Rhode Island
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1 THE SEWER OF NEW ENGLAND “History ... does not refer merely to the past ... history is literally present in all that we do.” — James Baldwin, 1965 “UNNAMEABLE OBJECTS, UNSPEAKABLE CRIMES” NOTE: During the early period “Rhode Island” was an ambiguous designator, as it might refer to the moderately sized island in Narragansett Bay, or it might refer to the entire colony of which said island was a part, together with the extensive Providence Plantations on the mainland shore. Also, since that period, there have been significant trades of land and towns between Rhode Island and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts — such as the entire city of Fall River. 1. This was the opinion of the Reverend Cotton Mather, who actually did know a thing or two about sewage. HDT WHAT? INDEX RHODE ISLAND ROGUE ISLAND 11,500 BCE Toward the end of the last Ice Age, most of what is now New England was still under an immense sheet of very slowly melting ice, like a mile in thickness, retreating from an edge that at one point had reached as far south as New Jersey. Vegetation was appearing on exposed surfaces: mainly tundra plants such as grasses, sedge, alders, and willows. NEW ENGLAND However, nearly all areas of the globe had climates at least as warm and moist as today’s. 10,500 BCE In this “Paleo Period,” humans began to occupy the New England region sparsely, hunting mastodon and caribou. Spruce forests began to appear, followed by birch and pine. This period would last to about 8,000 BCE. NEW ENGLAND The beginning of the Younger Dryas. Abrupt cooling in Europe and North America, return of near glacial conditions; in the Near East, an abrupt drought, leading to retreat to oases, possibly related to development of agriculture as a coping strategy. 2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ROGUE ISLAND RHODE ISLAND 8,000 BCE Little information is available for the New England region during the Early Archaic Period. We know that oaks, pitch pines, and beeches were beginning to flourish. As the glacier melted, it deposited scraped up erosional debris atop the bedrock. Streams stemming from the melting glaciers formed valleys such as the Mill Brook valley. Enormous buried blocks of ice would eventually be creating water-filled depressions in the landscape. These “kettle ponds” would include not only Walden Pond, Fair Haven Bay, and White Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, but also Spy Pond, the Mystic Lakes, and Fresh Pond in Cambridge. NEW ENGLAND Walden White Fair Haven 6,000 BCE A stone projectile period has been found in the New England region, dating to this Middle Archaic period. Clearly, nomadic tribes of Paleo-Indians were moving into New England. Their spear points were made of flint imported from the valleys of the Mohawk River and Hudson River. They were traveling in dugout canoes along the coast of New England and following tributaries far inland. (At this point maize was beginning to be cultivated in Mexico. The flexible-shaft spear, thrown with a stone-weighted spear thrower now termed the “atl-atl,” was the common projectile.) NEW ENGLAND “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX RHODE ISLAND ROGUE ISLAND 4,000 BCE During the Late Archaic period, humans were hunting game (caribou?) and marine mammals (seals, etc.), and fishing and gathering, in the region of New England. A warmer, drier climate had been encouraging the seeding of white pine, red pine, oak, and beech trees, which slowly had replaced the post-glacial jack pine, fir, and spruce that had been covering the area. NEW ENGLAND 4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ROGUE ISLAND RHODE ISLAND 3,000 BCE The vegetation of what is now New England has become predominantly hardwood, the fresh growth attracting increasing numbers of white-tail deer, moose, black bear, beaver, and turkey. A new tribal people had been attracted to homestead in this environment, the “Late Archaic Indians,” builders of circular homes that ranged from 30 to 66 feet in diameter. NEW ENGLAND 1,700 BCE From this point until about 700 BCE on the North American continent, during what we refer to as the “Terminal Archaic” period, there was manufacture and use of soapstone pots, and widespread trade connections. It is possible that a northward migration of Iroquoian-speaking peoples caused separation between eastern and central Algonkian-speaking peoples. NEW ENGLAND 700 BCE During the Early Horticultural period encompassing what some call the Early and Middle Woodland Periods, a period which would last from this point until circa 1,000 CE, there was in the New England area an increased use of ceramics and, in some local areas on western Long Island, the beginnings of a corn/beans horticulture. Trade was widespread throughout the Eastern Woodlands. Shellfish and deer were important food resources. Shell beads and copper beads appeared. Tobacco and pipes became common. Chestnut trees were naturalized in