Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes

Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes

Sherene Baugher · Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood Editors

Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes

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Editors Sherene Baugher Department of Landscape Architecture Cornell University 440 Kennedy Hall Ithaca NY 14853 USA [email protected]

Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood Department of Sociology Oakland University 520 Verner Hall Rochester MI 48309 USA [email protected]

ISBN 978-1-4419-1500-9 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-1501-6 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2009943844 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

We thank our families for their constant support and encouragement. Robert W. Venables and Brant Venables – S.B. André Z. Ruedi – S.S.W.

Contents

1 Introduction: The Archaeology and Preservation of North American Gendered Landscapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood and Sherene Baugher Part I

Gendering Native American Landscapes

2 The Clearings and The Woods: The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Landscape – Gendered and Balanced . . . . . . . . . . Robert W. Venables 3 Gender Dynamics, Routine Activities, and Place in Haudenosaunee Territory: An Archaeological Case Study from the Cayuga Region of Central New York State . . . . . . . . Kathleen M. Sydoriak Allen Part II

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Gendering African-American Landscapes

4 Sweepin’ Spirits: Power and Transformation on the Plantation Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Whitney Battle-Baptiste

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5 African-American Women, Power, and Freedom in the Contested Landscape of Camp Nelson, Kentucky . . . . . . . . . W. Stephen McBride

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6 Remembering the Women of Vine Street: Archaeology and Historic Preservation of an Urban Landscape in Lancaster, Pennsylvania . . . . . . . . James A. Delle and Mary Ann Levine

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Part III Gendering Multi-ethnic Landscapes 7 (Re)Constructing la Tierra de la Guerra: An Indo-Hispano Gendered Landscape on the Rito Colorado Frontier of Spanish Colonial New Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jun U. Sunseri

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8 Sailors’ Snug Harbor: A Landscape of Gender and Power . . . . Sherene Baugher 9 Gendered Power Dynamics Among Religious Sects, Ethnic Groups, and Classes, in Jewish Communities on Greater Boston’s Landscape at the Turn of the Century . . . . . . . . . . . Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood Part IV

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Gendering Religious Landscapes

10 The Dynamics of a Shaker Landscape in Canterbury, New Hampshire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David R. Starbuck and Paula J. Dennis

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11 The Importance of an Ordered Landscape at Pleasant Hill Shaker Village: Past and Present Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kim A. McBride

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12 A Chinese Temple in California, Lost and Found . . . . . . . . . . Roberta S. Greenwood Part V

Gendering Industrial Landscapes

13 Gendering Mining Landscapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Donald L. Hardesty 14 Engendering the Corporate Landscape: A View from the Miners’ Doublehouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Karen Metheny Part VI

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Commentary

15 Commentary: A Feminist Framework for Analyzing Complex Gendered Power Dynamics Altering Cultural Landscapes from the Past into the Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contributors

Kathleen M. Sydoriak Allen Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA, [email protected] Whitney Battle-Baptiste Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA 01002, USA, [email protected] Sherene Baugher Department of Landscape Architecture, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA, [email protected] James A. Delle Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, Kutztown, PA 19530, USA, [email protected] Paula J. Dennis In the Field Consulting: Architectural History and Historic Preservation, Essex, NY 12936, USA, [email protected] Roberta S. Greenwood Greenwood and Associates, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272, USA, [email protected] Donald L. Hardesty Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557-0096, USA, [email protected] Mary Ann Levine Department of Anthropology, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17604, USA, [email protected] Kim A. McBride Kentucky Archaeological Survey, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-9854, USA, [email protected] W. Stephen McBride Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park, Nicholasville, KY 40356, USA, [email protected] Karen Metheny Department of Archaeology, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA, [email protected] Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Oakland University, Rochester Hills, MI 48309, USA; Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA, [email protected], [email protected] David R. Starbuck Department of Social Science, Plymouth State University, Plymouth, NH 03264, USA, [email protected] ix

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Jun U. Sunseri Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3710, USA, [email protected] Robert W. Venables (Retired) Department of Landscape Architecture, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA, [email protected]

About the Authors

Kathleen M. Sydoriak Allen is an archaeologist and potter who is currently lecturer in anthropology and director of undergraduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She has worked on issues of gender and landscape for over 20 years. While her early work dealt with regional settlement and landscapes through the use of geographic information systems, her recent research has looked at community and household analyses with an eye toward local resource use and gendered tasks. Prior to her academic appointment, she was employed in cultural resource management doing surveys and excavations on prehistoric and historic sites in upstate New York. Whitney Battle-Baptiste is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a graduate of the African Diaspora Program in anthropology at the University of Texas Austin and her research ranges from plantation archaeology in Tennessee and Virginia to investigating issues of race, gender, and labor in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century New England. Her interests include the captive African landscape, African and African-American material and expressive culture, Black feminist theory, African Diaspora archaeology, and activist archaeology. Sherene Baugher an associate professor in the Cornell University, Department of Landscape Architecture, is also affiliated with Cornell’s Archaeology Program and Historic Preservation Program. From 1980 to 1990, she served as the first official archaeologist for the City of New York. Dr. Baugher’s research interests are in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century residential and institutional sites with a focus on class, inequality, ethnicity, and gender. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on these topics. Her other book from Springer is Past Meets Present: Archaeologists Partnering with Museum Curators, Teachers, and Community Groups (2007), co-edited with John Jameson. She also presents papers at conferences for landscapes architects, has written for the Landscape Journal, and is involved in the preservation of archaeological and cultural landscapes. James A. Delle is currently an associate professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. He holds a BA in history from the College of the Holy Cross, an MA in anthropology from the College of William and Mary, and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His research interests include the archaeological

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analysis of the social dynamics of inequality and has conducted projects on African-American sites in New York and Pennsylvania and on coffee plantations in Jamaica. Paula J. Dennis is the principal of In the Field Consulting, an architectural history and historic preservation firm based in Essex, New York. For over 30 years she has worked to understand, interpret, and support the preservation of historic structures and landscapes. Her work and research includes vernacular and traditional timber frame construction methodology, influence, evolution, and preservation. Her efforts to build a national coalition to preserve the 1885 Bow Bridge in rural Saratoga County resulted in a $1.4 million transportation enhancement award to fund the 2006 in situ restoration of the rare lenticular iron truss bridge. She currently serves on the Essex County Cornell Cooperative Extension Board of Directors and frequently volunteers to support the preservation of early agrarian-based architecture surviving throughout the Adirondack Park. Roberta S. Greenwood is a registered professional archaeologist (RPA) with a long list of publications for the profession, the trade, and the public. She is president of Greenwood and Associates, with 40 years of experience in investigations of prehistoric archaeology, historical archaeology, and architectural history. Educated at Wellesley College and UCLA, she has served as peer reviewer for public agencies and private organizations and as expert witness at public hearings and has managed complex extended state and federal projects. She is nationally recognized, with many awards and offices in professional societies. She is responsible for several HABS and HAER documents, National Register nominations, the preservation of significant sites and structures, and the dissemination of archaeological information to the public. Donald L. Hardesty is professor of anthropology and director of the Historic Preservation Program at the University of Nevada, Reno. He received his PhD in anthropology from the University of Oregon and has more than 40 years experience conducting research in the areas of historical archaeology, industrial archaeology, cultural resource management, and human ecology in the American West. Hardesty has published articles or books on such research topics as the social archaeology of mining, class and gender strategies in the American West, gender and archaeology on the Comstock, ethnographic landscapes, mining rushes and landscape learning, evaluating site significance, and the Donner Party. He has been president of the Society for Historical Archaeology, the Mining History Association, and the Register of Professional Archaeologists. Mary Ann Levine is currently an associate professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at Franklin and Marshall College. She earned a BA in anthropology from McGill University and an MA and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her research interests include north eastern North American archaeology, archaeological analyses native copper and brass artifacts, and women and gender in the archaeological record.

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Kim A. McBride, PhD, is co-director of the Kentucky Archaeological Survey, a joint undertaking of the Kentucky Heritage Council and the University of Kentucky, Department of Anthropology. She completed her BA in anthropology at Beloit College and MA and PhD in anthropology at Michigan State University. She has directed research and archaeological excavations on a number of historical sites, including extensive work at the Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Her work has included students at all levels, from public schools to the graduate level. She has served on the Board of the Society for Historical Archaeology and is in her fourth term on the Kentucky National Register Review Board. She also conducts research on frontier fortifications and settlement with her husband W. Stephen McBride. W. Stephen McBride, PhD, is director of interpretation and archaeology at Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park, in Jessamine County, Kentucky, where he has conducted numerous excavations, assisted with preservation planning, and contributed to exhibits and signage. He authored the National Register of Historic Places nomination and co-authored preservation and interpretive plans for Camp Nelson. Recently he has focused on the site’s African-American story, including both the soldiers (known as U.S. Colored Troops) and their families who were eventually settled in the "Home for Colored Refugees." He holds a BA in anthropology from Beloit College and an MA and a PhD degree in anthropology from Michigan State University. Other research interests include frontier settlement patterns and fortifications in the Ohio Valley and Mid Atlantic. Karen Metheny is a research fellow in the Department of Archaeology at Boston University. She holds a PhD in archaeology from Boston University and degrees in anthropology, history, and historical archaeology from the College of William and Mary. Her research has focused on landscape archaeology, with particular emphasis on industrial landscapes and gardens of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She is author of From the Miners’ Doublehouse: Archaeology and Landscape in a Pennsylvania Coal Company Town and co-editor of Landscape Archaeology: Reading and Interpreting the American Historical Landscape. Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood is professor of anthropology at Oakland University’s Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work. In 1987 she wrote the first feminist article on gender and landscapes published in the journal Historical Archaeology. In 1989 she organized and chaired the first two conference symposia on gender research in historical archaeology, at the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference, and the Chacmool Conference, which was published as The Archaeology of Gender (1991). Her article on turn-of-the-century gendered landscapes of playgrounds was published in the Landscape Journal (1994), followed by another article in 2002, and a chapter in Shared Spaces and Divided Places (2003). She has continued to publish her feminist research, including a 2006 article in Historical Archaeology that gendered the landscapes of historical utopian communities. David R. Starbuck is an associate professor of anthropology and sociology in the Department of Social Science at Plymouth State University, part of the

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University System of New Hampshire. He holds a PhD in anthropology from Yale University and specializes in military sites archaeology, Shakers, and Scottish archaeology. He has long served as the archaeologist on the New Hampshire State Historical Resources Council, as the President of the Adirondack Chapter of the New York State Archaeological Association, and as editor of the New Hampshire Archeological Society. He has published extensively on the archaeology of the Shakers and on eighteenth-century battlefields, forts, and encampments, and his publications include seven books with the University Press of New England and nearly 100 articles and chapters in books. Jun U. Sunseri is a chancellor’s postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He has conducted research on eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury historical archaeology sites in the southwestern United States and South Africa. His research on colonization and the historical transformation of indigenous landscapes, foodways, and identity is part of a multidimensional process that is both archaeological and contemporary. His interest in public archaeology and preservation necessitates collaboration with living communities in the narrative building process. Toward this end, he is working with descendant communities to identify effective strategies for bringing archaeology into formal school education. Sunseri received his PhD from the program in archaeology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Robert W. Venables (PhD History, Vanderbilt 1967) retired in 2007 from Cornell University’s Cultural Landscapes Program in the Department of Landscape Architecture. His two-volume American Indian History: Five Centuries of Conflict and Coexistence was published in 2004. His interest in the relationships between environmental issues and cultural landscapes is longstanding: in 1980, he co-edited and contributed two chapters to American Indian Environments. Other publications include chapters in the Smithsonian’s American Indians/American Presidents (2009), The Treaty of Canandaigua 1794 (2000), and Exiled in the Land of the Free (1992) as well as three entries in The Encyclopedia of American Studies (2001). Venables has also testified in court as an expert witness on behalf of Indian nations in both the United States and Canada to help preserve their lands.

Chapter 1

Introduction: The Archaeology and Preservation of North American Gendered Landscapes Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood and Sherene Baugher

This volume expands the scope of landscape archaeology to analyze gender power dynamics on neglected landscapes of non-elite social groups in the United States. Most landscape archaeology has involved ungendered analyses of elite gardens, farms, and plantations. The Journal of Garden History focuses mainly on gardens owned and designed by elite men whether in the Classical, Medieval, or PostMedieval world. In historical archaeology landscape research initially followed the pattern of classical archaeology by studying primarily elite men’s gardens. Many studies examined the grand landscapes of plantations owned and designed by men, such as Bacon’s Castle (Luccketti 1990), Mount Vernon (Pogue 1996), Monticello (Kelso 1995), and Robert Carter’s Corotoman (all in Virginia) (Hudgins 1990), and the gardens of urban elite men, such as William Paca in Annapolis, Maryland (Leone 1984). Fairly early in the development of landscape archaeology, a few historical archaeologists analyzed how vernacular landscapes were shaped by class or race, but did not consider gender (Kelso 1995, 1996; Zierden 1996). A few others expanded the archaeological concept of landscape to include both culturally shaped lands and what was previously called settlement patterns – the arrangement and cultural relationships among buildings constructed on or into landscapes such as cityscapes (Mrozowski and Beaudry 1990; Sandweiss 1996). However, only one of these cityscape studies analyzed gender power dynamics (Spencer-Wood 1987a). The edited volume Landscape Archaeology (Yamin and Metheny 1996) predominantly maintained the earlier focus on ungendered analyses of elite men’s gardens, farms, and plantations. Only three chapters considered elite women’s contributions to gardens. However, these chapters did not focus on gender power dynamics. Weber (1996) researched a female tradition of elite women’s gardening expertise passed down from Queen Henrietta Maria of England (1609–1669) to Margaret Tilghman Carroll (1742–1817), whose orangerie became so famous that George Washington S.M. Spencer-Wood (B) Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Oakland University, Rochester Hills, MI 48309, USA; Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA e-mail: [email protected], [email protected] S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_1,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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consulted her about constructing one at Mount Vernon. Research on the Stocktons’ 18th-century garden at Morven in Princeton, New Jersey, found letters in which Richard, on a trip to England, acquired bulbs and cuttings for his wife Annis’ “sweet little flower garden” as well as ancient relics for her shell grotto in the garden. Annis also wrote poetry and other documents referring to some aspects of the garden (Metheny et al. 1996:8). Research at Andrew Jackson’s plantation in Tennessee, the Hermitage, found that in the 1820s, Rachel Jackson selected flowers for a simple garden that gave the plantation a back country look, enhancing her husband’s successful presidential campaign as a man of the people (McKee 1996:77–78). These three studies brought to light elite women’s as well as men’s roles in the design of their gardens, but remain limited to elite gardens. This volume expands the scope of these earlier studies in historical landscape archaeology in a number of directions. It goes beyond the previous focus on ungendered analyses of settlement patterns, cityscapes, elite men’s gardens, farms, and plantations to focus on complex gendered power dynamics not only in domestic gardens and plantations, but also in the gendered vernacular landscapes of a variety of ethnic and racial groups in the middle class, the working class, and the under class. This volume expands beyond recent studies of non-elite landscapes, such as industrial landscapes (Cassell 2005) or working-class urban landscapes (Mayne and Murray 2001), which did not analyze gender power dynamics on these landscapes. This volume also expands beyond books, journal issues, and articles concerned with ungendered analyses of landscapes of overlooked site types such as institutions (Baugher 2001; Casella 2007) and utopian communities (over half the studies in VanBueren 2006a). However, some studies of institutions and utopian communities have analyzed gender power dynamics expressed in these landscapes (Casella 2001; De Cunzo 2001; Spencer-Wood 1987a, 1994a, 2003, 2006, 2009; VanBueren 2006b; Van Wormer 2006). This volume goes beyond previous gender research that has focused only on women, to consider gender power dynamics between men and women as well as within these gender groups. This book builds on a number of previous journal articles and book chapters in historical archaeology that have analyzed gender power dynamics on landscapes such as farms and villages (Huataniemi and Rotman 2003), plantations (Delle 2000; Fesler 2004; Young 2003), mining communities (Hardesty 1994), utopian communities (Spencer-Wood 2006; VanBueren 2006b; Van Wormer 2006), a women’s prison (Casella 2001), a women’s reformatory (De Cunzo 2001), a destitute asylum (Piddock 2001), playgrounds, children’s gardens (Spencer-Wood 1994a, 2003), and power dynamics at the intersections of gender, class, and ethnicity on urban institutional landscapes (Spencer-Wood 1994b, 1996, 1999). The earliest research in historical archaeology concerned with gender power dynamics in cultural landscapes analyzed how the changing locations and appearance of women’s institutions on Boston’s landscape expressed class and ethnic relationships between middle-class reform women and working-class immigrant women and their families (Spencer-Wood 1987a). The authors in this volume further examine complex power dynamics in the gendered cultural landscapes of a variety of neglected sites, including Native

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American villages, slave quarters on plantations, an African-American civil war camp, multi-ethnic/racial communities, charitable institutions, religious communities, and mining towns. Some of the authors also help the reader to understand ideological differences in the gendering of landscapes by Euro-Americans, Native Americans in New York, displaced African-Americans in Tennessee, and Chinese immigrants in California. These groups practiced diverse non-western approaches to gendering cultural landscapes. Worldview, religion, spirituality, and rituals play an important role in how women as well as men have altered their cultural landscapes.

Defining Cultural Landscapes Landscape archaeology as a field has yet to recognize the diversity and complexity in landscapes. The word “landscape” has been used only to mean cultural landscapes, ignoring the existence of natural landscapes, and their importance as the medium shaped to varying degrees by individuals and social groups to form cultural landscapes. The word “landscape” developed from the German word “landschaft,” meaning the shaped lands of a small agricultural settlement and surrounding fields, pasture, and wilderness (Stilgoe 1982:12). “Landschaft” was transformed into the 15th-century Dutch painters’ technical word “lantscap,” referring to a picture of scenery on land in the Dutch school of landscape painting that spread throughout Europe (COED 1971:1566). By 1630, the English word “landscape,” was coined, meaning actual large-scale rural vistas as well as the pictures of scenery (Stilgoe 1982:24, COED 1971:1566). This volume expresses an interdisciplinary view of the landscape that includes perspectives from archaeology, geography, and landscape architecture. This interdisciplinary view is expressed in the concept of “cultural landscape,” which explicitly focuses on the human shaping of landscapes that is often assumed but not clarified in vague definitions of “landscape.” A “cultural landscape” has, by definition, been permanently altered by human behavior, in contrast to a “natural landscape.” The academic concept of cultural landscape was developed in 1908 by Schluter, who coined the German term “Kulturlandschaft” (culturally shaped land) in contrast to “Urlandschaft” (naturally shaped land) (James and Martin 1981:177). Human geographer Carl O. Sauer was most influential in developing the idea of cultural landscape, defining it as a natural landscape modified by a cultural group (James and Martin 1981:321–4). However, a single individual can also substantially modify a landscape over time, especially with modern earth-moving tools. Scholars have discussed cultural landscapes within the fields of geography, landscape history, landscape architecture, and architecture, such as J.B. Jackson (1984), John Stilgoe (1982), Allen Noble (1992), Dolores Hayden (1997), Paul Goth and Todd Bressi (1997), and Arnold Alanen and Robert Melnick (2000). The primary definition of landscape is only concerned with an area of the land’s surface that can be seen in a single view (Jackson 1984:8; Morris 1969:736). However this volume and many of the above studies have defined cultural landscapes to include such alterations to natural landscapes as farms, agricultural fields, roads, buildings

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with yards (including homes and women’s and men’s institutions), communes, hamlets, villages, battlefields, cemeteries, and yes, even ornamental gardens. Although landscape archaeology as well as landscape architecture have focused on the visual aspect of cultural landscapes, J.B. Jackson (1984) first brought to light the fact that landscapes are experiences that impact all the senses, including hearing, smell, touch, and kinesthetics, as well as sight. Yet none of these studies of cultural landscape have considered how gender matters in perceptions and constructions of cultural landscapes. This book is concerned with gender power dynamics involved in altering physical landscapes. We follow the above listed landscape architects and cultural geographers in considering structures as components of landscapes, because human activities move seamlessly between landscapes and buildings. While structures are important components of cultural landscapes, buildings by themselves are not landscapes. For example, just a farmhouse and a barn do not constitute a farm landscape; the agricultural fields, woodlots, pasture, gardens, and fenced areas for keeping animals, along with the farmhouse and barn are the key elements of that cultural landscape. Buildings are elements of landscapes not only because they are involved in human activities on landscapes but also because the construction of buildings usually involves physical alterations to the natural landscape, creating a cultural landscape. The focus in this volume is on how particular women and men have altered natural landscapes to create specific cultural landscapes. The authors discuss the diverse motivations for landscape alterations, including (but not limited to) ideologies, worldviews, religious beliefs, economics, social status or prestige, health, sanitation, and security. The authors in this volume also discuss the complex power dynamics impacting how both women and men have altered these natural landscapes, as well as the challenges of preserving these gendered landscapes.

Gendering Power Dynamics in Historic Cultural Landscapes This volume provides new perspectives on gendered cultural landscapes by expanding the analysis of power dynamics involved in altering cultural landscapes in the past and present. Most previous landscape research has analyzed social relationships or power dynamics along one dimension, such as class or race or gender (e.g., Delle 1999a; Kelso and Most 1990; Ketz et al. 2005; Leone 1984; Orser 1988, 1996; Spude 2005; Pappas 2004; Yamin and Metheny 1996). This volume provides innovative research case studies analyzing how gendered landscapes are altered due to the complex intersections of gender and other social dimensions, especially class, race, ethnicity, or religion. To date only a few authors have researched how historic landscapes were shaped by intersections of gender and racial power dynamics (e.g., Delle 2000; Venables 1980, 2000, 2004; Voss 2000; Young 2003) or by gender, class, and ethnic power dynamics (Spencer-Wood 1994a, b, 1996, 2003; Voss 2008).

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In addition, this volume expands conceptions of power dynamics beyond those prevalent in landscape archaeology and cultural geography. In historical archaeology the prevalent ungendered dualistic model of domination versus resistance (e.g., Delle 1999a; Paynter and McGuire 1991) has recently been expanded to include covert resistance of various types (e.g., Symonds 1999), resistant accommodation (Garman 1998), and collusion combined with resistance (Delle 1999b). However, these complexities have been developed within the ungendered domination and resistance framework and analyze ungendered responses to class domination expressed in landscapes. More recent frameworks in historical archaeology involve power dynamics reflected in landscapes, such as “landscapes of conflict” and “landscapes of power” (Shackel 2003). “Landscapes of power” and “landscapes and power” earlier became analytic frameworks in cultural and political geographies (Rajaram and Grundy-Warr 2008; Zukin 1993), as well as in studies of landscape representations in pictures and texts (Mitchell 2002). However, these studies predominantly analyze power dynamics based on class and race, not gender. None of these frameworks for analyzing power dynamics in landscapes have led to the development of an alternative framework for analyzing gender power dynamics expressed in cultural landscapes. In contrast to previous volumes that have focused on hierarchical power dynamics such as domination and resistance that divide social groups (Mrozowski, Delle, and Paynter 2000) and their landscapes (Mayne and Murray 2001), this volume builds on Shared Spaces and Divided Places (Rotman and Savulis 2003) by considering cooperative as well as hierarchical powers in cultural landscapes. This volume goes further in researching a greater diversity of powers and emphasizes cooperative powers that people use to cross social spatial boundaries and bring people together, in the context of a heterarchy of powers. Chapters in this volume found evidence of a great diversity of gendered powers expressed in landscapes, from authority, prestige, status (Sunseri, Baugher); competition, (Greenwood, Sunseri); battles (W.S. McBride); struggles (Baugher); resistance (Battle-Baptiste); influence (Battle-Baptiste, Delle and Levine); and negotiations (Hardesty, Metheny); to gender equality, complementarity, mutual dependency and partnerships (Venables, Allen, Starbuck and Dennis, and K. McBride). Most chapters analyze forms of cooperation among people shaping cultural landscapes to materially construct identity and community. Three chapters develop alternative heterarchical models of the diversity, complexity, and fluidity in gender power dynamics within social networks on cultural landscapes (Hardesty, two chapters by Spencer-Wood).

Expanding Landscape Archaeology into the Present This volume brings power issues into the present through analyses of current preservation issues involving both power struggles and cooperation. Power dynamics among modern social groups affect which landscapes are remembered and interpreted to the public and which ones are concealed (Shackel 2001). Are the historic

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gender power dynamics associated with these landscape case studies being concealed or revealed by modern site uses? To meet the increasing professional focus on public archaeology, each author addresses the extent of preservation and public interpretation of a distinctive kind of gendered landscape. Cooperative powers among social groups have the greatest “power to” create change, whether in the past or in the present (Spencer-Wood’s commentary, this volume). Some of the case studies demonstrate how archaeologists can become active participants in the preservation of these gendered landscapes. This volume expands the interdisciplinary nature of cultural landscape studies to include the archaeology of gendered landscapes and preservation perspectives. Landscape architects often are not concerned with preserving or integrating historic landscapes within their contemporary landscape designs. Cultural landscapes are too often put into the same category as historically designed landscapes (such as George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore estate designed by Frederick Law Olmsted) in that these sites are regarded as the domain of historic preservationists. However, “ordinary people” rather than professional landscape architects created most cultural landscapes, including the gendered landscapes described in this book. It is not only landscape architects who limit their view of these gendered landscapes. Architectural preservationists often look at the building devoid of its landscape setting; they will designate a building for the National Register but not its site – only the footprint of the building. For people visiting historic house museums, the building may be appropriately restored but not the landscape. Even historical archaeologists often limit their analyses to the past and do not link historic landscapes with their present use. Archaeologists often consider their work completed when their analysis of the site is written. How the site is preserved and interpreted (or forgotten) is often not part of the scope of an archaeology project. This volume is unique in considering the importance of preserving and/or interpreting past landscapes within their current use. This volume links the past and the present by addressing issues in the preservation of archaeologically recovered gendered landscapes. This goal is important in raising the awareness of landscape architects, historic preservationists, and museum educators, as well as historical archaeologists concerning the need to preserve cultural landscapes, especially of ethnic and racial minority groups, from destruction by the modern dominant culture.

