Casting Lines ...

This week’s research pace has been slow (I celebrated an early Thanksgiving with my two sons this past week-end since we will not be able to be together for the traditional “Turkey Day” -- and my career work has been egregiously heavy lately) – and even my meager week’s activities have not yet been productive (how un-Thanksgiving-like?!). (And now I'm having problems adding my pictures to the post -- checked the blog help, but that hasn't been productive either ... oh well, guess it's just another "learning experience" associated with this blog & class -- and it's all good. Besides, I'll try to post the pix again tomorrow... and 'guess what'!! I've just tried again, and it works!)


[My sons, Joey and Billy! Both are fly-fisherman as it happens!]

Lines cast:

* Communicated with an acquaintance who is a manager in the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) regarding my obtaining access to engineering archaeological records from ‘digs’ performed in connection with highway construction. Per my Maryland Historical Society research, this is a likely source for early Indian settlements’ artifacts information.

* Warm thanks to my class-mate Luke for his excellent idea to research Ft. Garrison records and history!



[Picture of Ft. Garrison Courtesy of Baltimore County Public Library]

* I’ve developed a list of sites to explore over Thanksgiving week-end, appropriately, to tie up loose ends. They include two major ancient Indian shell ‘dumps’ or "middens" at Booby and Rocky Points near the mouth of Back River and south of Gunpowder Falls; and the remains of the Piscataway settlement on the Potomac River – Capt. John Smith’s "Moyaone" town, near present-day Accokeek, MD.



[The beautiful Gunpowder -- Courtesy of DNR, State of Maryland]

* I think I’ve located a neighborhood store that has the camera-PC interface equipment I need so I no longer have to depend on finding a downtown DC camera store within the vicinity of my this-week-non-existent lunch times – the device will enable my posting site photos to the blog more easily and economically.

* My “virtual paper” outline and major themes are coming together satisfactorily, I think-hope. Nevertheless, I’m very concerned that we have to submit our final blog on December 1st, when the class does not end until December 16th. I feel very pressed for time to make that early deadline. I rather think I will have to cut back the scope of my “paper” to fit this particular class’s needs, but I fully intend to carry on with my research and continue to add to my blog-published work over the next year or so.

* I’ve been fortunate to have found (and devoured -- still thinking of Turkey Day) a monumental book “1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus,” Charles C. Mann. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005,that presents a number of solutions pertinent to my research including the plausible reason for the “Great Maryland Barrens” in the Baltimore environs in the 1600’s, and convincing discussions of Native American/American Indians pre-Columbian populations’ size.

* A second book find – from a quite extensive antique ‘mall’ in Hampden, discovered while waiting for Holy Frijoles to open last Sunday – is an early Maryland history, Tidewater Maryland, by Paul Wilstach, 1931, The Bobbs-Merrill Company (Indianapolis) that contains many interesting observations relating to early Indian contacts and relations with the Lords Calvert particularly our first Governor, Leonard Calvert. I’ll be using this little treasure as a source, too.



[Maryland's First Governor - Leonard Calvert! Courtesy of Archives of Maryland; Portrait by Florence MacKubin (1914), oil on canvas, 30 x 25" - Said to be after a 17th Century portrait in a private collection.]


* Finally, I’ve ordered a third book from ‘Amazin’ Amazon’, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs: The Development of Algonquian Culture in the Potomac Valley, by Stephen R. Potter (1993).

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

2nd Lord Baltimore, Cecil Calvert (1606-1675), by Soest, Gerard, ca. 1600-1681 ~ Hanging in the Main Hall of the Central Library, Enoch Pratt Free Library / State Library Resource Center.

The Good:
Getting to attend the Maryland Historial Society's last Thursday night (10/22/09) book signing and excellent author's lecture, by Don Shomette, UB's own "Father of Marine Archeology in Maryland," on his new book "Flotilla" - Story of Joshua Barney's War of 1812 Chesapeake Flotillamen [published by the Johns Hopkins University Press and Mr. Shomette's  latest in a line of fascinating local history books], bottled up in St. Leonard's Creek, couldn't save the Capitol from burning but eventually the battered flotillaman went on to man the guns that gave us "Star-spangled Banner" -- and saved Ft. McHenry and Baltimore.
Connection with my Native American search? 
Right there outside the Society lecture hall are dioramas that depict encounters between early Native Americans and Colonists with textual display to the effect that "at first the relations were friendly" and showing the "American Indians" as bearing trays of bounty on their heads as they march up to the Englishmen!  Have to say I'm not at all sure this was really so and suspect it's borrowed from the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Thanksgiving) legend, mostly because I've been able to find so little actual evidence -- so far -- of what, where, and when the first encounters in the Maryland colony took place and most especially the true nature of the meetings. But -- at least MdHS must believe it has such evidence -- and now it's just up to me to find it there!  But the frustration of the week-end was that I ended up being distracted all day Saturday on a jaunt to the far reaches of Silver Spring, egads, to buy a new car and never made it back to the beautiful stacks at the MdHS Library and the nice pile of material I hope Mr. Francis O'Neill has kept for me in "my" cart??.

The Bad
Oh Enoch! wherefor art thou records of Native Americans in early Baltimore??!! A diligent online search of the collections at Enoch Pratt -- and references to what may be available in hard-copy, was, frankly, fruitless. "Native Americans," and "American Indians," and the like only brought up grade-school level entries in two desultory and very minor collections that echoed stereotypes from our early childhood notions of "Indians."  If only H.L. Mencken had been interested in more than a cigar store "Chief," I might have gotten something bold and ground breaking.
But at least my temporary tangential look online at the six Lords Baltimore, resplendant in their oil portraits, unearthed a clue, actually I feel it's going to prove to be an important clue: In the description of the contributions of "Cecil" (speaking now of Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore, and until I learn more, the only solid fellow of the bunch), I read where this Baltimore baron was esteemed in that, "Thanks to the good counsel which Cecil gave his young brother, Governor Leonard Calvert ...the Governor's firm dealings with the Indians bore fruit in securing comparative harmony, in marked contrast with the experiences of settlers in Virginia and New England."  SO!!! when I can track this reference down to parsable historical proof, then maybe that MdHS diorama was spot on after all, and we just might have a story here, folks!!

The Ugly
Leave it to the Curse of the Bureaucrat to find me, also a bureaucrat, online at the US Department of the Interior website, specifically under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, where one would like to think one could go to get intelligent information about American Indian tribes. Ho, no! It was an ugly story of one broken link after another until I gave up and retreated back to good old, reliable Google to bring up the most recent list of federally-recognized tribes as published in the Federal Register (8/11/2009) the hopes of finding modern links to tribal histories of interest to the quest here. But this line, too, led only to wasteland -- in all of the 560-some tribes, there is NONE in the State of Maryland; and no entries either for Piscataway or Algonquin.

Not wanting to leave my followers with a sense of gloom, I will say that I saw a notice for a meeting this coming Tuesday evening at the Baltimore American Indian Center, not far from my home, and I intend to make the meeting (reportedly open to the public) to work on the end-piece of my research and possibly uncover clues that can provide information about the early presence, although I think it unlikely but remain open to happy surprises.