WELCOME!

to

EARLY AMERICA

and to New Discoveries

of the Native and Colonial Northeast:

Truly aTransatlantic World

      I don't believe you can understand Native American cultures unless you are keenly aware that everything they do is spiritually related. Everything. Everything has Manitou, Life: everything is Life in itself. They never designed anything for design's sake....Nothing, from the slightest little thing to the universe itself, was ever taken for granted by Native Americans. Life was in all things, and they respected that life. There's a huge field that has never been written about, and I call it spiritual archaeology. You cannot understand a lot of the things that have happened, or that are happening, without understanding or at least being aware of that concept....When you do, things become clearer.

        Connecticut Archaeologist and Painter David Wagner, in Conversation with David Wagner: Portrait of an Artist

      (Wiltonwood Productions/SascoProductions, 2000

     In David Wagner's works on this website,

you're going to see the Native Northeast as never before---

and, if you'd like inexpensive color prints,

visit his website at http://davidrwagner.com; or, write to jpd37@hotmail.com!

     Welcome to the New World(s)---of human history, multicultural achievement---visible today through fresh archaeology and new approaches to the traditions, texts and records of the American past.

      "We Are Still Here" has been the motto of Native American New Englanders since the first impacts of colonies in their midst. A "Native New England Renaissance" suggests not their rebirth, but a change in the dominant colonial-American mind that once shut them out: a new awareness, or an old respect recovered, toward the vibrantly-alive Native American presence across this region and hemisphere.

      With all their differences, Native North and South Americans really do comprise the world's oldest living civilizations. It's hard to find other traditions that so corroborate discoveries about the last Ice Age---Native New England stories of people walking to Nantucket Island, for example.

     For most of their history so far, Native peoples evolved in places very different and virtually separate from "The Euro-Western World." So it is that of all the peoples and cultures that have come to inhabit these Americas over time, Native Americans (in their languages and concepts, social structures and more) also embody the greatest degree of cultural difference from the others. Their Planet Earth, their ideas of gender, power and more are profoundly different from the merely 3-dimensional ones that became dominant in these colonies. A Native American Universe is still what Naranjo of the Santa Clara Pueblo calls a Multiverse, "where there are many levels of simultaneous existence.

     Through constructive engagement with the ways in which Native Americans are not "like us," we grow in our self-understanding and in the spirit of democracy. Native peoples have been crucially important to "The American Story" from the beginning. No American generation can be understood without reference to its "frontiers": otherwise we define the universe in terms of one closed group (as if there is such a thing). Conservatives across the history-industries dub new perspectives a "PC" revisionism. The fact is, without Native American points of view---integrated, not just "recognized" and abandoned---we cannot accurately describe what happened, what made us what we are, and what choices of ours continue or change that inheritance."

     As we discover new foundations of facts, and from them learn how we have changed, we recover the power to change ourselves again (and, yes, do better). As anthropologist Stanley Diamond remarks, If our goal is self-knowledge in this world of relativity, our means must be the authentic understanding of others.

The First Land & The First People

      As we dig for fresh evidences in the soils of North and South America, we find a story increasingly ancient as well as dramatic---a story of incredible changes in the land that set the stage for human pioneers.

       Most people know that "The Bering Strait Theory"---that the first people reached the Americas from Asia by way of Beringia 12-13,000 years ago---is in question these days. Ten years of new digs have located "Early Pioneer" encampments of at least that age in places like Venezuela (Taima Taima) and Chile (Monte Verde).

        One of the biggest and most carefully documented digs in North America, the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in east central Pennsylvania, dates from 16,000 years ago. You can see this 20-year study's progress with two issues of National Geographic, from September 1979's issue to July 1997's. The Meadowcroft site cannot be the only one of its kind and age. It tells us how much we have to learn again from the beginning.

     Clearly, with an ancient place like Meadowcroft so far to the east, America's first pioneers were reaching these continents from more than one direction. The Northeast is rich with its share of clues that tell us where they came from, when and how.

     First of all, new research reveals a Northeastern American coastline very different from today's, back in the days of the last great glacier the Wisconsin. With world sea-levels far lower at this time about 21,000 years ago, huge tracts of dry land stood clear of the Atlantic Ocean just south of the Wisconsin ice-sheets. As you see, the once-dry coastal plain south of "New England" and the other known bodies of land south of Newfoundland comprised almost half a million square miles of seacoast.

