Latest / California Frontier / 076: True Visual History of California Part 1 | David W. Rickman, Illustrator and Historian

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076: True Visual History of California Part 1 | David W. Rickman, Illustrator and Historian · California Frontier

• 0:00
  Believe it or not, most of us have a very feeble idea of the past.
• 0:07
  We depend a lot on photographs on Hollywood on.
• 0:15
  Paintings or other illustrations we've seen, and especially on the frontier and especially in California, we have an even weaker idea of what things look like.
• 0:28
  First of all, when you talk about the American West, we're very influenced by Hollywood.
• 0:33
  And let's face it, there were very few, if any, photographers in California prior to the Gold Rush.
• 0:41
  So it's very hard to conceptualize what things and people looked like, uh, especially how people dressed, for example.
• 0:52
  So the guest I'm interviewing on this episode is a great person to have on with this regard.
• 1:00
  He's a very unique person when it comes to his expertise, and he's gonna shed a light on some things that I think we don't even realize that we take for granted.
• 1:14
  David w Rickman is his name, and he is the premier illustrator of topics related to the history of California and the overall Spanish borderlands.
• 1:24
  That would be, you know, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, California.
• 1:32
  Uh.
• 1:33
  I don't know if I left something out, but this, that whole swath of territory that was part of Northern New Spain.
• 1:40
  If you visited missions and state historical parks here in California, you have likely seen his work.
• 1:49
  Or if you've, uh, traveled along the Wam, Batista des, uh, national Historic Trail or.
• 1:57
  Other history museums throughout the west.
• 2:00
  Not, not only the west, also on the east coast, you will have seen his work.
• 2:07
  He's not only, uh, illustrated panels and signs and brochures, everything for state and national parks and museums, but he's illustrated books and he even created the manual for, uh.
• 2:27
  Sutter's Fort State Historic Parks, costumes also for Fort Ross and others, and he's working on a new one, which I can't wait to see that's going to be updated.
• 2:40
  David is a fascinating person, not only because he's an incredibly talented artist, but he's an historian and he, he moderates two excellent Facebook groups for people interested in what we call the material culture.
• 2:55
  Of California and the Southwest.
• 2:57
  How did people dress?
• 2:58
  What did they eat?
• 2:59
  Um, what did architecture look like?
• 3:01
  The things that you can touch, you know, that the historical, the historical material culture of the Southwest.
• 3:09
  And on top of that, he's just an overall wonderful person.
• 3:14
  As you'll hear in our conversation.
• 3:16
  His experience as an artist and an illustrator gives him a really unique perspective on history and on California history in particular.
• 3:26
  I.
• 3:26
  And you will notice that he mentions Antonio Cord a number of times as an important source for information about early California dress.
• 3:36
  And if you've been following this podcast, you know I have a number of episodes, uh, dedicated to sections of Antonio Cordell's memoirs.
• 3:47
  So hopefully you go back and listen to those.
• 3:50
  In much of the interview, by the way, we refer to some illustrations of David's so that he actually shared with me.
• 4:01
  So I recommend that if you can you watch this interview on YouTube where you can see those illustrations, you can find it by just going and looking up California Frontier.
• 4:12
  On YouTube and you'll see our channel.
• 4:15
  I have a number of our interviews posted there.
• 4:18
  One last thing.
• 4:19
  You may notice that the audio at times seems a little bit clippy.
• 4:24
  I hope it's not much of a distraction.
• 4:25
  I just wanna let you know that I'm aware of it and I don't think, and I hope it won't detract too much from the interview because the content is very fascinating.
• 4:37
  So now with all that said, let's get into my interview with David w Rickman
• 4:55
  Damian Bacich: Looks like we've started.
• 4:56
  Damian Bacich: thAnks.
• 4:57
  Damian Bacich: Thank you for being here.
• 4:59
  Damian Bacich: I'm excited
• 4:59
  David Rickman: you so.
• 5:00
  Damian Bacich: to you.
• 5:01
  Damian Bacich: You know, we have great conversations, or at least I have a great conversation.
• 5:06
  Damian Bacich: Listen, listening to you every time we meet up, and I'm just grateful to be able to of share this with the things we talk about with more people.
• 5:16
  Damian Bacich: And I'm, I'm always struck by the things I hear and see from you, your, your your presentations when I go to conferences or.
• 5:24
  Damian Bacich: Some of the most interesting.
• 5:26
  Damian Bacich: So once again, David, I'm really grateful for this.
• 5:30
  David Rickman: Well, thank you so much, Damian.
• 5:32
  David Rickman: And it's a shame we only get to see one another once a year or today this.
