Cock Fighting

He watched dogs, and came to know them as throat fighters and leg fighters and gut fighters. Bulldogs became his favorite because they were game. Enthralled, he saw the jaws of one clamp upon the flesh and bone of the foreleg of another and grind until the members snapped, or saw one grip the throat of the other until the victim went limp, or even yet sink his fangs into the soft sway of the other’s belly and tear until its viscera trailed the ground.

He watched boars fight for their sows, saw their white spreading tushes bared as they lunged at each other. A boar fight was easy to understand. They had but one stroke. They ripped. They played for place, for position in which to rush by the flank and rip open the belly. It is not easy. The boar on defense threw out his shoulder and took the whole impact of the tush upon solid meat and sinew. It is a stinking, mouth-foaming, filthy fight, but a boar did have sense enough to run when he felt that he was in danger of defeat. A boar fight has no eternal pull on man’s emotions. The boar is not game.

If you’re a Spaniard, you like a bullfight. That is man in the ring with death. It is closer home even than a cockfight. Its awesome drama grasps you and you disregard the sorry trappings, the gutted, helpless horses, the signs of occasional human cowardice and lack of skill. You wait for the moment of the climax when threatened man becomes triumphant, sinks a steel blade between the shoulders of the bull and steps back the victor. The man escapes. The bull dies. The Spanish like it, but the rest of us never seem to get the point. It begs the question. It doesn’t abolish the fear of death, it merely offers a temporary escape.

No death sport has followed man through from prehistoric times except cockfighting. It had death, but also it had triumph even in death. Triumph and beauty and finesse. No dead gamecock is ever defeated, though he may be killed. One sound only, aside from the thresh of wings and the click of steel, will you hear from a cock while fighting. It is a kind of tenor squawk. It is the only time in a cockfight when the cock’s brilliant valor permits you to have sympathy. That is when the adversary lands a straight blow and the gaff goes into his lungs. You may imagine it without hearing it, the kind of gasp of surprise and terror you, yourself, would give to feel a thin knife sliding through your ribs into your lungs. But you, being a man, have the accompanying vision of running away, crying for a doctor. The gaff is pulled from the cock and none too soon, for he is desperate to be up and upon his enemy. You forget your quiver. The cock says damn a stab in the lungs and, for the moment, you say so, too.

A cockfight, therefore, offers something additional. If we grant that male man’s passion for death sports grows out of his classic desire to dominate death and, therefore, life, we begin to understand. Many things shed light on it — his pagan feasts, his medicine and surgery, his faith healers, his hospitals, his magnificent funeral processions, his great collection of religions and his large assortment of invariably eternal gods. Death is the great enemy and man has attacked it on all fronts. Let us glance at the nations: —

The United States we have seen. We know of this country’s legions of men and women who for one assumed reason or another pay homage to the cock. We do not stop now to analyze their reasons, only note that they are but a small part of a world of cockers, and pass on for a brief glimpse of other peoples.

In Canada, from Nova Scotia’s “Land of Evangeline” to Vancouver’s Pacific, where the land is old and where it is new, they have their cocking mains. The French import the giant Combattants du Nord of their motherland and fight them naked heel, as is done in Belgium — great birds of terrific stroke almost the size of turkeys. Non-Gallic Canadians take immense pride in their particular lines of cocks, the smaller ones such as are in the United States, and swear they are better. They lose, and win, a great deal of money in that belief. They fight among themselves and in the United States.

Mexico has cocking tradition that goes back to the Conquistadores. Cortez may have brought cocks with him when he squired his beautiful Indian mistress into the presence of Montezuma and piled Tenochtitlan high in human flesh. Anyway, cocks soon came to Mexico and have been there since. Mexicans like action and get it with slashers. These keen, curved knives from two to four inches long are placed on one leg. One well-driven slash will just about shear off a wing. The keeper of the great plantation has his fine studs of cocks with which to keep the tradition of Santa Anna and his famous Blues, but the peon, too, has his cocks which he values next to his life.

