British showed up, and it wasâ¦
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had been in place for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.
5:00
So that's my story, and one of the reasons why I'm so interested in this,
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because I think all of us know that the horse world, it's a very, it's,
5:08
it's a very Eurocentric viewpoint.
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And but in fact, dressage as we know it and the domestication of the horse happens
5:16
on the borderland of Europe and Asia historically, and then it filters down
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into the Middle East, and then it filters across into North Africa, and it actually
5:24
comes into Europe relatively late.
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So knowing all this, it was very exciting for me to encounter Mr.
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Hooke here, because he's been doing extensive researches into
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these lost cultures, and with that, I'm gonna hand it over to him.
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Thank you for coming on the show.
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And please tell us what made you begin this inquiry, and give us the history.
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Louis Hook: Yeah, Robert, first I'll say that is an incredible
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pedigree that you have.
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Mm.
5:55
And already just from hearing it more, again, in more detail it, it
5:59
provides some much education for me that actually helps in my own effort.
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And what my effort is is to basically clean up history for
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inaccuracies and misrepresentation relative to Black people generally.
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But the horse culture comes naturally, because I've been for 40 years
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dealing with this horse culture with this youth program here in Compton.
6:30
And how I kind of wandered my way into it.
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In the count- In the, in the equestrian world of all the the Black cowboys, the
6:39
Black horsemen, it's fairly well known once you get into it, which took me,
6:45
you know, over time, over 40 years to dive deep into it, that the the cowboy
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world pr- that was painted by all the Westerns was basically whitewashed.
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That there's a long history of, of, of Black equestrians
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in the West and participation.
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So that was something that kind of is kind of common knowledge in that community.
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It's, it's a little bit of an outrage, but not really.
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It's like, "Hey, this is the way it is.
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We're reliving ourselves.
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We have our own muse- Black history museums for e- equestrians and the like."
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And there's a whole world spinning there, but it's, it's kind, was kind
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of independent, not moving too far.
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But I felt comfortable in my skin until I saw a movie called The Woman King.
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This isâ¦
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now mind you, my background is, I- I'm an academic.
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MIT PhD program.
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I didn't finish the PhD because I decided to go to business school.
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I went to Harvard Business School, but I always looked at myself
7:49
kind of as a, as a burgeoning economist in the background study.
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So anyway, all of that said, I in this movie, I'm watching a movie, and there
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are two things in it that I thought were, really caught my attention.
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I thought I was just gonna go see some Black African warrior female kicking ass.
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And as I got there, I find out that the sto- her story is, her main objective
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was trying to change even her own tribe from, from selling themselves, their
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own members into slavery for profit.
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And it turns out her main arch enemy in that effort, the main tribe in the
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movie that was partnering with the Europeans and capturing slaves, basically
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the goal there was the traditional goal like any in the ancient times.
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You build an empire by conquering other people.
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You enslave the people.
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And it just so happens the Europeans said, "Oh, you're,
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you're, you wanna build your empire.
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You wanna enslave people.
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Are you gonna enslave people?
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We'll pay you to enslave them, and give you guns and money, and sell them to us."
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So that tribe, as I'm watching it, is horseback cavalry-based tribe.
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And the, the woman king, female h-historical known, historically known
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female warriors were on, on on foot.
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When I saw a Black cavalry, I was shocked.
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I've been in horse world for 30 years, and I see some images of Africans with
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horses and things like that, but I never saw it in a cavalry environment.
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And in fact, I stood up.
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They were with my son.
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I told my son, "That's not true."
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And from there I left there to say, "Let me go find out," and I started a research.
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And I started a research path that just still to this day I come up
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upon revelations, like even in your comments, that blow my mind sometimes.
10:00
And it, it, and there, there are two anchors to this thing.
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First, you gotta know that everyone knows that the conqueror writes his story So
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the Europeans were the conquerors, and they wrote history to fa- favor whatever
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they felt was right to make it look good.
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The second thing is that in the history of the world, the most powerful militaries
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before the combustion engine and trucks and, and cars and tanks were horseback.
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Horseback horse-based militaries.
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So if you say in those days you couldn't have a powerful country
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without a powerful cavalry.
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Y- you can trace that back to the Romans, to wh- whoever, right?
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Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
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Louis Hook: To the Egyptians.
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You can go all the way back.
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So here we come in this modern time when the US is about to get founded, is getting
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founded, and it turns out that one of the most powerful militaries in the world
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of the day were these Afric- a couple of African, over, over over centuries'
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time were a couple of African empires.
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The first, which is most important, is the Moors.
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The Moors conquered southern Spain and held onto that for some 800 years.
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Rupert Isaacson: And- Let's just do geographics here for
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people- Okay â¦ who don't know.
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This is Morocco, but not just Morocco.
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It's the Maghreb, which is this strip of North Africa that faces the Mediterranean.
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So today those would be Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco,
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but the power base always in Morocco directly facing Spain.
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And yes, those Moors, largely Berbers, Islamic at that time, did indeed
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conquer Spain in the 8th century.
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Okay.
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Sorry, just to provide- Yeah â¦ that context.
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Yeah.
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Louis Hook: 711 to be precise.
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Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
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Louis Hook: And they held onto it to the last defeat of a Moor leader was in
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Rupert Isaacson: 1492.
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Yeah.
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Louis Hook: Okay?
12:26
Rupert Isaacson: Funny old year, that, wasn't it?
12:28
Louis Hook: It's very interesting.
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It actually has, it has meaning, in fact.
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So, one of the things to say about the, if we look at the history, most people
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learn that the Moors were Arab- Not Black African, which as you just mentioned, when
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you get into the studying and you learn that they were the Berbers, which was
12:50
North African, Black North African tribe.
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And they were Muslim, so it was a M- it was a, it was a Black African Muslim
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empire that conquered southern Spain and ruled it for 800 years, and the influence
13:06
across all of Europe was massive.
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Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, sure.
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So when- It's how we've ended up with the Andalusian and the Lusitano horse, yeah
13:13
â¦ Louis Hook: the horses, but all the architecture.
13:16
Essentially what's not well-documented in history is how these African
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M- Muslim Moors li- helped lift Europe out of the Dark Ages.
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They taught them- Absolutely â¦ they taught them how to clean themselves,
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how to, how to eat right agriculture a- architecture, everything.
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They kind of lifted.
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So if you look across all of Europe you'll see the Moors empire impact.
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The fact that history recorded that as there was Arabs and
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minimized the impact is an important
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Rupert Isaacson: Just, just to play- Right â¦ devil's advocate, the reason why
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they're recorded as Arab is the language that they were speaking was Arabic,
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and the reason we know this is because the records they left were in Arabic.
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And I actually live in Andalusia, Al-Andalus in a town called Guadalcanal,
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which derives from wadi, the, which is Arabic for river valley.
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The, you know, a wide river valley is what it means.
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So they were using Arabic, not Berber, as their lingua franca in
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the same way that, say for example, the language of diplomacy in Europe
14:32
for m- for many centuries was French.
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Even if you were a Russian diplomat, you would have used French.
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So it becomes confusing because people think they were Arabs, but
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as you correctly point out, they were Berbers and Moors who were
14:45
speaking Arabic, if that makes sense.
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Yeah.
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Louis Hook: Th- and that's c- that confusion, you can see how it's easilyâ¦
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If you look at Arabs today, that's how you view-
14:56
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
14:56
Louis Hook: what was there.
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But in fact, if you do the research to look at what I call the period-specific
15:04
writings, imagery and those things from before the 1500s, you'll see
15:12
that that's where you see Black and white integrated- cleanly,
15:19
including especially in the elite.
15:21
The Moors were powerfully represented in the elite, where
15:25
they were even kings and queens.
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Okay?
15:29
So but those images mostly into the 1500s areâ¦
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When you look at the imagery after the 1500s and into the 17th and 18th
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centuries, those images are no longer re- presented the, the, that show
15:45
them as as North Africans, Black
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Rupert Isaacson: people.
15:48
Right.
15:48
And I mean, th- there's a reason, as you say, the, the,
15:50
the victors write the history.
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So we said 1492 is a funny old year.
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That's the year that the reconquest by the Christian powers of
16:00
Spain and Portugal completes.
16:02
The Kingdom of Granada, which is the last Moorish kingdom in Spain, falls, and
16:08
the Kingdom of Castile and Aragon, the two-- these two kingdoms, the two most
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powerful kingdoms, Christian kingdoms in Spain, unite under Ferdinand and Isabella.
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And what do they do?
16:18
They talk to this bloke, Christopher Columbus, that same year and say,
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"Off you go, lad, and you know, come back with some goodies."
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Louis Hook: Yes.
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And
16:26
Rupert Isaacson: the
16:27
Louis Hook: whole Hispanic So to spin
16:28
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: world, yeah.
16:28
Louis Hook: Not gonna to spit, this is all accurate, but of course, it's still
16:33
not evenly distributed, the information.
16:36
That's one of my goals is to help raise that, but that's general.
16:40
Back to the horse culture- Mm â¦ is that my understanding is that what
16:45
gave the Moors the upper hand to conquer and stay in control was, was
16:51
their cavalries and their horses, and their horses helped them dominate
16:57
the Europeans as they came across.
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Remind me, remember, they had to cross, My mem- my, my, my recollection.
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So, but they had to cross a body of water, a small one.
17:07
I, I, it's the-
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Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, it's not very big to go- Yeah â¦ to go from-
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Louis Hook: Yeah
17:11
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: to, to to Gibraltar.
17:13
It's, it's not- Gibraltar â¦ it's not far.
17:14
Yeah.
17:14
Yeah.
17:14
So, It's like Calais
17:17
to Dover.
17:17
Yeah.
17:17
Louis Hook: Yeah.
17:18
So in fact, the Gib- the Gibraltar is the name of the the Berber
17:23
military leader who led the, led the,
17:26
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
17:26
â¦ Louis Hook: the the, the conquest.
17:28
But as I understand it, their horses were were so well-trained and superior, along
17:35
with their cavalry skills, that's what allowed, helped them to defeat Spain and-
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Rupert Isaacson: Well, can I, can I interject there?
17:43
Yeah.
17:43
They did indeed have extremely good cavalry skills that went back to pre-Roman
17:48
times in the, W- when Rome was trying to vie to become the biggest power.
17:55
Now we're going back into the ancient world.
17:57
There was a big rival, and the big rival was Carthage, and Carthage
18:01
was what is now Morocco and Tunisia.
18:05
And they fought it out, and they fought it out, and they fought it out.
18:08
Big wars, what's called the Punic Wars.
18:10
People have heard of Hannibal war elephants, all that stuff.
18:13
All that happened.
18:14
The, the, Hannibal even invaded Italy but was unsuccessful.
18:19
But they had such good cavalry, these Barb horses, these Berber horses, that
18:25
when the Romans defeated Carthage, they immediately absorbed that
18:31
cavalry into their into their armies.
18:33
Mm-hmm.
18:34
And the Berber cavalry were
18:39
n- were called enfrenati, meaning they- Mm â¦ rode without bridle.
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Louis Hook: Interesting.
18:44
Rupert Isaacson: And they didn't haveâ¦
18:46
So, but so they weren't for close combat, because y- for close combat
18:50
you h- have to have the bridle.
18:51
Mm-hmm.
18:52
So they would use a neck ring And make a carousel around foot soldiers and
18:58
throw projectiles, slings, javelins b- bows, and then disengage fast and then
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come back again and keep doing that.
19:08
They were known for harrying rather than, say, charging or entering and
19:14
disordering infantry where you have to wheel and the horse has to sit.
19:17
For that, you need frenati, which is the bridle.
19:21
And the Roman cavalry had both, and they got their frenati in that area
19:27
from the local Iberian Celts who were living on the Portuguese and Spanish
19:33
side, who were using the, basically the same kind of horse because, you
19:36
know, it's basically the same horse.
19:37
But they had evolved a way with the bridle, which was much more
19:39
about working livestock and therefore wheeling and spinning and
19:44
therefore very good in close combat.
