Erasure – A History Covered and Uncovered in Cape Ann, Massachusetts
It is low tide. Time to check the weirs and see what has been trapped today as the water receded. The workers check each low dam as they make their way down the river (now known as the Little Good Harbor River) and collect the day’s bounty from the sea. Others will work at high tide, dragging in the nets at the ocean’s edge. Some prefer to fish with spears, patiently from the rocks for flounder, skates, cod, bluefish, and seabass. Still others venture out onto the ocean in canoes, using crude hooks and lines to catch deep sea fish, such as anglerfish or swordfish.
The fishermen know how many they will keep, according to the village rules - enough for the day, enough to trade for other goods they need. The smaller ones they throw back. Best to let them grow up and feed someone else when they are bigger. When they are preparing the fish for cooking, the villagers watch for the globs of bright orange eggs that spill out from the abdomens of the fish. When it is spawning season, they are careful to keep even less for today’s needs. Better that the fish should lay eggs and keep the population healthy for the next generation and the one after that.
The season comes too for harvesting shellfish, but even when it is not the season for harvesting, there is work to do; dead or diseased shellfish to remove from the oyster and mussel shoals so the others are not infected; starfish, crabs, and gastropods that are carefully removed to protect the shoals. In the season of harvest, the workers take the largest of the oysters and mussels, leaving the rest to grow. They dig clams out of the sand and add them to the pile. The more patient ones pry open the shells and extract the meat, tossing the shells aside in great piles that are added to year after year.
These shell heaps, called middens, will be the most lasting evidence of the way of life that sustains these Native Americans, descendants of the first people to occupy northeastern North America (the area now known as New England) after the end of the Ice Age. They are an Algonquian-speaking people. For context, the term Algonquian refers to a language group, from which many different related languages and dialects emerged, in much the same way that Latin spawned many of the European languages spoken today. They are the Pawtucket, who made their home and their livelihood in what is now known as Cape Ann, Massachusetts, and when the first colonists came to this part of New England they had been there, harvesting these waters for thousands of years.
On May 30, our second day of sabbatical, we went whale-watching in Gloucester, MA, a lovely seaside town in Cape Ann, a rocky peninsula in northeastern Massachusetts, on the outskirts of Boston. Gloucester is America’s oldest fishing port and the fishing industry is still a major part of its economy today. Cape Ann also includes the towns of Essex, Manchester-by-the-Sea and Rockport.
The story that is commonly told about this region of the country begins with its Puritan settlers, most notably William Jeffreys and William Allen, who along with a few others were recorded to be the original “proprietors” of the town. This, of course, means landowners, those who laid first claim to a land that was said to be almost devoid of indigenous inhabitants. As Manchester historian Darius Lamson wrote in his 1895 in and definitive History of the Town of Manchester, Essex County, Massachusetts, “the country was practically unoccupied when the white man first set foot upon its shore. The wilderness…was but a hunting ground and battlefield to a few fierce hordes of savages.” This story was repeated by many subsequent historians until it became commonly held “fact.”
Records and journals of the earliest European inhabitants of the Cape Ann area “uncover” the true story. French traders and Spanish fishermen came to this area to find a thriving Native American population, and infrastructure that included roads, forts, farms, and cemeteries. The indigenous people had also diverted streams, drained beaver ponds, and dug canals. Causeways they built created paths between the water and the land that are still in use today.
The indigenous peoples and the colonists lived side by side for many years, and the colonists even aided the Pawtucket in defending their territory from another native group, the Tarrantines of Maine. However, as the European population grew, so did their desire to own the land (control its resources). Beginning with King Philip’s war in 1675 and continuing forward, many indigenous people were killed or forced into slavery. Those who survived were exiled with the adoption of President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830.
When speaking of the recovery of this history, I used the word “uncover” purposefully, because as the colonists made land deals with the Pawtucket, or took over land from those who were killed, enslaved, or forced to leave, they favored land that already had infrastructure – fields that were already cleared, established roads, existing fortresses. Often new infrastructure was build right on top of existing infrastructure, erasing it or hiding it in plain sight. There are roads that exist in this region today that follow the paths first carved out by the Pawtucket. Causeways created by these early inhabitants of the land still provide access points between the land and the sea. Whole towns have been built atop middens that were left behind as evidence of their presence here. The fact that this history has been covered over with a narrative that says, “they were never there,” has been blamed by local historian and anthropologist Mary Ellen Lepionka on the practice of Erasure, defined as “the modification or distortion of the historical record to downplay events or remove facts that people are not proud of, are prejudiced against, or wish to conceal… Example: Indians had no civilization and mysteriously disappeared.”
In recovering this erased history, there has also been an interest in understanding how the Pawtucket people managed the resources of the land and the sea. Even with their extensive use of the natural resources around them, the Pawtucket and their ancestors operated sustainable fisheries generation after generation for thousands of years. Modern environmentalists have much to learn from the Pawtucket and their stewardship of the resources of the Cape Ann region. As the story of their presence and effect on the land is uncovered and shared, we may gain insight into best practices going forward, so that we are protecting the land and its resources for the sake of future generations.