     "Red Paint People" (often called Maritime Archaic cultures) were sailing and trading along these North Atlantic coasts and the Arctic Circle at least 9,000 years ago---just as the last of the Wisconsin What was it like for people making their lives along this now-sunken coastline? The land's history provides many clues. This coastal plain sloped gently beyond the familiar "New England" for about 200 miles towards the Atlantic. New England today is a land of huge "derelict" boulders and stony outcrops. Back then it was more like a delta, built up by millions of tons of soil-erosion from the mainland. As the Wisconsin Glacier melted, its waters also raised sea-levels an average of six feet per year. The land evolved from a lichen-rich spruce tundra to grasslands, scrub woods and low brush. As caribou and mastodon grew scarce, the first pioneers held close to the ocean side with its limitless bounties of sea-mammals, birds, fish and other game.

     What was it like for people making their lives along this now-sunken coastline? The land's history provides many clues. This coastal plain sloped gently beyond the familiar "New England" for about 200 miles towards the Atlantic. New England today is a land of huge "derelict" boulders and stony outcrops. Back then it was more like a delta, built up by millions of tons of soil-erosion from the mainland. As the Wisconsin Glacier melted, its waters also raised sea-levels an average of six feet per year. The land evolved from a lichen-rich spruce tundra to grasslands, scrub woods and low brush. As caribou and mastodon grew scarce, the first pioneers held close to the ocean side with its limitless bounties of sea-mammals, birds, fish and other game.How early and for how long did people inhabit these coastal regions before the Atlantic submerged them around 8,500 years ago? We don't yet know; but they had very likely been there before people reached the inland Meadowcroft encampment. This may be a major missing part of the story of the North American spread of the "Clovis point" as well---which is found in both Western and Eastern contexts.

      The small extended-family group above represents "Red Paint People" displaced about 9,000 years ago from the Atlantic coastal plain into familiar New England landscapes. Some of their northern kinsmen are known to have lived in stone-built coastal houses (see the PBS documentary Search for the Lost Red Paint People). They traded "Rama Chert" up and down the region and produced extremely well-made tools with "concoidal" edges sharp as a single molecule. They set up the oldest navigational guides along these coasts with their standing-stones, and carved tools of stone, bone and ivory into stunningly life-like images of killer whales and other creatures---works that rival (and even resemble!) the craftsmanship of ancient Europe at this time. Red ochre, or iron oxide, they used for purposes both spiritual and practical---as an honorific in burials and sites, and as protection from sun and insects.

      The day of the mastodon passes. That of the domesticated "Carolina Dog" (a relative of Australia's Dingo) begins. But the history of the land tells us more of what these earliest Northeastern Americans experienced and witnessed over time.

Research conducted by Long Island Sound Research Laboratories (UCONN), Woods Hole Research Center (MA), Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center; and Geologist Ralph Lewis, Avery Point, Groton CT (1-2) About 250 million years ago, a massive erosion of continental bedrock was under way. By 20 million years ago, its soil-deposits had created this delta-like coastal plain on a bedrock foundation. (3) By 5 million years ago, a vast depression began to form in this eroded area close to the present-day coastline. (4) By 500,000 years ago, this depression---the future Long Island Sound---had begun to fill with fresh water. It remained this way well into the final Wisconsin Glacier period. (5) And at the southern extreme of that glacier (about 19,500 years ago), a huge moraine formed into which the debris of the glacier, from trees to boulders and soil, began to tumble. The glacier was beginning to melt. (6) The Wisconsin Glacier's meltwaters continued to fill this great depression and, beyond it, raised the Atlantic's sea-levels at the same time. (7) Finally, about 9,500 years ago, the last bastions of this "glacial dam" gave way between present-day Fisher's Island and Block Island. The Atlantic poured in, and within 500 years formed today's salt-water "sound" around what became Long Island. Laboratory-ships and divers have found all the predictable debris of this huge event in just these places.       Atlantic pioneers had to adapt over time to new coastlines and conditions. Sea-levels rose about 6 feet per year through this warming period, and glacial spruce tundra gave way to broken forest-lands of pine, birch and hemlock. Have you witnessed the awesome spectacle of today's Niagara Falls? Then you know something of how several generations of the earliest "New Englanders" felt---for at the peak of this event, they could see and hear a torrent of waters 300 times greater than Niagara's. When that coastal dam gave way, they had already been living here for at least 3,500 years.