19:46
Of course, the Romans ended up using both because the Romans
19:48
were always super practical.
19:51
But by the time the Berbers invaded Spain, the Berbers had also adopted both.
19:56
So they had both types of cavalry.
19:59
But the people that they went up against in Spain were the Visigoths, and the
20:02
Visigoths were also an equestrian culture, a Germanic, highly evolved
20:07
equestrian culture equally good as anything that the Berbers threw at them.
20:12
However, they were corrupted at that point, and they were
20:15
fighting their own civil wars.
20:17
And the Berbers had been watching and watching and watching as the Visigoths
20:24
became more and more disordered in the last decades of their, Kingdom, which
20:29
had been there for a few hundred years.
20:31
The, they, they'd come all the way from what's now Ukraine or Romania,
20:35
down through France and Germany, down into Spain, and had carved out
20:40
their own kingdom, the kingdom of the Western Goths, the Visigoths.
20:44
And then of course they becameâ¦
20:45
They, they began to infight amongst themselves.
20:47
The Berb- the Berbers took their opportunity, and boom, and were
20:53
very, very successful, as you say.
20:55
But the cavalry skills were no greater or less than what they
21:00
encountered with the the Visigoths.
21:02
It's just that they were more organized.
21:04
But I think where- what's interesting with this, though, is that from,
21:08
again, the white perspective, from the Eurocentric perspective, people
21:12
would automatically think of anything south of the Mediterranean on horseback
21:16
as being inferior to anything north of the Mediterranean in Europe.
21:21
And as you have pointed out, this just is not the case.
21:24
The cavalry met, whether they were better, whether they were worse,
21:27
they were fighting it out Well, you
21:28
Louis Hook: couldn't- â¦ because of this â¦ you couldn't defeat them if
21:30
they weren't at least as good, right?
21:32
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
21:33
Indeed.
21:33
So.
21:34
No, they were highly effective, and the, the Barb horse that they were using-
21:39
Louis Hook: And strategically, because of taking advantage of
21:41
those things you're talking about-
21:42
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
21:42
they were
21:42
Louis Hook: smart.
21:43
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
21:44
The smart, organized, and fine horsemen, not rough horsemen.
21:48
You can't have this kind of success in pitch battles if you're-
21:56
You know, ineffective up there.
21:58
Yeah.
21:58
Right.
21:58
Yeah.
21:59
Louis Hook: So the important issue for us is there's no way there's any thought
22:03
of any Black people anywhere in history-
22:06
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
22:06
Louis Hook: having that capability.
22:07
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
22:07
Just,
22:08
Louis Hook: just not there.
22:09
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
22:10
Louis Hook: So great- so my shock-
22:12
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
22:13
â¦ Louis Hook: learning what you're talking about, and now even learning
22:15
more from you, is, is just massive.
22:19
But it's consistent with this idea that as we, as I had my, my, my two anchors
22:26
was history, who writes the history, the conqueror, and then who writeâ¦
22:30
And then then the horses were so important.
22:34
So to draw one last kind of broad link is that the growth in the, in
22:43
the European wealth, as we s- as you mentioned, started in, with 1492 and
22:48
Columbus and going out across the world.
22:51
What had happened earlier in the 1400s was identification of a
22:56
very wealthy empire that happened to be Black and Muslim in Mali.
23:04
Rupert Isaacson: Yep.
23:05
Timbuktu, absolutely.
23:07
Louis Hook: Yeah.
23:07
So but Mali, the president who, who became the King of Mali, Mansa
23:12
Musa, I did the actual economic study, 'cause I saw the thing.
23:18
Some said he was the richest man in history, some said he was one
23:21
of the richest men in history.
23:23
I, as an economist, I did the analysis.
23:26
In 1310, he was worth 500 billion.
23:31
So even to this day, only Musk just recently passed him in converted dollars.
23:38
So this man, Mansa Musa who now as I've studied him, is probably one
23:44
of the greatest, one of the top five greatest men in history, most
23:48
people have never heard of him.
23:50
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
23:51
Louis Hook: Now, the fact that he was Mali, which was West Africa, the Sahel
23:58
says that they couldn't say he was Arab
24:03
So they just buried his, him generally.
24:08
And the story that goes with his wealth was he just happened to be sitting on
24:13
this massive gold resource, and he got lucky and got rich because of that.
24:22
What we know when we put everything together is that to be supplying at that
24:29
time 50% of the world's gold out of Mali, he had created a mining infrastructure.
24:38
How do you get the gold out?
24:41
How do you get it prepared for distribution?
24:44
How do you distribute it and control it, and reap the benefits of that financially?
24:51
To do that, that's massive.
24:53
The initial steps of industrialization that was
24:57
happening, gonna happen in the world.
24:59
So he's responsible for that, in my estimation.
25:04
And of course, anybody, we can all go study this and figure out what we think.
25:09
But the fact is that he, If you look at that, that's what he did for gold.
25:13
He did it for salt.
25:15
He did it for textiles.
25:16
He did it for cotton.
25:17
He did it forâ¦
25:18
So all the industrialization for me is that the US and the world took on
25:25
is kind of based on what they found and took out of Mali and the Sahel.
25:32
Now, that's a big statement, has work to be done to confirm it, but
25:37
this is kind of where I'm leading.
25:38
But now to go back to the horse, cut back in directly to the horse.
25:43
To control that gold and supply 50% of the world's supply
25:50
took an incredible military.
25:53
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
25:54
Louis Hook: And it was cavalry-based
25:57
So if you can imagine, you can't control that gold without, with
26:02
everybody trying to steal it from you, and you're s- distributing it
26:05
worldwide practically worldwide.
26:07
Mm.
26:07
They controlled all the trade routes the main trade routes around you
26:11
know, from there to out in the world where gold went, and their
26:14
military helped protect this business
26:20
So again, these are hypotheses that my research shows is accurate,
26:25
but of course it remains to be challenged by anybody, whatever.
26:30
But I, we do have some examples where again, you would imagine that the,
26:36
those accomplishments of, of Mansa Musa the fact that we don't know
26:40
anything about them is part of the whitewashing and erasure of creative-
26:44
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
26:45
And this is 14th century.
26:46
Louis Hook: Yes.
26:47
Rupert Isaacson: One of the, the things that was known in this early, you know,
26:52
the early Renaissance period in, in Italy was that people began to re-exploit the
27:03
Trans-Saharan gold and slave routes, which had been well established, of
27:07
course, under the Romans and under previous powers, and then hadâ¦
27:11
They never collapsed, they never went away, but they, you know, as, as the
27:15
economies of the world In the medieval period became more and more consolidated.
27:22
They, as you say, gave rise to this great wealth down there in West Africa.
27:27
And you've got a couple of empires that also come up, not just in that
27:32
Mali area but in around Lake Chad, where all of those countries in the
27:39
sort of central Sahel come together.
27:42
And Lake Chad obviously is a sort of somewhat of an anomaly in
27:46
that dry area, so it can support a lot of pasturage and so on.
27:49
You had, And I was just looking it up to, to remind myself of the name, the
27:53
Kanem-Bornu Empire- Mm â¦ which became incredibly militarized and centralized
27:59
there to control, because it sits between the two slave routes nor- the one that
28:03
goes north towards Palestine and Egypt and the one that goes up into Western Europe.
28:09
And then over in the Sudan, you had the Sokoto Caliphate, which gave rise to the
28:16
people that my ancestor met in battle.
28:19
Louis Hook: Right.
28:19
Rupert Isaacson: And what you, one sees from the from the photographs
28:23
that my ancestor left behind, so not just pictures, but actual photographs.
28:28
They're riding in curb bits.
28:30
They're riding one-handed from the finger and thumb.
28:34
Their, so their sword arm or their lance arm is free.
28:39
They're riding a lighter cavalry horse something which
28:42
we would perhaps call a barb.
28:44
Mm-hmm.
28:44
And but highly maneuverable.
28:46
They're riding in collection.
28:48
They're seated.
28:49
The, the horse is sitting on the haunches.
28:51
They're not roughly pulling the horses' heads around.
28:54
This is notâ¦
28:55
So, so the reason I w- I keep reiterating this is s- one of the things that I've
28:59
encountered in the white equestrian world is a sort of assumption that
29:05
Black people would ride in a rough way.
29:07
And although I have seen Black people ride in a rough way, I've also seen lots
29:12
of white people ride in a rough way.
29:13
Right.
29:14
And I don't think the color of your skin has much to do with that.
29:17
But the, I think what the reason why that mythology came about was that, When slaves
29:25
were taken out of equatorial West Africa where there was not a horse tradition,
29:31
down by the coasts where it's too feverish and tropical for horses below the Sahel,
29:37
where the ships were going out from.
29:39
Even though it was equestrian c- military cultures that were controlling
29:44
that slave trade, so Africans did indeed control the African slave trade.
29:48
Of course, they did.
29:49
Otherwise, they wouldn't have had a trade to trade with.
29:52
People are people.
29:53
Bad and good, color of your skin, you know, doesn't make much difference.
29:56
Mm-hmm.
29:57
If there's a market, there's a market.
29:57
Mm-hmm.
29:58
But the, the, the vast majority of the slaves that were exported were
30:03
not from those equestrian cultures.
30:06
Right.
30:06
Those equestrian cultures were the ones who were doing the slaving.
30:09
So- They were the
30:09
Louis Hook: cargo.
30:10
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
30:11
So by the time, you know, someone who was caught in one of those slave
30:15
coffles ended up in the West Indies or ended up in the Carolinas- Mm-hmm
30:20
no, they were not coming from a horse culture, and they would then have to
30:24
learn that from the white plantation owners and the Creole workers
30:31
for the white plantation owners.
30:32
And from that would come a mythology, "Well, these guys don't know
30:36
what they're doing with horses."
30:37
Well, sure.
30:38
Mm-hmm.
30:38
Because they were coming from a equatorial part of the world
30:40
where horses die of fever.
30:42
But a few hundred miles above them, there's a highly evolved
30:45
equestrian culture, but they're not the ones on the slave ships.
30:48
So but then-
30:49
Louis Hook: They weren't the oneâ¦
30:50
So you have to distinguish between slaveries, though.
30:52
So keep going because I wanna- Okay.
30:53
Rupert Isaacson: That's a good point
30:55
â¦ Louis Hook: I wanna spend, spend some time on that because there's,
30:57
there's a critical distinction.
30:59
Okay?
31:00
And the critical distinction is that pre Atlantic slave
31:05
trade colonial- colonialization
31:08
and slave trade-
31:10
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm
31:11
â¦ Louis Hook: the slavery world was a different world.
31:14
It was not race-based.
31:16
It was whoever you could beat and conquer, you enslaved them.
31:20
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
31:21
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31:26
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We really want to know.
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33:06
live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
33:10
Louis Hook: Exactly.
33:10
It didn't matter if you were white, Black, whatever.
33:12
It wasn't, it wasn't a, a designation.
33:15
If you're African Black, you're a slave.
33:18
Okay?
33:19
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
33:19
Yes.
33:19
The, the Barbary slave trade, for example, was largely Europeans being captured- Yeah
33:25
â¦ by- Right â¦ and sold into slavery.
33:27
Uh-huh.
33:27
And the word slave itself comes from the word Slav, which is- Right â¦ people from
33:33
Eastern Europe being sold into slavery.
33:34
So you're, you're right.
33:35
Slavery only came to mean Black- So
33:39
Louis Hook: there's one or two points I'd like to drive that home There
33:42
is, I think, 100 years worth of Roman African, Black African emperors
33:49
Mm â¦ several, several s- I, I think-
33:52
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, emperors, yes.
33:53
Emperors Quite
33:54
Louis Hook: a few
33:54
Rupert Isaacson: Black African emperors
33:55
Louis Hook: So that was indi- indicative of the interracial nature of the world
34:00
pre-colonialism and Atlantic slave trade.
34:03
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
34:03
Louis Hook: Also, s- three of the first, I think, 10 popes
34:07
were n- Black Africans, okay?