Go south, into Central America, and there you find your Spanish and American cocks and keen, thin slashers. You find cockpits and cocking places in the village squares. Here you find the crowded, jammed, sweating tropicals hovering over the battling birds. It is more than a recreation. It goes to the foundation of their lives.

It is here, in Honduras, they will tell you a strange story, that of Porfirio Canales who was killed by a cock in the village of La Caridad. The cock was a man-fighter and Porfirio came too close. The cock left his adversary and drove his slasher against the man’s breast. The steel entered the heart and Porfirio was dead. The rooster was arrested, taken before the village judge, and tried. He was adjudged guilty of murder and hanged.

Go into Puerto Rico, America’s own principality, and see the white-clad, wealthy men of the tropics and the high society of that admirable green spot gathered, gripped in the drama of the cockfight in Senor R. Martinez Nadal’s magnificent pavilion near San Juan. Go to the less exclusive, mass-favored big pit in the city and observe the swarthy hordes howl in mighty ecstasy as the feathered gladiators clash and slash. Cockfighting once was outlawed by the United States government in Puerto Rico, but the tug was too strong upon the native heart and it was restored to full legality. Puerto Rico now claims, with real color of title, to be the cockfighting capital of the world. Señor Nadal, who is president of the Senate, has a stud farm which is world-famous. Some of his cocks are valued at more than $1000 each.

And now let us see a Puerto Rican cockfight, and what could be better than through the eyes of the inimitable Journalist Luis Progress writing for San Juan’s El Munde, concerning a special battle at the Nadal pit: —

“The combat of the day was a black-red cock from Cabo Rojo, the property of Chago Padilla and a blue-red cock, the property of Pio de Jesus.

“I never saw anything equal. The fight was for a $4,000 purse, $2,000 on each side, and there were side bets for $3,000 more. The expectation was enormous. There was a delirium in the crowd present. When they billed the cocks even then the bets were very heavy. The pitters in the center of the pit made all kinds of malabaric gestures with the cocks. The referee would ask the pitters to let the cocks go, but the pitters kept on with their gestures. They held the cocks up. They brought the cocks downward. They even gave two or three zigzags to the sides. They looked at the beaks and they even kissed the cocks, and when everybody was with the nervous system shattered, they let the cocks go. A big boisterous crowd gave up and the pit seemed pandemonium.

“’A hundred dollars to Little Soldier,’ from Cabo Rojo.
     “’Five hundred,’ cried Pio de Jesus.
     “’I take them,’ cried Chago Padillo.

“The two cocks engaged in the most desperate fight ever seen. They seemed to be the real gladiators. Just when it seemed that Little Soldier had won the fight, the people from Cabo Rojo began giving great odds. In the meanwhile bets of ten, fifteen and twenty dollars grew up like grass in a wet field. When the combatants were engaged in a duel to death, stab to stab, the Cabo Rojo cock Little Soldier came out blind in both eyes and to what avail? There were offers of a hundred to fifty, and the bets were doubled on Pio de Jesus’s cock. Little Soldier, blinded, was always on the attack, when he met the blue-red, when he was on again and the crowd kept on shouting. It looked as if the pit would come down. There is a pitting — and another. It seemed as if the blue- red had given up. The cocks were placed in the lines, and the blue-red quit the fight. This was a fight where the people from Cabo Rojo cleaned up. The fight was in natural heels.”

Do you get the surge of it? The tremendous yearn of that crowd for a glimpse, a mere cock’s skull full of gameness? Perhaps you are not moved. Reporter Progress indubitably is a lover of cockfighting and we, perhaps, have no sympathy for that viewpoint, and in that case, by all means, we should turn to a Puerto Rican cock-fight long ago, about the time of the Spanish-American war. Frank G. Carpenter told of it then in the Buffalo Express: —

“The sight disgusts me,” he begins. Ah! Now we’re getting the opposite viewpoint on this amazing sport. He writes:—

