HEADMAN TAMANEND AND THE 13 TRIBES OF THE LENI-LENAPE HDT WHAT? INDEX TAMANEND TAMANEND 1625 Captain John Mason’s map of Newfoundland and “Discourse” about his findings was published in William Vaughan’s CAMBRENSIUM CAROLEIA. It was at about this point that the Tamanend was born, who would become the patron saint of America (see the following screen). The folks who had settled at Wessaguscusset (Weymouth) under Sir Ferdinando Gorges were ready to move elsewhere. The Reverend William Blaxton, their Anglican divine, however, was reluctant. He decided to stick it out, about 20 miles to the north, attempting a hermit existence upon the isolated peninsula known as Shawmut “Place Where You Find Boats” with its three connected drumlins, the peninsula which initially HERMITS would be known to the white people as “Blaxton’s Peninsula” and eventually would become known as “Trimontaine” or Boston town. He took with him seeds and his three Bibles, and multiple other volumes of use to hermits, and for five years would be living the life of a religious solitary. WALDEN: Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and PEOPLE OF gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I rambled still WALDEN farther westward than I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts of the town, “to fresh woods and pastures new,” or, while the sun was setting, made my supper of huckleberries and blueberries on Fair Haven Hill, and laid up a store for several days. The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the market. There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take that way. If you would know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cow-boy or the partridge. It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them. A huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have not been known there since they grew on her three hills. The ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and they become mere provender. As long as Eternal Justice reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither from the country’s hills. JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Solitary? –Rather, of white people, only the Reverend would be present: as to whether there were Native Americans living anywhere on the Trimontaine peninsula at this time, or perhaps colonies of the harbor seals, the records simply make no mention. Thoreau, in CAPE COD, would toy with these historical silences, in recounting his study of a volume of the “Historical Collections” which offered that: HDT WHAT? INDEX TAMANEND TAMANEND HDT WHAT? INDEX TAMANEND TAMANEND CAPE COD: When the committee from Plymouth had purchased the PEOPLE OF territory of Eastham of the Indians, “it was demanded who laid CAPE COD claim to Billingsgate?” which was understood to be all that part of the Cape north of what they had purchased. “The answer was, there was not any who owned it. ‘Then,’ said the committee, ‘that land is ours.’ The Indians answered, that it was.” This was a remarkable assertion and admission. The Pilgrims appear to have regarded themselves as Not Any’s representatives. Perhaps this was the first instance of that quiet way of “speaking for” a place not yet occupied, or at least not improved as much as it may be, which their descendants have practiced, and are still practicing so extensively. Not Any seems to have been the sole proprietor of all America before the Yankees. But history says, that when the Pilgrims had held the lands of Billingsgate many years, at length “appeared an Indian, who styled himself Lieutenant Anthony,” who laid claim to them, and of him they bought them. Who knows but a Lieutenant Anthony may be knocking at the door of the White House some day? At any rate, I know that if you hold a thing unjustly, there will surely be the devil to pay at last. LIEUTENANT ANTHONY “NOT ANY” The Reverend settled near a spring on the west slope of what is now termed Beacon Hill but then would have been becoming known as Sentry Hill, to begin his orchard and home and live in peace with his books. (This would have been near where Beacon and Spruce streets now intersect in downtown Boston.) “Of orthodox education at the University of Cambridge and an ordained priest in the Church of England, the young William Blaxton was not so much a latter-day St. Francis of Assisi as an earlier day Henry Thoreau, with somewhat more demanding tastes. It was no hut or lowly cabin that Blackstone fashioned there on his hill overlooking the Charles River. It was a comfortable, rambling cottage, multi-gabled and with small-paned windows, woodbine creeping over the walls and up into the eaves.” — Tourtellot, Arthur Bernon, THE CHARLES, NY: Farrar & Rinehart, 1941, pages 25-26 HDT WHAT? INDEX TAMANEND TAMANEND HDT WHAT? INDEX TAMANEND TAMANEND 1681 March 4, Friday (1680, Old Style): Friend William Penn had been granted a New-World charter by King Charles II of England in exchange for forgiveness of a substantial debt he owed to Admiral Sir William Penn, the father — he would become that area of the world’s Quaker Proprietor for a “Holy Experiment” in a land to be called “Pennsylvania.” This included land overlapping the New York colony as far north as Syracuse. (Having received royal permissions, for what such things are worth, the usual storyline has it that Penn immediately would solicit the permission and cooperation of the( actual owners and occupants of this land!) HDT WHAT? INDEX TAMANEND TAMANEND Planning a Peaceable Kingdom on God’s Holy Mountain Oh, all right, it’s a story. We all know that stories have to be simpler than what actually happens. “Treaties” seems to me to be very much too strong and specific a term to mobilize in the originary William Penn context. “Meetings,” certainly, and “dialogs,” and “interactions,” and “consultations” — but the deployment of such a term as “treaties” would seem to necessitate that there had been a formal record made of a specific agreement which had been entered into, and there does not seem to be any claim made at that time that at any time there was placed on the record any such formal and specific record, or agreement. I very much honor the manner in which Penn approached the race-interaction problem, but the meaning of this interracial interaction should not be exaggerated by the utilization of such tropes from a general Western diplomacy context as “treaties.” It is a very interesting task, to follow the representation of the meeting with headman Tamanend under the tree, as found in all the various Hicks paintings of the Peaceable Kingdom, back in time and discover elements of its staging and composition in a previous engraving of a previous painting, and then discover the identities of various of the figures in this painting, as above — and discover that a number of the persons depicted as being present were demonstrably not so much as on this continent at the time in question. A much more egregious problem comes when white people presume, as they very commonly did and still do, HDT WHAT? INDEX TAMANEND TAMANEND that because there was such an interaction on record between a visiting white man and various local personages, and because in a later period white people could be observed on the landscape and not red people, therefore a fully qualified land sale must have taken place. It is as if someone had come to your house for a party, bringing a bottle of wine and a hostess gift and weapons — and then afterward used that attendance as obvious proof that you had sold your home to them in exchange for that bottle of wine and hostess gift which had gotten you admitted to their house party. –It never does any good to object “But my home wasn’t on the real estate market” or “I thought that was just a pleasant social call” or “Is it not prudent for one to be quite tactful and agreeable and sociable when someone comes around to your home to visit with you, and that someone is packing a weapon?” On the basis of his contact first with Jews in England, and then with these natives of the American forest, Friend William Penn would hypothesize that the American Indians were perhaps the Lost Tribes of Israel: “A man would think himself in Dukes Place or Bury Street in London, where he seeth them.” Native American faces looked to him like the faces of Jews — and their languages sounded a lot to him like Hebrew. Does that mean that Penn became a self-entitling American Exceptionalist? –Well, not necessarily, as there’s no record that he took this line of thought in any reprehensible direction. Penn demonstrably did recommend that in the clearing of the woodlands of his Pennsylvania, “care be taken to leave one acre of trees for every five acres cleared.” But does that mean he was ecologically conscious? Not necessarily. It may merely have indicated that he was aware of the continuing value of woodlots as a source for domestic fuel. HDT WHAT? INDEX TAMANEND TAMANEND During this year, Proprietor Penn was trying to recruit colonists: HDT WHAT? INDEX TAMANEND TAMANEND HDT WHAT? INDEX TAMANEND TAMANEND SOME ACCOUNT OF THE PROVINCE Of PENNSYLVANIA IN AMERICA; Lately Granted under the Great Seal Of ENGLAND To William Penn, &c. Together with the Privileges and Powers necessary to the well-governing thereof.