34:10
This is knowledge that now is proven and shows that the world
34:16
pre-colonialization was interracial.
34:19
When we hear that Caesar married, married Cleopatra-
34:23
Rupert Isaacson: Right
34:24
â¦ Louis Hook: that was, it was a interracial marriage at the highest
34:27
level, bringing two empires together.
34:29
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
34:30
Louis Hook: That could never have happened once we moved to the colonial and model
34:38
that the, that the Catholic s- Church, supported by its papal bull, saying,
34:42
"Those people are, are, are heathens."
34:46
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
34:47
Louis Hook: Okay?
34:47
So that change is massive of what's part of what drove the, to the erasure
34:54
of the things you're talking about.
34:55
Mm-hmm.
34:55
Those equestrians and that strip.
34:58
Where I learned that the diseases were so great Africa-wide, sub-s-
35:04
Saharan-wide, that horses couldn't exist.
35:08
They couldn't- Yeah â¦ in any, any number.
35:10
Now we know that there was a s- that that region where there were
35:15
powerful calvaries, and they drove that early slave trade- Absolutely
35:19
because that's how
35:19
Rupert Isaacson: they built some of it You know, highly involved
35:21
horse culture from Ethiopia- Yeah â¦ right across to Senegal.
35:25
Right.
35:25
So- And even today, even today the people who are the nerds of Barb horse breeding,
35:32
many of them would say that the only true Barbs still left that have not become, you
35:38
know, Andalusians or Lusitano type horses are actually down in Senegal to this day.
35:43
Louis Hook: Wow.
35:44
Wow.
35:44
Rupert Isaacson: I've heard this from quite a few Barb
35:46
breeders here in Germany, so.
35:48
Louis Hook: Okay.
35:48
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
35:48
So
35:49
Louis Hook: we can take a step back and say the com- the, the mainstream
35:54
history does not include any of that.
35:57
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
35:58
Louis Hook: I, that's what I learned.
35:59
I knew nothing about this until I started studying the last four to five years.
36:04
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
36:04
Louis Hook: Nothing, okay?
36:06
It's mind-blowing to me, as an academic, to have- Mm â¦ no
36:11
knowledge of it whatsoever, okay?
36:13
So that tells me how in- intense the Historic writings and
36:22
narratives were focused on covering up these things that showed.
36:28
And the reason is, if you show that Africans were not inferior,
36:34
anything that supported their, this general belief that's true today-
36:39
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm
36:39
Louis Hook: that blacks are inferior, anything that would s-
36:42
go against that got wiped out.
36:44
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
36:44
No, I, I so agree, and I mean, that, that's basically why you still to this
36:48
day, I think, have a prejudice within the horse world to say it's, it's unspoken.
36:53
No one would say it out loud, but I think a lot of people feel that
36:58
somehow there's not enough finesse in the African, in the African
37:05
American to do this European thing.
37:10
We know this isn't true.
37:11
We know this is absolute BS, but we know that it's a product, it's
37:14
a mythology that's been inherited.
37:17
I think people, people feel it without even knowing they feel it.
37:20
Louis Hook: They don't even know they feel it, and I- Yeah â¦ and I,
37:23
I can dig into that just slightly.
37:25
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
37:26
Louis Hook: So, the churches The Catholic Church basically oversaw the changing
37:36
of the images of Christianity from including, broadly including Black people-
37:42
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely
37:43
â¦ Louis Hook: to being white.
37:44
So it's on record now that the pope, I forget which one, in the early 1500s,
37:49
'05 or something, commissioned Da Vinci to paint Jesus, which is the model
37:54
of the Jesus we see everywhere now.
37:56
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
37:57
And- Basically a self, a self-portrait of Da Vinci.
38:00
Louis Hook: Exactly.
38:00
And then- Yeah â¦ and then Mi- D'Angelo to repaint the Sistine Chapel and-
38:04
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm
38:05
â¦ Louis Hook: all of the imagery of Christianity became white, whereas
38:08
if you look at anything before that-
38:10
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
38:11
â¦ Louis Hook: it was demonstrably Black.
38:13
Black Mary, Black Jesus, Black Moses, Black everything.
38:16
So
38:17
Rupert Isaacson: not that Jesus didn't exist- Well, Black and also,
38:18
Black and also Middle Eastern.
38:19
You know, it, Jesus- Yeah.
38:20
Well,
38:20
Louis Hook: not the thing-
38:21
Rupert Isaacson: Jesus clearly was not European.
38:23
Louis Hook: Well, and not saying he was all Black or whatever,
38:25
but the point is it became white.
38:27
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
38:27
Louis Hook: And that is what was pushed to all the slaves, all the
38:32
colonies everywhere, and you were killed if you didn't convert.
38:36
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
38:37
Louis Hook: They killed hundreds of millions of people in that process.
38:41
So in that process we end upâ¦
38:43
It was so powerful today, this is what you, we face.
38:47
I don't care what country you go to in the world, Black people are generally at
38:52
the bottom of society and whites at the top, and the colorization in between.
38:57
Mm-hmm.
38:58
I don't care, you go to Russia.
38:59
You don't even know Russia has Black people.
39:01
Rupert Isaacson: Well, actually, it's true within Africa, too.
39:03
Louis Hook: No, true.
39:04
That's what I'm saying.
39:05
The co- Yeah â¦ the, so it, the, the, the, the color hierarchy
39:08
was pushed in by the colonizers.
39:10
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
39:11
Louis Hook: So but it, it's different in the surviving colonies because
39:15
there they just keep them all poor.
39:17
Okay?
39:18
That's my perspective.
39:20
And, but the, the big point is everywhere in the world, especially you go to Latin
39:25
America, Brazil is 50 per- 52% Black.
39:29
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
39:29
Louis Hook: They have, they're at the bottom of the society.
39:33
Okay?
39:33
To Mexico that was founded through its 1829 slavery abolishing slavery,
39:41
where its second president was Black in Mexico, to this day they don't
39:46
even perceive themselves as having-
39:48
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, no, sure
39:49
a Black past.
39:50
And there's, there's the whole suppressed history of Haiti, too.
39:52
You know, the, the first Caribbean country to throw off slavery
39:57
after the French Revolution.
39:59
Right.
39:59
And Toussaint, who was the Black not Creole, Black leader, military
40:06
leader, administrative leader ended up of course being imprisoned and
40:10
died in a, in a jail in France.
40:12
He's known as a master horseman, and, Oh, no, no â¦ he, he led all his
40:19
actions against the various forces that were sent against him, sometimes
40:24
by the French government, sometimes by the British, who didn't wantâ¦
40:27
'Cause Jama- they were worried that there'd be slave revolts in Jamaica.
40:30
He was largely successful with cavalry actions.
40:33
Again, it's not a history that's told.
40:36
One of one of H- one of Napoleon's principal cavalry commanders was Black.
40:43
It, y- you know-
40:45
Louis Hook: I
40:45
Rupert Isaacson: don't, I don't know his name â¦ you can't keep ca- talent down.
40:48
Yeah.
40:48
Louis Hook: I would believe, I would believe he's probably Moor, a Moor.
40:53
Rupert Isaacson: The, the evidence seems to be that, no,
40:56
I think he was West African.
40:57
Okay, great â¦ but I, I, I need to, I needâ¦
40:59
Well, he was, he was, he was West African, but from Doming- Domang- Yeah
41:02
â¦ Saint-Domingue, from the Caribbean.
41:04
Louis Hook: What I've, what I've seen is because the Moors were so integrated
41:08
into the elite in Eur- throughout Europe-
41:12
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
41:13
â¦ Louis Hook: as Europe rose, they carved themselves out in
41:16
a couple of different ways.
41:17
One is some of them were just sold into slavery, and a lot of times those are
41:23
the ones that were leading slave revolts.
41:26
Others carved out freedom, like one of the first slaveholders
41:32
in 1630 or something was a Black Moor who owned 100 slaves because they were
41:39
giv- if you came to the, to the States, to Virginia, wherever it was he was,
41:44
they would give you land and for, fr- dependin' on how many slaves you had.
41:49
So he was one of the first ones, a Black guy, owning slaves and land in
41:54
Virginia where-, you know, wherever.
41:56
In fact- Some
41:57
Rupert Isaacson: of whom were probably Irish.
41:58
Some of the slaves were- Yeah â¦ probably Irish, yeah.
42:00
So, in fact- Yeah, the first slaves were Irish.
42:02
Yeah
42:02
â¦ Louis Hook: he was part of a lawsuit, this is why the data is out there, where-
42:06
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
42:07
â¦ Louis Hook: one of his friends told one of his fellow plantation
42:10
owners, or someone told one of his slaves, "Hey, it's seven years.
42:15
You're, you're free.
42:16
You don't have to stay a f- slave for life."
42:18
And that started that court process that in the end set up Black
42:24
people to be slaves for life, and he participated in that chain of
42:27
events, this Black slave owner, okay?
42:31
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
42:31
Louis Hook: So, so, so these are interesting tidbits, but
42:35
let me rise back up to the, to, to what I call the power line.
42:40
So proven by a lot of different measures the richest man in the history of the
42:45
world, Mansa Musa, rode the back of a powerful cavalry military, and some
42:53
of their exploits include a 60,000 person pilgrimage to Mecca from Mali.
43:00
Rupert Isaacson: That's a long way.
43:02
Louis Hook: 60,000 people, and he carried so much gold he was
43:06
destroying economies on the way, giving away gold, spending freely.
43:11
It's documented in mainstream history that this pilgrimage happened, and
43:15
these are things that happened.
43:17
So for him to go, how far is it from Mali to, to Mecca?
43:20
Whatever the distance is some thousands of miles or something
43:26
He was able to keep his, his pilgrimage and wealth intact there and back
43:34
Military base had to be the reason.
43:38
They were able to protect that, that, that that pilgrimage and
43:43
caravan, and get it there, get the gold there, and get back, okay?
43:47
This is documented in the mainstream history of one of his accomplishments.
43:51
It doesn't play it as I'm explaining it, as a massive accomplishment demonstrating
43:56
the power of his military, right?
43:59
But that's kinda how I spin it.
44:01
So now you get that it's proven that Mansa Musa had a powerful cavalry
44:05
mil- military, controlling the trade routes, able to accomplish this massive
44:10
pilgrimage and protect it all of that.
44:14
So here come the Europeans, because they gotâ¦
44:18
In that, in that pilgrimage, he be- Mansa Musa's wealth of gold became known.
44:25
So he's part of why the whole Gold Coast was created and given that name.
44:32
And if you look at the maps of the explorers in those days going needing
44:38
to go to Africa, the map included an image of Mansa Musa holding up a
44:45
giant gold nugget on the map, okay?
44:49
So this gave the Gold Coast life and name of these explorers from Europe,
44:56
who now fully empowered by weaponizing gunpowder, and also empowered by the
45:05
fact that they had a lot of antibodies to diseases because of the Dark
45:10
Ages they moved to go get this gold.
45:14
And at first it was on a trade basis in the early 1400s to say, "Hey, will you
45:20
trade us the slaves you're getting to build your empire and selling up north?
45:25
You sell them to us, and and we we'll give you guns and gold, a- and money and
45:31
resources so you can build your empire."
45:33
So that was the beginning of that process that as the Africans grew to understand
45:40
that this was a disrespect of all of the Black people, not just the people
45:46
that were conquered and enslaved, that's when the African continent began to
45:52
change to oppose s- slavery of, slavery because it was focused on permanent
45:58
enslavement and disrespect for Black people, which was not acceptable.
46:04
Rupert Isaacson: What's interesting is that because, particularly within America
46:09
obviously, and America's geographical isolation from the rest of the world, the
46:15
mythologies that end up- Being created in America, which then find their way into
46:19
Hollywood and then get re-exported back to the world, become an accepted wisdom.
46:25
Absolutely.