• 5:36
  David Rickman: time we could, could see one other twice.
• 5:38
  David Rickman: But, uh, it's, it's so much fun to, uh, to get out with colleagues because as you probably understand, the, the life of an illustrator is fairly solitary one.
• 5:48
  David Rickman: And, uh, one of the reasons why I, uh, I love coming out is I get to actually be with fellow nerds.
• 5:55
  David Rickman: Uh, talking about a subject that, um, you know, if you were to start a conversation on the East coast here about the things that interest me, no.
• 6:05
  David Rickman: It, it wouldn't work.
• 6:05
  Damian Bacich: Right.
• 6:06
  Damian Bacich: I think even here in, well, even here in California, I think it's unusual, but, but I'm discovering that there are more and more people, at least than I thought, who are really interested in California history.
• 6:19
  Damian Bacich: And I think the, the visual aspect of what you do is so fascinating, fascinating.
• 6:26
  Damian Bacich: Because there are, as you know, and as you've mentioned in other places, there are a lot of places to learn through words about the life of the past and, you know, in, in our case, California, that we're talking about in particular, uh, but, but the visual representation of that is so unusual, right?
• 6:50
  Damian Bacich: It's so.
• 6:51
  Damian Bacich: Rare.
• 6:52
  Damian Bacich: So what you do is really interesting and exciting.
• 6:56
  David Rickman: Well, Well, thank you.
• 6:57
  David Rickman: Yeah, I, it, it was actually a struggle for me early on in life to, uh, to go with the life of the mind, of the life of, of, uh, visual expression, I suppose is the best way to put it.
• 7:10
  David Rickman: Um.
• 7:12
  David Rickman: And in a way I don't think I've even solved that problem yet, except somehow at this point in life, it seems to be easier and easier to, uh, uh, to do.
• 7:23
  David Rickman: Um, I mean, I would, I got a degree in history from Berkeley, but nevertheless, when they said, do you, do you wanna go onto graduate school?
• 7:30
  David Rickman: I said, actually teaching isn't exactly what I wanted to do.
• 7:34
  David Rickman: I set out to be an illustrator, but I just always loved history.
• 7:38
  David Rickman: So it, it has been.
• 7:39
  David Rickman: It has been kind of a light motif of my life that sometimes I'm a historian, sometimes an I'm an illustrator.
• 7:46
  David Rickman: Um, and somehow now it seems to work out.
• 7:51
  David Rickman: Um, I think one of the most flattery things is that I will come to the, uh, the California Missions and Presidio conferences, which I, I adore.
• 8:00
  David Rickman: I just, I have such a good time there.
• 8:03
  David Rickman: There are such wonderful scholars, including yourself there, people who have such qualifications and such.
• 8:09
  David Rickman: And at times I feel like I'm a bird watcher and a group of ornithologists.
• 8:13
  David Rickman: Um, you know, I can, I could tell you about the interesting flicker that I saw, and you can probably give me chapter in verse from, you know, its evolution and it's fully, it's uh, uh, life and all of that.
• 8:29
  David Rickman: Nevertheless, it's, it's been fun and I'm, I'm so grateful that it's such a welcoming association.
• 8:35
  David Rickman: I encourage so many people to, uh, to join the organization because I think that's where the future lies, is, uh, trying to bring new people into that, this conversation.
• 8:47
  David Rickman: Um, but getting back to the visual aspect, one of the things that, um, I'd like to talk about if I can, Ken, is that.
• 8:58
  David Rickman: The way this all started out, I think I've, children will show you if they can, what they intend to be.
• 9:08
  David Rickman: Um, so when I was a child, I drew like crazy and um, a lot of horses in particular.
• 9:17
  David Rickman: Um, but I also loved history.
• 9:22
  David Rickman: But the visual aspect of history was always my dream.
• 9:26
  David Rickman: Not to live in the past, because at a very early age, I found out that the past wasn't always a great place to live, but to see it and then later in life to help others to see it as best I could.
• 9:37
  David Rickman: Of course we don't actually see it, but I try to come as close as I can to, to creating, um, something that looks as much as.
• 9:49
  David Rickman: We can tell about history in the same way that, um, there are artists who reconstruct dinosaurs from bones.
• 9:56
  David Rickman: Uh, I reconstruct the past from archeology, written and, and visual, uh, eyewitness written and visual, uh, accounts.
• 10:05
  David Rickman: And, um, it showed itself early in my life the same time that I was drawing horses.
• 10:12
  David Rickman: When I went into fourth grade and they handed me my fourth grade California history book, as they always do.