“They fight on and on. Now the black one is spurring. The yellow cock is down and the black one on top. Now the yellow is up . . . the cocks almost spent. The black is trembling so that he can hardly stand, but still he fights. The yellow is staggering, but he picks away almost as courageously as when he began. . . . See! The black has lost his right eye, the yellow cock knows it, and for this reason he is fighting him on his blind side. There, the plucky black has jumped up and spurred the yellow. (Author’s Note. The correspondent seems here to be on the point of losing his disgust, but hold firm. It is momentary.) He has driven his spur in under the right wing. It seems to be a mortal thrust, for the yellow falls. The crowd goes crazy. Every man is yelling. The match is over. No! It is not. . . . The cocks are again in the ring. The yellow tries to hold his feet, but he cannot. He falls to the ground and the black stands by and picks him. . . . The poor yellow dying fowl makes one struggle to rise and then lies down. He cannot move and the black cock picks out his eyes, while the human brutes look on and yell. He can struggle no more; he is dead, and the black cock has won.”

“The sight disgusts me,” wrote Mr. Carpenter, and perhaps it is a case for disgust. Perhaps Señor Progress’s enthusiasm is wrong. Let’s not pass on that yet, merely agree on the latter part of Mr. Carpenter’s sentence, which is” . . . but I cannot help admiring the courage of the chickens.”

A short way across blue water and into the lush stench of a Haitian jungle, where it is hot and foul, where you sweat and glory in the relief of it, where thousands of roaming, cock-holding natives converge with you upon an opening under the mango trees, you take Mr. Carpenter’s side of the argument violently. You wish to be away.

Then you merge in with a packed, slick, sweating, black, halitosic circle around a pit. A dozen other pits are in operation in hailing distance. You choose this one. You push and shove and try not to smell, and the roosters are set down in the ring, and crazed wails resound around the pit. The pitters crawl upon their bellies, shrilling, working witch charms, calling upon the gods of men and cocks to bring them victory. The cocks fight bloodily, whamming into each other with jabbing spurs, losing their eyes, losing their blood. The pitters lick the blood and leaking eyeballs away from the cocks’ heads with  long red tongues and spit in the dirt. Bah! Mr. Carpenter was right.

But those cocks were game. They fought to the death. The fight would have disgusted Mr. Carpenter, or you, or me, but it had something deep and solid for those Haitian natives. But away with it. Let’s find a light, cool, airy pavilion where one may take a sweet breath, such as in the Coliseos de Gallos of Peru, where cockfighting is legal, regulated, and conducted under the traditions of gentlemen. Fights there are in those little pits, and for all one knows, gameness, too, but the fights are too fierce and swift for a cock ever to demonstrate it.

Proud, brilliant, he stands on the score. His lone slasher, four, five, even six inches long, stands out behind him. The crowd leans forward with drawn breath, for in another minute the cock will be dead or be a victor. The battle will be like an explosion, and over, like that. Perhaps one cock will be game, perhaps both. They never have time to show. Ability and willingness to fight they must have, but gameness for the long bout is not so essential.

Chile, too, has regulated cockfighting. Their sport is not so fast. They fight with slashers, also with naked heels. They look more to the scientific side. They experiment with Aseel crosses, but their basic cocks are the English and Irish and Spanish, as in the United States.

Across from Chile is Argentina, the Yankeeland of South America, which, like the Yankeeland of North America, piously prohibits cocking and fights them north, south, east and west. Many of the Argentine professional men, as in the United States, make cocking a hobby and give it standing. Some of the Aseel and Jap influence is noted, but Bankiva rules there, too. The mains are fought in naked heels or in puons — that is, metal spurs much the same size and shape of natural spurs which are attached by a socket to the spur. In Argentina the cockers aver that there is no chance in the pit, little, that is; that the best cock always wins. The rules are simple, there is no handling, the fights go to a finish.

It is enough. We know now that cocking flourishes from Canada to the Straits of Magellan, all over the New World. They are in Cuba, all the smaller South American states, Brazil, and the islands of the sea. Barely four hundred years ago there was not a cock this side of Europe.