Volume Organization The chapters in this gendered landscape volume use the term “landscape” as a shorthand for cultural landscape because these studies are not analyzing natural landscapes. The volume is organized into topical sections that increase the visibility of marginalized social groups on neglected site landscapes. The book organization flows from analyzing gender power dynamics in Native American landscapes, to the expression of gender power dynamics within and between races on African-American cultural landscapes, and the intersections of gender power

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dynamics with class, ethnicity, race, age, and/or religion in multi-ethnic/racial community landscapes (Fig. 1.1). Within this framework the next section focuses on gender and class or ethnic power dynamics shaping landscapes of religious communities and houses of worship. The last section examines how mining town landscapes were shaped by intersecting gender, class, and ethnic or racial power dynamics that included the influence of women in building churches, schools, and other public institutions. The Native American section provides an in-depth view of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) gendered landscapes. The Six Nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora) share a similar worldview and religion. In Chapter 2, Robert Venables discusses their egalitarian perspectives on gender power dynamics in relation to the cultural landscape. Some of the 19th-century feminists, such as Matilda Jocelyn Gage, were aware of the gender equality within Iroquois society (Wagner 1996, 1998). The Iroquois separation of their physical landscape into male and female zones (the Clearings and the Woods) is a reflection of their cooperative gendered worldview and is reinforced through religion and rituals. Venables discusses the role of religion, rituals, and ceremonies in maintaining these gendered landscapes. Finally, he discusses how modern Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) are struggling to maintain their ancestral worldview against the encroachments of modern western worldviews and landscapes. Kathleen Allen’s chapter (Chapter 3) moves from the macroscale of the Haudenosaunee region to the microscale of one Cayuga village, Parker Farm. Her archaeological study analyzes the landscape segregation of men’s and women’s economic activities and power dynamics, at a household level both inside and outside of a village longhouse. This chapter corrects the previous neglect (by archaeologists) of women’s domestic activities in macroscale landscape research, which has led to an under-representation of the importance of women’s activities in culture change. Allen discusses the importance of their heritage to contemporary Cayuga Indians who visit archaeological excavations of Cayuga sites. Finally, Allen describes how archaeologists have worked with current landowners to protect Cayuga historic cultural landscapes. In the African-American section Whitney Battle-Baptiste (Chapter 4) analyzes gender power dynamics on historic cultural landscapes of slavery. She analyzes the swept yards in the slave quarters as an act of resistance by female slaves on Andrew Jackson’s plantation the Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee. Both men and women used the yards for diverse activities but there was a common spiritual approach and ritual of shared power involved in the maintenance of the swept yards. Battle-Baptiste, like Venables, explores the importance of spirituality and worldview and how it impacted the way non-western people defined and used their gendered landscapes. Battle-Baptiste analyzes African worldviews and the rituals of sweeping the yards as necessary for the maintenance of encoded practices in which power was secreted. This chapter is unusual among studies of historic plantation landscapes in focusing on gender power dynamics within the slave quarters’ landscape, instead of the typical focus on racial power dynamics between slaves and white overseers on

Fig. 1.1 A map of the United States showing the locations of the case studies discussed in this book (Map illustration by Hans Klein-Kewett).

8 S.M. Spencer-Wood and S. Baugher

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the plantation landscape. This research has led to new interpretations of the slave quarters to tourists visiting the Hermitage plantation. While a couple of historical archaeologists have analyzed gendered power dynamics in plantation landscapes (Delle 2000; Young 2003), Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 deal with African-American gendered landscapes during and after emancipation. In Chapter 5, W. Stephen McBride studies the cultural landscape constructed and used by African-American women and children at Camp Nelson, Kentucky. In 1864, hundreds of escaped slaves, including many families, fled to Camp Nelson. The men were emancipated by enlistment in the Union Army, but their accompanying families and friends were not. The women engaged in economic activities at the fort such as cooking, sewing, laundry, and tool repair. However, white officers were determined to remove the women and children and six months later had them ejected from the camp in the middle of winter, resulting in many deaths. This created a national scandal with abolitionists protesting the cruel exile and abandonment of women and children. This led to the creation of the “Home for Colored Refugees” at Camp Nelson. The women and children returned and were freed in 1865. This chapter highlights the cooperative power shared by African-American women and men, in contrast to the intersection of race, class, and gendered power struggles altering the Civil War camp landscape. The archaeological excavation of the African-American women and children’s camp has had a major impact on the interpretation of Camp Nelson to the public. In Chapter 6, James Delle and Mary Ann Levine analyze power dynamics shaping a gendered landscape in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They excavated the increasing amount of property owned through time by Lydia Hamilton Smith, the first free African-American woman to own property in Lancaster, who was a conductor on the underground railroad, and the housekeeper of Thaddeus Stevens, an abolitionist and leading congressman during the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. Smith owned her own house, which was on the same lot as Congressman Stevens’ home. In an extraordinary inversion of traditional gender and racial power inequalities, Smith purchased all of Steven’s property after his death, using the large sum that he willed her. She also bought property in Philadelphia and in Washington DC, and became relatively wealthy renting the houses of these properties, often to white immigrant widows with children. Smith operated a boarding house in what had been Stevens’ house. The house’s landscape was transformed from the status of property of an elite and powerful male politician to a cultural landscape serving the needs of marginalized women and children. This chapter explores cooperative powers that crossed lines of race, class, and gender separating Ms. Smith and Congressman Stevens, followed by Ms. Smith’s leadership in using the wealth she had gained to assist lower-class women with their housing needs. Delle and Levine end with a discussion of the preservation and interpretation of an archaeologically excavated landscape feature, a cistern probably used to hide fugitive slaves, as part of a modern convention center/hotel/museum complex constructed on the site. The next section addresses the increasingly complex landscape power dynamics due to intersections of gender with class and mixed ethnic and/or racial communities. Multi-ethnic or racial communities included groups that were considered

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separate races in the past, although we now consider them as separate ethnic groups (Orser 2007). In addition, different cultures or ethnicities are discussed that existed within groups that were historically considered as races. This section is temporally organized, from gender power dynamics shaping a colonial mixed Spanish-Indian settlement landscape; to gender, class, racial and ethnic power dynamics shaping the community landscape of a large complex charitable institution; and ending with intersecting gender, ethnic, class, and religious power dynamics involved in the Jewish diaspora of historic Jewish communities and charitable institutions spreading across Boston’s urban and suburban landscapes. In Chapter 7, Jun Sunseri analyzes the gendered landscape of the Indo-Hispano colonial village site of Casitas Viejas in the Rito Colorado Valley of Northern New Mexico. The complexities of pluralistic frontier life, as reflected in the material record, challenge the relevancy of modern Anglo labels such as Hispanic or Indian. Members of the modern descendant community acknowledge a heritage of not only Native Americans and Spanish colonists of multiple casta designations, but also specifically Genizaros (Indian captives raised in Spanish households). The colonial land grant was a masculinized arrangement between the all-male administrative officials, military officers, and community leaders, who were required to construct a fortified plaza and irrigation ditch systems. However, village women were instrumental in planning the village and managing its operations for a significant proportion of its occupation. Often, men left the village for military campaigns against regional nomadic Indian groups, to engage in reciprocal captive raiding and rescue operations. The women of Casitas Viejas structured the layout and operation of the village through household industries and scheduling of ritual processions. Furthermore, in this intense period of captive raiding and trading along the northern frontier, men’s control of women and their labor were pivotal in masculine competition and prestige. Today, the descendant Indo-Hispano community is interested in mobilizing their connections to Casitas Viejas, via the archaeology, in current conflicts surrounding land and water use that confront many Northern New Mexico land grant communities. In Chapter 8, Sherene Baugher analyzes complex intersections between gender and class power dynamics on the landscape of a well-endowed, private charitable institution for aged and injured sailors in Staten Island, New York. The grand buildings and landscape looked more like an elite resort than an almshouse complex. Sailors’ Snug Harbor housed between 400 and 800 retired seamen including ship captains, other officers, and ordinary sailors who were primarily Euro-American, with a small African-American minority. The cultural landscape included spaces defined by gender, occupation, and economics. The single female employees lived together in the Matron’s Cottage (which was actually a large residential building), and the retired seamen lived in elegant dormitories. Both men and women were provided with plentiful food and amenities in their homes such as big bedrooms with large windows, indoor plumbing, water closets, and sewer lines. The archaeological excavations also revealed a landscape that reflected the power dynamics between middle class employees as well as the power struggles between the institution’s director and the retired seamen. Finally, Baugher discusses challenges to

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landscape preservation caused by piecemeal development and the lack of a unified master plan to retain historic aspects of the grounds while transforming them into a cultural center. In Chapter 9, Suzanne Spencer-Wood analyzes how complex power dynamics at the intersections of gender, ethnicity, class, and religion shaped changes in Jewish institutional landscapes involved in the historic diaspora of Jewish communities over Boston’s cultural landscape. A feminist theoretical approach is particularly relevant because variation in gender relations and power dynamics was at the heart of the development of diverse Jewish sects involving different degrees of adoption of Protestant practices by Jews of different ethnic groups and classes. The analysis uses Spencer-Wood’s framework of a heterarchy of powers connected with multiple intersecting identities, which is explicated in her commentary chapter. The variety and spatial network among Jewish institutional landscapes expressed the varying amount of gender, ethnic, class, and age segregation among different groups of Jews. Jewish-American identities developed as Jewish gender ideologies, identities, and power dynamics fluidly changed, expressed in landscapes of synagogues and charitable institutions. Finally, Spencer-Wood discusses how the gendered landscape of the last surviving Orthodox synagogue was preserved through cooperation among several preservation organizations and local Jewish and community organizations. The next section focuses further on the intersection of gender and religious power dynamics that were introduced in Chapter 9. This section includes chapters on the symbolism of gendered landscapes of religious communities and houses of worship constructed by and for marginalized social groups. In this section Chapters 10 and 11 analyze gender power dynamics in Shaker religious communities, which were unusual in admitting African-Americans as well as whites to equal membership in the community, despite some negative reactions in the dominant culture. Chapter 12 analyzes how Chinese immigrants in California sought to maintain their religion, culture, and identity while surrounded by a Euro-American community. Chapter 10 and 11 focus on a specific type of religious community – gendered Shaker landscapes. David Starbuck and Paula Dennis (Chapter 10) provide a broad overview of Shaker life and ideals and then focus on the egalitarian gender power dynamics in the Shaker community landscape of Canterbury Village in New Hampshire. In the 19th century, the Shakers sought to achieve a separation from worldly concerns in their closed communities. The Shakers had an ideal of strict gender segregation of their cultural landscape – there clearly were men’s spaces and women’s spaces. Starbuck and Dennis analyze the actual complexity involved in the interdependence created between women’s and men’s separate roles, leading women to transgress spaces identified with men in order to clean them. Then the discussion turns to issues of preservation balanced by reconstruction and access for tourists, and the impacts of local development, including a noisy speedway impeding the portrayal of quiet rural Shaker lifeways. In Chapter 11, Kim McBride analyzes the gendered landscape of a Shaker community in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, which was known for its independence and its strong male and female leaders. McBride compares aspects of ideology and

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power in gendered spaces at Pleasant Hill to those in traditional Shaker communities. She especially explores the landscape alterations probably created by men for the women’s laundry building, called a washhouse, to channel running water into the building and mechanize the clothes washing process, which greatly facilitated a major aspect of women’s work. The construction and use of the washhouse and its landscape express cooperative powers between the different gendered tasks of men and women. Finally, McBride discusses the powers of cooperation among modern groups to overcome hurdles to preserving the site, and issues of material authenticity in interpretation of the site versus the safety needs of modern visitors. In Chapter 12, Roberta Greenwood discusses the landscape of a Chinese immigrant community in Cambria, California. Because of restrictive U.S. immigration policies in the late 19th and early 20th century, it was difficult for Chinese women to immigrate to the United States. Therefore, many Chinese communities in the west were primarily male communities. Archaeological excavations revealed secular and sacred spaces of these men in Cambria and in their work locations on the California coast. The Chinese men who gathered seaweed or abalone off the rocks lived in solitary isolation along the coast, but came together occasionally in a small community on land owned by a white woman. The men cooperatively erected their own temple so that they could socialize and worship in their new land. The landscape of the temple included the traditional tree of heaven, an exotic planting that reminded them of their homeland. Greenwood links the past and the present in her discussion of cooperative efforts to preserve the temple and interpret the historic significance of this site to the public. The final section focuses on intersecting gender, class, ethnic or racial power dynamics in mining landscapes. In Chapter 13, Donald Hardesty uses a heterarchical model of power networks involving diverse situational, changing, and constantly negotiated interactions on mining landscapes in the far west. Men cooperatively cut, shaped, and altered the landscapes of the mines and they also transformed the surrounding natural landscape for cultural uses. But the landscapes were more than the mines – they also included small residential camps or company towns. Hardesty analyzes how intersecting gender, class, and racial power dynamics shaped the construction and use of mining landscapes, from kinds and arrangements of structures in mining camps and towns to relationships among towns in a region, and consumer choice (Spencer-Wood 1987b) linkages to the world system landscape. Hardesty further analyzes how modern mining and tourism affect the preservation and interpretation of the gendered mining landscapes. In Chapter 14, Karen Metheny examines a coal mining community in Pennsylvania. She analyzes the importance of women as well as men in cooperatively creating a community out of the paternalistic company town within a corporate industrial landscape. Within the community Metheny analyzes divisions of status based on age, sex, ethnicity, religion, and economics. While men altered the landscape of the mines, women helped shape the landscape of the neighborhoods. Families cooperated to survive by creating gardens in their company yards, altering their company houses, and using health services provided by the company.

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The company town landscape expresses gender power dynamics embedded in class and ethnic power dynamics. The future of the archaeological site is endangered by capitalism, since strip mining has destroyed half of the historic company town. The volume is brought together at the end in a commentary by Suzanne SpencerWood that discusses how chapters in this gendered landscape volume implicitly or explicitly exemplify her heterarchical theoretical framework of complex and fluid power dynamics, due to the intersections of gender, class, race, religion, and other social dimensions of identity. She analyzes evidence presented in the book chapters supporting her feminist heterarchical model of powers that includes not only domination and resistance, but also cooperative “powers with” other individuals and social groups in creating “powers to” alter historic landscapes in the past and the present. Taken as a whole this volume brings new perspectives to the archaeological analysis of gendered landscapes. The scope of the field of landscape archaeology is expanded by this volume to include a variety of vernacular gendered landscapes that had not been previously considered as landscape archaeology. These vernacular gendered landscapes are particularly important for archaeologists to analyze because minorities rather than the dominant social group created them. Minorities are the groups that develop alternative gender ideologies, identities, relationships and power dynamics, leading to changes in dominant group ways of shaping landscapes. If we are to understand how gendered landscapes changed historically, it is imperative to research how women and men in minority groups created their gendered landscapes, and how these ideas spread and came to be adopted as normative in the culture as a whole, thereby transforming American gendered landscapes.

References Alanen, Arnold R. and Robert Z. Melnick (eds.) 2000 Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America. John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Maryland. Baugher, Sherene 2001 “Visible Charity: The Archaeology, Material Culture, and Landscape Design of New York City’s Municipal Almshouse Complex, 1736–1797.” International Journal for Historical Archaeology, 5(2): 175–202. Casella, Eleanor Conlin 2001 To Watch or Restrain: Female Convict Prisons in 19th-Century Tasmania. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5(1): 45–72. 2007

The Archaeology of Institutional Confinement. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Cassell, Mark S. (ed.) 2005 Landscapes of Industrial Labor. Historical Archaeology 39(3). COED Compact Oxford English Dictionary 1971 Compact Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, New York.

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De Cunzo, Lu Ann 2001 On Reforming the “Fallen” and Beyond: Transforming Continuity at the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1845-1916. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5(1): 19–43. Delle, James A. 1999a Landscapes of Class Negotiation on Coffee Plantations in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, 1790–1850. Historical Archaeology 33(1): 136–59. 1999b “A Good and Easy Speculation”: Spatial Conflict, Collusion and Resistance in Late Sixteenth-Century Munster, Ireland. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3(1): 11–35. 2000 Gender, Power, and Space: Negotiating Social Relations under Slavery on Coffee Plantations in Jamaica 1790–1834. In Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender, edited by J. A. Delle, S. A. Mrozowski, and R. Paynter, pp: 168–205. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Fesler, Garrett R. 2004. Living Arrangements among Enslaved Women and Men at an Early-Eighteenth-Century Virginia Quartering Site. In Engendering African American Archaeology: A Southern Perspective, edited by J. E. Galle and A. L. Young, pp: 177–237. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Garman, J.C. 1998 Rethinking “Resistant Accommodation”: Toward an Archaeology of African-American Lives in Southern New England, 1638–1800. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 2(2): 133–160. Groth, Paul and Todd W. Bressi (eds.) 1997 Understanding Ordinary Landscapes. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. Hardesty, Donald L. 1994 Class, Gender Strategies, and Material Culture in the Mining West. In Those ‘Of Little Note’: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical Archaeology, edited by E. M. Scott, pp: 129–149. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Hayden, Dolores 1997 The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Huataniemi, Susan I. and Deborah L. Rotman 2003 To the Hogs or to the House? Municipal Water and Gender Relations at the Moors Site in Deerfield, Massachusetts. In Shared Spaces and Divided Places: Material Dimensions of Gender relations and the American Historical Landscape, edited by D. L. Rotman and E. Savulis, pp: 135–160. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Hudgins, Carter L. 1990 Robert ‘King’ Carter and the Landscape of Tidewater, Virginia in the Eighteenth Century. In Earth Patterns: Essays in Landscape Archaeology, edited by W. M. Kelso and R. Most, pp: 59–70. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Jackson, John Brinckerhoff 1984 Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. James, P.E. and G. Martin 1981 All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas. John Wiley and Sons, New York, New York. Kelso, Gerald K. 1996 Pollen Analysis in Urban Historical Landscape Research. In Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, edited by L. A. De Cunzo and B. L. Herman, pp: 259–85. Winterthur Museum and University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.

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Kelso, Willliam M. 1995 Archaeology at Monticello. Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Charlottesville, Virginia. Kelso, William M. and R. Most (eds.) 1990 Earth Patterns: Essays in Landscape Archaeology. University Press of Virginia, Charlotte. Ketz, Anne K., E.J. Abel, and A.J. Schmidt 2005 Public Image and Private Reality: An Analysis of Differentiation in a Nineteenth-Century St. Paul Bordello. Historical Archaeology 39(1): 74–88. Leone, Mark P. 1984 Interpreting Ideology in Historical Archaeology: The William Paca Garden in Annapolis, Maryland. In Ideology, Power and Prehistory, edited by D. Miller and C. Tilley, pp: 25–35. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Luccketti, Nicholas 1990 Archaeological Excavations at Bacon’s Castle, Surrey County, Virginia. In Earth Patterns: Essays in Landscape Archaeology, edited by W. M. Kelso and R. Most, pp: 23–42. University Press of Virginia, Charlotte. Mayne, Alan and Tim Murray (eds.) 2001 The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland. Cambridge University Press, New York, New York. Mitchell, W. J. Thomas, (ed.) 2002 Landscape and Power: Space, Place and Landscape. 2nd Edition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. Morris, William, (ed.) 1969 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc, New York. Mrozowski, Stephen A. and Mary C. Beaudry 1990 Archaeology and the Landscape of Corporate Ideology. In Earth Patterns: Essays in Landscape Archaeology, edited by W. M. Kelso and R. Most, pp: 189–208, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville. Mrozowski, Stephen A, James A. Delle and Robert Paynter (eds.) 2000 Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. McKee, Larry 1996 The Archaeology of Rachel’s Garden. In Landscape Archaeology: Reading and Interpreting the American Historical Landscape, edited by R. Yamin and K. Metheny, pp: 70–91. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Metheny, Karen Bescherer, Judson Kratzer, Anne Elizabeth Yentsch, Conrad M. Goodwin 1996 Method in Landscape Archaeology: Research Strategies in a Historic New Jersey Garden. In Landscape Archaeology: Reading and Interpreting the American Historical Landscape, edited by R. Yamin and K. Metheny, pp: 6–32. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Noble, Allen G. (ed.) 1992 To Build in a New Land: Ethnic Landscapes in North America. John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Maryland. Orser, Charles E., Jr. 1988 Toward a Theory of Power for Historical Archaeology: Plantations and Space. In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States, edited by M. P. Leone, and P. B. Potter, Jr., pp: 313–344. Smithsonian Institutions Press, Washington, D.C.

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2007 The Archaeology of Race and Racialization in Historic America. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Pappas, Efstathios I. 2004 Fictive Kin in the Mountains: The Paternalistic Metaphor and Households in a California Logging Camp. In Household Chores and Household Choices: Theorizing the Domestic Sphere in Historical Archaeology, edited by K. S. Barile and J. C. Brandon, pp: 159–179. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Paynter, Robert and Randall H. McGuire 1991 The Archaeology of Inequality: Material Culture, Domination and Resistance. In The Archaeology of Inequality, edited by J. A. Delle, S. A. Mrozowski, and R. Paynter, pp: 1–27. Basil Blackwell, London, UK. Piddock, Susan 2001 “An Irregular and Inconvenient Pile of Buildings”: The Destitute Asylum of Adelaide, South Australia and the English Workhouse. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5(1): 73–96. Pogue, Dennis J. 1996 Giant in the Earth: George Washington, Landscape Designer. In Landscape Archaeology: Reading and Interpreting the American Historical Landscape, edited by R. Yamin and K. Metheny, pp: 52–69. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Rajaram, Prem K. and Carl Grundy-Warr, (eds.) 2008 Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politica at Territory’s Edge. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis-St. Paul. Rotman, Deborah L. and Ellen-Rose Savulis (eds.) 2003 Shared Spaces and Divided Places: Material Dimensions of Gender Relations and the American Historical Landscape. The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Sandweiss, Eric 1996 Mind Reading the Urban Landscape: An Approach to the History of American Cities. In Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, edited by L. A. De Cunzo and B. L. Herman, pp: 319–359. Winterthur Museum and University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Shackel Paul A. (ed.) 2001 Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. 2003

Remembering Landscapes of Conflict. Historical Archaeology 37(3).

Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. 1987a A Survey of Domestic Reform Movement Sites in Boston and Cambridge, c. 1865–1905. Historical Archaeology 21(2): 7–36. 1987b

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1994a Turn of the Century Women’s Organizations, Urban Design, and the Origin of the American Playground Movement. Landscape Journal 13(2): 125–138. 1994b Diversity and Nineteenth Century Domestic Reform: Relationships Among Classes and Ethnic Groups. In Those of Little Note: Gender, Race and Class in Historical Archaeology, edited by E. M. Scott, pp: 175–208. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 1996 Feminist Historical Archaeology and the Transformation of American Culture by Domestic Reform Movements, 1840–1925. In Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture,

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edited by L. A. De Cunzo and B. L. Herman, pp: 397–446. Winterthur Museum and University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. 1999 The formation of Ethnic-American Identities: Jewish Communities in Boston. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge, edited by P. P. A. Funari, M. Hall and S. Jones, pp: 284–307. Routledge, London, UK. 2003 Gendering the Creation of Green Urban Landscapes in America at the Turn of the Century. In Shared Spaces and Divided Places: Material Dimensions of Gender Relations and the American Historical Landscape, edited by D. L. Rotman and E. Savulis, pp: 24–61. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. 2006 A Feminist Theoretical Approach to the Historical Archaeology of Utopian Communities. Historical Archaeology 40(1): 152–185. 2009 A Feminist Approach to European Ideologies of Poverty and the Institutionalization of the Poor in Falmouth, Massachusetts. In The Archaeology of Institutional Life, edited by A. M. Beisaw and J. G. Gibb, pp: 117–136. The University of Albama Press, Tuscaloosa. Spude, Catherine H. 2005 Brothels and Saloons: An Archaeology of Gender in the American West. Historical Archaeology 29(1): 89–106. Stilgoe, John R. 1982 Common Landscape of America, 1580 to 1845. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. Symonds, J. 1999 Toiling in the Vale of Tears: Everyday Life and Resistance in South Ulster, Outer Hebrides 1760–1860. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3(2): 101–122. VanBueren, Thad (ed.) 2006a Daring Experiments: Issues and Insights about Utopian Communities. Historical Archaeology 40(1) 1–185. 2006b Between Vision and Practice: Archaeological Perspectives on the Llano del Rio Cooperative. Historical Archaeology 40 (1):133–152. Van Wormer, Heather M. 2006 The Ties that Bind: Ideology, Material Culture, and the Utopian Ideal. Historical Archaeology 40 (1):37–57. Venables, Robert W. 1980 Iroquois Environments and “We the People of the United States”: Gemeinschaft and Gesellshaft in the Apposition of Iroquois, Federal, and New York Sovereignties. In American Indian Environments: Ecological Issues in Native American History, edited by C. Vecsey and R. W. Venables, pp: 81–127. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. 2000 Different Trees in a Different Forest: The Clearings, the Woods, and the Haudenosaunee Perception of the Treaty of Canandaigua. In Treaty of Canandaigua: 200 Years of Treaty Relations Between the Iroquois Confederacy and the United States, edited by G. P. Jemison and A. M. Schein, pp: 96–119. Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, New Mexico. 2004 American Indian History: Five Centuries of Conflict & Coexistence, Vol. I Conquest of a Continent. Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Voss, Barbara L. 2000 Colonial Sex: Archaeology, Structured Space, and Sexuality in Alta California’s SpanishColonial Missions. In Archaeologies of Sexuality, edited by R. A. Schmidt, and B. L. Voss, pp: 35–62. Routledge, London. 2008 The Archaeology of Ethnogenesis: Race and Sexuality in Colonial San Francisco. University of California Press, Berkeley. Wagner, Sally Roesch 1996 The Untold Story of the Iroquois Influence on the Early Feminists. Sky Carrier Press, Aberdeen, South Dakota. 1998

Matilda Joslyn Gage: She Who Holds the Sky. Sky Carrier Press, Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Weber, Carmen A. 1996 The Greenhouse Effect: Gender-Related Traditions in Eighteenth-Century Gardening. In Landscape Archaeology: Reading and Interpreting the American Historical Landscape, edited by R. Yamin and K. B. Metheny, pp: 32–52. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Yamin, Rebecca and Karen B. Metheny (eds.) 1996 Landscape Archaeology: Reading and Interpreting the American Historical Landscape. The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Young, Amy 2003 Gender and Landscape: A View from the Plantation Slave Community. In Shared Spaces and Divided Places: Material Dimensions of Gender Relations and the American Historical Landscape, edited by Deborah L. Rotman and Ellen-Rose Savulis, pp: 104–134. The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Zierden, Martha A. 1996 The Urban Landscape, the Work Yard, and Archaeological Site Formation Processes in Charleston, South Carolina. In Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, edited by Lu Ann De Cunzo and Bernard L. Herman, pp: 285–319. Winterthur Museum and University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Zukin, Sharon 1993 Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Part I

Gendering Native American Landscapes

Chapter 2

The Clearings and The Woods: The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Landscape – Gendered and Balanced Robert W. Venables

You who are wise must know, that different Nations have different Conceptions. Canasatego A Haudenosaunee Spokesman addressing English Colonial Officials in 1744 Recorded by Benjamin Franklin1 The way a society divides up the land says a great deal about the way the society divides up itself. Lois Levitan, Center for the Environment, Cornell University, 1998

Introduction: The Haudenosaunee and Their Landscape The core homeland of the Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois, stretches east to west across what is now upstate New York State (Fig. 2.1). Haudenosaunee (“Ho-deh-no-show -knee”) means “People of the Longhouse” (Powless 2000:14). “Iroquois” was originally a pejorative used by Algonquian Indian enemies of the Haudenosaunee meaning “real adders” – that is, really nasty killers (Hewitt 1969a:I, 617).2 During the colonial period, however, the word “Iroquois” was used by the allies of the Haudenosaunee, the English, and even by the Haudenosaunee themselves, so that today the Haudenosaunee often refer to themselves as “Iroquois.” The

R.W. Venables (B) Retired, Department of Landscape Architecture, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA e-mail: [email protected] 1 Benjamin

Franklin, “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America [1783],” (1987: 970).

2 The idea that the word “Iroquois” has its origin in the language of Basque fishermen off Canada is

put forward by P. Bakker, “A Basque Etymology for the Word ‘Iroquois’” in Man in the Northeast Volume 40 (1990), 89–93. This author is not convinced.

S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_2,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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Fig. 2.1 Within this core homeland of the Haudenosaunee, the Confederacy’s five founding nations united as early as AD 1142. This original map by Fredricka René Davis includes her well-researched and carefully proportioned rendering of a typical longhouse, 20 feet wide and 200 feet long

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Haudenosaunee confederacy was founded as early as AD 1142 by the interactions of all the Haudenosaunee people. They ended a horrific civil war by responding to the spiritually-inspired messages of Deganawidah, a young man who is also known as “The Peacemaker”; Hayonhwatha (Hiawatha), an elderly man; Jigonhsasee, a powerful woman; and Tadadaho, a powerful but corrupt male leader whose mind was changed by the teachings of The Peacemaker (Wallace 1994).3 The Haudenosaunee confederacy originally consisted of five nations: from east to west, the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas. Each of these people speaks a slightly different language within a language family now known as “Iroquoian” (Lounsbury 1978:334–343). (The degrees of differences are similar to those between French, Italian, and Spanish within the Romance language family.) To reinforce their population, the Haudenosaunee adopted individuals from other Indian nations and even adopted whole nations such as the Tuscaroras. Because the English colonists referred to the Tuscaroras as the sixth nation of the Confederacy, the Haudenosaunee were widely known as “The Six Nations” (Morgan 1995:23; Bond 1952:94–95; Garratt 1985:81–86). The Haudenosaunee – “People of the Longhouse” – originally lived in multifamily longhouses that varied in size. One of the longest longhouses was built by the Onondagas in one of their towns that archaeologists have named the Howlett Hill Site. This town was about six miles southwest of present-day Syracuse. This Onondaga longhouse measured 334 feet long and 23 feet wide and was occupied by the Onondagas between AD 1380 and 1400. (Tuck 1971:77–82; Nabokov and Eston 1989:78–79, 82). Typical longhouses sheltered dozens of people and were constructed of arched saplings, poles, and large bark sheets. In 1743, John Bartram visited the Onondagas and described the longhouse he stayed in: about 80 feet long, and 17 broad, the common [center] passage 6 feet wide; and the apartments on each side, 5 feet, raised a foot above the passage by a long sapling hewed square, and fitted with joints that go from it to the back of the house; on these joists they lay large pieces of bark, and on extraordinary occasions spread matts made of rushes, this favour we had; on these [raised] floors they set or lye down every one as he will (Bartram 1966:40–41).

Since the Haudenosaunee are a centuries-old confederacy of different Indian nations, the multifamily longhouse is a fitting symbol. “Haudenosaunee” is a reference both to the physical longhouse and to the geopolitical symbol used by the Haudenosaunee to define their original territory. The Mohawks live along the Mohawk River Valley and are known as the Keepers of the Eastern Door. To the west of the Mohawks are the Oneidas. In the center, the Onondagas preside over the confederacy “capital” where the Grand Council, representing all the nations of the confederacy, meets. The Cayugas reside west of the Onondagas. Finally, the Senecas are the Keepers of the Western Door (Morgan 1995).

3 The white roots refer to the teachings that reach out in all four directions from the Tree of Peace, planted by the Peacemaker as a symbol of the Confederacy.

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The intention of this chapter is to present Haudenosaunee concepts of a gendered landscape that will enrich the professional work of archaeologists, landscape architects, and preservationists. However, it is important to stress that while some Haudenosaunee concepts may be similar to those held by other Indian nations, each “First Nation” in the Americas holds its own unique worldview.

From Seascape to Landscape: The Haudenosaunee Gendered Origin Account of the World The entire Haudenosaunee landscape is gendered. This is because the whole Haudenosaunee worldview is gendered, beginning with the origin account (what the West would term Genesis). This origin account is too complex to describe in a chapter that focuses on the physical landscape. But briefly stated, the Haudenosaunee origin account begins in a Sky World above this earth. Spiritual beings, both female and male, live in this Sky World. A male known as “Taronhiawakon” (“Holder of the Heavens”) is married to “Iotsitsisen” (“Mature Flower”). Pregnant, she falls from the Sky World down toward a primal sea where there is no land. Canadian Geese break her fall, interlocking their wings to form a lattice of support. A great turtle agrees to allow Iotsitsisen to take refuge upon his back (Fig. 2.2). The turtle knew that muck lay at the sea bottom, and so Beaver, Otter, and Pickerel each try to reach the bottom to bring up some of the mud. Each of them dies. The little Muskrat then tries, and

Fig. 2.2 Sky Woman – Iotsitsisen (Mature Flower) – atop the turtle’s back. By John Kahionhes Fadden (Mohawk)

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although he also dies, he had managed to reach the sea bottom before drowning. When his tiny body floats to the surface, he has a bit of muck clutched in his paw. Other animals place the muck onto the turtle’s back. Iotsitsisen, who is also known as “Sky Woman,” begins to sing and to dance. As she dances upon the turtle’s back, both the muck and the turtle expand. The earth that Sky Woman magically creates becomes known as Mother Earth. And because Mother Earth is atop the great turtle, Sky Woman gives the new land the name “Turtle Island.” Sky Woman gives birth to a daughter, “Tekawerahkwa” (“Gusts of Wind”). The daughter is impregnated by the West Wind, and she gives birth to twin sons, “Okwiraseh” (“Sapling”) and “Tawiskaron” (“Flint”). In an extremely complex series of events, Sky Woman, her husband “Taronhiawakon” (“Holder of the Heavens”), her daughter, and the twins all contribute to the transformation of the world. Thus today’s landscape, according to the Haudenosaunee, is not a creation from a void undertaken by a single spiritual force. Instead, it is the transformation of a preexisting seascape into a landscape. This transformation is accomplished by spiritual forces who cooperate with existing mortals such as the geese, fish, and turtles. And, as a part of this transformation of the world, Okwiraseh (“Sapling”), inspired by his grandfather “Taronhiawakon” (“Holder of the Heavens”), creates the human beings.4

The Longhouse and the Gendered Landscape Since the Haudenosaunee are the People of the Longhouse, the longhouse is an appropriate place to begin a description of how the physical landscape of the Haudenosaunee is gendered. Each longhouse is a gendered landscape. Each longhouse belonged to the women of one of the many “clans” that defined, and still define, extended families. Descent among the Haudenosaunee was, and still is, matrilineal (Hewitt 1990:54). Within each longhouse, everyone was related either directly or by marriage to the eldest female resident. A longhouse was entered through doors at either end – doors that were often sheltered by a smaller, roofed porch. A painted symbol of a clan was often above the door of each longhouse (van den Bogaert 1988:13; Morgan 1965:64–65). A new husband moved into the longhouse of his wife, mother-in-law, and grandmother-in-law (Tooker 1990:210–214; Shafer 1990:77–78). Let us assume the new husband is a member of the Bear Clan (his mother’s clan). His new wife is a Wolf, and so every day he passes beneath the sign of the Wolf. Imagine now a small town in present-day America in which every mailbox along every street is emblazoned with the name of the wife, not the husband, who lives in and owns each home. Quite a contrast! Now imagine entering a tall apartment building in a big American city and, in the lobby, seeing a list of apartments and a list of mailboxes that announce the names of the wives, not

4 This account is a composite of what the author has learned over the years from elders and from sources such as Parker 1989: 59–73; Fenton 1998: 34–50; and Shenandoah and George 1998: 8 and 14.

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the husbands, who live here. Finally, imagine that all these homes and apartment buildings belong to women. There is no Donald Trump. Upon entering any Haudenosaunee longhouse, everything except the personal accessories and clothing of the men belongs to the women (Schoolcraft 1975:88–89; Morgan 1985:76; Brown 1990:190). If a Haudenosaunee woman wanted to divorce her husband, she put his belongings outside the door.5 The husband had to retreat to the longhouse of his mother, where he had to explain to her exactly why another woman had thrown him out. Because the murder of a woman also eliminated future children, the crime of killing a woman by a man was regarded as twice as serious as a man killing another man. But if a woman killed a woman, the crime was regarded as even worse. Murders were usually compensated by gifts, including gifts of wampum – tubular shell beads, which were regarded as having spiritual life.6 Thus the compensation for a woman murdered by a man was twice that of a man murdered by another man, and even greater if the woman was killed by another woman. To spare a murderer of either sex, the aggrieved family received at least 10 strings of wampum. For a male murdered by another male, 10 strings of wampum; for a woman murdered by a man, 20 strings of wampum; and for a woman murdered by another woman, 30 strings of wampum (Hewitt 1990:63–64). All this may at first appear to be clear components of a matriarchy – simply the gender opposite of the Western European and American system of patriarchy. However, Haudenosaunee society is not a matriarchy, nor is it a patriarchy. Haudenosaunee society is far more intricate, because the premise is “balance.”

The Balance of All Life “Balance” is the key word in Haudenosaunee society, and in fact the whole Haudenosaunee worldview is based on balance – not “either/or.” When things go wrong, as indeed they do in any and all human societies, the answers posed by the Haudenosaunee are based on the idea of finding ways to rebalance the situation. Progress – the adaptation to new ideas – was important, but not as important as balance. In turn, balance does not work without equality, and thus equality pervades the entire Haudenosaunee worldview. The Haudenosaunee believe that all life forms, including human beings, are equal and that all life forms have equal spiritual

5 Placing the hapless husband’s belongings outside the door is an image based on personal conversations, usually spiked with humor, with Onondaga female elders, which began for this author in the spring of 1971 and continues till today. These oral traditions are supported by Morgan 1965: 66 and Brown 1990: 186–187. 6 “Wampum” is a colonial English word from the Algonquin word “wam-pum-peh-ak” meaning a white string of shell beads which are animate – that is, shell beads that are alive and thus have a living, ongoing spiritual power. White beads were most often made from periwinkle shells. Wampum also includes purple shell beads, primarily made from quahog shells (Hewitt 1969b: II, 904–909; and Beauchamp 1901: 327, 333, and 338).

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consciousness – “souls.” Oren Lyons, an Onondaga Haudenosaunee leader and a spokesman for the Haudenosaunee, noted in 1979: In our perception all life is equal, and that includes the birds, the animals, the things that grow, things that swim. All life is equal in our perception (Lyons 1980:173).

All these life forms have different functions. “Female” and “male” are only categories within the wider range of differences. Because all life forms are equal, all life forms must be equally respected, and thus the world functions through reciprocity. All beings in the world are therefore interdependent. Because differences among all beings contribute to an interdependent whole, the differences among beings are not “separate” functions. While all life forms are equal, all beings maintain different spheres of responsibility, different functions. Thus the roles of men and women were – and are – “different and equal,” not “separate but equal.” The nineteenth century-ethnologist Horatio Hale analyzed this complex interdependence of women and men, and he concluded that “the complete equality of the sexes in social estimation and influence is apparent in all the narratives of early missionaries” (Hale 1963:65). The Haudenosaunee worldview begins with the idea that each human being and every other being are exactly who the Creator intended. Every being has an equal soul; every being is equal; and every being has a divinely mandated, different function. Thus the Haudenosaunee worldview applies to all life, not just human life. Hunters thanked the spirits of the animals they hunted before they began the hunt, and they thanked the spirits of those animals after they had completed a hunt, on the premise that the animals and the humans knew that all life was dependent upon the other (Engelbrecht 2003:4–5).7 In contrast to this Haudenosaunee view of interdependent life, note that in prayers given at American Thanksgiving dinners, families give thanks to the Judaic-Christian God for the turkey but they customarily do not directly thank the turkey. The Haudenosaunee concept of interdependent life in turn depended upon the idea that prayers and ceremonies could rebalance the value of a material life with intangible, spiritual actions. This even applied to enemies, as the Haudenosaunee ended wars in condolence ceremonies during which they accepted responsibility for the pain and death they had caused the other side, and asked the other side to do the same, as both sides were being watched by the Creator (Vimont 1896–1901, XXVII, 257–259; Jennings et al. 1985:127–153). Because the Haudenosaunee worldview is incorporative and seeks to balance what is perceived to be a world inhabited by spiritually equal beings, the Haudenosaunee worldview is still evident today in their spiritual perception of the non-Indians who now occupy so much of their homelands. This view was articulated in 1979 by the late Leon Shenandoah, an Onondaga, while he was serving as the “Tadadaho” of the Haudenosaunee. The Tadadaho’s obligations include guiding the confederacy’s council of chiefs in their deliberations. Chief Shenandoah, referring to all the non-Indian human inhabitants throughout the Americas, remarked: 7 In 1743, John Bartram observed a hunter thanking the spirit of a bear he had killed (Bartram 1966: 25).

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R.W. Venables For some reason, the Creator has allowed you to stay. I don’t know why. And I don’t think you know why. But I do know that we will have to work it out together (personal communication, Geneva, New York, April 1979).

This is not to say, either in history or today, that the Haudenosaunee never made mistakes, for indeed they have and indeed they still do. But when they make mistakes, they ask different questions and pose different solutions based on their worldview – a worldview, it must be stressed, that is what the Creator intended them to follow, and not simply a human invention. This worldview is today not necessarily held by all Haudenosaunee, because many have become Christians. Especially in the nineteenth century, those who followed the traditional teachings of their ancestors were called “pagans” by most non-Indians (New York State 1889:410). The Haudenosaunee who follow the old ways, including the teachings of Handsome Lake, refer to themselves as “Longhouse.”

The Balance of The Clearings and The Woods Balance is found throughout the Haudenosaunee landscape. Haudenosaunee women were responsible for the longhouses, the towns of longhouses, and the communal agricultural fields. These areas were collectively known as “The Clearings.” Arthur C. Parker, a Seneca who was also one of the important archaeologists of the early twentieth century, described how the land was cleared of trees: Land for cornfields was cleared by girdling the trees in the spring, and allowing them to die. The next spring the underbrush was burned off. By burning off tracts in the forest large clearings were made suitable for fields and towns (Parker 1968a:21).

A similar method was recorded in 1760 by Warren Johnson, the brother of Indian Superintendent Sir William Johnson. Warren Johnson also noted that the cleared land was never more than what the Haudenosaunee needed: When clearing Land, the[y] Set fire to the Timber, & burn it to ashes, which they Scatter about on the ground; they make Charcoal of Wood; they never clear more Land than Serves for their Own Use (Johnson 1921–1965:XIII, 195).

In 1634, a Dutch colonist, Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, visited several Mohawk towns. Some of the towns were stockaded (Fig. 2.3), while others were not. Although hilltop towns provided superior defenses when compared to towns in valleys or flatlands, the presence or absence of stockades was not related to their location. Thus stockaded towns could be found in lowlands as well as on hilltops, and towns without stockades could be found both on high and low ground (van den Bogaert 1988:3–5). Van den Bogaert and other Dutch colonists referred to large towns as “casteels” – castles – evidently because of their striking appearance on the landscape, whether on hilltops or in lowlands. But the “casteels” he described were not all stockaded (van den Bogaert 1988:5, 7, 27 at fn. 17). People from towns without palisades probably took refuge in nearby fortified towns (van den Bogaert 1988:5, 7, 27 at fn. 17). Smallpox, which Van den Bogaert

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Fig. 2.3 Typical longhouses within a palisade. Note two clan symbols – Turtle and Wolf – at the entrances of two of the longhouses. A raised corn storage house (silo) is on the left. By John Kahionhes Fadden (Mohawk)

described as already devastating the Mohawk people, was another factor shaping the Haudenosaunee landscape. A dispersal of people lessened the quick spread of that disease and may explain the existence of Mohawk towns without stockades (Engelbrecht 2003:102). By the late 1600s, all the Haudenosaunee were dispersing into small satellite communities that would lessen the impact of European diseases. As matrilineages were decimated by disease, longhouses were giving way to smaller bark home called a Ganosote. By the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775, log cabins and even cabins of “hewn plank” (Hubley 1887:160) were common (Jenkins 1887:173–175). Van den Bogaert described Onekahoncka, a Mohawk town on the south bank of the Mohawk River near what is now Fultonville. Onekahoncka stood on a high hill. There were only 36 houses, row on row in the manner of streets, so that we easily could pass through. These houses are constructed and covered with the bark of trees . . . . Some are 100, 90, or 80 steps long; 22 or 23 feet high. There were also some interior doors made of split planks furnished with iron hinges. In some houses we also saw ironwork: iron chains, bolts, harrow teeth, iron hoops [and] spikes (van den Bogaert 1988:3–4 and 29 at fn. 18).

Because the Mohawks, along with the other Haudenosaunee, are a communal people, one can only wonder how the division of the longhouse interiors by doors with iron hinges might have altered the matrilineal dynamics of the longhouse and the town. To the west of Onekahoncka, Van den Bogaert described another town, also on the south bank of the Mohawk River, the

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R.W. Venables castle called TENOTOGE. It had 55 houses, some 100 steps and others more or less as large. . . . The castle was [in the past] surrounded with three rows of palisades. However, now there were only 6 or 7 [posts] left (van den Bogaert 1988:9).

It is possible that the remaining stockade logs standing as silent sentinels around this Mohawk town had not been removed because smallpox had reduced the available labor. The post molds of logs such as these may have a different consistency when compared to the post molds of the other logs in a palisade, and archaeologists might consider the difference in post molds as a possible indication of labor exhaustion brought on by smallpox, rather than the equally compelling possibility that these logs were newer replacements in an existing stockade. However one might interpret other sites, it is probably too late to interpret the Mohawk town of Tenotoge because archaeologists believe that this once formidable town now lies under the traffic speeding east and west along the New York State Thruway (van den Bogaert 1988:38 at fn. 62). In 1677, Wentworth Greenhalgh, an English trader, visited Onondaga and described how The Clearings – the main Onondaga town and corn fields – were very large; consisting of about 140 houses, nott fenced [no defensive stockade]; is situate[d] upon a hill thatt is very large, the banke on each side extending itself att least two miles, all cleared land, whereon the corne is planted (Greenhalgh 1849–1851:I, 15).

The archaeologist James A. Tuck (1971:20 [map], 177–186) concluded that this town is the archaeological site known as “Indian Hill,” about 8 miles southeast of the present city of Syracuse, New York, and 8 miles east of today’s Onondaga reservation. The women’s fields at Onondaga and other Haudenosaunee towns were concentrated in what scientists now know as the most fertile soil in upstate New York, located in a band stretching from the Mohawk Valley through the northern sections of the Finger Lakes. This fertile band also constitutes the core areas of the confederacy’s five founding nations (Engelbrecht:2 [Map 1] and 91 [Map 3]). The women were especially focused on the cultivation of corn, beans, and squash. These three crops are regarded by the Haudenosaunee as female and are known as “The Three Sisters.” In Haudenosaunee religion, these three crops sprang from the buried body of the daughter of Sky Woman (Parker 1968:5–119; Lewandowski 1989:41–45). The corn grew upward from her breasts. Recalling this source, the women planted the corn in mounds of earth shaped like breasts, a practice which simultaneously meant that the women were practicing nonintrusive agriculture (Fig. 2.4). In balance, the men were responsible for “The Woods” – all the lands, lakes, rivers, and streams beyond The Clearings.8 The extensive systems linking the rivers and lakes of The Woods were the main routes the men used to hunt, travel, and trade. There were also extensive trails crisscrossing the landscape, many of which 8 I would like to thank Chief Irving Powless, Jr. (Onondaga), and Oren Lyons (Onondaga) for their insights into the complex nature of the Clearings and the Woods and for all the other insights they have generously shared with me since 1971. I am also grateful to Rick Hill (Tuscarora) for his insights regarding the Clearings and the Woods that he shared with me in 1998 and 1999.

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Fig. 2.4 Corn Woman, one of the Three Sisters, behind a mound planted with corn, beans, and squash. The “Tree of Peace,” planted by the Peacemaker as a symbol of the Confederacy, can be seen in the background on the right. The artist, John Kahionhes Fadden (Mohawk), notes that the dead branches at the mound’s base are “a symbol of how much of life grows from the bodies of other life”

were transformed into the highways of today. Two examples are Routes 5 and 20 that run east–west across upstate New York.9 Trade was conducted from Clearing to Clearing within the Confederacy; with other Indian nations; and, eventually, with the Europeans (Engelbrecht 2003:137–138; Endreny 2005:1664 and 1666–1669). Although The Woods were the primary responsibility of the men, women and men both engaged in trade. The Woods also included the sites of abandoned towns and abandoned fields. Some abandoned fields had been vacant for decades and even centuries, while the more recently abandoned fields were being encouraged to rejuvenate their strengths by lying fallow (Engelbrecht 2003:99–101; Fenton 1978:296–321; Dennis

9 Major Haudenosaunee trails, which can then be compared to a contemporary highway map, are defined in Morgan 1995 and Engelbrecht 2003: 175.

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1993:105–111; Tooker 1984:109–123).10 Any abandoned towns and fields that were encountered while traveling through The Woods were, as a matter of custom and religion, respectfully remembered as the residences of ancestors (Gibson 1992:593–595). The density of many parts of The Woods was described in 1743 by John Bartram: We observed the tops of the trees to be so close to one another for many miles together, that there is no seeing which way the clouds drive, nor which way the wind sets: and it seems almost as if the sun had never shone on the ground, since the creation (Bartram 1966:37).