• 10:20
  David Rickman: Um, I remember opening it up and actually I have the image in my PowerPoint that, uh, I'll show you and we can talk about it whenever you want to see that.
• 10:30
  David Rickman: But it was a picture of the Portola expedition coming up the coast, uh, probably heading towards San Francisco Bay, and I can still remember.
• 10:39
  David Rickman: And it's been a memory I've had all my life of looking at that and thinking it says 1769 and yet that's around the time of the American Revolution.
• 10:50
  David Rickman: And these guys have got like conquistador outfits on what's going on here.
• 10:56
  David Rickman: And as I've said often, um, the rest of my life has been trying to answer that.
• 11:01
  David Rickman: So yeah.
• 11:02
  Damian Bacich: Well, maybe we could talk about that picture if you, if you want to share
• 11:07
  David Rickman: Yeah, I can call it.
• 11:08
  David Rickman: up if you like.
• 11:09
  Damian Bacich: Yeah.
• 11:10
  Damian Bacich: Let's see here.
• 11:12
  Damian Bacich: You see that there?
• 11:14
  David Rickman: There it is.
• 11:16
  David Rickman: Yes.
• 11:17
  David Rickman: Um, this was a picture that I saw, um, year in fourth grade that inspired me for what I'm doing for the rest of my life, which is.
• 11:29
  David Rickman: A picture that shows, uh, the Port LA Expedition of 1769 riding up the coast towards San Francisco and in fourth grade, me looked at that when I first opened my, my California history reader.
• 11:45
  David Rickman: And I thought to myself, wait a minute, it says 1769 and yet that's around the time of George Washington.
• 11:54
  David Rickman: And why are these people wearing conquistador outfits?
• 11:57
  David Rickman: And as I have said often before, that's question has been something I've been trying to answer the rest of my life.
• 12:05
  David Rickman: Uh, why do people picture the past like this?
• 12:08
  David Rickman: Why haven't they looked to see what it really was like?
• 12:12
  David Rickman: And you know, the odd thing Damien, is no one really has, um, except a few people that I'll, I'll mention, but there have been, I.
• 12:25
  David Rickman: No serious books written about what was worn in early California, um, ever.
• 12:32
  David Rickman: Uh, there was a little book that was published during the, uh, depression by, um, two women, uh, Mackey and Suey, and it is a costume book, and, and it, it's really pretty bad and it's really pretty simplistic.
• 12:51
  David Rickman: And yet in 1976 for the bicentennial, Stanford University Press republished it.
• 12:57
  David Rickman: And other than that, my Sutter Schwart costume manual and now my upcoming, where Worlds Met from California State Parks.
• 13:05
  David Rickman: No one has taken this seriously now.
• 13:08
  David Rickman: I just this morning, um, received some pictures, uh, from a collector and they are watercolor sketches by an artist named Alexander Harmer who came to California in 1891.
• 13:22
  David Rickman: Married into the Abdi family in Santa Barbara and spent the rest of his life doing paintings of early California.
• 13:30
  David Rickman: And he really did try and make the effort to see into the past.
• 13:35
  David Rickman: He wasn't always completely effective.
• 13:37
  David Rickman: But I've just posted on my two, uh, uh, groups, uh, Alta, California clothing and, uh, arts and Skills of the Spanish Borderlands.
• 13:48
  David Rickman: Um, this sketch that Harmer did of California clothing, obviously antiques that were brought to him by old Californias.
• 13:58
  David Rickman: He wanted to know what the clothing looked like.
• 13:59
  David Rickman: They brought him their old clothes and he painted them and they appear later in his paintings and, uh, and other illustrations.
• 14:08
  David Rickman: He took an approach that I admire, the one that I try and follow today, which is to look at real things.
• 14:14
  David Rickman: Don't make things up.
• 14:16
  David Rickman: There's another artist, Joe Mora, that everyone loves.
• 14:19
  David Rickman: And frankly, I love him as an illustrator and an author, but he was really pretty bad when it came to try and trying to reconstruct what the old Californias from Port Law down to, uh, the Battle La San Pasquale looked like he was so bad that, as I've often said, uh, he put the leggings, the BOTAs onto all of his, uh, eros backwards.
• 14:48
  David Rickman: That was not someone who actually had looked at the real things and talked to the real people.
• 14:53
  David Rickman: And yet at the beginning of his book, California is he says, what I've presented here, it's all true what he's presented there visually.
• 15:03
  David Rickman: None of it is true, and yet he's the illustrator that everyone goes to first when it comes to, uh, uh, showing old Californias, I mean, his pictures are throughout the.