46:25
But, but, but what's interesting with all of that, because of course, until
46:30
re- N- Nigeria now has quite a burgeoning film industry- Mm â¦ as we know.
46:34
But until recently, those African countries were not
46:38
able to tell those stories.
46:40
But of course, that horse culture which we've been talking about historically that
46:43
was there in the Sahel never went away.
46:48
Never went away.
46:48
So let me tell you a couple of other stories from my family.
46:51
Yeah, great.
46:51
So, when the m- most of my family, I, I talked about a North African, a British
46:57
guy going down into North Africa and encountering the Sudanese cavalry,
47:01
but the vast majority of my family in Africa were down in Southern Africa.
47:05
So that's South Africa, Zimbab- what's now Zimbabwe Botswana, Namibia.
47:09
And, When the people in the 19th century, my ancestors, wanted to buy
47:14
horses down there, they weren't buying them in from Europe because the horses
47:20
that came in from Europe tended to die.
47:23
Not all of them, but there'd be a high proportion of them that would.
47:27
So you bought your horses from within Africa.
47:29
Now, there was a a block, which is this, the, the, you know, s-
47:34
the Congo, the rainforest, which again is not conducive to horses.
47:39
So separating South A- Southern Africa from the Sahel horse cultures.
47:45
Right.
47:45
Yet people were buying from those Sahel.
47:48
How were they doing that?
47:49
They were coming down in ships.
47:50
People were going up to, It's, it's not difficult.
47:53
You get on a boat in Cape Town, you keep going up the West Coast until you
47:57
get off at Senegal, and guess what?
47:59
There's horses to buy.
48:00
And there's- These are
48:01
Louis Hook: blowing my mind right now.
48:03
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
48:04
Louis Hook: They're blowing my mind.
48:04
Rupert Isaacson: And what do you do?
48:05
You buy them, you put them on a boat, and you go on down toâ¦
48:08
And why do you do that?
48:09
You do that because those horses are all, have an immunity to African-borne
48:14
diseases and a propensity for African forage and an, and an ability to
48:19
withstand the African climate.
48:21
So they've been there for thousands of years.
48:24
Y- if you're one of my ancestors farming in the semi-desert areas of the Kalahari,
48:31
that's where you buy your horses from.
48:33
And, or that's where the dealer who you're buying your horses
48:36
from has acquired the horses from.
48:37
That's where they've, they've come in from within Africa.
48:40
Okay.
48:40
And again, this is a slightly erased history.
48:44
When my, when my other ancestor, George Spotswood Sparks, was there in the
48:48
Sudan, after the after the conquest r- or reconquest of the Sudan, he then set
48:54
up as one of the colonial administrators in Egypt, and he's playing a lot of polo
48:59
and he's doing a lot of pig sticking.
49:01
Where's he buying his horses from?
49:02
Locally.
49:04
Locally.
49:05
Wow.
49:05
And- So,
49:05
Louis Hook: so let me-
49:06
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
49:06
â¦ Louis Hook: go ahead and finish.
49:07
Go ahead and finish.
49:08
Rupert Isaacson: S- so, and while I was, you were talking there, I was
49:11
thinking, "I wonder what you could do now in Africa on a horse in that
49:15
same Sahel area, just locally."
49:16
Mm-hmm.
49:16
And so I just looked it up, tourism, and r- right here, Equus Horse Tours,
49:21
which is one of the big companies, you can go now and book a tour through
49:24
various river deltas in Senegal, riding Barb horses produced locally by local
49:30
people who've been producing them for hundreds of years, and you're riding
49:34
through their villages and through their countryside on their horses, guided by
49:37
them, not on European horses that have been brought down by somebody who wants
49:42
to set up some tourism thing in Africa.
49:44
Local people, and- Yeah â¦ they're doing it.
49:47
So what's clear is that this horse culture never, it never went away.
49:51
It's just went unrecorded, It went â¦ and then unfated by Hollywood.
49:57
Yeah.
49:57
It
49:57
Louis Hook: w- it went, At some level, it got flipped.
50:01
And I'll tell you my experience in Ghana.
50:03
'Cause I went there and I explored the cavalry, the,
50:06
the equestrian world in Ghana.
50:08
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
50:09
Louis Hook: Where they have they have from polo to some riding things, but it's all
50:14
really disaggregated and unprofessional.
50:17
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
50:19
As you may know, if you've been following my work, we are also horsey folk here.
50:24
And we have been training horses for many, many years in the manner of
50:28
the old classical dressage masters.
50:32
This is something which is often very confusing for people.
50:35
We shine a light on that murky, difficult stuff and make it crystal clear.
50:40
If you'd like to learn to train your horse in the manner of the old masters and
50:45
really have fun and joy for you and your equine, go to our website, heliosharmony.
50:51
com Sign up as a premium member.
50:54
and begin to take the Helios Harmony course, which will take you from zero
50:58
to the Piaf, where the horse is dancing on the spot in hand on the ground.
51:04
And then from there, you can develop out to anywhere you want to.
51:08
Heliosharmony.
51:10
com to unlock the secrets of the old masters.
51:14
Louis Hook: And we connected with a woman who was trying to bring moreâ¦
51:18
She grew up in Europe, and she understands it, and she was trying
51:22
to bring more of a structured equestrian approach in Accra, okay?
51:28
And so she's got a riding program, and she's do- doing it, and her
51:32
biggest fight was the horse care and finding the people that did the right
51:37
horse care was just so terrible.
51:38
The horses wereâ¦
51:39
when I was there, the horses were just all practically malnourished dying, some- I
51:44
Rupert Isaacson: presume this was down around Accra, right?
51:46
Louis Hook: Yeah.
51:47
A- Accra, yes, yes.
51:48
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
51:49
Louis Hook: So, so, so that was my experience, and I
51:52
didn't get further north.
51:54
But
51:54
Rupert Isaacson: Accra is not the Sahel, right?
51:56
Accra, Accra is the non-horse zone where, of course c- colonial administrators
52:01
did bring some horses in, and then the elite that took over from those
52:07
colonials when Ghana got its independence, based now in Accra, would of course
52:11
try to perpetuate some of that.
52:13
But the actual West African horse culture is some hundreds of miles north of Accra.
52:18
So- Right.
52:18
So this is
52:19
Louis Hook: what you're teaching me- Yeah â¦ as I've gone through it,
52:21
because that's one of my next things is to flow through the full Sahel
52:27
all the way up- Mm-hmm â¦ into Mali and find out what was going on today.
52:31
Mm-hmm.
52:31
I haven't gotten that far, but I know in Accra that the painting
52:36
of no horse culture is strong.
52:41
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
52:41
Louis Hook: Okay?
52:42
And given that it's part of West Africa and the Gold Coast- Yeah â¦ it was a part
52:47
of that infrastructure that was having influence on how these things are viewed.
52:51
Now let meâ¦
52:52
I wanna do one more broad brush thing across the colonization and slavery
52:59
period that impacted the horse world.
53:03
And it's based on that the horse world is you can't have a powerful military
53:07
without a powerful cavalry, okay?
53:10
So, in those days.
53:12
So it's now with digitization, the internet, and now AI where
53:18
you can find it quickly, you, you can't hide anything anymore.
53:22
That's what the fact is.
53:24
So a lot of this stuff is starting to surface, of the
53:26
accuracies, inaccuracies, whatever.
53:29
But one of the things that's surfacing generally is that the slave auction
53:35
that we all understand is- Get, "Hey, bid on this strong buck.
53:41
Bid on this comely wench."
53:43
That model was at the very best part of the story What we see now is specific
53:54
expertise was sought after and paid at a higher rate on, without, with
54:01
pre-agreements for skillsets in the slavery work, in the, in the slaves that
54:06
they would bring and put to work directly.
54:09
So one of the biggest ones is the rice culture that that's in South Carolina.
54:14
And i- in fact, because of the nature of rice work and the nature of what
54:20
had to happen, it turns out that that Geechee culture in South in in South
54:26
Carolina preserved massive amounts of the connectivity between Africa and, and the
54:34
US, because it was such a swamp kind of model that the slave owners had to live
54:41
way outside of where the slaves were, and didn't come in very much so that they
54:47
were able to build their own culture and preserve some of their o- older culture.
54:51
So that evidence right there turns out it's replicable across the
54:58
way, including for blacksmiths, as we now know that Africans were
55:02
experts in, in in metal- metallurgy.
55:06
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
55:06
Okay.
55:07
Louis Hook: So bringing, finding skilled blacksmiths was a
55:10
powerful, "We'll pay you extra.
55:12
We'll b- buy all the ones that you can give."
55:14
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
55:15
Louis Hook: Well, it turns out horse expertise is one of those things that they
55:20
would buy and pay extra for, because why?
55:23
You have to have a powerful military to, a cavalry, to have a powerful military.
55:30
So across the board, there's this whole model of buying expertise, and horses
55:35
fit right in there, not by themselves, but horse expertise of slaves.
55:40
Now, what I haven't made the connection, which was kind of giving me goosebumps
55:43
when you were talking about people from southern Africa going up to the
55:48
Sahel to buy horses and bring them back down, I still don't know that
55:52
they, horses could have made it across the Atlantic to the US, but I do
55:58
know that the whole horse world that you've now shown me is still existing.
56:04
I felt like, where did they go?
56:07
Did they take the horses?
56:08
They obviously got the sla- many of the slaves with expertise as they could.
56:11
In
56:12
Rupert Isaacson: the Sahel?
56:12
No, the horses are still there.
56:13
Yep.
56:14
Louis Hook: No.
56:14
Rupert Isaacson: And the, and, and the- Yeah.
56:15
No,
56:15
Louis Hook: I- â¦ and
56:15
Rupert Isaacson: the cavalry cultures are still
56:16
Louis Hook: there â¦ I didn't know.
56:17
I, I'm saying my- Yeah â¦ my research down the path was-
56:19
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
56:20
Louis Hook: where did they go?
56:21
Did the, did the, did the
56:25
enslavers take them out along with the slaves?
56:26
Did they move horses with slaves?
56:27
Rupert Isaacson: No.
56:27
No.
56:27
They, they left them with the people they bought the slaves from.
56:30
The, those were the cavalry as you said, the, the, the militaristic powers which
56:37
were cavalry-based, which were north of the Gold Coast selling- The slaves,
56:44
capturing the slaves, selling them, putting them, s- the, the markets for the
56:48
Europeans then being- Right, but not now-
56:49
along the Gold Coast.
56:50
Louis Hook: But- But take a step up to say those expert
56:53
equestrians were desired slaves.
56:56
Okay.
56:57
The ones that were selling.
56:59
So if you make that flip, they were en- started to enslave the
57:03
eq- ex- equestrian expertise as well, not just who they captured.
57:08
So that's-
57:09
Rupert Isaacson: Yes, but I think but to a lesser extent, because the,
57:12
it's not that no slaves from West Africa had equestrian experience.
57:16
They, some absolutely did.
57:18
But because most of the people who were involved in the capture of slaves
57:24
within Africa were the equestrians, it was less likely that they would be the
57:30
ones who ended up on the slave ships, because they would largely be the ones
57:33
doing the capturing and the selling.
57:34
Right.
57:35
But it doesn't mean that some of them didn't.
57:37
Of course some of them did.
57:39
And,
57:39
Louis Hook: I, I, I'm interested in exploring to the degree that-
57:44
The expertise became critical.
57:48
Well, it- As it did, as it did in South Carolina for rice and other areas.
57:52
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
57:53
Shall I tell you something from my own experience in Texas?
57:55
So I, I lived in Texas 20 years, and on my firstâ¦
58:00
Central Texas, east of Austin, in those cross timber areas.
58:06
And I think it's the town of Bastrop which was close to us.
58:10
We were in Bastrop County, which is just east of Austin.
58:13
I think, I could be wrong, someone can correct me in the comments below,
58:17
but I think that Bastrop was the last town of official slave owning
58:24
to the west, and everything west of Bastrop, you didn't have plantations.
58:30
So there were slaves in Austin.