Because Haudenosaunee agricultural fields were the responsibility of women (Brown 1990:190–191), the locations of the fields and the towns reflected the choices of women. While men would have had an input regarding a town’s defensive location, even the best-defended town would fail if it was not located near fertile fields. When the women realized that their fields were becoming less fertile, they would know it was time to move to a town – something that occurred every

Fig. 2.5 A woman pounding corn, with braided ears of corn hanging in the background. The decorated castellated collar (rim) of the pot over the fire demonstrates a balance of aesthetics and practicality, as the collar supports a cord so that the pot can be suspended over the cooking fire. By John Kahionhes Fadden (Mohawk)

10 Although

written for high school students, an excellent summary of the balance between the Clearings and the Woods is related by Hazel W. Hertzberg, in a chapter she entitles “Patterns of Space: Forest and Clearing” in her The Great Tree and the Longhouse: The Culture of the Iroquois (1966: 23–34).

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10 or 20 years (Engelbrecht 2003:101). Since the town’s longhouses were under the direction of matrilineal clans, the layout of a town landscape and the interior use of the longhouses also reflected the directions of the women. This gendered landscape carried over into daily life. Thus when a husband killed a deer and brought the deer from The Woods into The Clearings, the deer became the responsibility of his wife and her clan. The women cooked the deer as well as other foods from The Woods such as fish and geese. The women also cooked the crops they raised (Fig. 2.5), using beautifully crafted clay pots they made (Engelbrecht 2003:82–83). Thus the decorated pots and potsherds found at Haudenosaunee archaeological sites and seen in museums are “women’s art” (Fig. 2.6). Moreover, the women created their pottery from another female: “Mother Earth” (Engelbrecht 2003:87). In fact, the women’s responsibilities centered around a female cycle. Mother Earth had been created by the spiritual power of Sky Woman. Mother Earth provided “The Three Sisters” (corn, beans, and squash), which had grown from the body of Sky Woman’s daughter, and these “Three Sisters” were grown by the women in their fields in their towns that lay in their Clearings. Even more profoundly, as the women – and the men – worked at their tasks, they believed – and still believe – that their future children are just beneath the surface of Mother Earth, looking up at the current generation. When a Haudenosaunee man acquired trade goods acquired from other Indian nations or from the Europeans, those goods became the responsibility of the women as soon as those goods entered The Clearings. But the basic divisions between women and men of The Clearings and The Woods were practical and flexible. Thus in The Clearings, the men were the primary builders of the longhouses and of the stockades. The men helped clear the fields of trees by girdling, felling, and burning the trees. Although women usually harvested the crops, if the harvest had to be brought in quickly, the men assisted the women. Thus Timothy Pickering, President George Washington’s ambassador to the Haudenosaunee, noted in a letter of October 8, 1794, how the Haudenosaunee “worked with uncommon zeal to get in their harvest of corn, the men & boys (which is not usual) assisting the women and girls, that it might be accomplished” (Pickering 1794:Reel 60, frame 203A). The flexibility of Haudenosaunee society was also seen when women, and children, helped the men fish in The Woods, where seasonal camps were set up on the banks of rivers and lakes. Both men and women traveled through The Woods – on trails or on waterways – to trade with other Haudenosaunee communities and with neighboring nations. Women, protected by the laws and customs of the Confederacy, could travel across The Woods without warrior escort, as noted in December 1634 when the Dutch colonist, Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, encountered several women staying alone in a cabin. This was evidently one of the cabins the Haudenosaunee established throughout The Woods for the use of travelers (van den Bogaert 1988:3–4). That same month, while van den Bogaert was in a Mohawk village in the Mohawk Valley, he noted the arrival of three women. They were Oneidas from the area of Oneida Lake to the west of the Mohawk towns. These three women had carried dried salmon at least 100 miles, salmon which they then sold in at least two Mohawk villages:

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Fig. 2.6 A woman creating a clay pot, by John Kahionhes Fadden (Mohawk). Before the pots were fired, they were formed without the use of a wheel, making their balance and structure all the more remarkable. Castellated collars (rims) often included sacred effigies or small faces (maskettes), represented here by a small circle above the collar of the middle pot

Three women came here . . . with some dried and fresh salmon.... They also brought much green tobacco to sell, and had been six days underway. They could not sell all their salmon here, but went with it to the first castle [that is, a Mohawk village further east] (van den Bogaert 1988:6).

The Haudenosaunee system was/is not rigid because it is based on maintaining balance in the real world, not a world based on abstract principles. A balanced reality calls for pragmatic solutions. The principle of balance carried over into Haudenosaunee politics. All the chiefs in The Clearings are men, thus balancing the matrilineal nature of The Clearings. However, the responsibility of appointing male chiefs rests with the clan mothers after they have consulted with the women of their clan. A chief serves for life unless a clan mother, on the advice of the other women in her clan, deposes him. Such a removal must then be sanctioned by the male chiefs of the entire Confederacy’s Grand Council, and if approved, the chiefs of the Onondaga nation have the responsibility of finalizing the end of the deposed chief’s tenure (Fenton 1978:296–297, 306–307, 309–312). The symbol of leadership worn by Haudenosaunee chiefs is deer horns, and “dehorning” occurs when a

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chief is removed by a clan mother from his office (Tooker 1978:426, 424–428).11 There were also male leaders called “Pine Tree Chiefs” who held this temporary office for a specific purpose or emergency (Gibson 1992:465, 442–472; Fenton 1978:314). Religious ceremonies and government councils were communal, with shared responsibilities reflecting the Haudenosaunee concept of maintaining balance. For example, Benjamin Franklin described the balance of a council meeting: The old Men sit in the foremost Ranks, the Warriors in the next, and the Women and Children in the hindmost. The Business of the Women is to take exact notice of what passes, imprint it on their Memories, for they have no Writing, and communicate it to their Children. They are the Records of the Council, and they preserve Tradition of the Stipulations in Treaties a hundred Years back, which when we compare with our Writings we always find exact (Franklin 1987:970).

In preparation for the men’s roles as hunters and warriors, the men played the game of lacrosse. These lacrosse games were usually played in The Clearings, but occasionally lacrosse could also be played in The Woods, as noted by the French officer Louis Antoine de Bougainville in 1758 (de Bougainville 1964:249).12 Today, lacrosse is still an integral part of Haudenosaunee life. The origin of lacrosse was spiritual. Historically, women placed the bets on the outcome of the lacrosse games played by men because the women possessed most of the goods that were either created in or brought into The Clearings. Lacrosse is more than a game because it involves sacred and religious components that are not a part of the sport played by non-Indians. A game can be played, for example, to help heal a sick woman, man, or child (Mitchell et al. 1978:8; and Vennum 1994:184–185).

The Interdependent Landscapes of Confederacy, Nation, and Clan Haudenosaunee women and men did not (and do not) define themselves as only members of the Confederacy. Each person was and is a member of the Confederacy as a whole; a member of one of the confederacy’s nations; and a member of a specific clan. Matrilineal clans were the glue that tied people to the whole confederacy because unlike the individual nations that made up the Confederacy, the clans stretched across national boundaries to include the entire Confederacy. Through their clans, people from one nation literally had relatives in one or more other nations across the Confederacy. When visiting another town or village, women and men could stay within the longhouses of their respective clans. Visitors to towns 11 Each

Haudenosaunee nation in the Confederacy has a different language, and so the English word “chief” serves as a convenient term. In Mohawk, for example, the word for chief is “royaner” and in Seneca “hotiyanesho ” (Fenton 1978: 314). 12 During the French and Indian War, during which this game was played, Mohawk Haudenosaunee who had been converted to Catholicism in the 1600s had moved back to the St. Lawrence Valley and fought on the side of the French, while their Mohawk brethren in the Mohawk Valley – some of whom were Protestants, while most were traditional – fought on the side of the British.

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where they did not have a clan affiliation, or visitors who were not Haudenosaunee (such as Europeans), were provided with special housing. The people in the towns and nations were also divided in half (each half is called a moiety by anthropologists). This added still another dimension to a complex personal identity (Fenton 1978:312–314). The number of clans was severely reduced by an epidemic disease accidentally introduced by the Europeans, and it is therefore unknown if each clan once existed in every one of the nations within the confederacy. The names of these clans were Turtle, Snapping Turtle, Tortoise, Wolf, Snipe, Beaver, Ball, Hawk, Deer, Eel, Eagle, Pigeon Hawk, Plover, Killdeer, Heron, Big Bear, Younger Bear, and Suckling Bear. There may have been others (Speck 1955:29). Despite the European epidemics, the Turtle (Fig. 2.7), Bear, and Wolf clans survived in all six nations of the Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora) (Snow 1994:55; Fenton 1978:313). Other clans survived, such as the Deer and Eel, but not in all of the nations. Clans not only served to bind the Confederacy’s population, they sorted out who could marry whom – a clan member could not marry a member of the same clan (Speck 1955:29).

The Dual Identity of The Woods and Spheres of Responsibility While The Clearings were and are in the national lands of only one nation (such as the Onondaga Nation),The Woods have a dual identity. The Woods are Confederacy lands, which means The Woods are the responsibility of all the five founding nations of the Confederacy (Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Tuscaroras). But The Woods are simultaneously recognized as being divided into the borders of those five founding Confederacy nations (Gibson 1992:460–461). The boundaries of these five nations are more accurately described as national spheres of responsibility and influence. In this context, The Woods are the equal responsibility of the Confederacy as a whole and, in their different locales, the responsibility of one of the five founding nations. Because there is no ultimate sovereign power, these simultaneous and equal responsibilities have no real parallel in Western law, including Western property law. These simultaneous and equal responsibilities are also what make the Confederacy a unique and delicate balance of equal responsibilities among its confederate parts. The concept of The Woods exemplifies a broader fact with regard to Haudenosaunee politics: the Confederacy is not centralized, and has no centralized supreme power with subordinate political entities such as the “federal-state” structure of the United States. The separation of territories into The Clearings and The Woods evidently existed in some form prior to the founding of the Confederacy. The specific details of the concepts could have been different – for example, before the Confederacy was founded, it is not known whether the women or the men controlled The Clearings. However, even before the founding of the Confederacy (Parker 1916:22), there was an established ritual expected whenever people wished to emerge from The Woods

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Fig. 2.7 The Turtle Clan, by John Kahionhes Fadden (Mohawk). The Haudenosaunee worldview of balance – of genders, ages, and all human characteristics – mean that all are equal but different, including differences in personalities and abilities

and enter any of The Clearings. Approaching humans fell into two categories: those who came in peace and those who were enemies. Of course it was unlikely that enemies would announce themselves, but an announcement of peaceful intentions was ritualized. If one or more of those within an approaching party was Haudenosaunee or already respected by them, that person might go ahead and alert a town that visitors were close by (Bartram 1966:40). But if that was not possible, a person intent on conveying friendly intentions stopped at “The Edge of The Woods,”13 which of course was also the edge of The Clearings. At The Edge of the Woods, a person was expected to light a fire or to shout loudly. Whether the people in The Clearings were alerted by a messenger, by smoke, or by shouts, a male or female messenger, or even a group of women and men, customarily went out to ascertain the identity of

13 Eight

examples of the “Edge of the Woods” protocol from 1535 to 1794 are in William Beauchamp, Civil, Religious and Mourning Councils and Ceremonies of Adoption of the New York Indians (1907: 421–422). The “Edge of the Woods” also translates in English as the “Edge of the Forest” (Woodbury 2003: 432 and 128).

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the visitor and to escort the visitor or visitors into The Clearings and into the town.14 This concept was based on what the founder of the Confederacy, the Peacemaker, had done to announce his presence outside a town (Wallace 1994:54–55). Tradition records that leaders such as Hayonhwatha (Hiawatha), the Onondaga who assisted The Peacemaker, carried out this ceremony during the long process that led to the founding of the Confederacy. For example, when Hayonhwatha and some warriors approached a Mohawk town, he stopped before emerging from The Edge of the The Woods. As described by the Seneca archaeologist Arthur C. Parker: This was the custom, to make a smoke so that the town might know that visitors were approaching and send word that they might enter without danger to their lives. The Mohawks knew the meaning of the signal so they sent messengers and invited the party into the village (Parker 1916:22).

When trade began with the musket-bearing Europeans, musket shots fired into the air became a new way to signal one’s emergence from The Woods into The Clearing. For example, in 1634, a group of Mohawks were escorting three Dutch traders westward, out of Mohawk lands and into the lands of the Oneidas. The Mohawk escorts stopped just a short distance from the first Oneida town – the first Oneida Clearing. One of the Dutchmen, Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, wrote: The Indians asked us to shoot. We fired our weapons, which we reloaded, and then we went to the castle town surrounded by a wooden palisade (van den Bogaert 1988:12).

In 1709, Abraham Schuyler and five other colonial New York emissaries accompanied Mohawks, Oneidas, and Cayugas to a council at the capital of the Confederacy, Onondaga. Following Haudenosaunee protocol, they intentionally stopped near Onondaga and waited for an escort into the town: 4 June [1709] early in the Morning being near to Onondaga we sent Wm Printop the Smith [a respected blacksmith] before us to Accquaint the Sachems that we, the Mohawks, Cayugas & Oneidas were coming to their Castle, upon wch Message they came out to meet us & made us Welcome (Wraxall 1968:70).

In addition, The Edge of Woods was and today remains a central, symbolic ceremony during the installation of a new chief (Gibson 1992:542). And words of greeting at a large gathering were, and are still today, known as “The Edge of the Woods” (Swamp 2000:13–14; Bartram 1966:58). “The Edge of the Woods” greeting, however, is given only after “the words that come before all else” – The Thanksgiving Address.

14 A

lone female messenger, carrying food, was sent out from an Oneida town when Mohawks brought Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert to them in 1634 (van den Bogaert 1988: 12). A group came out from Onondaga to meet Abraham Schuyler and five other white emissaries in 1709 (Wraxall 1968: 70).

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The Thanksgiving Address: A Summary of the Haudenosaunee Worldview At public gatherings today, as in the past, someone gives “The Thanksgiving Address.” The content of The Thanksgiving Address follows a sequence of ideas, but the actual words vary with the speaker. The address can also be lengthy, or it can be brief. The purpose of the Thanksgiving Address is to remind all who are present that all life is interrelated and interdependent. A translation of a Mohawk version of the first point in the Thanksgiving Address, the greetings to the people, begins with these words: Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things (Swamp et al. 1993:1).

After this greeting, thanks are extended to Mother Earth; the Waters; the Fish; the Plants; Food Plants; Medicine Herbs; the Animals; the Trees; the Birds; the Four Winds; the Thunders who bring rain; the Sun; Grandmother Moon; the Stars; to all Spiritual Messengers; and to the Creator. The Thanksgiving Address is completed with the Closing Words.15 The Thanksgiving Address acknowledges that other mortal beings consciously and willingly give their lives so that the humans can survive. The reciprocity offered by the humans is respect, ceremonies, and prayers, all of which are believed to be a spiritual benefit equal to the tangible sacrifice of other beings. The context of all this interdependence is defined as each being following the instructions of the Creator. Thus the medicine herbs are thanked, along with the women and men who know how to use the herbs: Now we turn to all the Medicine Herbs of the world. From the beginning, they were instructed to take away sickness. They are always waiting and ready to heal us. We are happy there are still among us those special few who remember how to use these plants for healing. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the Medicines and to the keepers of the Medicines (Swamp et al. 1993:13).

A part of the gift that other mortal beings bring to humans is that these beings teach the humans significant lessons. Thus the deer and other animals are thanked: We gather our minds together to send greetings and thanks to all the Animal life in the world. They have many things to teach us as people. We see them near our homes and in the deep forests. We are glad they are still here and we hope that it will always be so (Swamp et al. 1993:135).

Thanksgiving was not confined to public occasions. Every morning and every evening, the clan mothers in all of The Clearings gave thanks on behalf of all the people in their towns (Fenton 1998:47). In The Woods, the hunters gave thanks before and after the hunt, with thanks specifically addressing those particular animals who gave their lives that day (Engelbrecht 2003:4–5; Bartram 1966:25). And 15 A

Seneca version of the Thanksgiving Address is Clayton Logan (2000: 7–11).

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each Haudenosaunee individual could give thanks whenever so moved. Another method of communicating with the spiritual world was the use of tobacco, either dropped by an individual into a fire or smoked in a pipe, with the rising smoke bringing thanks up to the spiritual world (Engelbrecht 2003:54–60,47–59).

The Woods: “One Bowl” The Haudenosaunee were grateful to the animals and other mortal beings for the food and other benefits that they provided. However, when the Peacemaker founded the Confederacy, the Creator had instructed him that competition among the nations of the Confederacy for the benefits offered by the other mortal beings would cause dissension and weaken the Confederacy’s unity. Such dissension would also distract people from recognizing their spiritual obligations to be grateful to these beings. Thus the Peacemaker made the Confederacy responsible for all of The Woods, defining the right of all Haudenosaunee to hunt anywhere within “The Woods.” Deganawidah symbolized this by calling The Woods “one bowl” (also translated as “one dish”) (Gibson 1992:457–461). The chiefs affirmed this: We shall only have one dish (or bowl) in which will be placed one beaver tail and we shall all have coequal right to it, and there shall be no knife in it, for if there be a knife in it, there would be danger that it might cut some one and blood would thereby be shed (Parker 1916:103).

According to the Seneca archaeologist Arthur C. Parker, “one bowl” signifies that they will make their hunting grounds one common trace and all have a coequal right to hunt within it. The knife being prohibited from being placed into the dish or bowl signifies that all danger would be removed from shedding blood by the people of these different nations of the confederacy caused by differences of the right of the hunting grounds (Parker 1916:103).16

Different Trees in a Different Forest: The Clearings and the Woods Physical space is just one dimension of the Haudenosaunee environment. Because the philosophical premises of the Haudenosaunee are very different from “Western” beliefs, the Haudenosaunee pose different questions and different solutions. These are more than just choices of different paths through the same forest, because the Haudenosaunee believe the trees and all the beings within the forest have spiritual components that are equal to human spiritual identities (“souls”). Thus the entire reality for traditional Haudenosaunee is different. When compared to the

16 The Mohawk leader Joseph Brant described the Woods in 1789, noting that “Our Ancestors made

no Distinction in a Nation [did not define boundaries of lands according to one of the Confederacy’s individual nations]; they held their Lands in common” (Brant 1861: 340).

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Western beliefs brought by white settlers and the ever-active missionaries, the Haudenosaunee perceived, and still perceive, different trees in a different forest. The Haudenosaunee view of the landscape has always been based on the premise that both humans and non-humans are consciously interactive. The environment is interdependent spiritually as well as biologically. From this strong sense of interdependence comes a stress on “communal” ethics. The entire world is alive with the spiritual energies of all these beings – deer, eagles, trout, and all others. Each species has its own function, assigned by the Creator, and each species has a sense of its own community. Each species has religious instructions that have been provided by the Creator and which each species is obliged to carry out. All beings are equally conscious of the other beings. There are no unconscious objects, no inferior beings. There are simply beings with different functions. In this sense, all beings, with their equal souls, are our relations, our relatives. Communal human ethics are thus a logical extension of how the Haudenosaunee perceive a communal, interdependent world. Since the Creator filled the world with symbiotic, equal souls who nevertheless carry out specific functions, the most logical premise upon which to base an organized human community was also communal.

The Seventh Generation The “seventh generation” is a key to Haudenosaunee environmental ethics. The Haudenosaunee believe that individual humans and human communities must be responsible for taking actions that positively affect seven generations hence. Thus they must also avoid actions that might negatively affect the future generations, as far ahead as “the seventh generation.” The Haudenosaunee are constantly reminded that they should always think about the seventh generation because they believe that the next generation waiting to be born – their children and the children of all beings – is just beneath the surface of the ground looking up at the current generation.17 This imagery is consistent with the Haudenosaunee concept of “Mother Earth,” the womb of magical earth that has rested on the back of the great turtle since the transformations begun by Sky Woman.

Transformations in The Clearings and The Woods The spiritual/ethical foundations of the Haudenosaunee, and consequently their landscape, were severely challenged and almost destroyed by their experiences with the invading Europeans. Three major factors especially corrupted their cultural values: epidemic diseases, the beaver trade, and the American Revolution. 17 This common image used by the Haudenosaunee is expressed in a variety of ways; for example,

as “those yet unborn, whose faces are coming from beneath the ground” (Wallace 1994: 89; Gibson 1992: 699; and Shenandoah 2000: 213).

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The first factor was the continuing impact of epidemic diseases, especially smallpox. Epidemic diseases undermined Haudenosaunee confidence in their religion, because the question became, “Why, if we are following our spiritual instructions, is this happening to us?”18 Conversion to Christianity was one alternative taken by many Haudenosaunee during the seventeenth century (Vecsey 1997:19–20, 23–24, 97–108, and passim). But conversions undermined traditional beliefs and the entire cultural landscape – Christianity does not allow for the equality of all life, or that all life forms possess souls. Smallpox was an epidemic disease accidentally introduced by the Europeans along the Atlantic coast. The disease quickly spread along Indian trade routes that had existed for thousands of years and linked all geographic sections of North America. The earliest known smallpox epidemic was introduced by the Spanish in 1524 and, carried along Indian trade routes, reached the Haudenosaunee by 1535, spreading as far as the Senecas at the western end of the Confederacy (Dobyns 1983:313–317, 326 fn. 6). Smallpox was followed by other devastating epidemics during the 1500s: typhoid, measles, bubonic plague (the black death), influenza, measles, and syphilis (Ramenofsky 1987; Thornton 1987; Verano and Ubelaker 1992). Syphilis, a disease which was probably a hybrid of a mild form in the Caribbean with a more virulent form from Europe, would eventually make its way into Haudenosaunee country (Dobyns 1983:34–35).19 Had the most virulent form of syphilis existed prior to the arrival of the Europeans, it is unlikely that the Haudenosaunee would have had the sexual freedom that was recorded by the Europeans. In 1653, Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck was surprised to find a unique blend of sexuality and modesty among the Haudenosaunee, as “both men and women” were extremely liberal and uninhibited in their relations. But foul and improper language, which many of our [Dutch] people think amusing, they despise. Kissing, romping, pushing, and similar playful frolicking, popularly known as petting, and other suggestive behaviour one is unlikely to see among these people. They speak scornfully of it when done in their presence. And if they see Hollanders behaving in that fashion they tell them sarcastically: “Shame on you; if you are so inclined, wait till nighttime or you are alone” (van der Donck 1996:115).

The impact of smallpox is illustrated by the Mohawks’ experience in 1634. That year, smallpox reduced the Mohawk population, according to one modern estimate, “from 7,740 to 2,830 in a matter of months” (Snow 1994:99–100). Estimates are

18 This

philosophical issue pervaded European thought when the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) struck Europe in the late 1340s, helping to undermine the Catholic Church and encouraging the Renaissance and, later, the Protestant Reformation. The same philosophical issue was raised by the European Jews persecuted by the Nazis. See Norman Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made (2001); and Arno J. Mayeer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final Solution in History (1988). The impact of diseases throughout the world’s cultural landscapes is in William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (1976). 19 Warren Johnson noted in his journal that the Haudenosaunee had “the French Disease,” meaning syphilis, but also that the Haudenosaunee “cure the French Disease well, by herbs; they have got it, & other Disorders, very much among them” (Johnson 1921–1965: XIII, 194–195).

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all that can be made, for there are no reliable figures from the era. More devastating epidemics followed, spreading throughout Haudenosaunee country. The losses from these epidemics were combined with losses from war. While reliable statistics are not available from the past, the colonists at least recorded overall impressions of the epidemics’ tragic impacts. A Dutch traveler, Jasper Danckaerts, poignantly wrote in 1680 that the Haudenosaunee and other Indians are melting away rapidly . . . . I have heard tell by the oldest New Netherlanders [Dutch] that there is now not 1/10th part of the Indians there once were, indeed, not 1/20th or 1/30th and that now the Europeans are 20 and 30 times as many (Danckaerts 1996:210).

The second factor was the beaver trade. When the Haudenosaunee began hunting beavers and other fur-bearing animals as economic resources in order to obtain guns and trade goods (Hunt 1940), the reciprocal arrangement between fur-bearing animals and the Haudenosaunee was corrupted. But guns were especially necessary because if the Haudenosaunee did not acquire them, they would be conquered by the French in Canada and the Indians allied with the French. The choice between ethics and survival is an old dilemma in all human history, and the Haudenosaunee chose survival. Moreover, one reason many Haudenosaunee became Christians was that Christianity allowed them to see fur-bearing animals as the European colonists saw them: inferior beings without souls, and thus more easily blended into pure economics. The third major factor was the American Revolution. Because so many Haudenosaunee warriors fought as allies of the British, Britain’s surrender to the new United States was a disaster. The Haudenosaunee were not included in Britain’s surrender terms in the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Yet Britain confidently transferred to the new United States all the royal claims Britain had to Haudenosaunee lands. These claims were founded on the absurdity that England had a right to Haudenosaunee lands because of “the right of discovery.” This “right” began with Columbus in 1492–1493, and it was perpetuated by the English in 1496 by King Henry VII and his “explorer” John Cabot. Cabot landed in Canada in 1497 (Commager 1973:5–6). Grants based on “discovery” from Elizabeth I (to Sir Walter Raleigh 1584) (Commager 1973:6–7), James I (to the Jamestown colonists in 1606) (Commager 1973:8–10), and every subsequent monarch perpetuated this myth.20 Although the Haudenosaunee protested these absurd claims,21 the Haudenosaunee endured a series of unjust and often illegal treaties from 1784 until

20 In

1823, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the right of discovery to be valid with regard to U.S. land claims (Marshall 1973). In 2005, the allegedly liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg specifically upheld the right of discovery in an Oneida Haudenosaunee case. U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, City of Sherrill, New York v. Oneida Nation of New York et al., March 29, 2005 (544 U.S. 2005), 3 fn 1. 21 For example, Aaron Hill (Kanonaron), a Mohawk leader, declared in 1783 that “The Indians were a free People Subject to no Power on Earth, that they were the faithful Allies of the King of England, but not his Subjects” (Aaron Hill at Fort Niagara, May 18, 1783, in Maclean 1783B. 103: 177).