We have mentioned Orientals, Japs, Aseels, but lightly. When the wave of Bankivas was flowing these twenty centuries from Persia to the American Pacific, a much slower wave was proceeding from the lower Orient eastward. Not until our own day did it make a great impression in the United States, and not even yet has it taken a sure place with the brilliant and graceful “Persian bird.” But the Oriental cannot be disposed of so summarily. It is game. It knows a gameness that is deep and awesome, and in that same slow manner in which it fights, it slowly forges eastward.

In India is the Aseel. In America we place that name on the finest Indian cocks and consider it a special breed, but in Indian they call all dead-game cocks Aseel. Again following Finsterbusch who has made a careful study of them we give attention to the Raja Murgh, which is the finest of the Indian cocks and the gamest thing alive. It is the bright jewel of the studs of the princes and few have it. A small, four-to-five-pound cock, red-black and black, it will stand a test, such as that three-day test that Sam Douglas gave his Mugwump, except that it will go nine days and still show fight. Its muscle is so dense, it is said, that when a cock is dropped to the floor it will bounce like rubber.

These are the cocks which once were priceless, and may not be had even yet from all their royal breeders. There are instances where offered prices of $4000 and $5000 for a single cock were refused. One golden-red strain, indeed, has its name, Sonatawal — “weight in gold” — from the fact that its owner refused to exchange it for gold, ounce for ounce.

India is the fountain of cocking and there are various other strains all through the land. The princes have their lines and the common people have theirs. Many of the lesser breeds are extremely game, have to be, for in India a single naked-heel cockfight may last for an hour, perhaps for a day, even for longer than a day.

The Malay bird is found, too, in Siam. It may be native in that ancient country. The cocks attain enormous size, up to fifteen and sixteen pounds. They are fought naked- heel and in slashers.

In Japan are found the Sumatra-type bird, also the Malay and the Bankiva, but from the Malay, or, as the Japanese say, the “Siamese bird,” comes the distinctive Japanese Shamo cock. This is the chief cock of the country and ranges from the great and not always game Amoku to the small aristocratic three-to-four-pound Tuzo, whose gameness is world-famed. This little cock is advertised by its commercial breeders to be “Very good, very nice, fight like hell.” The royalty of the country chose this diminutive cock as their favorite, and they raise some brilliant, beautiful cocks of purplish green-black sheen. Their larger cocks the Japanese fight blunt-heeled and their small birds sharp naked-heeled, sometimes with short steels and slashers.

The Shamo, from seven to nine pounds, is what Americans know as the Jap. These cocks are more numerous on the West Coast of our country than in the East, but are finding their way all through the country, many cockers having experimented with them in Bankiva crosses. The extreme gameness of the Jap and his ability to take incredible punishment make him a desirable cross if those qualities can be transferred without destroying other Bankiva qualities. The breeders have had varying luck in this attempt, but all pretty generally agree that the true secret of making the crossbreed has not yet been discovered.

The Nipponese cockfight is different from that in America. The cocks are pitted and let alone. A cock is not disturbed when he is down but is permitted to lie there until the other cock triumphs or he gets up again. Fights last for a long time, sometimes for hours. It is seen, therefore, that the Shamo’s stamina and gameness are qualities more necessary to his needs than speed.

Where the Bankiva followed the sun from Persia to the Pacific, and went almost around the world, the Oriental went to meet the sun, and has come from the Orient only in a thin line. There is a difference in the texture of their flesh, a disparity in disposition; their nerves are geared differently and their fighting outlook is not the same. The Oriental is the slugger, the Bankiva is the fast and furious wing-and-leg worker, mixing beauty with his vindictiveness. As long as men maintain their present cocking ideals Bankiva will continue to dominate the cocking earth.

Now — England. It isn’t pleasant to write, somehow. The mother country has given us in America a tradition, one of a sort of stiff-necked determination that we like to think of as being in England. Over here we are inclined to follow those laws we like and with youthful insouciance break those we don’t, taking the High Sheriff with us on our escapades and thus salving our consciences. Even so, it pleases us to think of England holding high the standard of law and following it religiously.