• 15:15
  David Rickman: The California Park system, for example.
• 15:18
  David Rickman: So what it is that I do, if I could help, I'm sorry, go ahead.
• 15:23
  Damian Bacich: no, I was just, and, and I don't want to get off track here, but why do you think it is, or was so difficult to picture past in California's past in inaccurate way?
• 15:36
  Damian Bacich: Why do you think, uh, Joe Mora, for example, able to or didn't talk to descendants or people who had that?
• 15:46
  Damian Bacich: Those, those items of clothing, uh, you know, at their homes.
• 15:51
  David Rickman: Well, he said that he did talk to people, and yet he obviously did not take advantage of all the things that were available to him.
• 16:01
  David Rickman: I mean, Alexander Harmer, the illustrator, author, I mean artist and illustrator that I mentioned earlier, I.
• 16:08
  David Rickman: Harmer arrived in California in 1891 at a time when, uh, Antonio Cordell and all were still around, and he could talk to them and he could, he had them act as his models, and yet Harmer lived until 1925.
• 16:24
  David Rickman: Joe Mora could have taken a trip down to from Monterey down to Santa Barbara, and spoken with Harmer and looked at his artwork, but evidently he, he didn't want to.
• 16:37
  David Rickman: Um, as an illustrator myself, I know that there is a tendency with some of us that we want to show the past or whatever subject it might be, um, the way we see it.
• 16:50
  David Rickman: Um, I live in the hometown of an illustrator named Howard Pyle, and he is the one who created the, the idea of how pirates looked with the head scarves and the striped shirts and the big sashes and all of that.
• 17:06
  David Rickman: It that in influenced right down to Pirates of the Caribbean today.
• 17:09
  David Rickman: And yet that isn't at all what pirates looked like.
• 17:13
  David Rickman: And I have spent a lot of time reading through his, uh, papers and looking at his sketches and all that.
• 17:19
  David Rickman: And I realized that at some point along the way, he knew that that's not what they looked like.
• 17:27
  David Rickman: But he continued to do it because he liked the way they looked.
• 17:31
  David Rickman: He liked what he created.
• 17:32
  David Rickman: And I think we could go back to Joe Mora and say he did the same thing.
• 17:36
  David Rickman: Whether or not he knew it, he just bypassed the whole research part.
• 17:41
  David Rickman: Um, and went straight to illustrating.
• 17:44
  David Rickman: Another thing that was available to him is he could have gone down to Los Angeles, to the Los Angeles County Museum where they have the largest collection of California clothing, the Cornell and, and other family collections.
• 17:58
  David Rickman: It's not huge, but it's enough, uh, that if you went to that museum.
• 18:04
  David Rickman: He could have answered a lot of his questions, or if he had the questions he could have, he could have done a much better job of representing, uh, early California.
• 18:16
  David Rickman: There were existing saddles throughout California.
• 18:19
  David Rickman: Joe Morty ignored them because he created something that I think he liked better.
• 18:24
  David Rickman: He might have gotten the bit right as as, uh, my friend John Grafton will point out, but he got the saddles all wrong.
• 18:31
  David Rickman: I don't think that Maura understood really what historical illustrators do, where Alexander Harmer did.
• 18:41
  Damian Bacich: So did your, so your interest begin.
• 18:45
  Damian Bacich: Directly with California, But you, you also, what I've noticed is that you illustrate a broad variety of historical subjects.
• 18:56
  Damian Bacich: How did you get into this this world after having, after having graduated with a degree from Berkeley in history?
• 19:06
  David Rickman: Well, it's interesting.
• 19:07
  David Rickman: Um, I grew up in California.
• 19:10
  David Rickman: I, I felt the presence of California history all around me, uh, all the years of, of my growing up and, and well in, into my thirties when I first moved to the East Coast.
• 19:20
  David Rickman: But I wanted to be an illustrator, and an illustrator as essentially a taxi dancer.
• 19:25
  David Rickman: You know, 10 cents a dance, you pay me.
• 19:28
  David Rickman: I'll illustrate what it is you ask for.
• 19:31
  David Rickman: Um, I started out doing children's, uh, textbooks and, and, uh, and other kinds of books for kids.
• 19:38
  David Rickman: And then eventually was able to work my way around two the things that I wanted to do.
• 19:44
  David Rickman: And the first thing I did, if, if I could see the next slide, um, were Dover coloring books.
• 19:52
  David Rickman: Um.
• 19:54
  David Rickman: Yeah, California missions and, and cowboys coloring books were my opportunity to break out as an illustrator that did historical topics and I was able to use these then to start going to historic sites, uh, national Park Service and such, and doing more of this kind of thing.
