The Dredge Cycle

The Search for Maugus

I grew up on Mau­gus Avenue. When peo­ple (from a few blocks, towns, or states over) vis­ited, they asked my par­ents the same ques­tion: “What’s a Mau­gus?” I’ve spent most of my life won­der­ing, “Who was Mau­gus?” The time’s almost here I get to start really tear­ing into that question.

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…