We, we tell ourselves, may want to do that ourselves some day. It isn’t a charming thought to envision grim, respectable Englishmen fleeing through the dark carrying battle cocks in their arms, skirting the paths of officers of the law who would catch them if they could. That sort of thing suits our nimbler American role better.

But, what’s an Englishman to do? Surely you don’t expect him to give up cockfighting merely because there’s a law against it? No country yet has . . . not even England. Here’s a newspaper cable from London just before King George’s coronation:—

“London, May 6 — Cock fighting, forbidden sport of a century ago, is being revived this year as an additional thrill for wealthy coronation visitors. So many promoters are getting busy that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have had to offer $500 reward to anyone who will provide information leading to the conviction of a cocker.

“Shortage of game cocks has led promoters to make arrangements for flying birds across the English Channel from France by plane. The first principle of cock fighting is secrecy. Decoys are used to lead any suspicious policemen miles away from the actual scene of combat, while round the arena, which is generally off in the country somewhere, a cordon of watchers is stretched.”

And here is an excerpt from a letter from an English cocker to a friend in America, from which you may get the idea that the sport of Henry VIII is not altogether vanished in Merrie England: —

“Sir John — took on some Frenchmen and lost seven, won three.

“Knappe took on the Newmarket crowd and won five, lost three, drew one. He also took a poundage and won £10 on it.

“Hall-Watt took on Lowther. Thirteen caught. Watt won seven, Lowther five, one draw.

“I have an affair next month with the Birmingham crowd and will let you know the result later.”

It develops that numerous English cockers cross the channel to Calais and either “take on” the Frenchmen or, away from the restrictions of their own laws, fight among themselves. This from the Paris edition of the New York Herald-Tribune:

“Calais. Sunday.— Women and children comprise a large number of the spectators at the cock fights here this evening. There was tremendous excitement during the fights, which took place in a well-appointed building fifty feet by twenty feet, with a gallery at one side, and large sums of money changed hands in betting. British visitors were among the audience. . . . The spectacle seemed to interest the women as much as the men. They were betting enthusiastically and one, a middle-aged woman, told me ‘I do not miss one gala.’ . . . Betting is steadily increasing and I am told that British visitors are placing spectacular wagers at some of these meetings.”

The Old English Game Fowl Club is making a determined effort to preserve some of the old fighting strains still existing, those which have not gone all “show-bird.” There are such strains in the country, preserved by the titled and other old families, and now that cocking is coming back all through the world there is a chance that these thin lines will outlast the pressure and be the fountain head for a restoration of the noble strains which made English fighting cocks supreme.

The recent death of Sir Herbert Atkinson was a blow to the movement, for he had done much to revive the sport. Even so, the work he started in the club still progresses.

Here is a brief clip from a long and interesting letter written to the Editor of the Morning Post by Rev. B. Castel De Boinville, Heyope Rectory, Radnorshire, England: —

“Sir — I was pleased to see the article you published on the ancient British sport of cocking. It will help to dispel some of the popular misconceptions. Cocking has been a British sport for a long time; Cæsar found our ancient British ancestors addicted to it. It was ever the most democratic of national pastimes: the sport of kings and the sport of ploughmen. It has brought together rich and poor, peer and peasant, in friendly personal intercourse in the past as no other sport could have done. . . . No other living creature can demonstrate as can the true game cock what indomitable, unyielding courage is. I am prepared to admit that the man who opposes all blood sports — hunting, shooting and fishing — is logical in opposing cocking, too. I am too out-of-date to oppose any of these pastimes. When England ceases to shoot and hunt and cast the fly I believe she will be, in consequence, the poorer in character. The ban on cocking has certainly not helped to increase the national grit.”

English cocks once crew over the dead bodies of French cocks, but it is not so any more. The French cocks are large, these Combattants du Nord, ranging up to twelve pounds. The French prefer them at eight to eleven pounds, which, by reason of some freak of climate or other mystery, is their normal weight, and at that poundage they fight like demons. They demonstrated their supremacy over the English “shakebags” years ago, and a Britisher considers himself lucky when he wins a fight — that is when he matches a typical English cock against a typical French rooster. It is a question of weight. The French cocks are naturally big and an English cock anywhere in his range is unnaturally big. Perhaps he lacks something in compensation for his extra size, and therefore is not equipped to match a perfectly developed adversary of his weight.