the area. NEW ENGLAND 300 BCE New England natives began growing corn and producing clayware. This period is known as the Ceramic- Woodland period and the tribespeople are termed Algonquians. They constructed wigwams of woven mats and also long houses that might harbor several families. Sizable villages grew around cleared fields; stockades were often erected as a defense against neighboring tribes. NEW ENGLAND “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX RHODE ISLAND ROGUE ISLAND 1000 CE There appears to have been some population shifting from southwestward, possibly caused by hostile conflict with Iroquoians. During this Late Woodland period there was widespread adoption of horticulture in southern New England. The Wampanoag who were encountered by the European intrusives of the 16th and early 17th centuries were in this phase of their culture. NEW ENGLAND During the Late Prehistoric tradition, several cultures arose in different parts of Ohio. People lived in large villages surrounded by a stockade wall. Sometimes they built their villages on a plateau overlooking a river. They grew different plants in their gardens. Maize and beans became the most important foods (squash, another important plant, had been being grown since the Late Archaic). In what is now North Carolina, people of the Mississippian culture in what we describe as the Piedmont region, were continuing to construct earthwork mounds or add onto existing ones. In the five to seven centuries preceding the initial European contacts, this Mississippian culture would produce large, complex cities and maintain farflung regional trading networks. 6 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ROGUE ISLAND RHODE ISLAND “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX RHODE ISLAND ROGUE ISLAND 1300 Maize agriculture would be being introduced in what would become upstate New York during the 14th century, producing a population surge in the longhouse villages, and bringing other changes as well. The 14th Century would suffer from four periods during which summer temperatures were markedly cooler than average. (The longest of these four cold spells would last for a couple of decades, from about 1343 to about 1362.) Some 4-foot-long metal tubes jammed into the marshy soil and sediment layers at Succotash Marsh in East Matunuck, Rhode Island (at the west side of the ocean entrance of the Narragansett Bay) by Tom Webb of the Geological Sciences Department of Brown University, have revealed that there has been a series of overwash fans created by storm tidal surges, indicating that seven category-three hurricanes have struck Narragansett lowlands in about the past millennium. The first such overwash fan that has been revealed dates to the period 8 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ROGUE ISLAND RHODE ISLAND John Bartram’s 1751 diagram of an Iroquois longhouse and the town of Oswego. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 9 HDT WHAT? INDEX RHODE ISLAND ROGUE ISLAND 1295-1407. NEW ENGLAND 1400 The Halifax Gibbet was definitely in use by this point in Halifax, England, for executions on market-days. This head-chopping machine may even have been functioning as early as 1280. The last beheading with this Halifax gibbet would take place in 1648. (We can be assured that present-day inhabitants of Halifax no longer look with favor on the chopping of heads off local criminals.) HEADCHOPPING In what would become upstate New York, ritual cannibalism began. (According to newspapers reports, this is no longer a local practice.) 10 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX ROGUE ISLAND RHODE ISLAND Some 4-foot-long metal tubes jammed into the marshy soil and sediment layers at Succotash Marsh in East Matunuck, Rhode Island (at the west side of the ocean entrance of the Narragansett Bay) by Tom Webb of the Geological Sciences Department of Brown University, have revealed that there has been a series of overwash fans created by storm tidal surges, indicating that seven category-three hurricanes have struck Narragansett lowlands in about the past millennium. The first such overwash fan that has been revealed dated to the period 1295-1407CE, and the second dates to this period of roughly the first half of the 15th Century, specifically the period 1404-1446CE. NEW ENGLAND “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 11 HDT WHAT? INDEX RHODE ISLAND ROGUE ISLAND 1497 During the late 1500s and early 1600s, the natives known as the Massachuset or “Those of the Great Hills” (since, in Algonquian, “massa” meant great and “wadschuasch” meant hills and “et” meant at) were allied in conflict against the Narragansett confederacy. Eastern Massachusetts groups were located at the endpoint of extensive trade network involving the French, Micmac, Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, and Eastern Abenaki. In about this period John and Sebastian Cabot would have been passing offshore, as they sailed down along the northeastern coasts of America.