I’ve been working on another longish blogpost, planning to enjoy the snowstorm by curling up with a cup of hot chocolate and wrapping up my words of wisdom, but something de-stabilizing in my life has interrupted my focus. It’s time to recognize that it’s not happening this week.
Enjoy this winter pic of the Ausable River.
I’ve been seeing a lot of mushrooms in the woods the past month. Usually it’s late spring/early summer when mushrooms are abundant. To me, mushrooms have a fairy association, and of course an association with water.
This picture may look like it’s upside down, but it’s Chalis Pond on a clear day.
This Red-spotted Newt was very patient and co-operative.
The Mountain Ash is related to the European Rowan.
Mid October and still no snow on Giant Mountain.
Happy trails!
Something done a second time is derivative; when it’s done a thousand times, it’s a genre. The mystery novel I’m working on right now is in the island thriller genre. I was inspired by Circe’s island of Aeaea that appears in The Odyssey and by the story of Medusa.
The appeal of the island thriller is the isolation, which allows more intense interaction with the landscape. Who can forget the topography of the island in Robinson Crusoe? I think the isolation also brings more intensity to character interactions. People can’t escape one another on an island.
Another island tale that inspires me is P.D. James’s The Lighthouse. My island will also have a lighthouse. It’s an element that can’t be left out – lighthouses are so spooky and romantic at the same time. Also, my island is on Lake Champlain, which has lots of lighthouses. It is a fictional island, but a composite of Isle la Motte, Grand Isle, and Valcour Island. I used the place name Peregrine, as in Peregrine Cottage in the James novel. James was a devout Christian and peregrine has overtones of pilgramage. For me, the word has not only the suggestion of wandering found in The Odyssey, but the association with the Peregrine Falcon. Circe is a falcon goddess.
I learned recently that James wrote this novel when she was 85, which I find inspiring and a bit comforting. I admired the way James used the SARS Corona Virus One in this novel to great effect. I incorporate COVID-19 into the fabric of my own novel. Doing so worries me, because agents are writing DO NOT SEND ANYTHING ABOUT A PANDEMIC!!!!! in their wish lists. Yet how can the pandemic be written out of a novel that takes place in 2020? I don’t see a way, without it looking contrived. I’ve always thought that novels taking place in the early 1940s, even in the American mainland, which was spared bombing, to feel quite odd if there is no mention of the war.
One of my favorite island movie mysteries is Dolores Claiborne, based on the novel by Stephen King. Kathy Bates’s performance in that movie is one that deserves a prominent place in cinematic history. I like not only the sinister tone of the movie, but the unflinching gaze at class divides.
Another island movie I like is Triangle at Rhodes, based on the Agatha Christie novel. The camera work in this movie is strikingly beautiful and profound. I usually consider films that linger on scenery annoyingly pretentious, but I wished in this one that the camera would hold the images a few more frames.
Christie’s most well known island mystery And Then There Were None is echoed in Rachel Howzell Hall’s They All Fall Down, which takes place in this century on an island off the coast of Mexico. By the end of that novel, I was more than reconciled to the death of the protagonist.
A classic in the island thriller genre is The Tempest, which believe it or not I’m unfamiliar with. The plot sounds entirely up my alley, but I haven’t had the opportunity to see this one performed, and I don’t like to read Shakespeare’s plays. I found a movie version that I’m looking forward to watching. If I like it, I’ll write a review.
Couldn’t schedule my post yesterday due to internet outage. Spotty broadband reliability is one of the issues with rural living.
This weekend marks the ten year anniversary of Hurricane Irene. An incredible amount of rain (17 inches where I live) was dumped here in about a day, plus all the runoff from the High Peaks. I counted fourteen major landslides, and the Ausable River changed course in places.
About a third of the properties in the area sustained damage. Businesses were devastated. All roads out of the area were impassable for a few days, and many roads were wiped out. There were casualties in the Catskills and Vermont, though thankfully none in the Adirondacks. Vermont lost many of its iconic covered bridges.
The reason the impact of Irene in the Keene, Wilmington, and Jay areas isn’t more widely known is that not many people live here. The worst geographical impact was on state land, though the communities downstream were hit hard. Unfortunately, some people decided after Irene that they were done here. Nobody can blame them, but we appreciate people who persevered through the long process of recovery.
For better or worse, Irene was how the area got limited cell coverage. The governor’s assistant was here to assess damage and he was amazed when he was directed to a certain field where a signal was maybe sometimes available if the wind was right. There was a working cell tower in the area within a few days.
What I remember most about Irene was how we came together as a community to rebuild, and how people from downstate, who hike and vacation here and love the area as much as we do, came up to help. It was a long slow process that took much love. A film about Irene premiered last week, and I was pleasantly surprised that the focus was more on the rebuilding than the devastation.
Part three of three
This is a continuation. Part one is here.
One of the things Melissa Otis discusses in Rural Indigenousness is the trope of the “Old Indian who used to live here.” I’ve read about this Old Indian in various places of the Adirondacks since coming to live here, and this new perspective was highly intriguing to me.
Melissa Otis contends that where the Old Indian legend arose, there lived an extended indigenous family group. This family group, usually Mohawk or Abenaki, often interacted with non-indigenous men as paid guides.
In Colonial times, indigenous guides were hired for geographic exploration or military reconnaissance. During the 19th century, guides were used more for location of geological resources or for recreational hunting and fishing. Guides recorded during this time, always men, were popular with hunting enthusiasts or associated with important mining developments.