58:32
There were slave shacks and shanties, but there wasn't a plantation culture.
58:35
And then as soon as you went up onto the Edwards Plateau, which is the
58:39
Texas Hill Country, the rocky, drier bit that goes up west of Austin,
58:43
the slave culture broke down there.
58:44
It wasn't really there.
58:46
So where we were living was right where that western-most
58:50
bit of slave-owning culture was.
58:53
And of course, until the mid-19th century, that was still Comancheria.
58:58
That was still Comanche country, with which it was very difficult for
59:04
white people to settle, particularly west of, say, Austin west of Dallas.
59:10
And so what did they do after the Civil War?
59:14
They the, the American government gave land grants, that's that 40 acre and a
59:18
mule thing to Black freed slave families within Comancheria, and basically
59:24
said, "If you're still alive in 10 years, maybe we'll come back and, you
59:28
know, put some infrastructure in."
59:30
Of course, a lot of these f- freed slaves came with massive equestrian
59:36
skills because they had been training the horses for the plantation
59:41
owners who were riding around these vast plantations in East Texas and
59:45
Louisiana and Mississippi and so on.
59:48
And training them in what's called a gated tradition, what they call single
59:52
footing, similar to Tennessee Walker.
59:55
There's all these different regional variations.
59:56
Yeah.
59:57
But of course, the people doing the training were
59:58
Louis Hook: slaves.
59:59
The reason we ride mostly here is old people, 'cause it's a smoother ride.
1:00:01
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
1:00:01
Exactly.
1:00:02
And I think if you're, you know, on the horse all day, you know, yes gated horses.
1:00:06
So I'm there, I've just moved, 1999, I've just moved to Texas,
1:00:11
and I'm sitting on the front porch.
1:00:13
I'm not owning horses at this point.
1:00:15
And I hear this sound of m- massive amounts of h- hooves coming down the road.
1:00:22
I'm like, "What's going on?
1:00:23
This is, like, hundreds of horses."
1:00:25
And then I hear doof, doof, doof, doof with it.
1:00:28
I'm like, "What's going on?"
1:00:30
And- Down along my front fence, which fronts the road, come about 200 Black guys
1:00:39
on horses, all on gated horses, with a couple of beer trucks blasting hip hop.
1:00:47
And it's also not just guys, it's, it's, it's women as well.
1:00:50
No, I know.
1:00:50
And they're all wearing- I think you showed me the- â¦ like,
1:00:51
gangster gear, and they've all got their hair in cornrows.
1:00:54
I'm like, "What is going on?"
1:00:57
And then I realize they all live in the local town, Elgin.
1:01:01
Louis Hook: Right.
1:01:01
Right.
1:01:02
Rupert Isaacson: And so I start making inquiries, like,
1:01:04
what, what's th- what is this?
1:01:05
And then I meet some of the guys at the feed store, you know, 'cause I'm
1:01:09
quickly getting involved in horses again.
1:01:10
They say, "Oh, yeah, our ancestors came out of, you know, E- East-
1:01:15
Western Louisiana, East Texas.
1:01:17
They gave us these land grants."
1:01:18
That there were a lot of Black land-owning families along the country
1:01:21
roads where we were living, and we got this, these 40 acre mule grants, and
1:01:24
this is our tradition, and we do this.
1:01:26
We get together and we have these trail rides, and we then have a big party.
1:01:29
And and then I attended some of the parties, you know, after theâ¦
1:01:32
And it, what was interesting, they were so welcoming, and
1:01:36
they were such expert horsemen.
1:01:37
And you had, you had everything there.
1:01:39
You had terrible horsemen, you know, people who shouldn't
1:01:41
have been anywhere near horses.
1:01:42
Right.
1:01:42
Right.
1:01:42
And you had master horsemen.
1:01:44
You had, you, like anywhere, you had that full range.
1:01:48
But what was very clear was this was a Black African horse tradition
1:01:53
going back at least 250 years.
1:01:56
At least.
1:01:57
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:01:58
So, so your ability to see that is not even present in themselves, to
1:02:04
understand the African connection.
1:02:07
Me being fluid in these kind of groups and through the program
1:02:11
I've been involved with, we go to some of those events with them.
1:02:14
We do all those things.
1:02:15
Generally, the African connection is
1:02:20
Very lightly understand, stood, if at all.
1:02:24
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:02:25
Louis Hook: And, but I do wanna say, as you lived in
1:02:27
Texas how much did you knowâ¦
1:02:29
This is, these are things I only learned this last five years.
1:02:33
Texas to Mexico was- The southern leg of the Underground Railroad to Mexico.
1:02:43
Are you familiar with that?
1:02:44
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:02:45
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:02:45
Okay.
1:02:46
Okay.
1:02:46
Yeah, that makes sense.
1:02:47
Louis Hook: So if you add, if you add that to what you're talking about-
1:02:50
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
1:02:51
â¦ Louis Hook: which means Mexico, because it abolished slavery in 1829,
1:02:57
long before we did- Mm
1:02:59
it served as a, as a, as a tran- as a tr- a, a, for the Underground Railroad
1:03:05
for free, want to raise slaves.
1:03:07
Okay?
1:03:08
Mm.
1:03:08
They were charging out to Mexico, and a lot of them had that
1:03:13
equit- equestrian expertise.
1:03:15
Now, what we didn't say is the Spanish conquest of Latin America
1:03:21
and Mexico and all that were bringing equestrian expertise up from the south.
1:03:25
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
1:03:26
Louis Hook: That also we now know came from what?
1:03:29
Okay, from Africa, right?
1:03:31
Especially in the enslaved worlds there would be some of that
1:03:35
eques- e- equestrian expertise.
1:03:37
If theâ¦
1:03:37
If you go back to the Moors who taught some of it to Europe,
1:03:42
anything coming out of Spain would have included some of it, right?
1:03:45
Yeah.
1:03:46
Rupert Isaacson: True.
1:03:46
Fair enough.
1:03:47
Fair comment.
1:03:47
Okay.
1:03:47
Yeah.
1:03:48
Louis Hook: So, so now you add that to, which is again-
1:03:53
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
1:03:53
â¦ Louis Hook: the entire Battle of the Alamo, which led to the US basically
1:03:58
purchasing all of North, basically stealing all of North, North Mexico
1:04:04
for a cheap price because of the war.
1:04:06
Yeah.
1:04:06
The Alamo, one of my most famous proud thoughts about the US, and the movies
1:04:16
that they made, I mean, I, I just was in that thing, man, oh, so critically.
1:04:21
Only to learn that the Alamo was fighting because Mexico had abolished slavery
1:04:27
and wanted t- them to abolish it, their, to make their Texas territory,
1:04:31
and Texas said, "No, we're from the US.
1:04:34
We're not gonna abolish slavery," and it went to war over slavery.
1:04:38
Rupert Isaacson: Yep.
1:04:39
Louis Hook: What?
1:04:39
Rupert Isaacson: Nope.
1:04:40
Louis Hook: I had no idea.
1:04:40
Rupert Isaacson: And it wasn't the only time.
1:04:41
Yeah.
1:04:42
Absolutely.
1:04:42
Louis Hook: I, Iâ¦
1:04:43
What I'm saying is that whole battle that ended up with us, with all of North
1:04:47
Mexico, and it, all of its Mexicans and Native Americans- Mm â¦ whoever was
1:04:52
in there mixing however, became part of the US as a part of that dialogues.
1:04:58
'Cause most, so most of it wasn't the grant land-based Africans that got grant
1:05:04
lands, and if you imagine that the, why Jim Crow survived 100 years after slavery-
1:05:13
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
1:05:14
Louis Hook: was because the monetization of the African, the Black labor was key.
1:05:19
Rupert Isaacson: For
1:05:20
Louis Hook: 100%.
1:05:20
So- Yeah â¦ so, so those things were going on in Houston and Texas
1:05:26
just like it was everywhere else.
1:05:28
As a matter of fact, more hardcore.
1:05:30
My argument that why Texas is always one of the first ones to say, "We're gonna
1:05:35
secede"- Is their his- and they were the last ones to free their slaves because of
1:05:41
that independent thing that was around, that was built around a war model that
1:05:47
was existing to preserve slavery already.
1:05:51
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:05:51
Well, the, the, the whole e- economic model was dependent on it.
1:05:53
Yeah.
1:05:54
Yeah.
1:05:54
Louis Hook: And the wholeâ¦
1:05:55
And I, I did the economic analysis.
1:05:56
It's massive.
1:05:57
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:05:57
'Cause
1:05:58
Louis Hook: I, I got people responding to me in a chat in, you know, on social
1:06:02
media that it was about patriotism.
1:06:05
And I said, "Yeah, it had patriotism in it, but let's look at the numbers."
1:06:11
60%, 70% of the asset value of the plantation, of the
1:06:16
state was in slave assets.
1:06:19
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:06:20
Louis Hook: Okay?
1:06:21
So they, they, the, the, the leaders of the place, they were clear,
1:06:24
"This is where we make our money.
1:06:26
We gotta preserve slavery or preserve the labor of slavery
1:06:29
so that we can keep our value."
1:06:31
Okay?
1:06:32
And they led the, They were a certain strong-ended component to to Confederacy.
1:06:38
Because of that independence model, they started fighting long
1:06:42
before the US went to civil war.
1:06:45
Rupert Isaacson: What, of course, is, I mean, everything you're saying is true.
1:06:47
And what is equally ironic is that the slave trade which originated or
1:06:58
was developed by these Sahel African equestrian militarized, centralized
1:07:06
cultures that arose post-Roman Empire and were probably influenced by
1:07:13
Berber cultures pre-Roman Empire, were all, of course, slave-owning.
1:07:19
And the, the Moors that invaded Spain were slave-owning.
1:07:24
Louis Hook: That's right.
1:07:25
Rupert Isaacson: And the interesting, the Visigoths who had taken Spain from
1:07:31
the Romans, they had some slavery, but it wasn't a developed market like
1:07:37
it was with the Berbers that came in.
1:07:39
And o- of course, today in West Africa in the Sahel, slavery is alive and well.
1:07:45
Right.
1:07:45
Those slave routes are still happening.
1:07:47
And so in the horse cultures that we're talking about there are
1:07:52
still es- established systems of slavery, and that's domestic.
1:07:57
And then of course there's still a transatlantic migrationâ¦
1:08:01
Not transatlantic, sorry.
1:08:02
Trans-Saharan migration route up to Europe which is now exploited by
1:08:08
the very same people that have been exploiting it, you know, in Algeria,
1:08:12
in northern Mali, this sort of thing who, who have been exploiting it
1:08:16
for the last few thousand years.
1:08:18
And there's human trafficking going on on a massive level.
1:08:21
So the, the, the term in French would be plus Ã§a change, plus c'est la mÃªme chose.
1:08:26
The more it changes, the more it's the same thing.
1:08:28
Theâ¦
1:08:29
I think what we see is that humans behave appallingly to other humans no matter
1:08:36
what their color of their skin, and peop- white people do it to white people,
1:08:41
Black people do it to Black people.
1:08:42
H- and the horse, sadly, has been a vehicle for this.
1:08:47
Right.
1:08:47
Yeah.
1:08:48
And perhaps to some who saysâ¦
1:08:49
However, what's also true is that- W- now that we are supposedly post-slavery,
1:08:58
post-Jim Crow within the United States and within Europe, we are still dealing
1:09:04
with a mindset, it is true, that is saying a Black person is inferior.
1:09:08
And- Yeah â¦ that is an inherited mindset, and it's
1:09:11
reflected in the equestrian world.
1:09:13
Louis Hook: Yeah, so- Sure, yeah â¦ so this is, th- there's two points here.
1:09:16
One is when you, we go back to when you make Jesus white-
1:09:20
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
1:09:21
â¦ Louis Hook: you know, I used to always wonder, how does the Ku Klux
1:09:24
Klan with all this, all, all the- Is
1:09:27
Rupert Isaacson: that MJWA, Make Jesus White Again?
