Think about how many
times you may have read or heard about those early contact times, how the
“first settlers” began using already cleared Indian fields. Have you ever read
or heard a suggestion as to where the stones went? Think about how many times
you’ve read or heard that the Indians burned the “woods” to facilitate hunting,
which is slowly evolving into the thoughts that Indigenous People were actually
maintaining a Cultural Landscape by selective burning that was sustainable
rather than destructive (mostly), perfected with a thousand or so years of
practice? Think about how those fires
may have been controlled, how just maybe those rows of stones just might have
been fuel breaks created over that long period of time before European Contact,
a soft term for Colonial Invasion, separating what was to be burned at a
certain time for a certain reason.
Excerpt from the companion website to:
Our Beloved Kin: Remapping A New History of King
Philip's War
By Lisa Brooks
“During her journey,
Weetamoo walked well-worn paths through forests which her community had long
managed with fire. As Roger Williams noted, Native men performed controlled
burns of the “underwoods” in the fall, which, combined with selective cutting
for firewood, fostered an abundant open forest, which encouraged the growth of
tall nut trees. The spacious canopy allowed sunlight to filter through the
leaves, encouraging growth of berries and other edible plants. The nuts,
grasses, berries, and saplings that flourished in this forest were inviting to
game, while the clearing of undergrowth facilitated travel and visibility for
hunting as well as gathering.
As she neared Plymouth, Weetamoo would have witnessed the
changing landscape, new European plants growing among ancient fields. These
plants were particularly well adapted to the stomping hooves of cattle, which
were also newcomers to this land. Since court was often held on "market
day" in Plimoth, Weetamoo may have encountered English men leading their
cattle and other livestock to market, as she neared the colonial settlement in
Patuxet. Today, we might view cattle as docile animals, contained within
fences, barns and factory farms. Likewise, we might regard fire as a
destructive force beyond our control. Yet, for many of the plants and people of
the Wampanoag country, the opposite was true.
Cattle, horses, and swine repeatedly roamed into Wampanoag
homes and fields, sometimes even signaling encroachment before settlers were
seen, and “clearing the land” through their consumption. In Creatures
of Empire, Virginia DeJohn Anderson has convincingly argues that
livestock were “the means by which colonists established exclusive control over
more and more territory. As agents of empire, livestock occupied land in
advance of English settlers, forcing native people who stood in their way
either to fend the animals off as best they could or else to move on.” Still
some settlers sought ameliorations to prevent conflicts with their neighbors.
For example, John Brown and his son-in-law Thomas Willet built a massive, “four
rod” fence at Wannamoisett to make manifest the boundary between their farms
and Wampanoag planting fields. However, the fence did not prevent livestock
from ravaging women’s mounds. Cattle, adapting to their newfound
freedom, learned to navigate the waters, traveling around the fence at low
tide, leaving deep fissures in the mud which also impacted Wampanoag clam
gathering on the banks.[1]
.
Accessed April 9, 2020
Home Page: https://ourbelovedkin.com/awikhigan/index
[1] Virginia De John Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 190-2, 210-11, 223-4. Thomas Bicknell, Sowams: With Ancient Records of Sowams and Parts Adjacent (New Haven, CT: Associated Publishers of American Records, 1908), 160-4. Thomas Williams Bicknell, A History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Providence, RI: Snow and Farnham, 1898), 38, 43