As indigenous families ceased their seasonal use of the Adirondacks and created permanent settlements, they became obscured in the historical record. For one thing, their way of life in the 19th century was often no different from the Euro- and African- Americans who settled here. Permanent residents in isolated rural Adirondack communities, regardless of their ethnicity, practiced subsistence farming, hunting, and trapping, augmented by seasonal paid work. Indigenous families shared knowledge of sustenance activities such as farming, hunting, trapping, fishing, and gathering plants with incoming residents. Of course, settlers brought knowledge with them as well, but there was more integration into indigenous culture here than was occurring elsewhere in the Northeast. This was true into the early 20th century, fostered by the remoteness the Adirondacks, the small year-round population, and the harsh living conditions.
Adirondack men, again regardless of ethnicity, often traveled away from home for part of the year for paid employment. They might live in lumber or mining camps or obtain seasonal commercial work in the cities and towns bordering the Adirondacks. Recall that indigenous people in the area moved seasonally as a survival strategy before colonial contact. Adirondack women would supplement their income in cottage industries. In the summer, there was money to be made from the rich city folk who traveled to the area for recreation.
Unsurprisingly, indigenous families often intermarried with settlers who lived as they did, class distinctions being more along the lines of part-time recreationalists versus permanent residents. Sportsmen referred to both White and Indian guides as “Natives.” Descendants of blended families might be listed as either “White” or “Indian” on census forms, the rationale for racial distinctions being unclear, as the same person might be recorded as a different race in different census years.
However they are recorded in official records, many families in the Adirondacks are aware of their Mohawk or Abenaki heritage. The old saw that the Adirondacks were uninhabited prior to tourism and commercial exploitation is blown away by this book. Indigenous people have always lived here, and live here still.
Part Two
This is a continuation of the review from last week.
Last week’s post discussed Indigenous peoples in the Adirondacks before European settlement: Iroquois, Abenaki, and Mahican nations pre-contact and later Algonquian peoples displaced by English settlement along the Atlantic coast. According to Melissa Otis, much of the 1700s was characterized by indigenous accommodation of Euro-colonial hunters and trappers and a few settlers. Shared land use was negotiated through family alliances, often cemented by intermarriage. The period after the Revolutionary War brought a sharp increase in violence and upheaval as colonial expansion continued.
The violence itself was not altogether new. Before European contact, Iroquois and Algonquian peoples sometimes came into violent conflict over shared resources and disputed territories. What changed was the inability of indigenous groups to collectively resolve disputes. Euro-Americans had the upper hand. Even accounting for the primitive legal establishment, acts of aggression against indigenous people were under-prosecuted. Otis was not able to name a single trial for murder or violent aggression where the White perpetrator was convicted. Many Euro-American settlers, trappers, and businessmen continued negotiating with indigenous peoples on friendly terms; others simply took what they wanted, backing up their claims with violence. Still others, nursing hostility through prejudice or historical grievances, simply lashed out in unprovoked aggression. Copious amount of alcohol consumed by both White and indigenous men did not help the situation.
As competition with White trappers increased, mining and lumbering became established, and settlement expanded, indigenous groups found it more difficult to support traditional ways of life. Access to hunting and fishing territories became limited and animal populations declined. Euro-Americans appropriated Abenaki and Mohawk seasonal camps, claiming these peoples, with territories on both sides of the border, were in fact “Canadian Indians.” Dependence on the emerging wage economy further fractured indigenous communities and attenuated traditional practices.
There are two stories told about colonialism in America. In one story, the one usually told about the Adirondacks, the land was empty and unused, available for settlement. In another, acknowledged in more populated areas of the country, the people already living on the land were either massacred or uprooted in forced relocations. The indigenous people in the Adirondacks were not massacred, even though sporadic deaths by violence went unatoned. Nor were they physically relocated en masse, even though many moved away as traditional livelihoods evaporated. Neither story fits, although indigenous peoples did lose land, traditions, and social cohesion.
The next installment will discuss how indigenous people in the Adirondacks adapted to changing circumstances in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Part One
I am finding this book by Melissa Otis challenging on three levels.
On the first, it is challenging my idea of Native American presence in the Adirondacks. Otis doesn’t refute the popular belief that most of the territory in the Blue Line (the boundary of the Adirondack Park) was hunting territory used by many tribes, but she asks the reader to reflect on what the word “hunting territory” means. I always pictured some guys killing big animals and bringing a few home to justify going off for a summer vacation with the boys.
But no. The concept of “hunting territory” needs to be picked apart. What were they hunting? Animals, of course, but also plants and fish. When were they hunting? It could be any season. Trapping in winter. Foraging in summer. Who was hunting? Young men, yes, but some women, or even the whole band together. If a lot of meat or fish was being harvested, women did most of the processing on site. The small groups could be Abenaki, Iroquois, or Mahican before colonization, but later they might be other displaced Native groups. Were they only hunting? No, there was trapping and fishing. And Mohawk women would sometimes plant and harvest during a long hunting season. Or Abenaki women would sow plants and return later that year (or even in subsequent years) to gather.
I’m also finding the book challenging because it is dense and difficult. A lot of names, dates, wars, treaties referenced. It’s slow reading, and sometimes I have to look up events that I’m not familiar with. This is a meticulously researched book, which is its strength and weakness. I wish this kind of information was available in a more readable form, but the book was only published in 2018. And of course people demand good documentation after so much questionable stuff has been around for so long.
The third challenging level has to do with absorbing the troubling details of the history of displacement through colonization. This displacement was not as dramatic as the forced mass relocations of Cherokee or Delaware, but it was traumatic nonetheless. The Abenaki and the Mahican faired the worst, being more itinerant than the Mohawk, who were settled and agriculturally advanced.
So I’m getting through the book slowly, but I recommend it to anyone interested in the early history of this region.
This picture was taken in Newcomb, New York last week. The High Peaks can be seen in the distance.