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1857: 46 treaties with the State of New York and 10 treaties with the United States. These treaties transferred most of the Haudenosaunee lands to New York State – most of The Woods and The Clearings (New York State 1889:190–403; Kappler 1972:5–6, 23–25, 34–39, 50–51, 327–331, 512–516, 517–518, 537–542, 767–771, 1027–1030). Between 1799 and 1815, a reformation of Haudenosaunee religion and culture helped the Haudenosaunee rebalance the values which had been nearly lost because of the excesses of the fur trade. It also helped them recover from the American Revolution. The Haudenosaunee Reformation occurred just as their land base was being reduced to ever-smaller reservations. The Woods were now increasingly occupied by strangers. Ironically, both New York and the United States recognized the right of the Haudenosaunee to hunt, fish, travel, and trade throughout all the lands ceded to the whites. But in the Woods, the indigenous animals, fish, birds, trees, and other beings were dying off and were being replaced by the plowed fields and domesticated animals of the Americans. On the Haudenosaunee reservations, the people increasingly felt that they were “alone” – recall that they regarded all the other beings as their equals, with souls. Moreover, each nation’s surviving Clearings – the towns – also stood in isolation, no longer connected to each other by the physical link of The Woods. Whatever lands were left – reservations – were by default “Clearings,” although the reservations’ various town centers were physically rimmed with woods. Between 1799 and 1815, a Haudenosaunee teacher, Handsome Lake (Ganio dai io 1735–1815), received messages from spiritual beings, and he transmitted these messages to the people. The message – the “Gai wiio” or “The Good Word” – was a synthesis of the old ways with the new messages (Wallace 1970:184–337).22 Not all Haudenosaunee accepted these teachings. The Christian Haudenosaunee resisted, but so did those Haudenosaunee who wanted to continue the old ways. Some who opposed the teachings were accused of witchcraft. Fear of male as well as female witches had existed among the Haudenosaunee centuries before Handsome Lake and was hardly unique to Haudenosaunee society. But in 1807, an epidemic caused many deaths. At least one old woman was killed when Handsome Lake pointed her out during a council meeting (Parker 1968b:11; Wallace 1970:292, 289–302). Among the many spiritual instructions given to Handsome Lake, one included how the Haudenosaunee men could make a living in The Clearings and adapt to the loss of the men’s direct relationships with The Woods. Since the land bases

22 The

spiritual messages given to Handsome Lake are widely known to non-Indians in various English translations as the “Code of Handsome Lake.” But would one translate the “Ten Commandments” as the “Ten Commandments of Moses”? This subtle use of words is important to the contemporary Haudenosaunee. They are confident that Handsome Lake was inspired by spiritual forces. From the Haudenosaunee point of view, the Code was “taught by” Handsome Lake, but the Code is not really “of” or “by” him. According to Handsome Lake’s own statements, he was simply the transmitter of the spiritual messages he received. “The Gai Wiio” or “The Good Word” is preferred.

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were so small, and since the Haudenosaunee were completely surrounded by EuroAmericans, spiritual messengers assured Handsome Lake that he could tell his followers that men could now farm in The Clearings, and use white agricultural methods. This meant that the men would replace the women as the primary farmers (Cornplanter 1968:38). Did this result in a loss of status for the women? From a “Western” point of view, “Yes.”23 In the Western tradition, status is measured in part by comparing individuals with other individuals. An accumulation of data regarding the status and rights of Haudenosaunee individual women would conclude that each individual found their status diminished. However, from the Haudenosaunee point of view, the answer is “No.” “The Good Word” reestablished balance, the primary value of the Haudenosaunee. This balance was defined within the entire communally based society. The Good Word sanctioned a redistribution of what was left of the Haudenosaunee land base. Facing the reality of reduced possibilities, the Haudenosaunee women who followed Handsome Lake’s teachings believed that, within their communal ethic, this redistribution was logical and not at all a loss of power or status. The Woods of the men was being destroyed. A balanced society meant that the men had to have a practical function. Both the women and the men recognized the crisis, especially because the men were consuming even more alcohol than they had during the colonial period (Wallace 1970:233–234, 278). From a Haudenosaunee point of view, balance was maintained within the reality of new circumstances because the women continued to maintain control of The Clearings through their clans and the clan mothers, their female leaders. Furthermore, the women and the clan mothers still appointed the male chiefs, and the traditional matrilineal kinship system was continued. In fact, nineteenth-century feminists such as Matilda Joslyn Gage in New York State observed the Haudenosaunee balance of women and men and concluded admiringly that Haudenosaunee women enjoyed far more rights than white American women (Wagner 1996; Wagner 1998; Gage 1998:5, 332–334).

Preservation and Continuity: The Clearings and the Woods Today Today, the Haudenosaunee people are dispersed. Factions among the Haudenosaunee fought on both the British and Patriot sides during the Revolution, and after the war many of the pro-British faction removed to Canada. Then, in the decades

23 For

example, see Wallace (2003: 57–67). A stark example of this viewpoint is that of Barbara Alice Mann, who asserts that the prohibition of abortions in the teachings of Handsome Lake was “one of its main woman-crushing innovations” (Mann 2000: 262). Previously, women did perform abortions using a now-unknown herb. However, in terms of “balance,” the fact was that the Haudenosaunee population was in decline, and a “rebalance” of the population meant that more children were necessary.

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following the War of 1812, some of the Haudenosaunee were forced by the State of New York and the U.S. governments to remove to Wisconsin while others were forced to take up lands in Oklahoma. Thus reservations of various Haudenosaunee nations can now be found in New York, Quebec, Ontario, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma (Hauptman 1986:x [map] and xi [map]). Despite the fact that the governments of Canada and the United States continually break the treaties and agreements made with the Haudenosaunee, the Haudenosaunee persevere.24 The traditional Haudenosaunee still perceive all life as having equal souls but different functions. But this worldview has been undermined since the 1600s, when Christian missionaries – both Catholic (Vecsey 1997: passim; Shoemaker 2006:93–116) and Protestant (Huey and Pulis 1997:13–15; Bilharz 1995:101–112; Perdue 1998)25 – began converting the Haudenosaunee. This has had its greatest impact on Haudenosaunee views of The Woods because traditional Christianity does not admit the existence of souls among non-human beings. Furthermore, Christianity’s Genesis dictates a hierarchy – the Genesis Pyramid – with an order that gives priority to human males, followed by human females, followed by the rest of Creation (Venables 1980:94; 82–85). The result is that the balance so central to the Haudenosaunee worldview is no longer followed by those who have either converted to Christianity or have simply accepted a secular way of life. Other factors, especially government-sponsored boarding schools, dramatically altered Haudenosaunee life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Venables 1995: passim). In the twentieth century, employment off the reservations increased, and with these employment opportunities, government institutions such as the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security subtly shifted the Haudenosaunee into the use of the last names of fathers. Canada mirrors these same issues (Fiske 2006:336–366). In Canada and the United States, there are about 150,000 Haudenosaunee.26 More than half of the Haudenosaunee are “urban Indians,” living in the cities that 24 The

most flagrant recent example is the Supreme Court Case City of Sherill, New York v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York et al., decided on March 29, 2005. This decision violated the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua in several ways, not the least of which was the assertion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing the majority opinion, that the United States claims over the Haudenosaunee were based on the “doctrine of discovery,” an entirely fictitious legal claim begun by Columbus in 1492, perpetuated by the monarchs of Europe including the rulers of Great Britain, and continued by the U.S. government as the heir to British claims. City of Sherill, New York v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York et al., No. 03-855, 544 U.S. March 29, 2005, page 3 at footnote 1. 25 Bihartz (1995) notes that under the influence of the Quakers, some Senecas seceded from the Confederacy in 1848 to form the “Seneca Nation.” Guided by white ideals, these Senecas promptly disenfranchised the women, who did not regain any voting rights until 1964 (Bihartz 1995: 109– 110). 26 This is the author’s estimate. Population figures are especially elusive because in the United States people have the right to “self-identify” themselves as Indians on census forms without providing any proof whatsoever. There is also the issue of generations of intermarriage among many Haudenosaunee people, so that a strong identity with their Haudenosaunee heritage has all but evaporated and may exist only to claim university scholarships or other “minority” programs.

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lie beyond the reservations. Some Haudenosaunee enterprises such as gas stations or what are now the most profitable enterprise, gambling casinos, are in The Clearings, such as the one at the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation in the St. Lawrence River Valley 5 miles east of where the Seaway International Bridge links New York State with Cornwall, Ontario (mohawkcasino.com). Others, such as the Oneida Turning Stone Casino in Verona, New York (turningstone.com), are in The Woods – lands repossessed by the Oneidas after being forced off the lands in the 1800s by New York State and the U.S. government. The homes of the Oneidas – the new Clearings – are not on the grounds of the casino. Most Haudenosaunee town sites – The Clearings – lie beneath contemporary cities, towns, or farms. This is because the Europeans and their descendants chose to settle exactly where the Haudenosaunee had settled, for these locations were geographically the most advantageous. Railroads, highways, airports, suburbs, and shopping malls have destroyed other sites. Hilltop locations, such as Castle Creek north of Binghamton, New York, have been disturbed by pothunters. But some evidence has managed to survive even at sites that were plundered. A major problem is the fact that Haudenosaunee towns were built of wood, and thus the surface reveals little to the public, and thus the public is not conscious where The Clearings were located. This invisibility is in contrast to the Southwest, where stones were used in the great Anasazi Pueblo sites such as Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and where sites remain as stunning reminders of the past. Most reservations in both Canada and the United States have seasonal festivals where non-Indians are welcomed. Many also have cultural centers that strive to educate the public on the history and culture of the Haudenosaunee, and some of these have reconstructed longhouses such as those at Akwesasne on the St. Lawrence River. Within the core homeland of the Haudenosaunee, New York State has just one publicly funded historic site dealing specifically with the Haudenosaunee: Ganondagan, in Victor, New York south of Rochester. Ganondagan was destroyed by the French in 1687. Three hundred years later, in 1987, Ganondagan became the first (and only) New York State historic site focusing upon the Haudenosaunee (Faber 1987).27 The site has a reconstructed longhouse based on archaeological and historical records. The site is being interpreted to the public by Haudenosaunee and non-Indian staff, and by dedicated volunteers. The educational programs at Ganondagan are based on Haudenosaunee oral history, including lectures by elders, as well as on historical documents and archaeological data. A major emphasis at Ganondagan is the role of Jigonhsasee, the powerful woman who helped The Peacemaker establish the Confederacy. Gardens there include traditional herbs and corn, beans, and squash – “The Three Sisters.” The longhouse is covered with specially manufactured panels of composite materials that reproduce the appearance of bark. On the roof, sliding rectangles of these simulated bark sheets can be moved

27 In

1981, this author prepared an initial report on the history of the site for the State of New York’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

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from the inside by long poles to close the roof in rain or snow. The interior is furnished with reproductions of pottery, ladles, and tools. Sleeping and storage platforms line both sides of the interior, and sunlight cascades through the smoke holes on the roof above fire pits. Standing inside, the visitor can easily imagine how the longhouse would have been when a clan mother and her female relatives managed the daily tasks of The Clearings. The Mohawks have recovered one of their traditional Clearings at the old Mohawk town site of Kanatsiohareke on the north shore of the Mohawk River. Here, for more than two centuries, white farmers planted the same fields as the Mohawks before them. In 1993, the Mohawk leader Tom Porter (Sakokwenionkwas, The One Who Wins) reestablished the first Mohawk community in the Mohawk Valley since the American Revolution ended in 1783. On newly purchased lands on the north shore of the Mohawk River at what is now Fonda, New York, Chief Porter and his friends used a tractor to plow and plant corn on the very same fields their ancestors used on the north shore of the Mohawk River. Although Tom Porter eventually retired to live on the Mohawks’ Akwesasne reservation in the St. Lawrence River Valley, Kanatsiohareke remains an active community (Porter 2006). Despite all the pressures from the non-Indian world, most Christian Haudenosaunee and all traditional Haudenosaunee take pride in knowing in which matrilineal clan each individual belongs. Equally important, The Clearings are still home to lacrosse games. “Field lacrosse” is still played outside. But in the 1930s, a new adaptation of lacrosse evolved among the Haudenosaunee in Canada, which then spread to the other Haudenosaunee reservations: “box lacrosse.” Box lacrosse is played indoors on “an indoor concrete, asphalt or hardwood floor, which is 200 feet long and 90 feet wide . . . enclosed by a four foot high boarding” (Mitchell et al. 1978:159, 224). The field houses in which these games are played are major focal points of The Clearings. High school and college teams in Canada and the United States frequently count Haudenosaunee players among their finest players. The Haudenosaunee lacrosse team, the “Iroquois Nationals,” is made up of players from both sides of the Canadian-U.S. border, and the team travels the world to play the lacrosse teams of nations as far away as Australia. Today, the Haudenosaunee are exploring a “new landscape.” Each Haudenosaunee reservation now has its own Web site, designed and staffed by the newest generation of Haudenosaunee women and men (sixnations.org). These Haudenosaunee work in The Clearings, reaching into the newest expanse of The Woods. Acknowledgments I would like to thank my friend Chief Irving Powless, Jr. (Onondaga Nation), for all the insights he has shared since we met in 1971. Without his patient guidance, this chapter and indeed my entire career since 1971 would not have taken the path that it has. I would also like to thank my friend of three decades, John Kahionhes Fadden (Mohawk Nation), for his wonderful and perceptive portrayals of three significant spiritual and physical insights of the Haudenosaunee worldview.

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Hauptman, Laurence M. 1986 The Iroquois Struggle for Survival. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. Hertzberg, Hazel W. 1966 The Great Tree and the Longhouse: The Culture of the Iroquois. Macmillan, New York, New York. Hewitt, J.N.B. 1969a Iroquois. In Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Vol I (reprint of the 1907 edition), edited by F. W. Hodge, pp: 617–620. Greenwood Press, New York, New York. 1969b Wampum. In Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Vol II (reprint of the 1907 edition), edited by F. W. Hodge, pp: 904–909. Greenwood Press, New York, New York. 1990 Status of Woman in Iroquois Polity Before 1784 [reprint of 1932 article]. In Iroquois Women: An Anthology, edited by W. G. Spittal, pp: 53–69. Iroqrafts, Ohsweken, Ontario. Hubley, Adam 1887 Journal of Lieut. Col. Adam Hubley. In Journals of the Military Expedition of Major General John Sullivan Against the Six Nations of Indians in 1779 with Records of Centennial Celebrations, edited by F. Cook, pp: 145–167. Knapp, Peck, & Thomson Printers, Auburn, New York. Huey, Lois M. and Bonnie Pulis 1997 Molly Brant: A Legacy of Her Own. Old Fort Niagara Association, Youngstown, New York. Hunt, George T. 1940 The Wars of the Iroquois. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Jenkins, Lt. John 1887 Journal. In Journals of the Military Expeditions of Major General John Sullivan Against the Six Nations of Indians in 1779 with Records of Centennial Celebrations, edited by F. Cooke, pp: 168–177. Knapp, Peck & Thomson, Auburn, New York. Jennings, Francis, William N. Fenton, Mary A. Druke, and David R. Miller (eds.) 1985 The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. Johnson, Warren 1921–1965 Journal, June 29, 1760 to July 3, 1761. In The Papers of Sir William Johnson (14 vols.) edited by J. Sullivan et al., pp: XIII, 180–214. University of the State of New York, Albany. Kappler, Charles J., (ed.) 1972 Indian Treaties, 1778–1883. (reprint of 1904 edition). Interland Publishing, New York, New York. Lewandowski, Stephen 1989 Three Sisters – An Iroquoian Cultural Complex. In Indian Corn of the Americas: Gift to the World, double issue of Northeast Indian Quarterly, Spring/Summer 1989, edited by J. Barreiro, pp: 41–45. Cornell University American Indian Program, Ithaca, New York. Logan, Clayton 2000 The Thanksgiving Address. In Treaty of Canandaigua 1794, edited by G. P. Jemison and A. M. Schein, pp: 7–11. Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Lounsbury, Floyd G. 1978 Iroquoian Languages. In Northeast Volume 15 of the Handbook of North American Indians, edited by B. G. Trigger, pp: 334–343. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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1989 Seneca Myths and Folk Tales, Introduction by William N. Fenton (reprint of the 1923 edition). University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Perdue, Theda 1998 Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700–1835. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Pickering, Timothy 1794 Timothy Pickering to Secretary of War Henry Knox, October 8, 1794, Pickering Papers. Microfilm on file at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. Porter, Tom Sakokwenionkwas 2006 Kanatsiohareke: Traditional Mohawk Indians Return to Their Ancestral Homeland. Bowman Books, Greenfield Center, New York. Powless, Chief Irving Jr. 2000 Treaty Making. In Treaty of Canandaigua 1794, edited by G. P. Jemison and A. M. Schein, pp: 15–34. Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ramenofsky, Ann F. 1987 Vectors of Death: The Archaeology of European Contact. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Schoolcraft, Henry R. 1975 Notes on the Iroquois (reprint of 1846 edition). Kraus Reprint Co., Millwood, New York. Shafer, Ann Eastlack 1990 The Status of Iroquois Women [unpublished 1941 master’s thesis]. In Iroquois Women: An Anthology, edited by W. G. Spittal, pp: 71–135. Iroqrafts, Ohsweken, Ontario. Shenandoah, Chief Leon 2000 Chief Leon Shenandoah, address at Canandaigua, November 11, 1994. In Treaty of Canandaigua 1794, edited by G. P. Jemison and A. M. Schein, p: 213. Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Shenandoah, Joanne and Doug George 1998 Skywoman: Legends of the Iroquois with illustrations by John Fadden and David Fadden. Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Sherrill v. Oneida 2005 City of Sherrill, New York v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York et al. U.S. Supreme Court Case No. 03-855, 544 U.S. March 29, 2005. Shoemaker, Nancy 2006 Kateri Tekakwitha’s Tortuouse Path to Sainthood. In In the Days of Our Grandmothers: A Reader in Aboriginal Women’s History in Canada, edited by M.-E. Kelm and L. Townsend, pp: 93–116. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Ontario. Snow, Dean R. 1994 The Iroquois. Blackwell, New York, New York. Speck, Frank Gouldsmith 1955 The Iroquois (2nd edition). Cranbook Institute of Science, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Swamp, Jake 2000 The Edge of the Woods. In Treaty of Canandaigua 1794, edited by G. P. Jemison and A. M. Schein, pp: 13–14. Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Wagner, Sally Roesch 1996 The Untold Story of the Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists. Sky Carrier Press, Aberdeen, South Dakota. 1998

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1970 The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca: The History and Culture of the Great Iroquois Nation, Their Destruction and Demoralization, and Their Cultural Revival at the Hands of the Indian Visionary, Handsome Lake. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York. 2003 Handsome Lake and the Decline of the Iroquois Matriarchate [reprint of a 1971 chapter]. In Anthony F.C. Wallace, Revitalizations and Mazeways: Essays on Culture Change, Vol. I, edited by R. S. Grumet, pp: 57–67. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Wallace, Paul 1994 The White Roots of Peace, with illustrations by John Kahionhes Fadden; a forward by Chief Leon Shenandoah; and an epilogue by John Mohawk (republication of the 1946 edition). Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Woodbury, Hanni 2003 Onondaga-English English-Onondaga Dictionary. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Ontario. Wraxall, Peter 1968 An Abridgment of the Indian Affairs Contained in Four Folio Volumes, Transacted in the Colony of New York, from the year 1678 to the Year 1751 (1754; reprint of the 1915 edition) edited by C. H. McIlwain, Benjamin Bloom, New York, New York.

Chapter 3

Gender Dynamics, Routine Activities, and Place in Haudenosaunee Territory: An Archaeological Case Study from the Cayuga Region of Central New York State Kathleen M. Sydoriak Allen

Introduction This chapter focuses on the spatial arrangement of gendered activities on the landscape within and outside an archaeologically recovered, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) longhouse in the Cayuga region of upstate New York. Several longhouses have been documented at two sites occupied during the mid to late 1500s in this region. I will discuss the way in which the spatially and temporally repeated performance of gendered routine activities, particularly those associated with food preparation and domestic manufacture, organizes and structures the archaeological record, as well as the impact this has on the relative visibility of women’s and men’s work at the level of a village landscape. The implications of this study for understanding the organization of economic activities as well as gender relations in Haudenosaunee society are also explored. The broader environmental context and the contemporary uses of these sites are discussed with special reference to how local residents and Haudenosaunee are able to connect with these landscapes. In addition, these locations are placed within the broader environmental context and contemporary land use in order to connect the past with the present in the way these landscapes are viewed both by local residents and by Haudenosaunee people. The encouragement and participation of the landowners has allowed this research to move forward and has helped to preserve the sites within the current rural landscape.

The Landscape of Central New York State Two village sites in the Cayuga region (White et al. 1978), Parker Farm and Carman, occupied in the mid to late 1500s (Niemczycki 1984), have been the focus of investigation in the context of summer field schools at the University of Pittsburgh since K.M. Sydoriak Allen (B) Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA e-mail: [email protected]

S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_3,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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1993. These two archaeological sites that form the center of the analysis discussed here are located in the Taughannock Creek watershed in the Allegheny uplands between Lakes Seneca and Cayuga, the two largest Finger Lakes in upstate New York. The land is relatively level as a result of former glaciation, although the several creeks that flow through this region result in gently rolling hills (Fig. 3.1). Some 7 miles to the northeast of this upland portion of the valley, Taughannock Creek plunges 215 ft over a rocky precipice and flows eastward for a distance of about a mile before it empties into Cayuga Lake (Ehling 1989). This waterfall is dramatic as its single drop is higher than Niagara Falls. The land around the southern half of Cayuga Lake also contains many other waterfalls in deep bedrock gorges (Van Diver 1985); the area is a dramatically beautiful region. The inhabitants of the sites in the upper reaches of Taughannock Creek probably knew of these waterfalls, but there is little evidence of the falls upstream, when one is atop the site, or along the floodplain below Parker Farm. Both sites occupy higher ground above either Taughannock Creek (Parker Farm) or a short tributary to Taughannock Creek (Carman). Water would have been readily available to the inhabitants of the sites as it is an easy walk down to the creek. While inhabitants at both locations probably cultivated crops, the wide floodplain below the Parker Farm settlement seems particularly suitable for cultivation (Fig. 3.2). Compared to the Carman settlement, the evidence for occupation is more dispersed

Fig. 3.1 View of Taughannock Valley in the vicinity of the Parker Farm and Carman sites, looking east

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Fig. 3.2 View from the floodplain below Parker Farm looking up toward the site

at Parker Farm and site size estimates are correspondingly larger (3.5 acres at Parker Farm vs. 2 acres at Carman). Several longhouse structures have been identified at these sites and household middens are found on the slopes and ravines adjacent to them. Clay would have been readily available to the inhabitants of the sites as it is present in the creek bed adjacent to Carman and occurs as lenses in the exposed bluff below Parker Farm. This upland area was also a prime deer-hunting territory and deer predominates among the faunal remains from the sites (Lockard-Reed and Allen 2007). At Carman, floral remains are dominated by carbonized nutshell (hickory and walnut), with maize and raspberries/blackberries also present in most features (Asmussen 1998). Floral remains at Parker Farm include maize kernels as well as a smaller number of nutshells (probably butternut) and other wild resources (Michaud Stutzman 2002). This evidence indicates differential uses of nearby and more distant landscapes around the village. Both sites have historic markers that were placed adjacent to them during the 1930s (Fig. 3.3). Each county in the state had a number of markers allotted to them at that time and the local communities were allowed to choose locations to mark. These markers have served to draw attention to the sites over the years, and collectors have come for decades to surface collect, and sometimes to dig pits, looking for artifacts. The signs also bring these locations to the attention of the community and serve as a reminder of the past history of the region. They heighten awareness of the value of these sites and today serve to protect them from random destruction.

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Fig. 3.3 State historic markers: A. Parker Farm B. Carman

As of yet, there is no definitive evidence for a palisade at either site, although the historic marker at Parker Farm suggests that one was present around the pond, a feature which has been gradually filled in by farmers over the years. Several glacial ridges are present on the site and beyond; these were interpreted as palisade ridges by early observers. The territory around the sites is primarily rural and current land use is agricultural. In the last two years, the land on which Parker Farm is situated has changed hands and cattle are currently grazing on a large portion of the site

Fig. 3.4 Rural location of Parker Farm with view of open field area and woods where the longhouse was located

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(Fig. 3.4). The landowners at both sites have encouraged and supported the educational goals of the fieldwork, and have been eager to maintain the properties in their current, minimally disturbed state.