The French have smaller cocks of the same identity as their grand Du Nords and these are fought at matched weights as in America. The smaller cocks are fought by the peasants all through the country, but the traditional cock of France is the large bird and he is fought in the big mains. By reason of their size the large cocks are not fought at matched weights, but as “shakebags,” without weighing. Two-inch gaffs much after the American style are used. These, by the way, were introduced a number of years ago by America’s Dr. Clarke. The French fight lasts only fifteen minutes, but owing to the speed and strength of the warriors that is quite enough. For show purposes the Du Nord, it is said, “surpasses any other variety in elegance of stance, resplendent colors and nobility of origin.”

When one speaks of French cocking the name of the  venerable Henri Cliquennois soon arises. He is to the cockers of that country what Dr. Clarke is to those in America. His collection of cock spurs (here’s an idea for those with the collecting urge) is one of the greatest.

The French “gallo-drome” or “parc de coqs” is all through the land an accepted part of community life. The pit at Roubaix with a seating capacity of two thousand is said to be the largest in the world.

Belgium, too, has an enoromus cock, large, perhaps, for the same unrevealed reason that the North of France cocks are so large. The reason is something that concerns the territory and not the breeding for when the big cocks of Belgium and France are taken elsewhere they lose their stamina after a few generations. Belgium’s dull grey Flemish cocks range up to thirteen pounds. They fight in steel and are said to be the heaviest steel fighters known. They are not so swift as the French birds but are very strong. The Belgians also have another larger and slower cock which they fight in naked heels.

The Irish cock is a shrewd, savage, fast fighter, and gathers his pitside crowds all through the country. It is supposed to average slightly lighter than the English cock in weight and slightly in advance of the Spanish cock in point of development from the wild Bankiva.

When the Spanish cocking scene is discussed much, of course, must be taken for granted. No one can say, as this is written, what will be left in Spain. Newspaper articles, however, recently have reported that bullfights are staged as usual in many places and that cockfights continue popular. The two chief types are the traditional Bankiva bird, slightly smaller than the English and the Irish cousins, with full feathers, and the “hennie,” a peculiar strain of cock described elsewhere. The pits in Bilbao, Oviedo, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and other Spanish centers formerly consumed from five thousand to six thousand fighting cocks a year and still other thousands were exported — many to North and South America.

In many other places of the world the seeker for rooster fights may see battle cocks in action, Sweden alone taking the distinction of having none. Russia has an extremely old cocking tradition, the sport once having had an overwhelming vogue in that country, sweeping the people to unprecedented heights of gambling. Now, however, few if any reports of cockfights come out of Russia.

Cockpits are to be found in Africa, where the sport is followed by all degrees from the savage blacks to the imported whites; in Australia, where some brilliant mains are reported from time to time; on the great Island of Madagascar, which boasts its own mysteriously old line of Malay-type cocks, and on literally hundreds of other islands. And where, to end our journey, could be more pleasant than at a cock meet in the verdant hills of the dream island of the South Seas, Bali?

It is the time of the nyepi, the religious rite which is an attempt to appease the evil spirits which thirst for blood and threaten the fields of rice. The Dutch officials, grounded in the wisdom of the enchanted land, do not interfere. There are many cocks delivered at the fighting grounds in baskets. There will be many cockfights. The gandji, the coconut-shell water-clocks, are placed in the water to time the length of the combats. The natives bring out their kepengs and their more valuable ringgits and make wagers recklessly. The cocks are fetched from their baskets, displayed before the crowds, and the battles begin. There is a period of wild enthusiasm, the spirit of sport mingling with religious fanaticism. Then the fights are ended. The bets are paid. Blood is on the soil. The ground is cured. The evil spirits are appeased. The rice will grow. So there is cause for celebration. The dead cocks are dressed and cooked and a great feast is prepared for that night. Nobody enjoys a cockfight more than the Balinese.