• 20:15
  David Rickman: But when you do that, I mean, I ended up doing, oh, uh, Northwest Coast Indians in Alaska, uh, for the National Park Service, the prehistoric, uh, ancestral pueblos down in Colorado.
• 20:28
  David Rickman: Um, more recently I've done, um, a, a cotton mill in Providence, Rhode Island, uh, Jamestown in the 16 hundreds.
• 20:39
  David Rickman: I love it all, and part of it is that it allows me to do research and, and that in a way is also my calling card when I do illustrations.
• 20:49
  David Rickman: Um, right now I'm doing a project, I hope it goes forward with, um, Shriner University in Texas.
• 20:56
  David Rickman: They wanted to find someone who would illustrate the, uh, Texas Native Americans and Spaniards in the 1750s, which was a crucial time in, in Texan history.
• 21:09
  David Rickman: And so they came to me and I've just spent the last month and a half corresponding with, uh, the foremost experts, uh, trying to find out about something that no one really understands, which is the fact that Early Plains Indians we're used to thinking of them riding bareback and lying along the sides of their horses and shooting under the necks and all that.
• 21:32
  David Rickman: Early Plains Indians copied the Spanish and went into battle, completely armored with their horses, covered with buckskin armor down to their knees, and the, the men wearing armor as well.
• 21:45
  David Rickman: That's something no one has ever illustrated.
• 21:47
  David Rickman: Well, I hope to be illustrating that soon.
• 21:50
  David Rickman: Yeah, it's exciting stuff.
• 21:52
  David Rickman: Um, I'm also doing, uh, some work, uh, for a little Norwegian farm in Lake Superior.
• 22:00
  David Rickman: No project that allows me to do some research and, and get into it is ever boring to me.
• 22:07
  David Rickman: But somehow, for whatever reason, early California and also the Spanish Borderlands as a whole, going from all the way from Texas to to California, that's had a hold on me.
• 22:22
  David Rickman: And if you wanna be mystic about it, it's almost as if I didn't choose it.
• 22:26
  David Rickman: It chose me for whatever reason.
• 22:28
  David Rickman: Because it feels like that sometimes.
• 22:30
  David Rickman: I'm thinking, well, you know, I could have gone on and done other things.
• 22:33
  David Rickman: I could have gone on and, and taught, but I think this kept pulling me back for whatever reason.
• 22:39
  David Rickman: And, um, I think.
• 22:43
  David Rickman: Quite simply.
• 22:43
  David Rickman: I love it.
• 22:45
  David Rickman: Um,
• 22:45
  Damian Bacich: Did you?
• 22:46
  David Rickman: if we could see the next slide,
• 22:48
  Damian Bacich: Sure.
• 22:48
  Damian Bacich: And in the meantime,
• 22:50
  David Rickman: just wanted to show a few of the things that I have done.
• 22:53
  David Rickman: Um, yeah, this was a wonderful project.
• 22:58
  David Rickman: It was the Juan Batista Dances and National Historic Trail, which in the early two thousands, um, allowed me, uh, to put, to put, to use something I've been researching since the 1970s, since the bicentennial itself.
• 23:15
  David Rickman: What, how do they really dress?
• 23:16
  David Rickman: What do they really wear?
• 23:18
  David Rickman: And it allowed me to go back to, um, the original Spanish language documents.
• 23:25
  David Rickman: Um, uh, one of which was the supply list, uh, the original supply list that was shared with me by a man named Don Ti, who was, uh, worked for the, the National Park Service.
• 23:37
  David Rickman: And he, uh.
• 23:38
  David Rickman: Not only spoke Spanish, but he also spoke Basque because his family was Basque and that was the Anza family was Basque, so he was the perfect scholar to talk to about what they might have worn and and such.
• 23:51
  David Rickman: And so that was a great project for me and one that I loved.
• 23:55
  David Rickman: And I actually retraced the, um, the trail.
• 23:59
  David Rickman: Uh, a friend and I drove the trail, uh, in, uh, 2023 in order to, uh, uh, get a feeling for the landscape and, and the experiences of the, uh, the people who traveled it.
• 24:15
  Damian Bacich: I don't
• 24:16
  David Rickman: Um,
• 24:16
  Damian Bacich: any conquistador helmets.
• 24:19
  David Rickman: yeah, not a shame.
• 24:21
  David Rickman: Yeah.
• 24:21
  David Rickman: Um, well, I mean, the term myth busters is used a lot these days and, and it's, it's kind of, it, it's fine.