Gender Dynamics and Routine Practice Excavations at these sites have centered on the recovery of residential structures; results from the analysis of two compartment areas within one structure from the Parker Farm site are discussed here. Underlying this analysis are ideas about the importance of understanding gender and the role of routine gendered activities in the creation of the archaeological remains at Haudenosaunee domestic sites. Initial impetus for this research stemmed from Janet Spector’s work on task differentiation by gender (1983). Routine activities and daily practice are often considered to be ahistorical in character; that is, they are part of daily, mundane life where events occur in a repetitive seasonal cycle and change is slow. It is at this microscale, however, that we can observe the organization of domestic and economic activities at the household and village level. Tasks concerned with food preparation (commonly associated with women’s labor) and manufacturing are among those routine actions that are most highly visible at domestic sites. The hearth is the locus for these food-related activities (Picazo 1997), and the contextual study of spaces centered around the hearth, as well as elsewhere in the residence, provides information about the organization of gendered tasks. Julia Hendon (1996) has noted how technology and material culture associated with food activities are active components in structuring social relationships. Choices made by makers and users of material may be made consciously, or may be conditioned through previous practice and tradition, depending on particular situations (see Bourdieu 1977; Lightfoot et al. 1998). While domestic activities are often associated with women, we must not simply identify who performed which task (gender and age attribution) and where activities took place on the landscape, but also consider how gender relations structure space and the ways in which activities and locales affect and involve gender (Sorensen 2000). In the research presented here, the analysis of features, their contents, and their spatial distribution are used to examine aspects of gender relations within and outside a residential structure. Combining routine activities with a consideration of their gendered nature provides greater understanding of domestic household organization (how space is organized and where tasks are performed), its connection with gender relations, and how economic organization at the household level impacts broader cultural change.

Haudenosaunee Social Practice Seasonality and gender complementarity have often been cited as key elements in the traditional subsistence and settlement pattern of the Haudenosaunee (Fenton

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1978; Snow 1994) and their analysis requires consideration of a number of spatial and temporal levels (Gamble 2001). Subsistence and settlement pattern have been examined at several spatial scales of activity from the regional through the community to the household level (Allen 2000, 2009; Engelbrecht 2003; Fogt and Ramsden 1996; Miroff and Knapp 2009). At the temporal scale, daily, periodic, seasonal, and decadelong patterns of activity can be identified. A brief introduction to these scales follows although the primary emphasis will be on the microscale, the smaller, daily activities that occur in the village and within the household.

Spatial Patterning During the 1400s through 1600s, the Haudenosaunee were slash and burn horticulturalists who lived in village communities of approximately 800–1000 people. They moved their villages every 15–20 years resulting in a long-term pattern of village movement over the regional landscape (Engelbrecht 2003; Tuck 1971). In general, the domain of women consisted of the house, the village, and the nearby fields; the world of men involved movement into the woods and long-distance travel away from the local area (Engelbrecht 2003; Fenton 1978, 1998; Heidenreich 1971; Prezzano 1997; Chapter 2 by Venables, this volume). Specifically, women’s activities involved moving across the landscape between gathering tasks in nearby edge areas, horticultural activities that took place in fields close to the village, and domestic tasks within the village and the household. Although men engaged in specific tasks such as house building, maintenance, and field clearing, men’s work more often took them further distances across the landscape to engage in hunting, trading, and warfare at various times during the spring, summer, and fall. Men returned to the village for longer periods in winter to engage in maintenance and feasting activities (Table 3.1). Older men probably stayed in the village for a greater portion of the year. This pattern of subsistence activities means that women’s labor is much more evident archaeologically at the village level than that of men, although this will be affected by seasonal variations. A typical prehistoric Haudenosaunee village consisted of a number of longhouses packed into a small area, often enclosed by a palisade, and surrounded by cultivated fields (Engelbrecht 2003; Fenton 1998). Several small open areas might be present within the village where tasks that required more space could take place and where activities could be done during warmer weather. The longhouse was the locus for many daily and periodically performed routine tasks. In structural (physical) terms, the longhouse consisted of a central corridor that extended the entire length of the structure with family compartments on either side of regularly spaced, or somewhat irregularly spaced, central hearths (Finlayson 1985; Warrick 1996). Among the Haudenosaunee, the household as a unit of production has been equated with different structural elements of the longhouse ranging from a compartment half, the residence of a single nuclear family, to the entire structure, usually a longhouse occupied by a number of families related through women (Michaud Stutzman 2009; Williams-Shuker 2009). Historic reports suggest the coordination

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Table 3.1 Seasonality and spatial components of activities for women and men Women’s activities Village

Field

Spring

Edge

Forest

Gather firewood Maple sap Burning Planting

Collecting greens Collecting berries

Hoeing

Collecting berries

Summer Drying berries Tending Gathering berries, Indian hemp Fall

Harvesting Drying crops storing

Winter

Nut gathering Hunting Councils

Councils Manufacturing: Weaving mats Tool maintenance Feasting and socializing

Men’s activities Village

Field

Spring

Forest

Beyond

Fishing Maple sap Clearing War and trade

Summer

Fall

Defense Bark work houses, utensils Return from war and trade

Peel bark Some fishing

Fishing Mass hunts Councils Winter

Most residents here manufacturing feasting and socializing

Councils War Some ice fishing Some trade

of labor through matrilineal family units (Morgan 1962). Although some work has treated the interior compartments as modular units with very little structural or behavioral variability, recent analyses have indicated that the organization of individual compartments may vary (Kapches 1993, 1994; Funk and Kuhn 2003).

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Hearths are often located off-center and open areas for storage and performance of activities are present at the compartment ends. There is diversity between compartments as well based on status and perhaps wealth (Snow 1994, 1995, 2002). The compartment areas within the longhouse are where many routine activities occurred that contribute heavily to the remains found at these village sites.

Temporal Patterning While the spatial configuration of seasonal and subsistence activities represents an important component of economic life, consideration of the specific location and frequency of occurrence of these tasks sheds light on the relative density and proportions of different categories of archaeological remains that result. Table 3.2 shows the temporality of activities participated in by the Haudenosaunee focusing on those that occur on a daily or periodic basis within the village. Both men and women participated in these activities although more were done by women. In fact, most of the daily and periodic activities were performed by women with the exception of village maintenance tasks. Food procurement, preparation, distribution, consumption, and disposal are subsistence practices that occurred on a daily basis (Parker 1968; Waugh 1916). While food procurement occurred primarily outside the village and varied by season, most of these other food-related tasks (food preparation, distribution, consumption, and disposal) took place within, and were done mostly by women. In addition, the most Table 3.2 Temporal cycle of activities for women and men in vicinity of village Daily activities

Periodic activities

In village Rise with sun

Mostly in village area Manufacturing: Pottery Mats Baskets

Keep fire going Food preparation Cooking Eating

Hide processing Bone awls Stone tools Bark containers

Childcare Cleaning utensils Carrying water

Village maintenance: Replacing wall posts Replacing bark walls Building new structures Strengthening palisade

Chopping wood Garbage disposal Sleeping

Process food for storage: Dry berries, crops Clean fish Butcher animals

Wood bowls Beads Ornamentation

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frequently occurring activities within the household were food related and probably took place primarily at the hearth or nearby within the compartment. This was especially the case during winter months. Food processing activities also took place outside during the warmer months and days of the year. Table 3.3 presents information on the location of routine domestic activities associated with subsistence and their associated material remains. Lithics, ceramics, and fragmentary faunal remains are the primary kind of evidence found for a variety of these food-related activities although the relative proportions and completeness of these may vary as patterns become obscured with village abandonment and post-depositional processes. Manufacturing and maintenance tasks also occurred on a regular basis; both women and men participated in these tasks although these varied by season. Evidence for these kinds of activities may be much less abundant particularly if they are performed less frequently or involve the use of more perishable materials. Table 3.4 shows a variety of routine domestic manufacturing and maintenance activities that occurred and their associated material remains. In warmer weather, many of these activities would have taken place outside. Some tools used for maintenance and manufacture are the same as those used for food-related tasks. Rarer items such as bone awls and antler tines provide information about activities that occurred less often, or these tools may be less frequently preserved. Table 3.3 Food preparation and consumption activities occurring in domestic spaces and the material remains Associated material culture Spatial area Hearth Final food preparation stages Cooking Distributing food Eating nearby Compartment Food processing Food storing

Lithics

Containers

Utilized flakes

Bone Unburned

Knives Scrapers

Pottery Wooden bowls

Burned

Utilized flakes Knives Scrapers

Pottery

Unburned

Pits Baskets, bins Midden Disposal

Discarded tools, flakes

Sherds

Fragments – burned, unburned

Archaeological Patterning The intensity of utilization of the residence will vary by season according to the scheduling of specific tasks that must be accomplished on a seasonal basis (cf. Wilk and Netting 1984). Mima Kapches (1979) notes more intensive use of longhouses

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K.M. Sydoriak Allen Table 3.4 Manufacturing activities occurring in domestic spaces and the material remains Associated material culture

Spatial area Hearth & compartment Making baskets Pottery making Hide working

Flint knapping Outside and midden Refuse from above activities

Lithics

Containers

Bone

Temper Drills Utilized flakes Scrapers Knives Debitage Hammerstones

Clay Bark

Bone awls Decorating tools Unburned

Spent tools Debitage

Sherds

Antler tines Unburned

during the winter than during the summer and more varied and intensive deposition of material during that season. Both men and women utilized the house during the winter; during summer months, women were fully engaged in activities centered in the village landscape in and outside the house (Engelbrecht 2003; Fenton 1978; Prezzano 1997; Snow 1994). Over time, it is probable that a variety of activities would take place in any particular portion of the house. Hearths are the most persistent, recognizable features in the houses and their locations structure the placement of activities. Interior support posts and bench posts also delineate areas of organized space within the structure (Kapches 1990) and frame where activities can and cannot take place. Discrete activity areas are rare as the archaeological remains are a palimpsest of those actions that occur at different times of the year, and year after year. In addition, consideration of site formation processes in the form of refuse disposal, cleaning, and abandonment is crucial in understanding archaeological remains (Moeller 1992; Nelson and Schachner 2002; Schiffer 1987). Confounding factors abound at these sites; artifacts may not be found at the locus where they were employed. Periodic sweeping of interiors and refuse removal and disposal result in a pattern of remains that is an imperfect reflection of the kinds of activities that actually occurred in the longhouse. The most abundant evidence for all kinds of activities may be located in middens which may, in turn, exhibit complex histories that also vary seasonally (Needham and Spence 1997). Nevertheless, even with periodic cleaning, the material recovered from structures will be an indication of activities that took place most consistently in the longhouse and can be analyzed to discriminate those routine actions that occurred most frequently and regularly in particular areas. Material on the floors of structures can

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be compared with feature material as well to see if similar kinds of activities are indicated. Storage pits in houses are usually emptied prior to village removal (abandonment) or filled with refuse at some point either during the occupation or as it ends. This suggests that pits in the house probably contain material associated with activities that occurred within the structure. Halstead et al. (1978) note that segregation of refuse occurs due to temporal and spatial variability of tasks and that different sets of activities are identifiable even within middens. Their work suggests that fine scale analyses of structured deposition will allow for discrimination of activity patterns. In what follows, materials from several compartments of a longhouse are compared. This examination of the remains of domestic activities will enable a further discussion of gender.

Sites and Context of Material Examined I focus on results of fieldwork at Parker Farm, a Cayuga site (Niemczycki 1984), where we have evidence for a longhouse structure. While excavations have taken place in a number of locations across this somewhat dispersed site, the greatest amount of excavation has concentrated on a single longhouse structure located in a small wooded area, the least disturbed portion of the site. Two adjacent areas within the house have been investigated, as well as a feature just west of the structure. In the summer of 2000, excavations identified a compartment within a longhouse which contained a hearth, a food preparation feature, a shallow pit layered with rocks, and several personal storage pits (Michaud Stutzman 2002). At one end of the compartment, postmolds that appeared to be a partition separating that compartment from an adjoining area to the south were found. In 2002, work on the structure continued with the excavation of the area adjacent to the compartment to the south. On the basis of the features found and their orientation, this southern area is either a continuation of that compartment or a vestibule area near the end of the house. This uncertainty is due to ambiguous structural evidence for wall and bench post locations although the orientation of features strongly suggests the continuation of the longhouse structure (Fig. 3.5).

Data Discussion In order to look for differences in activities occurring in these two longhousecompartment spaces (referred to as the northern residential area and the adjacent southern area), particularly those that might be structured by gender, the contents of a number of features were analyzed. Most of these features were relatively small; all feature sediment was put through an 1/8 inch screen. Ceramics, lithics, and faunal material were the primary categories of material recovered. Flotation of sediment is ongoing and discussion of floral material is not included here.

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Fig. 3.5 Map of Parker Farm structure showing compartments and features

For features in both the northern and southern areas, faunal material comprises the most frequent material recovered except for Feature 124 in the southern area, which has by far the largest amount of lithic material. When the cultural material of lithics and pottery are examined by removing the high faunal material frequencies which tend to mask the relative proportions of artifactual material, some interesting patterns emerge (Fig. 3.6). In the northern residential area, cultural material from four of the five features contain larger proportions of lithics than pottery. In the southern area, Features 85 and 90 on the west side contain much higher proportions of pottery than lithics. The strong and statistically significant difference between the features in this area in the relative proportions of artifactual material suggests a different focus to the activities taking place in the western and eastern portions of this southern space. Comparing all of the features in both areas shows patterns of similarity and difference. The two cylindrical pits (85 and 90), in close proximity on the west side of the southern area, were most similar to each other and different from the rest of the features. These both have fewer lithics and more pottery than expected by chance. Two features (50 and 124) (one in the center of the north compartment between

Gender Dynamics, Routine Activities, and Place in Haudenosaunee Territory

Fig. 3.6 Comparison of lithic and pottery percentages among features in the north and south compartments. North compartment statistics: (chi square 6.755, p < .03, Cramer’s V .277); South compartment statistics: (chi square 93.243, p < .001, Cramer’s V .557)

100

69 lithics pottery

80 Percentages

3

60 40 20 0 pm358

50

61

55A

55b/35

Northern compartment area features, House 1 100

Percentages

80

lithics pottery

60 40 20 0 83

85

90

94

124

Southern area features, House 1

the hearth and the rock-lined feature, and the other on the east side of the southern area) contain slightly more lithics than expected by chance. This suggests that there was more intensive lithic activity carried out in specific areas on the east side of the southern space and in the center of the northern residential compartment. Feature 94, located just west of the southern area, and Feature 83, located in close proximity to Features 85 and 90, also had more lithic material than pottery. The relative frequency of unburned and burned bone in these features was also compared (Fig. 3.7). Overall, burned bone outnumbers unburned bone in the majority of features although three have relatively equal proportions. These three features, two in the southern area (85 and 90 again) and one in the northern area (55b/35), were most similar to each other with greater proportions of unburned bone than expected. It is tempting to consider these differences as related to food preparation activities; Feature 55b has been previously identified as a food processing area and has more unburned bone than any other features in the two spaces. Features 85 and 90 provide evidence for both pottery and unburned bone refuse suggesting their contents result from several kinds of activities of differing intensity.

70 100

unburned burned

80 Percentages

Fig. 3.7 Comparison of unburned and burned faunal material percentages among features in the north and south compartments

K.M. Sydoriak Allen

60 40 20 0 pm358

50

61

55A

55b/35

Northern compartment area features, House 1 100

Percentages

80

unburned burned

60 40 20 0 83

85

90

94

124

Southern area features, House 1

The picture presented then is relatively complex; the remains do not suggest identical activities taking place in these two areas nor are they entirely distinct (as in food preparation in the southern area and cooking and consumption in the northern residential area). Food preparation activities are most evident in the space adjacent to the hearth in the northern compartment and on the western side of the southern area. This is also where greater amounts of pottery are found. Clearly there was some localization of tasks associated with food preparation and food consumption in the two areas within this structure.

Interpretations and Conclusions Archaeological material recovered from this house area consists primarily of the remnants of daily activities, especially those performed by women. Food preparation, including processing and cooking, are most clearly represented in the remains. The actual location of material is the result of both deliberate placement within pits as well as accidental presence through regular floor sweeping.

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Examination of feature contents suggests variability in activities occurring in the two areas. While one might focus on the strong similarities between these different places with a preponderance of activities associated with food processing and cooking, differences in the specific composition of material provide support for the separation of tasks in these locations. Specifically, the overall greater proportion of burned bone in the northern residential compartment suggests a greater emphasis on cooking and consumption in that part of the household. This interpretation is strengthened by the presence of the hearth in this area. This hearth area is a focus for a number of activities indicated both by the large number of features in that area and the more equal percentages of lithics and pottery here compared to other areas. Some food processing also apparently took place adjacent to the hearth. The southern part of this structure is a space where activities associated with routine domestic practices occurred that were complementary in nature to those taking place in the northern area. The larger proportion of unburned bone in this area provides greater evidence for food processing. In addition, activities associated with production took place here including manufacture of stone tools (evidenced by the carpet of debitage in Feature 124), utilization of bone tools (evidenced by three awls that came from units in the southern area), and pottery manufacture (higher percentages of sherds and a fragment of unburned tempered and shaped clay). None of these areas can be specifically attributed to men’s activities with the possible exception of one feature (124) with a dense layer of lithics apparently resulting from biface reduction. As women form the core of longhouse residence, it is perhaps not surprising that activities performed by them are overwhelmingly represented in the archaeological material recovered from this space adjacent to a hearth. The hearth is at the center of longhouse activities and a set of them stretch along the central corridor of the longhouse. Women, on a daily basis, are focused on a number of activities centered around the hearth; most of these are associated with the sustenance and nourishment of the family. Men are present (more so at some times of the year than others) and participate in the shared meanings associated with the hearth and the pot full of food, but are less directly involved in cooking and preparation activities that provide that fullness. Although the longhouse has been characterized as having a nonspecific-function interior (Kapches 1990), we can also view it as a multifunctional, adaptable unit of residence where alternative gendered activities are carried out in different spaces depending on need. Hearths are a major structuring element of the longhouse interior. While the conventional description suggests that the hearths are equally spaced down the center of the longhouse with a nuclear family on either side, in reality, hearths are often located toward one side of the corridor or another, and are not always evenly distributed or used at the same time, thereby providing spaces where other activities are performed (Kapches 1990). Over time, regularly performed activities create structured patterning of materials in the longhouse that varies from compartment to compartment. In the present case, the greatest variability in activity is associated with the southern space that is not as strongly organized as the north area which contains a hearth – that central symbol of community associated

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especially strongly with women. The presence of men in the village and the longhouse is more ephemeral due to their frequent absences from the household and village while hunting, trading, and fighting. The presence of men is more illusory in these archaeological remains as well. There is less archaeological evidence for men’s activities or for the separation of men’s and women’s spaces within the house. What can we say about gender relationships here? They have been described as complementary for the Haudenosaunee and have been characterized as separate and equal. The interweaving of women’s and men’s activities is apparent in the lack of separate areas for their work within the house. Although there are more remains associated with women’s work, men’s activities are represented in the extensive evidence for biface reduction in one part of the south area and in the presence of large quantities of bone, primarily deer, resulting from their hunting activities out on the broader landscape. The fact that differences have been identified between these areas suggests that this is a fruitful avenue for research. It is through the identification of variability within and between residences that complexity will become apparent at the domestic, microscale level. Comparisons between longhouses and villages will illuminate the structure of economic gender organization and gender relations, and how they changed over time.

Landscape and Site Preservation Issues The two sites in this study have been relatively well-preserved up to this point, largely due to the landowners’ efforts. The landowners at the Carman site are two women who approached me during a public talk I gave some years ago to say that there was a site on their property. I went out to visit and began fieldwork there the following summer. They regularly rented their land, including the field that Carman is on, to a local farmer who would plant either corn or some other feed crop for his dairy cattle. This farmer would plow the field for me before I arrived with students for the field season. As it turned out, he owned the field and the woods that the Parker Farm site was on, and allowed me to do some testing there before proceeding with his plans to cut down the trees on the wooded portion of the site and pull stumps. Once we found extant features and better preservation there than on Carman, he delayed his plans for further work in the woods to allow us to excavate in that area. When he sold the land to the new owner, he told him of the site and the new owner put up a fence to protect the wooded area of the site from the cattle he was planning to graze there. He even put in a gate so we could easily access the site area. The landowners have played an important role in the preservation of these two sites. They have promoted education about these sites through organizing both “open house” activities at the sites and talks to the local community. During the open houses, neighbors have stopped by to see what we are doing, and the field school students have learned to explain their finds to members of the local community. Local residents also stop by regularly during our 6-week field season to visit and catch up on the progress we have made. I have also given talks to the local

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community at the nearby fire hall and at the Friends Meeting House. The sites continue to coexist with current agricultural and grazing land use, and the owners and neighbors protect them from modern encroachment. These sites were well-marked in the 1930s and I am hopeful that they will survive these modern times as well. There are, however, new housing developments that have been going up in nearby areas and the threat is present here as well. Gendered landscapes could disappear without the care of local landowners and the community. In this case, working with the landowners and outreach to the local community has resulted in greater appreciation for these sites and for the previous Native American inhabitants of the region. In the years since I first started working on these two sites, we have had a succession of Native visitors to the sites including Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, and Mohawk people. They tour the sites, observe excavations, and interact with the students. Students both answer and ask questions of our visitors and often comment on the contribution this makes to their experience. In addition, there has been an increase in the number of Cayuga Indians living in the vicinity of Lake Cayuga and they now own land on the eastern side of the lake (Hansen and Rossen 2007). This past summer, we went to the Cayuga SHARE farm and participated in a group work day. This experience gave students a greater sense of connection with the Native people whose ancestors we are studying and brings this research into the contemporary world. As in the past, Cayuga people continue to visit these sites to reconnect with their past through viewing and discussing the landscape, the sites, and the evidence for structures and activities we recover. Acknowledgments I am very grateful to the wonderful landowners, Peggy Billings, Mary Lou VanBuren, Peter and Jane Hansen, and Scott and Kit Gardner, for their gracious permission to work on these sites and provide opportunities for undergraduate students at the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere to work on and respect Native American sites in this region. I highly value their friendship and assistance. I also thank the Native people who have visited these sites over the years and have made comments that have helped in interpretations. Our landlord in Ithaca, Christopher Anagnost, and his assistant, Tracy Swearingen, have made great contributions to the success of our field school and I am grateful to them. Thanks also to the many who have worked on these sites both in the field and in the lab. Special thanks to Myrtle Shock and Kate Birmingham for their efforts in this regard. I also appreciate the comments and advice offered by Nicole Constable, Katheryn Linduff, and Bryan Hanks on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Tables 1 and 2 previously appeared in Allen 2009 published by the University of Tennessee Press. Technical assistance provided by Mark Mooney and Adam Berrey made final production of figures possible. I am especially grateful to the book editors, Sherene Baugher and Suzanne Spencer-Wood, for their support, encouragement, and assistance. Their comments greatly improved the structure and flow of this paper and I am very appreciative of their efforts. Any errors or omissions that remain are my responsibility alone.

References Allen, Kathleen. M. Sydoriak 2000 Considerations of Scale in Modeling Settlement Patterns Using GIS: An Iroquois Example. In Practical Applications of GIS for Archaeologists, edited by K. L. Westcott and R. J. Brandon, pp. 101–112. Taylor & Francis Inc., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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2009 Temporal and Spatial Scales of Activity Among the Iroquois: Implications for Understanding Cultural Change. In Iroquoian Archaeology and Analytic Scale, edited by L. E. Miroff and T. D. Knapp, pp. 153–177. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Asmussen, Heidi 1998 Toward an Understanding of Iroquois Plant Use: Archaeobotanical Material from the Carman Site, a Cayuga Village in Central New York. Honors Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Bourdieu, Pierre 1977 Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press, New York, New York. Ehling, William P. 1989 Fifty Hikes in Central New York. Backcountry Publications, Woodstock, Vermont. Engelbrecht, William E. 2003 Iroquoia: The Development of a Native World. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. Fenton, William N. 1978 Northern Iroquoian Cultural Patterns. In Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15: Northeast, edited by B.G. Trigger, pp. 296–321. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 1998 The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Finlayson, William 1985 The 1975 and 1978 Rescue Excavations at the Draper Site: Introduction and Settlement Patterns. Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series 130. Fogt, Lisa and Peter G. Ramsden 1996 From Timepiece to Time Machine: Scale and Complexity in Iroquoian Archaeology. In Debating Complexity, edited by D. A. Meyer, P. C. Dawson, and D. T. Hanna, pp. 39–45. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary. Funk, Robert E. and Robert D. Kuhn 2003 Three Sixteenth-Century Mohawk Village Sites. New York State Museum Bulletin 503. The New York State Education Department, Albany. Gamble, Clive 2001 Archaeology: The Basics. Routledge, New York, New York. Halstead, Paul, Ian Hodder, and G. Jones 1978 Behavioural Archaeology and Refuse Patterns: A Case Study. Norwegian Archaeological Review 11:118–131. Hansen, Brooke and Jack Rossen 2007 Building Bridges Through Public Anthropology in the Haudenosaunees Homeland. In Past Meets Present: Archaeologists Partnering with Museum Curators, Teachers, and Community Groups, edited by J. H. Jameson and S. Baugher, pp. 127–148. Springer, New York, New York. Heidenreich, Conrad E. 1971 Huronia: A History and Geography of the Huron Indians 1600–1650. McClelland and Stewart Limited, Toronto, Ontario.

