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