• 24:31
  David Rickman: It's not so much busting myths, but it's.
• 24:34
  David Rickman: Wanting to know more, wanting to see what it actually looked like.
• 24:39
  David Rickman: Um, and, and one of the things that, uh, I, I know language is your great skill and, and delight.
• 24:47
  David Rickman: Damien, one of the things I like to be able to do is there are certain words as I, I sure I, you remember from my talk at the missions conference that come up that actually need to be understood from a material culture point of view.
• 25:04
  David Rickman: If you folks are gonna be able to do your job to the best of your abilities.
• 25:08
  David Rickman: And I can't tell you how many things I've read, not by you and no names mentioned, where the word IL will be translated as rifle and um, uh, cal will be translated as trousers.
• 25:28
  David Rickman: It completely loses the whole character of what it is people are trying to.
• 25:34
  David Rickman: Uh, understand.
• 25:36
  David Rickman: And it was a great frustration for me when I first started out doing this.
• 25:40
  David Rickman: And so, um, I've studied Spanish, German, and French enough that when I read through the documents, I can find out what it is I need to know.
• 25:50
  David Rickman: I think if I'd been more of a scholar, I would've spent a lot more time in archives and, and dealing with original documents.
• 25:55
  David Rickman: But what I have done, um, it's really helped me to understand it from the point of view of language.
• 26:02
  David Rickman: cause language is so important to understanding what it is they, they have.
• 26:07
  David Rickman: So now I recommend that when people try and do this kind of work, they go to the original documents in their original languages, find, find out how to, to read the handwriting, find out how to, uh, access period dictionaries that will explain to you better than modern dictionaries what these people had in mind.
• 26:27
  David Rickman: So it's, it's more than just, um.
• 26:32
  David Rickman: Sitting around like Howard Pyle did and, and imagining what pirates looked like.
• 26:35
  David Rickman: It's actually trying to find out.
• 26:38
  Damian Bacich: So going back to the case of the Comanches using armor or leather clad, how did you come across, how, how is that revealed in, say, the documents?
• 26:51
  David Rickman: Well it's, it's an interesting thing and it's, it's quite a phenomenon.
• 26:55
  David Rickman: The first one, and I don't have any pictures here, but people can look it up.
• 26:59
  David Rickman: Years ago, I think I was still in college.
• 27:02
  David Rickman: I came across the book, uh, by a, uh, Swiss scholar whose name was Hoz, HOTZ, I don't remember his first name, but it was about two paintings on Buffalo Hide that were found in a Swiss home in the 1930s, 40.
• 27:20
  David Rickman: Someone recognized what they were.
• 27:22
  David Rickman: He rec recognized that they certainly weren't.
• 27:25
  David Rickman: I mean, people had thought, well, maybe it shows South America.
• 27:27
  David Rickman: Maybe it shows Asia.
• 27:28
  David Rickman: No, what it shows, the two different high paintings are battles that took place in the west.
• 27:36
  David Rickman: The first one is called Sesser one, and, and they, both of'em are still on display now in Santa Fe at the History Museum.
• 27:46
  David Rickman: The first one shows armed horsemen, completely armored horses, completely armored men riding the battle against dismounted Indians who were firing at them with bows and arrows.
• 27:57
  David Rickman: Well, that was intriguing.
• 27:59
  David Rickman: So I thought about it for some years and, and picked up things here and there as I went along.
• 28:06
  David Rickman: And then, oddly enough, because of our connected era with computers, um, in 2019, I received an email from the foremost scholar of horse armor, uh, a guy named Jim James Kaiser.
• 28:21
  David Rickman: Who is a professor of archeology in Oregon.
• 28:24
  David Rickman: He's now retired, but he wanted to ask me about Spanish saddles because he thought he was seeing Spanish saddles in what is his specialty, which is rock art carvings on rock that are found throughout the west.
• 28:37
  David Rickman: In turn.
• 28:38
  David Rickman: I wanted to ask him about the armor, because that's what these pictures show.
• 28:44
  David Rickman: So from the Eser Hide Painting, they're able to tell from these rock carvings that these guys, in early times, from about 1650 to about 1750 were riding horses covered completely from neck to tail in leather armor, and these rock carvings occur everywhere from Texas all the way up to the Saskatchewan River in Canada.
• 29:09
  David Rickman: So at one time it was, that was the way you used horses in the old West.
• 29:15
  David Rickman: Well, something came along called guns.
• 29:17
  David Rickman: Completely ruined that for everyone.
• 29:19
  David Rickman: And of course, that's how from about 1750 on you have the light cavalry tactics of the Plains Indians, but because the armor no longer worked.