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Hendon, Julia A. 1996 Archaeological Approaches to the Organization of Domestic Labor: Household Practice and Domestic Relations. Annual Review of Anthropology 25:45–61. Hertzberg, Hazel W. 1966 The Great Tree and the Longhouse: The Culture of the Iroquois. The Macmillan Company, New York. Kapches, Mima 1979 Intra-longhouse Spatial Analysis. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 49(4):24–29. 1990 The Spatial Dynamics of Ontario Iroquoian Longhouses. American Antiquity 55(1): 49–67. 1993 The Identification of an Iroquoian Unit of Measurement: Architectural and Social/Cultural Implications for the Longhouse. Archaeology of Eastern North America 21:137–162. 1994 The Iroquoian Longhouse: Architectural and Cultural Identity. In Meaningful Architecture: Social Interpretations of Buildings, edited by M. Locock, pp. 253–270. Worldwide Archaeology Series Volume 9. Avebury, Brookfield, Vermont. Lightfoot, Kent G., Antoinette Martinez, and Ann M. Schiff 1998 Daily Practice and Material Culture in Pluralistic Social Settings: An Archaeological Study of Culture Change and Persistence from Fort Ross, California. American Antiquity 63(2): 199–222. Lockard-Reed, Angela and Kathleen M. S. Allen 2007 Cayuga Subsistence During the Late Sixteenth Century. Paper presented in the session Eastern North America, Society for American Archaeology 72nd Annual Meeting, Austin, Texas. Michaud Stutzman, Tracy S. 2002 Multi-scalar Analysis of Domestic Activities at Parker Farm: A Late Prehistoric Cayuga Iroquois Village. Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, MI. 2009 The Community and the Microhousehold: Local Level Scales of Analysis within an Iroquois Village. In Iroquoian Archaeology and Analytic Scale, edited by L. E. Miroff and T. D. Knapp, pp. 131–151. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Miroff, Laurie E. and Timothy D. Knapp, eds. 2009 Iroquoian Archaeology and Analytic Scale. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Moeller, Roger W. 1992 Analyzing and Interpreting Late Woodland Features. Occasional Publications in Northeastern Anthropology, No. 12. Archaeological Services, Bethlehem, Connecticut. Morgan, Lewis H. 1962 League of the Iroquois. Originally published in 1851. Citadel Press, Inc. Secaucus, New Jersey. Needham, Stuart and Tony Spence 1997 Refuse and the Formation of Middens. Antiquity 71:77–90. Nelson, Margaret and G. Schachner 2002 Understanding Abandonments in the North American Southwest. Journal of Archaeological Research 10(2):167–206.

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Niemczycki, Mary Ann P. 1984 The Origin and Development of the Seneca and Cayuga Tribes of New York State. Research Records No. 17, Rochester Museum and Science Center, Rochester, New York. Parker, Arthur C. 1968 Iroquois Uses of Maize and Other Food Plants. In Parker on the Iroquois, edited by W. N. Fenton. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. Picazo, Marina 1997 Hearth and Home: The Timing of Maintenance Activities. In Invisible People and Processes, edited by J. Moore and E. Scott, pp. 59–67. Leicester University Press, London, UK. Prezzano, Susan C. 1997 Warfare, Women, and Households: The Development of Iroquois Culture. In Women in Prehistory: North America and Mesoamerica, edited by C. Claussen and R. A. Joyce, pp. 88–99. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Schiffer, Michael B. 1987 Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Snow, Dean 1994 The Iroquois. Blackwell Publishers Inc., Cambridge, MA. 1995 Mohawk Valley Archaeology: The Sites. The Institute for Archaeological Studies, University at Albany, SUNY, NY. 2002 Longhouse at Otstungo. Paper presented at the Iroquois Conference, October 2002. Rensselaerville Institute, Rensselaerville, New York. Sorensen, Marie Louise Stig 2000 Gender Archaeology. Polity Press, Cambridge, U.K. Spector, Janet D. 1983 Male/Female Task Differentiation among the Hidatsa: Toward the Development of an Archaeological Approach to the Study of Gender. In The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women, edited by P. Albers and B. Medicine, pp. 77–99. University Press of America, Washington, D.C. Tuck, James A. 1971 Onondaga Iroquois Prehistory: A Study in Settlement Archaeology. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. Van Diver, Bradford B. 1985 Roadside Geology of New York. Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula, Montana. Warrick, Gary A. 1996 Evolution of the Iroquoian Longhouse. In People Who Lived in Big Houses: Archaeological Perspectives on Large Domestic Structures, edited by G. Coupland and E. B. Banning, pp. 11–26. Monographs in World Archaeology no. 27. Prehistory Press, Madison, Wisconsin. Waugh, Frederick W. 1916 Iroquois Foods and Food Preparation. Memoir 86, No. 12, Anthropological Series. Canada Department of Mines, Government Printing Bureau, Ottawa, Ontario. White, Marian E., William E. Engelbrecht, and Elisabeth Tooker 1978 Cayuga. In Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 15, Northeast, edited by B. Trigger, pp. 500–504. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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Wilk, Richard R. and Netting, Robert M. 1984 Households: Changing Forms and Functions. In Households: Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group, edited by R. M. Netting, R. R. Wilk, and E. J. Arnould, pp. 1–28. University of California Press, Berkeley. Williams-Shuker, Kimberly 2009 “Bottom-Up” Perspectives of the Contact Period: A View From the Rogers Farm Site. In Iroquoian Archaeology and Analytic Scale, edited by L. E. Miroff and T. D. Knapp, pp. 189–213. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.

Part II

Gendering African-American Landscapes

Chapter 4

Sweepin’ Spirits: Power and Transformation on the Plantation Landscape Whitney Battle-Baptiste

Introduction When one thinks of power, a number of thoughts come to mind. Is power the ability to influence something or someone? Does power have anything to do with authority or control? Is power given by others or earned by the individual? I begin this article with the word and idea of power because some of the chapters in this book focus on power dynamics and all of the authors in this volume discuss how landscapes are perceived in the past or in the present. In this chapter, I will explore landscapes as more than just places affected by people, but made of living species – plants, trees, birds, animals, fish, and so forth, while recognizing that it is people who bring social and symbolic meaning to these places. Therefore, I see power in who transformed the plantation from a “natural landscape” to “cultural landscape” as the central component in understanding black cultural production in the 19th century. Taking my lead from the work of cultural geographers, landscape historians, and landscape architects, I wanted to examine the transformative process in cultural landscapes and perhaps tease out who ultimately shapes these cultural locations. According to the cultural landscape historian, Paul Groth, “Cultural landscape studies focuses most on the history of how people have used everyday space – buildings, rooms, streets, fields, or yards – to establish their identity, articulate their social relations, and derive social meaning” (Groth 1997:1). Landscape architects Arnold Alanen and Robert Melnick (2000:21) note, “the cultural landscape provides considerable evidence as to how humans have used nature over time.” Another aspect of the creation of cultural landscapes is the preservation of these spaces to reflect a historical time or important person. For this chapter, we will be focusing on the Hermitage, a plantation museum just outside of Nashville, Tennessee. The Hermitage is often discussed from the perspective of the great power

W. Battle-Baptiste (B) Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01002, USA e-mail: [email protected]

S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_4,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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and legacy of Andrew Jackson – lawyer, general, and the seventh president of the United States. However, much of the path to transforming the decaying plantation into a Tennessee historical landmark was through the efforts of a memorial association started by a small group of wealthy Nashville women, the Ladies’ Hermitage Association (LHA). These women were members of the city’s elite and used their own “influence and power” to push for legislation marking the Hermitage as a place of Tennessee pride (Fig. 4.1).

Fig. 4.1 The Hermitage. Engraving (property of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association, Nashville, Tennessee)

In 1915, a founding member, Mrs. Mary C. Doris, described the historic homestead in these words: “It was a conscientious principle with Andrew Jackson that caused him to build the log house at the Hermitage, a spot destined to become historic and where he spent forty-one years of his eventful life” (Doris 1915:7). Mrs. Doris felt the necessity to write the first history of the plantation in her book, Preservation of the Hermitage 1889–1915: Annals, History and Stories: The Acquisition, Restoration and Care of the Home of General Andrew Jackson by the Ladies’ Hermitage Association for over a Quarter Century. She wanted to solidify the role of the LHA in the memory of the property as well as the importance of the founding of the organization. The role of the LHA was historically significant in a number of ways. The presence of these women has always been at the forefront and an active influence in how the property would be remembered. This commitment to understanding the past has played a major role in how the Hermitage incorporates gendered discussions in contemporary interpretive exhibits. This chapter will focus on a case study from my own research and how I used a gendered approach and methodology to interpret life at one area of the plantation, the First Hermitage site.

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The First Hermitage The First Hermitage site is located at the highest point of the Hermitage plantation and was what Doris was referring to earlier when she described Jackson as building a log cabin (Fig. 4.2). Mary Doris (1915:8) described the site, “Nothing daunted, he built the log house and in the year 1804, moved once again into the wilderness. The log house was a two-story building, one large room below and two above, with several other log houses surrounding it, making a comfortable, if not a very pretentious, home.”

Fig. 4.2 The First Hermitage site with Alfred posing. (Property of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association, Nashville, Tennessee)

When the Jacksons and 10–12 captive Africans first moved to the Hermitage in 1804, the property resembled a small farm more than a working plantation (BattleBaptiste 2007:237). In the first few years the Hermitage was modest by Tennessee standards. However, this would not be the case for very long. Although the First Hermitage has always symbolized Jackson’s humble beginnings and his rise to social and political prominence, the myth of Jackson’s cabin in the woods has always been slightly exaggerated. The projection of Jackson as a common man, a man of the people, the humble son orphaned at an early age to become president of the United States, has always neglected to mention his role as one of the largest plantation owners in the Middle Tennessee region. In 1819, Andrew Jackson began overseeing construction of a new brick structure about 250 feet south of the First Hermitage site. The new brick structure

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allowed Jackson to perform a symbolic dominance through architecture (Epperson 1999:169). The First Hermitage was therefore transformed from the center of the property and Jackson’s home to a quarter occupied exclusively by captive African families. With Jackson’s removal to the Mansion, there was an increase in distance between master and captive workers. The year 1821 also marked a profound restructuring of the entire plantation (McKee and Galle 2000; Jones 2002). In 1820 Jackson sold his Alabama plantation and was in the process of moving a majority of the captive workers to the Hermitage, increasing the population from approximately 40 to 80 people (Battle 2004). Cotton was a rare choice in the Middle Tennessee region, a majority of “planters” did not have the land, resources, or labor to sustain such an intense crop. Jackson, however, made the decision and made it work, eventually opening up several fields dedicated to the crop and building a cotton gin and press on the property. To accommodate his growing labor force, in the 1820s Jackson began planning the

Fig. 4.3 First Hermitage excavations. (Image compiled by Jamie Brandon, 2004)

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construction of several additional structures. Excavations revealed evidence of at least two additional structures at the First Hermitage site (making the total number of structures four) and four double pen structures (known as the Field Quarters) about 250 feet south. Excavations at the First Hermitage site spanned a three-year period from 1997 to 1999. During this period researchers investigated several areas around and between the two standing cabins. The archaeological findings ranged from the Jackson Period (1804–1820), the Middle Quarter Period (1821–1850), and the pre-Museum

Fig. 4.4 Map of archaeological sites/quarter neighborhoods. (Compiled by Larry McKee)

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period (1850–1888). The areas of the site that were most significant to my research questions were divided into five archaeological zones. These included Zone I (the Kitchen Courtyard), Zone II (the Kitchen Quarter backyard), Zone III (the outdoor hearth and cooking area), Zone IV (the Central Courtyard), and Zone V (The Farmhouse West) (Fig. 4.3). After 1821 the First Hermitage became a very central location on the expanding plantation and the site served as a bridge between the Jacksons’ private space and the labor and living areas occupied by the captive population (Fig. 4.4). This chapter will focus on the First Hermitage site after 1821, a time I have named the Middle Quarter period. This time period was when the Hermitage was transformed from a small adequate farm to a burgeoning plantation. Therefore to analyze this moment through the archaeological record was a chance to explore how the captive African community was able to permanently fix their cultural footprint on the plantation environment. The meaning of the space for the captive families was different than it was for the Jacksons. It is this line of questioning that makes a gendered approach all the more rich. The methods I was able to employ yielded quite new and exciting interpretations of the captive landscape in ways that I did not foresee. It also, in some ways allowed me to address the challenges of interpreting a complicated past to a contemporary audience.

The Shaping of a Landscape In the early years (1804–1820) The Hermitage was a simple, small farm, where land was being cleared, settled, and planted and there was little separation between the Jackson family and the captive population (Remini 1977). The Jackson Farmhouse and the Kitchen Quarter were only 40 feet apart. This community found methods of creating social boundaries between their work life and private lives in subtle and subversive ways. It is important to point out that initially the role of captive women were essential (but not confined to) the domestic spaces of the plantation, forcing what Deborah Gray White refers to as serving a “double duty” (Gray White 1999). Some of these domestic duties included food preparation, laundry, raising chickens, sewing and repairing clothes, cleaning their houses, or tending to small gardens (Gray White 1999). Yet there was another important responsibility, the transforming of plantation domestic spaces. For a growing farm at this stage (pre-1820s) the need for able-bodied men to be working in the fields and building was most likely a primary concern. The absence of men in the initial shaping of the First Hermitage site may have been a direct reflection of how these spaces were constructed. It was not that captive men were not agents on this transforming landscape, they simply may have had much less physical time and therefore less influence on how the landscape was initially configured. This fact has, in my opinion, been neglected in the traditional history of the Hermitage site and plantation landscapes in general. However, I must stress that simultaneously, captive men were essential in the shaping and development of the

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agricultural landscape. It was the clearing of fields, the building of housing quarters, and the understanding of environmental nuances – the hidden spaces that were also shaped by captive men. Although they may seem like separate spheres (domestic and field) by contemporary standards, they operated in comparative ways in the daily lives of captive Africans. In some of my oral interviews with elders from areas around the Hermitage museum, I learned that yards were the spaces dominated by women and children among black communities (Minerva Washington 1999, personal communication). When combing through secondary sources to see why this was a part of the reality of captive life, and a stereotype that has remained a part of dominant views of the black family in the United States today, I recognized that there were scholars who were seeing how these organizational principles came into existence. Angela Davis (1981) describes how we can only assume that in a very real sense, it was in domestic life – away from the eyes and whip of the overseer – that captive Africans could attempt to assert the modicum of freedom they still retained, it was only there that they might be inspired to project techniques of expanding it further by leveling what few weapons they had against the planter class whose unmitigated drive for profit was the source of their misery (Davis 1981:118). So in several ways it was the captive woman who became the “custodian of a house of resistance,” a space that transformed the oppressed into active agents in the pedestrian actions that shape lives (Davis 1981:118). There were several reasons why I concentrated on the exterior areas of the First Hermitage site. First, I began to recognize how the confining dimensions of each cabin forced most activities outdoors. Second, I believe that the yard functioned as more than empty space between two structures, it served as a bridge connecting several individual families living in close proximity. As a second generation apartment dweller, I had to learn these details of how to visualize these spaces from my grandmother. She recalled that during her childhood growing up in rural southern Virginia, the yard was an extension of the house, what I might understand as a “living room” (H. Lawrencie Jones 1997, Chesapeake, Virginia, personal communication). This area is where the family greeted visitors, young girls “courted,” food was prepared, and other social activities took place. Ywone Edwards-Ingram further explains how “African American houses and yards also embodied complex and simple rhythms of time, space, energy, and change during slavery, as they do today” (Edwards 1998:249). So the courtyard at the First Hermitage site was not only socially significant and meaningful to the inhabitants, but also served as the site for black cultural production. Here I would like to briefly visit how I am defining the term household for this site and emphasize the distinct relationship between the cultural landscape and the lives of captive Africans. The role of material culture used in activities associated with these symbolic spaces enhances the study of captive domestic organization and the related social practices taking place at these locations. This cultural landscape made it possible for the captive African household to operate as a complex social unit that could pool resources in order to complete daily tasks and domestic chores. As captive individuals were inextricably tied to all plantation affairs through forced

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labor, they were simultaneously members of multiple “households.” First, they were members of the larger “plantation household” (as “property” of Andrew Jackson); next they were also members of the “complex household” of the First Hermitage; and lastly, they were members of their own simple family units or the “intimate household.” Thus, the captive or complex household of the Hermitage plantation “was a domestic network which served to mediate the social relations that revolved around production, distribution, and reproduction,” whereby members “. . .variously contributed their efforts and resources to the sub-household as circumstances and needs varied” (Franklin 1997:53–54). Here is where the concept of community differed between master and captive. Survival (mentally, emotionally, and physically) for captive Africans were inextricably tied to their quarter neighborhood where the landscape could become a place of solace and recovery, not tied to forced labor. The title of this chapter is Sweepin’ Spirits. For me, this term has a multiplicity of meanings. For my grandmother, it was a task or chore given to her by her grandmother that she never really understood. There was never any grass in her yard and bare feet being the norm meant that keeping the area clear was the logical thing to do. For captive Africans it meant more than just keeping an area free of debris and trash. It was both a social and spiritual ritual that united the community in ways that would be overlooked by non-African observers. As stated earlier, captive Africans were tied to the land in a variety of ways. From tilling, to planting, to picking, and building, the hands and bodies of captives also defined the places they lived. For this reason, the landscape must take on a unique importance to our understanding of these communities. It was this spiritual connection that remained beneath the radars of Eurocentric modes of behavior and understanding. Archaeologists Barbara Heath and Amber Bennett (2000:43) contextualize this spiritual connection with the earth, “Among the Bakongo of Central Africa, ‘sweeping is an ordinary ritual gesture for ridding a place of undesirable spirits’ in a landscape populated by day with ghosts of witches and others who have not been accepted into the villages of the dead, and by night with the ancestors.” Although these ghosts and spirits took on different forms in the New World, the need for spiritual cleaning remained constant. It is accepted by traditional scholars of the African-American past that the quarters held a distinct significance in the shaping of the captive world; yet, to look specifically at how a yard is maintained or how physical boundaries are created within the captive community continues to be an obscure aspect left to art historians, folklorists, and a few anthropologists. In the early days of the First Hermitage site, owner and laborer were less than 40 feet from each other, however, the captive community had to find alternative ways, if not physically, then spiritually, to separate work space from private space. Here I argue that it was the sweeping of the yard that became the means to create a cultural boundary understood by the captive families living at the site. Therefore, the sweeping of the yard in many ways was both a social and political act, even an act of resistance. How they ordered distinct functional areas was entirely in the hands of the communities at each Hermitage quarter neighborhood, and at the First Hermitage site, privacy was in the eyes of the beholder and usually at the hands of elder captive women.

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For the sake of my argument, the act of sweeping was also to protect against master and the undesirable spirits of the plantation. The very purposeful strokes of an elder woman’s broom has power, it separated and protected the area from all that is evil. So as a broom is pushed back and forth, there are purposeful strokes, strokes that move different energies to different locations. As an elder woman moves her broom back and forth, she may sing a song to invoke whatever feeling or work she needs to do. She is protecting her home, her family, her community by creating a spiritual boundary that is recognized by her people. These actions were performed by women, the methods passed down from woman to woman, generation to generation.

Transforming the Middle Quarter As time passed the captive community began to change their environment to suit their needs, most likely very different from how Jackson originally intended. For example, the location of the First Hermitage quarter was about 250 yards from the brick mansion. The four cabins that now made up the First Hermitage site during the Middle Quarter period formed an enclosed space, visually inaccessible to the Jackson family. The mansion was at a lower elevation and the South cabin blocked the Fire Pit/cooking area. Here, again is the example of how the sweeping of a yard and the clearing of space between the various structures were important. The Central Courtyard Area defines how the organization of space and the symbolic parameters of the area resembled more of a houselot rather than a “standard” quartering area, with houses placed neatly in rows. Individuals participated in a number of activities that helped each member of the First Hermitage community, creating a different configuration than the Mansion Backyard Quarters, closer to the main house (Fig. 4.3). As I began to understand the active nature of the cultural landscape I began to think differently about the everyday activities and how these are connected to the larger transformative process. For example, one way children were taught to survive under the brutal system of slavery was through daily tasks. Before a young captive child was considered an adult, they often worked by helping elders in the house and field.Chores included, fetching water from the spring, giving water to field hands, participating in “trash gangs,” pulling weeds, and helping to take care of the sick (King 1998). The land is what would later define them as adults, but was also the space that was used to shape how they learned to survive the rigors of slavery. So, this land served as the place where life is literally and figuratively grounded. These children would not only learn where things were, they would understand what spaces meant, how to move through these areas, and what they meant to the community. Seeing it this way, the plantation becomes the site of community building, social interaction, political struggles, and everyday resistance. The swept yard serves as a metaphor of how captive African women not only shaped the domestic landscape, but created spaces for black cultural production to

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survive. As bell hooks described, the swept yard is the place where one’s humanity is never questioned, a site of completion (hooks 1990). Communication of ideas and meaning is also directly connected to the notion of identity formation. It was also slavery that informed each generation of the details and rules needed for survival. Without the ability and social space to communicate these details and rules, the social reproduction of African-American identity would have been impossible. It is not only that the collective memory of the older generations nurtured the succeeding generations, but the social meaning of landscapes that made the articulation and the “passing-on” of these memories possible.

Preservation In this last section I will address how some of these ideas have made an impact on how the First Hermitage site appears today (Fig. 4.5). There remain challenges, and as with any museum, there are faults and shortcomings, however, I can honestly say that I am proud that I was a part of the conversation that created the standing exhibit. How does one convey all of this information to the public in an honest and meaningful way? This is a question that has not one, but multiple answers. Reflecting back to the early history of preservation at the Hermitage plantation, the role of women in the conservation efforts have made the site serve as an important

Fig. 4.5 First Hermitage reconstruction (2005 photo by author)

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space to tell a complex history of life in Middle Tennessee during the 19th century. The women (and now men) who make up the Executive Board of the LHA are a complex group of individuals, all with agendas, opinions, and ideas. However, one of the only things that kept me coming back year after year was their ability to engage in the uncomfortable conversations, from debating on the wording of signage, the way in which slavery is discussed along the various tours, to suggestions of literature for tour guides to read. The ideas and approaches I had were never dismissed, shocking to some, but never dismissed. I can return to the museum and see the fruits of those discussions, something that was overwhelming when I first visited the reconstructed First Hermitage site. Today, the First Hermitage site is presented as the Middle Quarter period, which was extremely exciting and gratifying for me as an archaeologist. This time frame allows the visitor to see the site as a quarter neighborhood, but also learn of the transitional history of the landscape. All too often plantation sites are fixated on the role of the main house. However, the First Hermitage exhibit provides the visitor with an incredible opportunity to see artifacts found at the site, artifacts associated with different occupants, and ways that the captive community structured their private lives (Fig. 4.6). At times there can be a positive or negative relationship between the archaeologist’s interpretation and the museum’s ideas of preservation. Many times when the

Fig. 4.6 Farmhouse exhibit. (2005 photo by author)

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archaeologist leaves a site and moves on, their voice may be lost when the research is transformed into the museum exhibit. Trying to re-create certain features, such as the swept yard, a cooking pit, or the concept of an outdoor living space is a difficult task, to say the least. For example, the challenge of re-creating a swept yard. The only way to re-create a swept yard is to sweep it everyday, dance, walk, and trample on its surface. However, the strength in this line of interpretation is not that the swept yard is perfect, but that it is a part of the exhibit at all. It is information that most visitors have never thought about or been exposed to in the discussion of slavery. During my brief tenure at the site I began an oral history project of sorts. My connection with the local African-American community stemmed partially from feeling a bit lonely and separated from my own African-American communities of Austin, Texas, and New York City. I met and talked with many families in the local area and learned a great deal about how the Hermitage is perceived in the past and in the present. I discovered a rich history of relations with the site; how access changed over time; and how African-Americans, local or transplants, have never really felt comfortable at the museum. In recent years the communication between the African-American community has become much more fluid and the Hermitage has committed to maintaining this important relationship. I hope in some small way, it was through my outreach to local churches and community elders that made some of these connections possible.