1:09:29
Or is it, is it- Yeah.
1:09:30
I was gonna say, exactly â¦ MJBA, Make Jesus Black Again?
1:09:34
Louis Hook: So, so, so, so if you can ima- I used to always wonder why the Klan had-
1:09:39
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
1:09:40
â¦ Louis Hook: had God and, and r- Christianity throughout all of their,
1:09:44
their activities and, and their structure.
1:09:47
And this thing of making Jesus white had a, had, was a double-edged sword.
1:09:53
Inferiority to Blacks subconsciously who can never achieve their goal to be
1:09:59
Jesus-like, but on the other side- Mm-hmm â¦ for the Klan, hey, Jesus is white,
1:10:05
God is white, we're made to be on top.
1:10:07
That's what th- th- they did.
1:10:08
That's what it is.
1:10:10
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:10:10
Louis Hook: So that colorization-
1:10:11
Rupert Isaacson: Divine right, yeah, sure
1:10:13
â¦ Louis Hook: okay, got embedded everywhere.
1:10:15
Rupert Isaacson: Yes,
1:10:16
Louis Hook: it did.
1:10:16
Okay?
1:10:16
And it was a manmade transition that caused it.
1:10:21
Now, that's my hyp- my conclusion from my research, okay?
1:10:26
Now, if I take another step back and say I know this thing of-
1:10:33
And, and I mentioned how it got my attention in that movie,
1:10:36
was s- Black people selling themselves into slavery, right?
1:10:40
So again, there was a transition from whoever you beat, it was not race-based.
1:10:45
If you beat them, if you could beat them up you enslaved them, you killed them, you
1:10:49
took their women, whatever all of that.
1:10:52
So some of that kind of continued, but now you have to put this overlay that
1:10:57
the world, r- I call it a world-based r- is, the world is on a race-based world
1:11:04
order status, with whites generally at the top and Blacks at the bottom, and
1:11:09
that was implemented across the world.
1:11:12
Is if we bring it to the horses of what I'm saying- That the horses were
1:11:18
the foundation of a powerful empire.
1:11:21
They too, and the equestrians, the African equestrians were, became enslaved.
1:11:28
They were paid extra higher rates for them, and they got them,
1:11:32
and they've been involved in our equestrian world from the beginning.
1:11:35
As you mentioned, in Texas you saw that these slaves that got free
1:11:40
land, they had equestrian expertise.
1:11:43
That starts from the beginning of slavery.
1:11:45
Rupert Isaacson: Right, and some of it came from Africa, and some
1:11:47
of it was learned, depending on which Africans you're talking about,
1:11:51
because Africa's a huge place, right?
1:11:53
So some of the people that were coming across the, on the Atlantic slave
1:11:56
trade, there was a certain minority that would have had some equestrian skills.
1:12:00
The vast majority probably not, only because of the geographical
1:12:03
area that they came from.
1:12:04
But it doesn't mean that they didn't acquire equestrian skills
1:12:06
once they got to the Americas.
1:12:08
Of course they did, because they were set to work on plantations
1:12:11
where horses were part of it.
1:12:12
So you have
1:12:13
Louis Hook: to be
1:12:13
Rupert Isaacson: pragmatic.
1:12:13
And they were going to acquire the skills, yeah.
1:12:15
Louis Hook: If you look at what is proven now for rice expert- rice
1:12:19
planting expertise, and you look at the whole range of, of of enslavement.
1:12:25
No, the equestrians couldn't be the majority.
1:12:28
But e- there were segments for specific people But there were
1:12:31
Rupert Isaacson: no- there were some there, for sure, and
1:12:33
Louis Hook: they- Well, w- well, no, what I'm, what I'm saying is-
1:12:34
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, they couldn't have run the plantations without them
1:12:35
the entire slavery
1:12:36
Louis Hook: model was a n- brain drain model.
1:12:42
If you pick the pieces out, we know about the rice culture, we know
1:12:47
about the metallurgy culture, and we know now about the horse culture.
1:12:51
As small segments, but yet powerful- Mm-hmm â¦ of targeted
1:12:55
people paid extra money for, that we never even saw that anywhere.
1:13:01
We haven't been taught that anywhere, that there were these segmentations of
1:13:04
skillsets that people, that slavery, slavers and slavers went after.
1:13:08
Right.
1:13:09
That's my model, and then equestrian is, of course, it's, it's not a, a degradation
1:13:13
to say it wasn't all the slaves.
1:13:15
I'm never saying that.
1:13:16
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:13:16
Louis Hook: I'm saying that that segment came through and was a valuable piece,
1:13:21
especially when you look at it this way.
1:13:24
The military-
1:13:24
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, no, 100%.
1:13:25
So let- let's, let's take it to to today.
1:13:29
Louis Hook: Yes.
1:13:29
Rupert Isaacson: Because it, it, it's a really interestingâ¦
1:13:32
You know, I work in the classical horse as well as the therapeutic horse
1:13:36
sphere, let's say, and one of the people who is definitely a rising star in
1:13:43
the classical horsemanship landscape within the USA is a young man called
1:13:48
Nashon Cook, and Nashon comes out ofâ¦
1:13:52
And again listeners, viewers, please click on the link for my
1:13:56
interview conversation with Nashon.
1:13:58
We did it recently.
1:13:59
It's really good.
1:14:00
It- on the same Live Free Ride Free podcast.
1:14:03
He's really interesting.
1:14:04
He's coming out of Denver, and I would imagine that his heritage
1:14:10
is probably almost as much Native American as it is African.
1:14:15
And i- there's no question, and, and European, and there's no question
1:14:19
that within all of those genetic lines that have produced Nashon- There must
1:14:27
have been a confluence of equestrians from each place because he's a, he's
1:14:33
a master, and he's a natural master.
1:14:36
He's one of these people who can kind of enter the arena
1:14:41
and do it somewhat intuitively.
1:14:43
And so what'sâ¦
1:14:44
How's he doing that?
1:14:45
Is he downloading it from the field, you know, the field of consciousness?
1:14:48
Is it in his genetics?
1:14:49
Is it both?
1:14:50
And usually I think when people exhibit great talent,
1:14:53
it's usually a mixture, right?
1:14:55
Some of it's inspirational.
1:14:56
Some people say, you know, gift from God, whatever, the field, and some
1:14:59
of it is he must have ancestors, and he must have ancestors, some
1:15:03
of whom have come from West Africa.
1:15:05
And I suspect that there are many unsung people like this across America.
1:15:12
You know, within, within the Western world, we know, for example,
1:15:16
with the cowboys of color and that whole rodeo circuit, there
1:15:19
are master horsemen in there.
1:15:21
I- if they weren't bringing that from horse cultures and the genetics of
1:15:30
horse cultures in West Africa, well, where else could it have come from?
1:15:34
In the same way that Europeans in the horse world in America are bringing it
1:15:39
from their European and A- you know, Eurasian horse heritage, the Goths,
1:15:44
the Vandals, all these horse cultures of the ancient world, you know, that
1:15:49
eventually created the medieval world, that created the modern world, that
1:15:52
then went across to the Americas.
1:15:54
So all of these strains, of course, are there in the Americas.
1:15:59
But where I think it's completely, as you say, deliberately perhaps not looked
1:16:08
at is that, yeah, a goodly number of them would've come from West Africa,
1:16:13
and the proof is in the pudding because those West African horse traditions,
1:16:17
actually not just West African, Sahel, so west to east, they are still there.
1:16:21
They never went away.
1:16:23
Yeah.
1:16:23
Louis Hook: Let me tie specifically to your lineage that you are aware of and
1:16:28
how far it goes back and how far it includes equestrians related to my family.
1:16:33
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-
1:16:35
Louis Hook: And I have to apologize for getting emotional and excited about
1:16:39
some of these things in a certain kind of way because it's just the extent
1:16:45
of the erasure just blows my mind.
1:16:48
I think that- Okay.
1:16:49
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave that to say I apologize for letting that-
1:16:53
Rupert Isaacson: You, you have nothing to apologize for, my friend.
1:16:55
That you would be inhuman if your sense of humanity was not outraged by
1:17:03
the history that we're talking about.
1:17:05
Right.
1:17:05
Because of the horrible, horrible things that have been done effectively
1:17:11
by my people to your people.
1:17:13
Mm-hmm â¦ and you know, I'm also half Jewish, so I can g- take that to
1:17:15
Europe and, you know, my wife's German.
1:17:17
Right.
1:17:17
Yeah.
1:17:17
You know, her people to my people.
1:17:19
Yeah.
1:17:19
You know, these things are- Mm-hmm â¦ unfortunately embedded in, in the
1:17:25
history, but that's why we have to have the dialogues, and that's why-
1:17:28
Louis Hook: Yeah
1:17:28
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: it's really important that we dig up and resurrect-
1:17:32
Louis Hook: Mm-hmm
1:17:32
Rupert Isaacson: um, things like the African horse tradition.
1:17:34
Because-
1:17:34
Louis Hook: Let me do it, to get off of that- Mm â¦ is just the, the,
1:17:38
the lineage issue, which is just a natural outcome of what happened.
1:17:44
So sci- I check a lot of things, and science now confirm that we have 14
1:17:50
generations of memory in our DNA.
1:17:53
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:17:55
Louis Hook: And for you, that has had a natural progression from
1:18:01
your original horse people all the way to who you are today.
1:18:06
For me, our family stumbled on our equestrian, w- what I believe
1:18:14
is our equestrian ancestry.
1:18:17
Totally stumbled as my sister was exposed to some horses, and she
1:18:23
kind of fell in love with them.
1:18:25
Tracked me into it.
1:18:27
I'm still not as fully a horseman as she was, is.
1:18:31
She brought our whole family, 'cause I liked what was going on.
1:18:34
I felt it.
1:18:35
We brought our whole family into it.
1:18:37
My sons
1:18:45
Excuse me
1:18:49
My sons are cowboys.
1:18:50
They're horsemen.
1:18:52
Fully full-blooded.
1:18:55
They would have never had the chance of knowing what I know, is that they're
1:18:59
connected to their ancestry accidentally.
1:19:03
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:19:03
Louis Hook: Okay?
1:19:04
Then we, I take them to Ghana with me, and we go through some of the
1:19:12
history and some places, and we go to a place called The Last Bath, where
1:19:18
the slaves were given a bath before they were taken up for auction to get-
1:19:24
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
1:19:24
Louis Hook: bought and put on ships.
1:19:27
And you can-- everybody who goes and does, goes through this and then goes
1:19:33
through the slave castles, everyone, every Black person who goes at least
1:19:38
says, "Man, you can feel the ancestors."
1:19:40
It's a, just an incredibly emotional thing.
1:19:43
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:19:44
Louis Hook: But what hit me was, I have no idea who my ancestors are,
1:19:50
if they came through this or not.
1:19:51
W- through this one- Mm â¦ that one, whatever.
1:19:53
I'm not, I'm totally disconnected.
1:19:55
So as I was standing there, and I, the image of my mom came up
1:19:59
saying, "I'm making the connection."
1:20:06
But I, I don't, I don't have it, right?
1:20:09
So out of that which I had already been trying to connect to my ancestry
1:20:14
and I've tracked it to regions, but I said to myself, there are people,
1:20:20
like right now with, with, I'm on Ancestry, and whenever a person sh-
1:20:25
signs up for Ancestry and gets their DNA done, if they're related to me, I
1:20:29
get a note, "You got a new relative."
1:20:31
Six, six times away, but it's- Mm-hmm â¦ a relative of yours.
1:20:37
That relative that's in Africa is there connected by the DNA.
1:20:43
But I don't s- I've been exploring, and nobody is tracking at that level.
1:20:48
How do we connect to the individuals?
1:20:51
Now, individuals like Gates and some of these people, they've
1:20:55
helped individuals track to their very family, so it's possible.
1:21:01
So that connection, I understand how important it is to know that my kids'
1:21:09
ancestry comes from an equestrian history that we don't even know.