• 29:27
  David Rickman: Um, so when I received this, um, project from Shriner University in Texas, uh, first thing I did was I contacted Jim Kaiser and I said, I need you to walk me through this.
• 29:41
  David Rickman: And he's been wonderfully open-handed, so much so to the point that he now wants me to write a scholarly article with him about how I go about reconstructing these guys.
• 29:51
  David Rickman: So that'll be fun to do and I hope to, uh, to work on that next year.
• 29:57
  Damian Bacich: What about
• 29:57
  David Rickman: Can we take a look?
• 29:59
  David Rickman: Mm-hmm.
• 30:00
  Damian Bacich: I'm so, uh, what, so it would seem to me that, uh, in California, the historical record is, is not in the world.
• 30:14
  Damian Bacich: How do you go about finding, you know, knowing what these, uh, colonists on the, an expedition wore, for example?
• 30:24
  David Rickman: Well, that was a bit of luck.
• 30:25
  David Rickman: Um, I knew, I knew basically what they had.
• 30:29
  David Rickman: I mean, years and years ago.
• 30:31
  David Rickman: Um, B Brinkerhoff and Falk, uh, who were two scholars at the, uh, Arizona Historical Society, uh, Sid Brinkerhoff and ODB Falk published something called Lancers for the King.
• 30:45
  David Rickman: And I've had this book since right after college, and it was the 1772 Royal Regulations in Spanish and in English, and their analysis of it.
• 30:59
  David Rickman: So you start with the regulations.
• 31:00
  David Rickman: Well, 1772 was just for three years before Ansys first expedition to California.
• 31:07
  David Rickman: And uh, so that is a start.
• 31:11
  David Rickman: But then, you know, given enough years, uh, you begin looking into it further and you find out from Herbert Bolton that there is a, uh, supply list when they're trying to figure out how much this expedition's going to cost for, to outfit all the new recruits and their families and, and put them on saddles and such.
• 31:32
  David Rickman: And it gives a complete list of everything that they thought they were gonna need for the expedition and what it would cost.
• 31:38
  David Rickman: Okay.
• 31:38
  David Rickman: Then you wanna look at Costa paintings to know what a chupa corta might be, or what a, an agua, uh, a jacket or a skirt might look like in the 1770s.
• 31:50
  David Rickman: Um, and then you.
• 31:52
  Damian Bacich: paintings are those famous paintings that we see, uh, with the different ethnicities and, and, so and so marries so and so, and, uh, Mestizo marries, mulatto, and they have a child.
• 32:08
  Damian Bacich: It's called such and such.
• 32:09
  Damian Bacich: Those are the, the Costa paintings, right.
• 32:12
  David Rickman: And they're, they're absolutely absolute treasure troves of material culture information.
• 32:18
  David Rickman: Now, you can't always assume that everything that was used in Mexico City was used in the Spanish borderlands, but it is probably our best guide and it's backed up because by the time you get to the 1790s and you have the malas fina expedition in California, they're essentially wearing exactly what I thought they would've been wearing.
• 32:37
  David Rickman: Uh, cause the fashions didn't change that quickly in California, as they did in New Mexico.
• 32:42
  David Rickman: They're essentially wearing, essentially.
• 32:44
  David Rickman: The same thing that you would see in the cost of painting from the 1770s.
• 32:48
  David Rickman: So that helps.
• 32:49
  David Rickman: And then there were various inspections and such that happened.
• 32:52
  David Rickman: Archeology, uh, I went to the Arizona historical, uh, museum and, and they had some of the weapons there and such.
• 33:02
  David Rickman: And I've been looking at saddles forever.
• 33:04
  David Rickman: Um, no real ones exist from this time, but there are plenty of images and there are saddles that came later that are of the same type.
• 33:13
  David Rickman: So it all comes together and, um, I've devoted, probably, undoubtedly most of my life to researching the material culture of the Spanish Borderlands and most particularly California.
• 33:27
  David Rickman: But, um.
• 33:30
  David Rickman: As I'd like, like to show a little bit later on, there have been other areas that I've worked on and you know, I mentioned the Howard Py.
• 33:36
  David Rickman: I've also worked on Russian America, especially Fort Ross and such.
• 33:40
  David Rickman: And, and that's a bit tougher.
• 33:41
  David Rickman: As I said, I've, I've looked at documents in Spanish, French, and German.
• 33:48
  David Rickman: There's a lot of discussion, a lot of evidence to be found in Russian documents, and they're badly translated in publication now.
