The Dredge Cycle

Oh, Yeah… Slavery

Some­times I jump­start new areas of inter­est in this book by googling gen­eral his­tory. Links daisy­chain, and soon, BAM. A cor­ner­stone of the story. Today’s les­son is no less dra­matic than other dis­cov­er­ies (Metacom’s War; the project’s ori­gins): let’s start talk­ing about North­ern slav­ery. This arti­cle on Boston.com (from Sep­tem­ber of last year) makes a good start­ing place. I’m far from an expert the arti­cle caught me by sur­prise, both for its con­tent and my igno­rance. So I don’t expect this post to serve for…

I miss you, Pat

I’m read­ing my late editor’s Wee­t­a­moo (pro­nounced Weh-​​​​táh-​​​​moh) book, Heart of the Pocas­sets. It’s a heavily-​​​​researched, 95% imag­ined diary of the Pocas­set sachem at 14. Pat wrote it for Scholas­tic, for those lucky eighth-​​​​graders with an Indian His­tory unit. It’s sim­ple and refresh­ing, if light-​​​​weight for my needs. An easy lit­tle recap after the over-​​​​saturated and dis­turb­ing Mayflower. Weetamoo’s par­ents man­date that she find time each day to learn patience. Because the his­tor­i­cal Wee­t­a­moo didn’t read or write (her cul­ture didn’t use those tech­nolo­gies) it’s a…

Three Shouts of "Huzzah!"

A stom­ach bug this week afforded me time to fin­ish Mayflower. The epi­logue, where Philbrick draws most of his con­clu­sions, is a fat ham­mer to the chest. And while there are many ideas worth dwelling on in there, one ques­tion has me absolutely enthralled: How did Meta­com (aka Philip) go from the most hunted man in New Eng­land in the late 17^th cen­tury to a mytho­log­i­cal proto-​​​​American freedom-​​​​fighter in the early-​​​​19^th? Philbrick, under­stand­ably, rushes through the inter­ven­ing 150 years, and left me pon­der­ing. As I said to…

So Many Questions

Almost done with Mayflower. Help­ing me: I know a tremen­dous amount more about the region and the 17^th cen­tury than when I started. Not help­ing me: the absence of infor­ma­tion about the area I’m most inter­ested in. This morn­ing I’m look­ing for a map (or five) of tribal lands in 1605 (and 1620, 1650, 1675, 1690). I just want to know the names of what and who the hell I’m look­ing for. This absence of acces­si­ble infor­ma­tion may be a core moti­va­tion of my book, but…

Central Questions

It doesn’t take a his­tory PhD to fig­ure Meta­com declared war on the Eng­lish in 1675 to fight the now English-​​​​favoring bal­ance of regional power. Power was land, reli­gion, guns and fol­low­ers. Let’s take that for given. There was, of course, another huge, com­plex fac­tor in the mix: Indigenous-​​​​English rela­tions. And as much as that had to do with the foun­da­tions of Amer­i­can racism, it was also wrapped up in ques­tions of debt. Accord­ing to Philbrick, the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans  –  the chil­dren of the Ply­mouth colonists, and…

Another Exploratory Question

Deeper dis­patches from Mayflower: Of the behav­iors the Pil­grims (and their Boston-​​​​area spin­offs, the Puri­tans) became known for, I’m start­ing to won­der which was more dan­ger­ous: their ratio­nal­i­sa­tions (the Pequot War of 1634  –  1638 was a nec­es­sary blood­bath to ensure Indian Coun­try didn’t unite against them), or their obliv­i­ous­ness (launch­ing a raid and killing Mass­a­chu­sett war­riors in the early 1620s would have no effect on Indige­nous trade and rela­tions.) Also just as inter­est­ing, at least to me, is the rev­e­la­tion that from the remains of the…

“Is this Plymouth? We’ve just come from Plymouth!”

Grow­ing up in Mass., inevitably you study Ply­mouth Plan­ta­tion. It’s just part of the pro­gram. If you were among the lucky, you were actu­ally taken there. Of course, if you were taken there, you prob­a­bly had no idea you were so lucky. The day passes: you imag­ine your boxy-​​​​hatted cul­tural fore­bears descend­ing their ship, ham­mered entirely of doves’ wings, and water­proofed with the sweat of angels, so 350 years later, you could daw­dle for your bagged lunch. In the enve­lope of favor­able weather, roped walk­ing bridges, and under the…

News Flash: what happens when you let the guns write history

Even the white his­to­ries con­tra­dict each other. Holy shit. This is gonna more fun than I’d realized.

Kári, my hero!

It was ini­tially meant to be a lit­tle sar­cas­tic, a lit­tle splash of the looni­ness I’ve been dri­ving myself head­long into the last few months, but I had com­pletely for­got­ten about Google Books. Seri­ously, my friend, you’ve just changed the entire land­scape of the remain­der of this project. Thank you.