1:21:13
We- we're, we're, we're, we're Mendi, could be Mandinka, which
1:21:18
could connect us to Mansa Musa.
1:21:19
I mean, who the F knows?
1:21:21
But you hear what I'm saying?
1:21:22
I do.
1:21:23
So that absence is massive to me, especially now that I understand the heart
1:21:30
connection between horses and humans.
1:21:33
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:21:34
Louis Hook: And how that plays in who you are and who you become, and your
1:21:38
history is an important part of that.
1:21:39
So that theft of my-
1:21:45
Being is part of my emotion.
1:21:49
Not just that we were t- treated terribly, not this, not that, not this, not that.
1:21:55
It's all of those things above, but this one, because I feel it as I'm
1:21:59
living in a horse world, growing to understand the heart math, and this
1:22:04
and that, and all the connectivities that go all the way to your ancestry.
1:22:09
And then when I hear your connection, I'm like, I'm just blown away to say
1:22:14
that I, I probably have a similar history, but I have no idea what it is.
1:22:18
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:22:18
You know, w- w- listening to you, I sort of know exactly what
1:22:21
I'd do if I was in your shoes.
1:22:23
Because you've already, you've already done it within the Americas.
1:22:27
You, you've tapped in somehow to your equestrian ancestry,
1:22:31
and you created Compton Cowboys.
1:22:33
This is, this is a, a meaningful institution in the North American
1:22:39
equestrian world that is, has, and still does contribute enormously to wellbeing.
1:22:48
Okay.
1:22:49
Not just to Black people, too, there's a lot of Hispanic people
1:22:51
there in Compton, and so on and so on.
1:22:53
And, and also anyone who comes in contact with the story, White, Black, Hispanic,
1:22:57
doesn't matter, they're going to benefit.
1:22:59
You have done this.
1:23:00
Hats off to you.
1:23:02
Honor you.
1:23:03
So now what would I do if I was you, if I was in your, your shoes?
1:23:07
I know exactly what I'd do.
1:23:09
I would get on a plane to Africa, and I would go, I would make a
1:23:14
series of journeys, 'cause it's a bit too big to do in one go.
1:23:18
But I'd probably start in Senegal, and I'd, I'd stay in the Sahara.
1:23:22
Now, the Sahara's a tricky area.
1:23:24
You've got Boko Haram, you've got terrorist groups, you've
1:23:27
got some areas that are a no-go.
1:23:30
But there are many areas that still are.
1:23:32
Mali, unfortunately, is largely off limits at the moment, but that will change.
1:23:37
But I w- I would, I would say, I would go to Senegal, I would go
1:23:40
across the top of Burkina Faso.
1:23:42
I would go into Niger, I would go into Chad, and I would look at the
1:23:46
horse cultures in northern Nigeria.
1:23:49
And w- you know, you can just go on YouTube and look at
1:23:53
the, the horse cultures there.
1:23:54
They're alive and well.
1:23:55
And say, "I'm gonna go there, I'm gonna go there.
1:23:57
I'm gonna let my curiosity lead me."
1:23:59
And then maybe the second trip, maybe I'll go east of Chad.
1:24:03
Maybe I'll go, you know, across northern Kenya, South Sudan, if, if it's safe, and
1:24:09
then into Ethiopia, strong horse culture.
1:24:12
You know, perhaps up a little bit into Egypt, across into Djibouti.
1:24:17
And I think that-
1:24:21
That's sort of what I did in Africa.
1:24:24
I followed my ancestry because not all my family's white, and it len-
1:24:29
led me into all my human rights work.
1:24:33
It led me into stories of healing down there.
1:24:37
Which I'm very grateful you for.
1:24:39
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:24:39
Rupert Isaacson: It, I, I think you could do a great service to the American
1:24:44
equestrian world by going and drawing those links and then publishing.
1:24:49
Yeah, so, so- Publish your findings, you know?
1:24:52
Louis Hook: So my, myâ¦
1:24:54
You're, you're, you're exactly on the track, except just slightly t-
1:24:58
I, I have a slightly different bent.
1:25:00
So my book, Black in the Saddle: From African Cavalries to
1:25:04
Modern Cowboys, volume two is about the African connection.
1:25:09
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:25:09
Louis Hook: And my research for that has to require what you're talking about.
1:25:13
So I have it on the docket.
1:25:15
My track is my mother's side ancestry goes to Senega- Sierra Leone, and
1:25:22
my dad's side goes to Burkina Faso.
1:25:26
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:25:26
Louis Hook: So I have tracked my ancestry on my mom's side to the slaves in Maryland
1:25:34
that were sold by the, the Jesuits.
1:25:36
They, they call them the, the Georgetown 272 that were sold by the Jesuits to
1:25:41
survive, and they created a group, and the, the Georgetown student body found
1:25:46
out about it and pushed Georgetown to help with reparations with that group.
1:25:51
But that group's ancestry isâ¦
1:25:52
I'm tied to that group.
1:25:54
Okay.
1:25:54
My next role is connect that group, the data for that group.
1:25:59
I have the, the o- the records where they were sold and down to Louisiana and the
1:26:04
plantation they were in, which I know that that plantation that b- b- burned
1:26:08
up last year was my family's plantation.
1:26:11
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:26:12
Louis Hook: Okay?
1:26:13
So anyway, tracking all the way to that 272, there are records by
1:26:19
individuals that will take that to the African continent, what ships
1:26:22
they came across, stuff like that.
1:26:24
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:26:24
Louis Hook: I can't find any of that work yet, but I know somebody's doing
1:26:27
it, so I'm gonna track that work.
1:26:30
Then I'm gonna follow that path of my ancestry as best I can in my- Mm
1:26:34
travels.
1:26:35
So I'm guessing as I create the fir- formal links to get me to Sierra
1:26:40
Leone, I'm gonna go there first, given that I've been to Ghana and
1:26:46
I've been you know, I spent the summer in Liberia out in the bush.
1:26:50
I've been in, in about four trips to, to the African continent, but
1:26:54
now-- but never with a mission.
1:26:56
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:26:57
Louis Hook: So as you describe it, I call it a mission, and that
1:27:00
mission is to understand my own ancestry and document it and, and a-
1:27:06
as best I can through my writings.
1:27:07
Okay?
1:27:08
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:27:09
Louis Hook: And so for the research for that, I have to do it, and
1:27:11
that's the pathway that I'm thinking.
1:27:13
So I'm, I'm thinking that I will have to go to s- Sierra
1:27:17
Leone and Burkina Faso if I can.
1:27:20
Right now there are big missions going to K- Burkina Faso- Because he's welcoming
1:27:25
the African diaspora, and there are massive missions that are going there- Mm
1:27:30
â¦ to, to, to s- develop relationships.
1:27:33
So that one I can do.
1:27:34
Now, the issue is what resources do I have to do all that traveling,
1:27:37
do everything the way I need to?
1:27:39
I'm working on that, okay?
1:27:40
But that's in my game plan, right, of my research of that.
1:27:45
Now, I have a whole separate charge, given I understand these things and link the
1:27:52
dots I think better than most people in the, in the world of what I call myâ¦
1:27:57
I have a separate book I'm building called The New World Order, DEI Style.
1:28:04
And it's addressing that the world went from a non-race-based world order
1:28:09
to a race-based world order, and the race-based world order is out of balance
1:28:14
because the European leaders-- the race-based world order was based on
1:28:19
inferiority of Blacks, and the European leaders knew that was a lie when they
1:28:23
moved forward with it, including our own leaders, because they had experience
1:28:27
with the march, in the Black March.
1:28:30
So the world order today is based on a lie that has our entire karma of our
1:28:35
civilization out of balance, that is moving towards, back towards balance with
1:28:39
all the things happening, ranging from a Black president to a Black-connected pope
1:28:48
These things are all moving, and I believe I can help with that transition in my six.
1:28:53
And my separate writing related to that stuff, and that's why you hear s- me
1:28:57
over there, excitement over there also.
1:28:58
So that's my, my,
1:29:00
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
1:29:01
And one can't, one cannot separate political and economic
1:29:03
history from the horse.
1:29:04
Right.
1:29:05
Because horses and ships are what have done it all.
1:29:08
Whether it was Genghis Khan, whether it was the Romans, whether it was the
1:29:12
Goths and the Vandals and the Huns, whether it was the conquistadors c-
1:29:17
you know, it, it, whether it was the
1:29:20
Louis Hook: Comanche- Whether it was the pharaohs fighting fa- the pharaohs
1:29:21
trying to hold off all these Su- the sub-Saharan people, and also trying- Mm
1:29:26
to hold off the, the Romans.
1:29:27
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
1:29:29
Indeed.
1:29:29
You know, and but what, what, what to me is intriguing is that because
1:29:34
those cultures are still there, and largely unexplored by white horse
1:29:40
people, not entirely, but largely itâ¦
1:29:45
What I think w- i- is, is healing about this is that, you know, when
1:29:49
we're dealing with acts of historical injustice, which include A- West
1:29:56
Africans to other West Africans on the back of a horse what of course can heal
1:30:02
this but the joy that horses bring us?
1:30:04
And you have already done this with Compton Cowboys.
1:30:08
I do believe that you drawing these links to the West African, between the
1:30:15
West African horse cultures and the European and American horse cultures
1:30:20
is a, is actually an exercise in joy.
1:30:23
Absolutely.
1:30:23
That's what makes it worth doing.
1:30:25
Because, yes, one can be outraged forever, and the outrage will never
1:30:32
go away because one must alsoâ¦
1:30:35
You know, it's like the Holocaust.
1:30:36
You must remember that it happened, 'cause we don't want
1:30:38
it happening too often again.
1:30:40
We never again, hopefully, but that's probably too much to ask for.
1:30:44
But nonetheless, that's not where we want all of our attention,
1:30:48
and we want our attention onâ¦
1:30:49
So the horse, you know, my wife and I came up with this, this idea of horses
1:30:53
to heal and horses to harm, that you can use the same classical system to harm
1:31:00
your fellow man with a war horse or to heal your fellow man because the same
1:31:07
movements that you use to train the horse for battle have a byproduct of giving
1:31:11
oxytocin, which will calm your nervous system, make an au- autistic child speak.
1:31:16
Right.
1:31:16
You know.
1:31:17
Yeah.
1:31:17
But it's which way you wanna go, you know.
1:31:19
You wanna drive- Yeah â¦ your car to kill people in a crowd, or you wanna be the
1:31:23
guy that shows up in the car- Yeah â¦ to drive those same people to hospital.
1:31:26
It's still a car.
1:31:27
It's up to you, the driver- Yeah â¦ how you use it, you know.
1:31:29
Yeah.
1:31:29
And the horse is a little bit like that for us, you know.
1:31:31
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:31:31
My, my model of teaching my kids and the kids we work with is to
1:31:37
say that, God makes it possible.
1:31:40
He puts things out here.
1:31:42
Then they can be used for good or evil.
1:31:45
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:31:46
Louis Hook: It's the people who determine what they're gonna do with it.
1:31:49
So that's horses.
1:31:50
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:31:51
Louis Hook: That's cars.
1:31:52
That's AI.
1:31:52
Exactly, AI.
1:31:53
Okay.
1:31:56
So, so, so that's how I view the world.
1:31:59
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:31:59
Louis Hook: So I'm not a, a, "Oh, AI is gonna destroy the world.
1:32:02
Oh, it's gonna be the greatest savior."
1:32:04
It's like, hey, it's gonna find its way based on the creativity of the people.
1:32:09
Rupert Isaacson: I'm sure we're gonna see both sides of that story.
1:32:11
Yeah.
1:32:11
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:32:12
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
1:32:12
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:32:13
So I appreciate your view of, one, what you would do next, because it, it, it kind
1:32:18
of validates kind of my model of what's important, and it, like you say, it's aâ¦
1:32:23
it's just a joy to be after my own ancestry.
1:32:27
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:32:28
Absolutely.
1:32:29
Louis Hook: Unbelievable.