• 33:55
  David Rickman: But Russian was bridged too far for me.
• 33:59
  David Rickman: It really was.
• 34:01
  David Rickman: Um, could we, could we see another picture?
• 34:03
  Damian Bacich: to, oh, yeah.
• 34:05
  Damian Bacich: Um, is it difficult then to, to do research on such varied subjects?
• 34:11
  Damian Bacich: You know, you have to shift.
• 34:12
  Damian Bacich: Gears from say, one geographical area or one time period to the next.
• 34:18
  Damian Bacich: Let's see.
• 34:19
  Damian Bacich: Going to the next picture?
• 34:22
  Damian Bacich: Yeah.
• 34:22
  Damian Bacich: Is it, is it hard to switch gears like that?
• 34:26
  David Rickman: Um, it isn't actually, um, I don't know why, uh, I will never be able to do Jamestown, Virginia in the depth that I do the Anza Expedition, but luckily, most of the, um, most other areas, I, I would have to say Damien, that probably the most neglected part of, uh, American material culture studies is west of the Mississippi.
• 34:58
  David Rickman: People spend a lot of time working on Colonial America and even into the Midwest somewhat.
• 35:06
  David Rickman: But our understanding of what was worn in the American West is so limited by Hollywood and by illustrators like Charles Russell and Frederick Remington.
• 35:19
  David Rickman: It was far richer, far more interesting.
• 35:21
  David Rickman: And, and neither of those two guys actually, I mean, they, they touched on the Spanish borderlands a bit, but neither of them, what they really understood was cowboys and cavalry and, and Plains Indians and Apaches and Western art had remained stuck in that groove ever since.
• 35:38
  David Rickman: But they're neglecting huge amounts of what I find fascinating and varied cultures.
• 35:47
  David Rickman: I mean, I was lucky enough to do prehistoric, uh, Southwest or the Pacific Northwest where the.
• 35:55
  David Rickman: Indians didn't just wanna take your scalp, they wanted to take your head and had created one of the most absolutely breathtakingly, gorgeous fields of art, styles of art in the northwest coast that's completely ignored by Hollywood and by the culture in general.
• 36:15
  David Rickman: And I mean, you can't say enough about how much the Spanish borderlands have been ignored.
• 36:22
  David Rickman: Um, I think California is probably the easiest of all those.
• 36:28
  David Rickman: If you were to say Texas, New Mexico, Southern Colorado, Arizona, Baja California, and Alta California, uh, Alta California is the easiest and there are a variety of reasons for that.
• 36:41
  David Rickman: Um, Alta California had a very long board, uh, shoreline with the Sea, and so they had a.
• 36:50
  David Rickman: Visitors every few years, whether it be George Vancouver or the Masina Expedition or the Beachy Expedition.
• 36:57
  David Rickman: In the 1820s, newcomers were always arriving at least every decade, if not more often, up until the 18, thirties, forties.
• 37:06
  David Rickman: And so they left a lot of, not just written descriptions, but visual descriptions, and also a number of them collected artifacts and took them back with them.
• 37:17
  David Rickman: So we're so much luckier than even a place like Texas, even though they were, you know, on the Caribbean, so to speak, you know, with, uh, they didn't have that same sort of, um, approach.
• 37:31
  David Rickman: One time I was at the Witty Museum, uh, speaking with a retired curator there who was showing me the collection, and she pointed out a pair of shoes and I looked at them and I said, I don't think those are Texan, and.
• 37:47
  David Rickman: She looked it up in the records and she said, well, actually they were purchased at an antique show show in Arizona.
• 37:55
  David Rickman: And the dealer said that he bought them in California.
• 37:58
  David Rickman: And you find this time and again is historic sites from Arizona to Texas.
• 38:05
  David Rickman: They lack artifacts.
• 38:07
  David Rickman: They lack images that, um, would be used normally in California to interpret our history.
• 38:16
  David Rickman: And so what they do is they borrow from California.
• 38:19
  David Rickman: And these shoes, if I'm not mistaken, I could even name the maker, uh, it was Antonio Cord because of the way they were made.
• 38:28
  David Rickman: But we're very lucky in California to have as much as we do.
• 38:32
  David Rickman: I'd love to have more and surprisingly enough as just yesterday, more new things turn up all the time.
• 38:40
  David Rickman: Um, one of the great delights is having formed.
• 38:45
  David Rickman: The, uh, arts and skills of the Spanish borderland and, and to help, uh, administer the Alta California site is that I have made a lot of connections with people who said, oh yeah, I have this here.
• 38:57
  Stay tuned for part two of my interview with David Rickman.