Time Line 1: Paleo to Woodland YEARS AGO 12,700 11,000 9,500 8,500 6,000 NEW ENGLAND AREA        "EARLY PALEO-INDIAN":        Small bands (av. 30?) use seasonal camps/meeting-places such as Bull Brook (Ipswich,Ma) inland NH, VT, quarry stone from Maine to upper NY-state.        MIDDLE PALEO: or "Neponset Phase": points evolving for smaller game; ryolite quarries in NH;  Wapanucket, Neponset (MA), Templeton CT, Fairfax VT.        LATE PALEO: or "Nicholas Phase" (after a NH site): pine/oak, antler and bone tool-carving; Hidden Creek RI incl. stones quarried in northern Maine        EARLY ARCHAIC: Larger semi-nomadic groups w/points incl. "Clovis" types; Maritime Archaic sites from Port Aux Choix-Newfoundland to southern Maine incl. "spectacular" ceremonialism, art; caribou, porpoise, whale and deep-sea fish hunting ELSEWHERE Europe's "Late  Paleolithic" Catal Huyuk in Turkey "Near East" Agriculture &  Sumerian Wheel Jericho c. 7500y. ago   Pyramids 3,000       MIDDLE ARCHAIC: Exposed land-masses are submerged, Maritime Archaic endures 2500 more years; while "Narrow Point" inland peoples speaking Algonquian begin to inhabit southern New England sites: Seals, salmon, birds, beaver, deer, shellfish plentiful "Minoan" Cretan Civilization Distinctive 5,000-3,500 Years Ago 2,500 1,500 (500 AD) 1,000        LATE ARCHAIC: (till c. 2,500 years ago): Earliest atlatls (spear throwing weights) appear in N. Carolina; by 5-3,000 years ago in Northeast. Fish-weirs in waterways, Cape/Vine- yard shell-mounds c. 4,000 years ago.  Maritime burial mounds; trade and/or incursions of Great Lakes "Laurentian" or "Old Copper Culture"peoples; Algonquian-speakers begin more north-coastal occupations through at least next 700 years. C. 2500, Midwestern "Hopewells" force "Adena"  from Ohio regions: their ceramics, ceremonialism begin to influence New England peoples, as do later "Susquehanna" incursions with soapstone-carving, atlatls       EARLY WOODLAND: "Red Paint" cemeteries; ceramics much replace soapstone; pipes, decorative copper, gorgets. Corn-agriculture begins to arrive and by 1500 AD its ears triple in size (Wilbur 28). Algonquian languages ascendant though "tribal ways" evolving in relation to regional ecology. Cooler, moister weather may cause 1,000 years of "low" population: shellfish (vs. hunting) and sea-game more important to basic diet       MIDDLE WOODLAND: Southern New England peoples pursue seasonal rounds between farming villages and hunt-camps. Wide trade in all directions: Hopewellian influences continue. Burial-mounds, earth-  works, decorated ceramics, stone and copper artifacts. The bow-and-arrow, first-known in the Arctic c. 2,000   years ago, reaches the region around this time "Classical" Greece c. 2000y. ago   Rome falls c.1000 years ago Europe's "Middle Ages"       LATE WOODLAND: "Mississippian influences: more permanent villages and recognized tribal territories; ceramics evolving, stone-works, earth-mounds       Leif Ericson's voyages to Greenland: Viking settlement at L'Anse Aux Meadows 1347 1398  Norse from Greenland seek timber along coasts of Labrador. Native New England population will reach 100-135,000 people by the so-called "Historic" Period (see Chronology 2 below). By 1393, Venetian ships scout Greenland: see Sinclair/Zeno Map in "Before Columbus"  Evidence (below) suggests that Scottish Prince Henry Sinclair reaches Newfoundland, builds "Newport Tower" on the Rhode Island coast.

Next: Stone-Works, Corn & Calendars