1:32:30
And the challenges that are in the way, like, you know, I, I propose
1:32:33
to one of the ancestry groups, the Black one, to say, "Why don'tâ¦
1:32:37
Do you offer a service in Africa that says, 'Sign up and see if you
1:32:42
can connect to your US relatives?'"
1:32:46
We're not in that business."
1:32:48
"Okay, well, maybe I will be.
1:32:50
I don't know."
1:32:51
But, but the point is that connectivity is important, and it's right now
1:32:57
a very custom process to do it, and this G- Guy Gates, like, he
1:33:01
did it for the Pope, and he walked the Pope through all his ancestry.
1:33:05
He's done it in his show for people regularly, and I watch it and I go,
1:33:09
"Wow, you know, look at all that work."
1:33:11
But it turns out that a lot of the data is digitized, and to some degree,
1:33:18
with AI and other sort tools, we can get at it more better, more- Well,
1:33:23
Rupert Isaacson: this, well, this is actually the nice thing about AI, yeah,
1:33:26
is that, and the, that, there's that genetic data, is it, it, it can help
1:33:32
to dispel mythologies, and if we have a mythology that horses are a white thing,
1:33:40
and fine riding and dressage and all that is a white thing, which we know it isn't,
1:33:44
but nonetheless, that's the mythology.
1:33:46
Well, something like AI and genetics can be a very, very nice-
1:33:52
Very easy, straightforward way to say, "Look, no, actually.
1:33:56
Louis Hook: The evidence says
1:33:57
Rupert Isaacson: this."
1:33:57
This is very exciting- Yeah
1:33:58
â¦ Louis Hook: because this is where I live right now.
1:34:01
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:34:02
Louis Hook: Because this is the way, a- as a, as a, as a analytical guy and
1:34:06
an economist guy who was focused on regression analysis, it's just data.
1:34:10
That's what I, what, where my- Mm-hmm â¦ where my hat was.
1:34:15
So the way the AI works is it's gonna reinforce mainstream teaching because it
1:34:24
searches the database and says, "99 of the 100 things I found say mainstream,"
1:34:31
and that, and one thing says it's not, so that one thing's not true.
1:34:35
That's how AI first turns it back.
1:34:37
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:34:38
Louis Hook: So I'll give you an example where I heard something about, you know,
1:34:42
we all know about Benjamin Franklin's e- e- electrical kite thing, right?
1:34:48
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:34:48
Louis Hook: And so someone said, "Hey, you know, it was, that was
1:34:52
one of his slaves that did that."
1:34:53
So I'm like, "Oh, that's, I don't know.
1:34:55
Well, you know, let me put it in AI."
1:34:56
So the first response that came back from AI was, "Benjamin Franklin never
1:35:01
owned slaves, so it's not true."
1:35:03
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:35:04
Yeah.
1:35:05
Louis Hook: So I did the thing you want to do.
1:35:06
I think he
1:35:06
Rupert Isaacson: was one of the few Founding Fathers that
1:35:08
did not own slaves, yeah.
1:35:10
Louis Hook: Okay.
1:35:10
So listen to this.
1:35:12
I did, my thing is let's look at the periodic writings of that period and
1:35:17
the situations of that period before we make an answer, and it came back
1:35:21
and said that his wife was a plantation family, and her slaves worked for him.
1:35:29
Okay?
1:35:29
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:35:30
Louis Hook: This is how, what I'm saying is AI can get you to the
1:35:33
right place, but because of the way-
1:35:36
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
1:35:36
â¦ Louis Hook: it has to search the records, it's, you gotta help it.
1:35:40
Okay?
1:35:40
Yeah.
1:35:41
And so right now, anybody who's gonna go do something, they may come back
1:35:44
with what Louis said is total bullshit."
1:35:46
Okay?
1:35:48
So I'll, I'll say, "Okay, let's work together.
1:35:50
Let me try my prompt."
1:35:52
Okay.
1:35:53
And then when you hit the prompt and AI comes back and
1:35:55
says, "Holy shit, you're right.
1:35:58
I missed this, this, and this."
1:35:59
Now, then it goes, digs into all that shit, and all of a sudden-
1:36:02
Yeah â¦ you're like, "Whoa."
1:36:04
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:36:04
Louis Hook: Okay?
1:36:04
So that's the fun that I'm having right now.
1:36:07
Rupert Isaacson: And I could absolutely see that Benjamin Franklin might not have
1:36:09
owned slaves, in that he might not have had his name on the title, but they may
1:36:14
well have been in his house working, yes.
1:36:17
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:36:17
So, so, so it's interesting that whole creation thing.
1:36:20
So there's this- Yeah â¦ thing in the co- Black community when we, we try to
1:36:22
show the records of all these inventions that Blacks made during slavery, right?
1:36:28
And I always said, "It doesn't make sense to me.
1:36:31
How does a slave working in the field all day come home to his shack tired
1:36:37
as hell to create the cotton gin?"
1:36:42
Okay?
1:36:43
It, it, it just never sat well with me.
1:36:45
But the reality is, is the owners sought out the experts- Sure
1:36:50
who put them in labs-
1:36:52
Rupert Isaacson: Sure
1:36:52
â¦ Louis Hook: and used them, and then- No â¦ took the ownership of the, of
1:36:55
the- No â¦ 'cause it was il- it became illegal for Blacks to get patents.
1:36:58
So they-
1:36:59
Rupert Isaacson: It was exactly what the Romans did.
1:37:01
Exactly.
1:37:01
So if you showed any talent, you were gonna end up in the
1:37:05
accounting house, you were gonna end up basically a professional.
1:37:09
Louis Hook: It's normal.
1:37:09
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
1:37:09
But it's so normal.
1:37:11
Be- you, because people are gonna just harness talent where they see it.
1:37:13
Yeah.
1:37:15
Louis Hook: Yeah, absolutely.
1:37:15
It's so normal, but it's not known at all.
1:37:16
Rupert Isaacson: In fact Toussaint, you know, the, the guy who led the
1:37:19
revolution in, Yeah â¦ the horse, great horseman who led the revolution
1:37:22
in Haiti, that was exactly his story.
1:37:24
You know, he began he was a field hand.
1:37:27
He was very, his talent for maths was very, very quickly spotted by the other
1:37:33
slave accountants on the plantations, who then said- Mm-hmm â¦ "W- a waste of this
1:37:39
guy to have him out there in the field.
1:37:41
Let's bring him into the counting house.
1:37:43
Let's show him how the estate is run.
1:37:45
Let's show him how the economy works.
1:37:47
Let's show him how to train a horse.
1:37:49
Let's show him how to drive a carriage.
1:37:51
Let's show him how to wait at table for the visiting diplomats.
1:37:54
Let's, let's, let's, let's.
1:37:55
Let's teach him horsem- let's teach him fencing.
1:37:57
Let's teach him fine manners.
1:37:58
Let's teach him, teach him, teach him."
1:38:00
Then the next thing you know, he's running the country.
1:38:02
So - Right.
1:38:02
Louis Hook: Right.
1:38:03
You- What I, what I call it is once you open the door- Yeah â¦ the dots
1:38:07
connect so fast it makes your head spin.
1:38:09
Rupert Isaacson: Yep.
1:38:10
Louis Hook: It just, like you j- what you just ran through was from
1:38:13
the field to running the country.
1:38:15
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:38:15
Louis Hook: And the dots connect so firmly it's unbelievable.
1:38:19
Rupert Isaacson: Yep.
1:38:20
So listen, I think we're approaching the two-hour mark, and I know that
1:38:24
you've got writings out there on the West African horse traditions that
1:38:28
I think a lot of people will find really interesting to nerd out on.
1:38:31
Can you tell us the links?
1:38:32
How can they find them?
1:38:33
I've read through- Yeah, â¦ some of them.
1:38:34
They're great reading.
1:38:36
Louis Hook: Yeah, so, Black in the Saddle: From African Cavalries
1:38:39
to Modern Cowboys is on Amazon.
1:38:41
Rupert Isaacson: Black in the Saddle: From African-
1:38:43
Bla- â¦ Cavalries to Modern Cowboys.
1:38:44
Louis Hook: Black, yeah.
1:38:45
Black in the Saddle: From African Cavalries to Modern Cowboys.
1:38:49
Yeah.
1:38:49
Rupert Isaacson: And how can people find this?
1:38:51
Is it, is it published?
1:38:52
Can they get it on Amazon, or is it, is it a PDF that they're gonna find on-
1:38:56
Louis Hook: It, it's published on Amazon.
1:38:58
Rupert Isaacson: Published on Amazon.
1:38:59
Louis Hook: And the, and the audio version is on Spotify.
1:39:01
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, perfect.
1:39:02
So Black in the Saddle: From African Cavalries to the Modern Cowboys on Amazon.
1:39:08
Also, i- a- and y- you say it's, it's also an Audible?
1:39:12
Louis Hook: On Spotify for the audio.
1:39:13
On
1:39:13
Rupert Isaacson: Spotify.
1:39:14
Okay, on Spotify.
1:39:15
Louis Hook: Mm-hmm.
1:39:15
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:39:15
I recommend it listeners and viewers.
1:39:18
It will widen your perspective massively and your education base.
1:39:22
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:39:23
And based on our comments, you will see some of the stuff that I'm learning from
1:39:27
you, that I'm gonna be researching your books and your things, 'cause volume
1:39:31
two is a, is de- is a deep dive into the African background, equestrian world.
1:39:37
And so I need some of the stuff that you have said.
1:39:40
It's, itâ¦
1:39:41
I've begun it, but I can see how it can be flushed out with
1:39:44
some of the stuff you have.
1:39:45
And that's my- Well, I,
1:39:45
Rupert Isaacson: I think-
1:39:45
Louis Hook: That's my next, my next book up will be that volume.
1:39:48
Rupert Isaacson: Here's what I'm gonna propose.
1:39:50
I think what we should do, this is, this was, like, the
1:39:52
podcast, like, who is Lewis Hook?
1:39:53
How have you fallen into this line of work, et cetera, et cetera.
1:39:58
But I think what I'd like to do next is we should do a series of talks,
1:40:04
of conversations on YouTube where we actually specifically look at the training
1:40:09
techniques, the breeds of horses, the tack be- used, da, da, da, da, da, da,
1:40:13
through that West African tradition.
1:40:16
Mm-hmm â¦ I can go back and do some more researches as well.
1:40:20
Mm-hmm.
1:40:20
And I think that would make a fine series of horse nerd conversations.
1:40:26
Louis Hook: Yeah, I, I think this is powerful in this way.
1:40:28
If I send you the, the chapters of volume two-
1:40:33
Rupert Isaacson: Okay
1:40:34
Louis Hook: As a starting point to say, "H- here's how I'm thinking about the cov-
1:40:38
the informa- the, what I need to cover."
1:40:41
Then you say, "Mm, okay, let's tweak it this way for my needs," and we go down
1:40:46
and we get a combined path that we like.
1:40:49
But for me, anything that overlaps from what you can provide into
1:40:53
that ch- into that volume- I'm
1:40:55
Rupert Isaacson: happy to contribute anything I can.
1:40:56
Absolutely
1:40:57
â¦ Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:40:57
And then when I f- when we finish it, after I get all those im- that
1:41:01
input from you and me and come up with a draft, I'd love for you to
1:41:05
take a look at that draft of that,
1:41:06
Rupert Isaacson: Gladly.
1:41:07
I'd be honored.
1:41:08
I'd be honored â¦ Okay.
1:41:09
Louis Hook: All right.
1:41:10
We don't want
1:41:10
Rupert Isaacson: to wear out our- Very good, my friend.
1:41:12
Louis Hook: Yes.
1:41:13
Incredible.
1:41:14
I'm just blown away.
1:41:16
Just really-
1:41:16
Rupert Isaacson: Likewise.
1:41:17
Thank you.
1:41:18
Thank you.
1:41:19
And I guess we will be speaking soon.
1:41:23
Louis Hook: Two thumbs up.
1:41:24
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1:41:28
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