Conclusion A gendered archaeology of the Hermitage includes a different set of questions that ultimately adds a layer of complexity to the understanding of the plantation landscape as a whole. It emphasizes the significance of all the agents involved in the shaping of a particular place and provides a more nuanced analysis of everything from the shaping of domestic spaces to the planning out of agricultural environs. In the case of the Hermitage plantation, it is clear that the connection between land and people was extremely important in the shaping of captive African identities. Once we begin to see how these communities, and especially women, were active agents in the shaping of their landscapes, we may begin to recognize the possibility of different forms of agency and control of cultural production that remain invisible through a traditional (read masculine) perspective. For me the most successful aspect of the current exhibit is the landscape. To see the outdoor cooking area in full view, the brick “porch” feature visible, and an attempt at re-creating a swept yard, for me is power, the power to influence and alter the way we present the past to the public, the power of being able to show the transformation of historic (and sometimes painful) places into symbolic (and meaningful) spaces. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Suzanne Spencer-Wood and Sherene Baugher for their patience, tireless commitment to this volume, and all their comments and suggestions for this

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chapter. I would also like to thank the Ladies Hermitage Association, Robbie Jones, Marsha Mullin, Larry McKee, Elizabeth Keller-DeCourse, Jillian Galle, and Jennifer Woody, for their help during my time at the Hermitage. In addition I would like to thank Tanya Mears, Maria Franklin, Michele Wallace, N’Dri Assie-Lumumba, Warren Perry, and Bob Paynter for reading early drafts of this paper and helping me to develop my ideas since leaving the Hermitage. My thanks to members of the local Hermitage community including the members of Stateland Baptist Church and Scott’s Hallow AME Church. I hope to have a lifetime to learn from descendants I have met along the way, especially Mrs. Constance Bradley (and sister Kathye). I would also like to acknowledge those elders who have passed on to the other side, Mrs. Minerva Washington and my grandmother, Mrs. H. Lawrencie Jones. My husband, Trevor Baptiste supplied encouragement and support. Any shortcomings in this article are solely my responsibility.

References Alanen, A. R. and Melnick, R. Z. 2000 Introduction: Why Cultural Landscape Preservation? In Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America, edited by A. R. Alanen and R. Z. Melnick, pp. 1–21. John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Maryland. Battle, W. 2004 A Yard to Sweep: Race, Gender and the Enslaved Landscape. Ph. D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin, UMI/Proquest, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Battle-Baptiste, W. 2007 “In This Here Place”: Interpreting Enslaved Homeplaces. In Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora, edited by A. Ogundiran and T. Falola, pp. 233–248. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Davis, A. 1981 Women, Race, and Class. Vintage Books, New York, New York. Doris, M. C. 1915 Preservation of The Hermitage 1889–1915: Annals, History, and Stories, The Acquisition, Restoration, and Care of the Home of General Andrew Jackson by the Ladies’ Hermitage Association for over a Quarter of a Century, Mary C. Doris, Nashville, Tennessee. Edwards, Y. D. 1998 “Trash” Revisited: A Comparative Approach to Historical Descriptions and Archaeological Analysis of Slave Houses and Yards. In “Keep Your Head to the Sky”: Cosmology, Ethics, and the Making of African American Home Ground, edited by G. Gundaker and J. McWillie, pp. 245–272. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville. Epperson, T. W. 1999 Constructing Difference: The Social and Spatial Order of the Chesapeake Plantation, In I, Too Am America: Archaeological Studies of African-American Life, edited by T. A. Singleton, pp. 159–172. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville. Franklin, M. 1997 Out of Site, Out of Mind: The Archaeology of an Enslaved Virginian Household, ca. 1740–1778, Ph. D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, UMI/Proquest, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Gray White, D. 1999 Ar’n’t I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, New York.

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Groth, P. 1997 Frameworks for cultural landscape study. In Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, edited by P. Groth and T. W. Bressi, pp. 1–21. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. hooks, b. 1990 Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. South End Press, Boston, Massachusetts. Heath, B. and Bennett, A. 2000 “The Little Spots allow’d them”: The Archaeological Study of African American Yards. Historical Archaeology 34(2):38–55. Jones, R. 2002 The First Hermitage Historic Structure Report. On file at The Hermitage Museum. King, W. 1998 Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in 19th Century America, Indiana University Press, Bloomington. McKee, L and Galle, J. 2000 Summary Report on the First Hermitage Excavation. The Ladies’ Hermitage Association, Hermitage, Tennessee. Remini, R. 1977 Andrew Jackson. Volume One. The Course of American Empire, 1767–1821. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland.

Chapter 5

African-American Women, Power, and Freedom in the Contested Landscape of Camp Nelson, Kentucky W. Stephen McBride

Lieut. Information has reached these Headquarters that a bevy of women and children are quartered near the Commissary Warehouse, the women (colored) are engaged in lewd business annoying everything and everybody in the vicinity. You are directed to place the whole kit beyond the lines for five (5) miles with a parting injunction to not return on pain of being imprisoned. Col. Andrew H. Clark Commander, Camp Nelson June 17, 1864

Introduction The above quote (Hanaford 1864a) hints at a conflict that began at the U.S. Army Post of Camp Nelson, Kentucky, in the spring of 1864. This conflict, which I like to call the “Second Battle of Camp Nelson,” pitted escaped slave women and children against the U.S. Army in a fight for self-determination and control of at least a portion of Camp Nelson’s landscape where they could make a home for themselves. More particularly, the battle was over who had ultimate authority over this landscape and how and why these women challenged this authority to ultimately win their own freedom. This quote, with its “lewd” description by a white officer, also brings up the issue of who gets to write history and how this history is interpreted today. While the army left copious records, stating their opinions, the women and children’s voices are nearly mute. Perhaps because of this, but more likely because of racism and selective memory, the African-American story of Camp Nelson has not been told until recently. In fact, until the last few years the only reminders that anything happened W.S. McBride (B) Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park, Nicholasville, KY 40356, USA e-mail: [email protected]

S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_5,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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during the Civil War at Camp Nelson were the Camp Nelson National Cemetery and a historical highway marker that memorialized General William “Bull” Nelson, for whom the camp was named. No mention was made of the struggle for freedom for thousands of enslaved African-Americans. Ultimately, we need to ask what this military order of more that 100 years ago has to do with landscapes. Why and how do words on a page in an archive inform us about what was, until recently, a “vanished” landscape? What words do we choose to describe the places we commemorate in our history, and whose history do we inscribe on our highway markers or ultimately in our history books? This paper explores the landscapes of Camp Nelson, a chaotic landscape of the Civil War, and the landscape as it appears today, and as we want it to appear in the future. We will see that it was a contested landscape, one which saw a bitter and deadly struggle around the idea of freedom and home. This landscape fell within the somewhat paradoxical state of Kentucky, which was a Union state and a slave state. Kentucky was a landscape occupied by Union Troops but not affected by the Emancipation Proclamation and the last state in the Union to allow the enlistment of African-American men into the army. We will also see that this supposedly “vanished” landscape has tremendous archaeological resources; resources that can help us reconstruct this landscape and help give a voice to the enslaved women and children who created it.

Camp Nelson in the Civil War Camp Nelson had been founded by the U.S. Army in June 1863 as a large supply depot, recruitment camp, and hospital facility. The camp was spread out over 4,000 acres, contained over 300 buildings, and was protected by earthen fortifications and deeply entrenched streams (Fig 5.1). Topographically, the camp was located on rolling karst terrain with many sink holes and springs. It became more rugged and dissected as the Kentucky River was approached to the west and south. Before May 1864 all of the men who enlisted at Camp Nelson were white. It was not until February 1864 that African-American men were even allowed to join the army in Kentucky, making it the last state in the Union to do so, and even then the enlistment was restricted to free blacks and slaves with their owners’ permission (Lucas 1992:153–154; Sears 2002:xxxviii). As was noted above, because of Kentucky’s status as a Union state and a slave state, the January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did not affect the status of her slaves. Since the enlistment of slaves into the army necessitated their emancipation and gave the men the status of soldiers, it was strongly opposed by Kentucky whites. The creation of African-American soldiers was an affront to many Kentucky whites because of the special status assigned to soldiers as men of courage and honor, a status the whites could not allow slaves or former slaves to have (Smith 1974). It was not until May 1864, when literally hundreds of enslaved African-American men escaped slavery and attempted to join the army at Camp Nelson and at other

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Fig. 5.1 Map of Camp Nelson (Miller 1866)

posts, that the army finally relented and decided to enlist all of those who were of age and able bodied (this was the “First Battle of Camp Nelson”). Permission from their owners was no longer required. This policy became official across Kentucky on June 13, 1864, against the outcries of many white Kentuckians (Sears 2002). At the Civil War’s end over 23,000 black Kentuckian’s had joined the army, making it the second largest contributor of any state (Berlin et al. 1982). Camp Nelson was Kentucky’s largest African-American enlistment center and one of the largest in the United States (Dyer 1908; Gladstone 1990). The African-American women and children first entered Camp Nelson with their husbands in May 1864 when the latter were finally allowed to join the U.S. Army without the consent of their owners. Although the men were emancipated upon enlistment, their wives and children were not. The women and children nevertheless entered the camp with the intent of finally escaping slavery, to gain control of their labor, and to create a new life. In May and June 1864 the army did not have a clear policy for these refugee women and children and issued contradictory orders. For instance, on May 23, camp commander Colonel Andrew Clark ordered “the negro women here without authority will be arrested and sent beyond the lines, and if they return, the lash awaits them” (Sears 2002:64). But the June 17 order cited above in the introduction indicates that the army let some women and children establish an encampment

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at Camp Nelson. Did the refugees have the “authority” and how did they get it? Interestingly, on June 20, District of Kentucky commander Brigadier General Stephen G. Burbridge ordered Captain Theron E. Hall, Chief Quartermaster, to “Establish a contraband camp at Camp Nelson. The Women and children cannot be left to starve” (Dickson 1864). Since no other orders or letters mention this contraband camp, it is unclear whether this order was ever followed. In fact, most orders illustrate that the army did not want the women and children in the camp, and sometimes classified these Camp Nelson refugee women by negative terms such as “lewd.” But what did this classification really mean? Were the women really behaving in such a way or did Colonel Clark used the term as a pretext for ejecting the women and children who actively sought their own freedom by coming to the camp and engaging in whatever kinds of labor they could? Colonel Clark was caught in the paradox of Civil War Kentucky; a slave state in a war to end slavery. The paradox of this situation is also illustrated by the fact that the army often let slave owners into the camp to search for their property. One account published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard on June 18, 1864, demonstrates the danger the escaped slaves faced: The owner of the girl, with a guard, went to the [Convalescent] Camp and seized the girl, and amid her cries and frantic appeal for protection were taking her away. She fell upon her knees and begged the guards to shoot her on the spot, saying her master would whip her to death if he got her away (quoted in Sears 2002:63–64).

Fortunately, the patients at the Convalescent Camp, where the girl was employed as a cook, rescued her from the guard and hid her (Sears 2002:64). By early July 1864 orders originating with Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas, who was in charge of African-American recruitment in the Mississippi Valley, and carried out by district commander Brigadier General Speed Fry, clarified that only women “in Government employ” were allowed to stay in the camp (Hanaford 1864b). All others were ordered or escorted back “home” to slavery, where according to General Thomas, “Under the state law their respective masters are bound to take care of them” (Thomas 1864). General Thomas’ statement shows a naïve view of slavery, to say the least. Some officers had difficulty following these ejection orders as the following letter from Colonel Clark’s adjutant, Lt. George Hanaford to General Burbridge’s adjutant illustrates: General Fry. . . instructed me to have all of the colored women and children brot here, to give passes to all that desired to return home. There is not one among two hundred (200) that want to go. . . They are laboring under the impression that they will be killed by their masters if they return and cannot be assured to the contrary. Please reply giving definite instructions. (Hanaford 1864c).

Unfortunately, Brigadier General Burbridge supported the orders from Fry and Thomas. But the women and children just kept returning to Camp Nelson, and the ejection order had to be reissued at least seven times between July and November 1864, when a more dramatic ejection occurred. As the Reverend John G. Fee, a leading abolitionist working with the refugees, stated on September 22 that “For months

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the officials have tried the experiment of sending the women and children out of camp. Like flies they soon come back?” (Fee 1864). Exactly how the women and children were able to remain or return to the camp despite these orders is unclear, but there is mention of the women bribing guards (Fry 1864a). It is also probable that sympathetic officers hid the women and children and/or used the “government employ” exception to keep the women in the camp. Only two legitimate employment opportunities are mentioned in the military documents; washerwomen and cooks (Fry 1864b; Scofield 1864). Given that between 200 and 400 women and children are documented to have been in Camp Nelson at this time, it is doubtful that more than a small percentage of the women were “officially” employed by the government and, in fact, no African-American women are listed in the quartermaster employee rolls at all. But the women may have been operating more independently. A large number may have been continually removed from the camp and just kept returning, as Reverend Fee stated. So, how can we learn more about this battle over power and freedom within Camp Nelson, especially since the women did not leave a written record? What conditions and allies did the women utilize in their battle with the army, the Federal Government, and public opinion? Were they “lewd” as Colonel Clark stated, or were they more “acceptably” employed or occupied? What kind of home and life did they make for themselves within the camp? I will utilize archaeological data, particularly artifacts related to activities, foodways, architecture, clothing, and personal adornment from the very same refugee encampment mentioned by Colonel Clark, as well as additional archival material, to explore this landscape of home and of freedom.

Archaeology of a Refugee Encampment During a 2001 archaeological survey of Camp Nelson conducted by the University of Kentucky, we discovered an undocumented site near the documented site of the commissary and quartermaster warehouses mentioned above by Colonel Clark (McBride and McBride 2006). This site was located in the eastern half of Camp Nelson on a hillside just above a small stream and the plain occupied by the warehouses (Fig. 5.2). It covers an area about 25 m (north–south) by 40 m (east–west). Significantly, this location is both in the quartermaster section of the camp, which was under the command of the sympathetic Captain Theron E. Hall, and hidden in dense woods from the view of the camp headquarters, under the unsympathetic Colonel Clark and Brigadier General Fry. The presence of container glass, ceramics, clothing items, animal bones, and military accoutrements recovered from shovel test probes and metal detecting suggested that this was a habitation site. Further excavation of the site resulted in the discovery of subsurface features and numerous Civil War era artifacts (Fig. 5.3). Surprisingly, among these artifacts were glass beads, jewelry, hair ornaments, dress buttons, porcelain doll fragments, two silver half dimes (one pierced) (Fig. 5.4), and a domed rubber button inscribed with an “X” (Fig. 5.5). These items were scattered across the site but tended to be more

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Fig. 5.2 Refugee encampment within Camp Nelson (Miller 1866)

concentrated in the north central and southwestern portions. The beads, dress buttons, jewelry, hair ornaments, and doll fragment indicate the presence of women and children, while the coins and inscribed button suggest that the occupants were likely African-American. Pierced coins and “X” marked circular artifacts have been recovered from many African-American sites and are documented as having religious and magical associations (Ferguson 1992; Wilkie 1995; Young 1996). The X symbol on artifacts ranging from pottery, coins, marbles, and spoon bowls has been associated with the West African Bakongo symbol for the cosmos (Ferguson 1992). Silver coins, especially pierced ones were worn as charms for good luck or to protect the wearer (through reflection) from evil spells (Davidson 2004; Young 1996; Wilkie 1995). For instance, a former Kentucky slave stated, Every one of my children wears a silver dime on a string around their leg to keep off the witches spell (Rawick 1977).

Un-pierced coins were often worn in shoes for protection and used to detect conjurers (Wilkie 1995:144). The two coins and the “X” button point to the survival of traditional African animistic beliefs probably blended with Christianity. The discovery of these artifacts led me to reexamine the archival records and I located the “lewd” women order cited above. This order stated that the “women and children are quartered near the Commissary Warehouses” (Hanaford 1864a). This

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Fig. 5.3 Refugee encampment site map

Fig. 5.4 Personal artifacts from refugee encampment (Photo by W. Stephen McBride)

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Fig. 5.5 Button with inscribed X from refugee encampment (photo by W. Stephen McBride)

certainly describes the location of the encampment site we found, and further survey failed to locate any additional encampments near the warehouses. On the same day as the “lewd” order, Colonel Clark’s adjutant Lt. Hanaford (1864d) ordered: Captain: The Col. Commanding authorizes you to raze the shanties near the commissary warehouses now occupied by the negroes. Lt. George Hanaford, A. Adjutant June 17, 1864

This order both mentions the type of housing found at this site, namely “shanties,” and also that they were supposed to be destroyed. Further mention of refugee housing at Camp Nelson was provided by Reverend Abisha Scofield (1864): The families of the colored soldiers who were in camp lived in cabins and huts erected by the colored soldiers or at the expense of the women. During my labors among them I have witnessed about fifty of these huts and cabins erected, and the material of which they were constructed was unserviceable to the Government. I have had extensive dealing with these people and from my observation I believe that they supported themselves by washing, cooking, and etc. Reverend Abisha Scofield December 16, 1864

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Significantly, Reverend Scofield used the less loaded terms, “cabins and huts,” rather than the derogatory term “shanties.” The numbers of cabins and huts he mentions, namely 50, suggests that there were probably multiple encampments since the encampment we discovered is not this large. Reverend Scofield also makes it clear that the refugees built these structures out of materials not useable to the army. Private John Higgins of the 124th U.S. Colored Infantry also mentions refugee housing when he notes: In company with another man I built a small hut where I resided with my family. . . While my family were in Camp they never eat a mouthfull off the Government. My wife earned money by washing. Pvt. John Higgins November 28, 1864

Higgins’ statement is significant in that it mentions that he lived with his family in the hut. This would have been clearly against army regulations. The presence of military accoutrements and ammunition supports the presence of some soldiers, possibly the husbands, at our refugee site. Like Scofield, Higgins also mentions washing clothes as an occupation for the women. But how much washing or cooking did the refugees actually perform? Also we can only wonder at what Scofield meant by “and etc.” Both Reverend Scofield and Pvt. Higgins, as well as Pvt. John Burnside cited below, were chosen by Capt. Theron Hall to testify on behalf of the refugees (Resteaux 1864). They were almost certainly trying to emphasize that the refugees were productive and not a burden to the army. Unfortunately, very few architectural remains of the huts or tents were discovered during our excavations. This is not surprising given the ephemeral nature of these structures. The features found that likely relate to these structures include three fire pits, two stacked rock piers or chimney remnants, six postmolds, and five refuse pits (Fig. 5.3). The placement of these features suggests the presence of five to six huts or tents. When the distributions of nails, window glass, and brick are added, they suggest that there were probably more like seven to nine structures in the investigated area (Fig. 5.6). The quantity and variety of architectural artifacts indicates that most of these structures were certainly more substantial than tents. From south to north these structures or areas are designated Huts 1, 2, 3, Unit 24 (possible hut or part of Hut 3), Area A (possible hut or part of Huts 4 or 6), Huts 4, 5, 6, and 7 (Fig. 5.6). The architectural artifact distribution also suggests some variability between these huts. For instance, Huts 2 and 3, and the possible hut at Unit 24 definitely had numerous glazed windows while the other huts had few or no glazed windows. Some huts, such as Huts 2, 3, 4, and 7, and possibly Area A, had high concentrations of brick and possibly brick or partially brick chimneys, while the others did not. Huts 1, 2, and 7 had the fire pit features and stone features were associated with the pits at Huts 2 and 7. Another source of heat was from cast iron stoves since fragments of these were found at all huts (Table 5.1). These distributional differences hint at some social and/or economic variability within this refugee camp. Some social variability is supported by the distribution of different refined ceramic types across the site (Table 5.1). Huts 5 and 7 contained the greatest

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Fig. 5.6 Artifact distributions at refugee encampment Table 5.1 Various artifacts from the refugee huts

Hut 1 Hut 2 Hut 3 Unit 24 Area A Hut 4 Hut 5 Hut 6 Hut 7

Plain whiteware

Ironstone/ porcelain

Buttons

Clothing beads

Larger beads

28 76 93 7 11 105 25 99 11

6 23 1 – 3 5 19 22 9

19 24 14 – 12 13 4 51 12

– – – – – – – 10 –

6 1 1 – – – – 19 –

Stove parts 1 4 4 – – 15 2 5 4

concentration of more expensive ironstone and porcelain relative to cheaper plain whiteware, while Huts 3 and 4 have the lowest proportion of the more expensive wares. The other huts have a more moderate ratio of plain whiteware to ironstone/porcelain. Interestingly, the variability in ceramic quality among the huts does not correlate well with the variability in window glass or brick. This lack of correlation indicates that the relationship between the quality and quantity of material goods and socioeconomic status is not at all straightforward at this site. This likely relates to the

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complex social, political, and economic relationship between the refugees, and possibly their husbands, and the army, as well as with other Camp Nelson soldiers and civilians. Few material goods were probably brought in by the refugees, so much of what they had was likely purchased or traded for within the camp. Other items, such as building materials, may have been salvaged as Reverend Scofield stated. Some material goods, such as the cast iron stoves, may have been donations from sympathetic officers or missionaries. Stoves would have been stored in the nearby warehouses. Another foodways item besides ceramics that is informative is animal bone. This site is the only one at Camp Nelson that is dominated by pork rather than beef, and also produced much chicken and some rabbit. These remains suggest that the refugees were not getting normal army rations. This lack of rations for the refugees is supported by the statement of John Higgins quoted above and by the following statement by Private John Burnside, also of the 124th U.S. Colored Infantry. While my wife and family were in Camp they never received any money or provisions from the Government but earned their living with hard work. Pvt. John Burnside December 15, 1864

The faunal remains also indicate that the refugees were either successfully foraging and hunting or, more likely, trading or purchasing this food. This evidence suggests that they had either money, goods or services to trade. So what does the archaeology say about the women’s occupations and activities? One of the most striking aspects of the material remains of the site is the tremendous quantity of buttons (149) it has produced (Table 5.1). This number is higher than any other site at Camp Nelson and also includes a greater variety. These buttons include civilian men’s and women’s buttons, military coat and pant buttons, some definitely from officers’ clothing. But, is this an indication that officers and civilian men lived at the site? The documents suggest otherwise, as I believe does the archaeology. The large quantity and variety of buttons and other clothing items, particularly seed beads, tiny tube beads, and hooks and eyes, may reflect specialized activities that occurred at the site, namely laundry and/or sewing. The Camp Nelson pattern of a high density and variety of buttons and other clothing items closely parallels the patterns found at a washing site in South Africa and at washer women house sites in Annapolis, MD, and Northern Delaware (De Cunzo 2004:251, 256, 277; Jordan 2005, 2006; Mullins 1999:137–140). The presence of thimbles, straight and safety pins, a sewing needle, bodkins, and sewing scissors at the Northern Delaware house sites indicates that sewing as well as washing occurred there (De Cunzo 2004:251, 256, 277). The near absence of sewing artifacts, such as pins, needles, and thimbles, at the refugee encampment and the presence of a sadiron strongly suggests that washing and not sewing was the major activity here. The spatial distribution of the buttons and clothing beads (seed and small tube beads) indicates that while washing probably occurred over the entire site, it was most

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concentrated at Huts 2 and 6 (Table 5.1). Hut 6 also produced the greatest number of larger beads suggesting that this was an area of intensive women’s activities. These escaped slave women probably set up washtubs near campfires, hearths, or cast iron stoves where hot water could have been obtained. The presence of a spring feed stream just below this encampment may have been an important factor in its location. Laundry on slave plantations was usually a communal activity where women could interact and importantly also care for their children (Jordan 2005, 2006). As Tera Hunter (1997:62, cited in Jordan 2006:10) states, doing laundry “encouraged women to work together in communal spaces within their neighborhoods, fostering informal networks of reciprocity that sustained them through health and sickness, love and heartaches, birth and death.” At Camp Nelson, washing and perhaps cooking were the main occupations for African-American women and the demand for washerwomen also made these women indispensable and gave them a legitimate reason for staying in Camp Nelson. It also gave them the economic power to support their families and create a community. While some women in this camp may have been “lewd,” many or most of these women saw an opportunity for self-employment and a means to make money that could support themselves and their families in what was an increasingly hostile environment.

Ejection and the “Home for Colored Refugees” Unfortunately this adaptation, by itself, could not overcome the politics and legal situation of Kentucky. On November 22–25, 1864, District Commander Brigadier General Speed Fry, (a native Kentuckian and slave owner himself) succumbed to pressure from slave owners and expelled all of the enslaved women and children who had made a home at the camp. Fry utilized armed white troops to forcibly load the women and children onto wagons and escort them out of the camp. One of the most heart wrenching descriptions of the ejection is from Private Joseph Miller of the 124th U.S. Colored Infantry. According to Pvt. Miller: About eight O’clock Wednesday morning November 25” a mounted guard came to my tent and ordered my wife and children out of Camp. The morning was bitter cold. It was freezing hard. I was certain that it would Kill my sick child to take him out in the cold. I told the man in charge of the guard that it would be the death of my boy. I told him that my wife and children had no place to go and I told him that I was a Soldier of the United States. He told me that it did not make any difference. He had orders to take all out of Camp. He told my wife and family that if they did not get up into the wagon which he had he would shoot the last one of them. On being thus threatened my wife and children went into the wagon. My wife carried her sick child in her arms. When they left the tent the wind was blowing hard and cold and having had to leave much of our clothing when we left our master, my wife with her little ones was poorly clad. I followed them as far as the lines. I had no Knowledge where they were taking them. At night I went in search of my family. I found them at Nicholasville about six miles from Camp. They were in an old meeting house belonging to the colored people. The building was very cold having only one fire. My wife and children could not get near the fire, because of the number of colored people huddled together by the soldiers. I found my wife and children shivering with cold and famished with hunger. They

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had not received a morsel of food during the whole day. My boy was dead. He died directly after getting down from the wagon. . . (Sears 2002:135–136).

Following the ejection, soldiers destroyed and burned the refugee cabins (Scofield 1864; Vetter 1864). There is strong archaeological evidence of this destruction and burning at the refugee encampment in the form of heavy ash deposits with burned artifacts, including nails, window glass, container glass, and ceramics. While some of this destruction could have occurred following the June 17 order quoted above, the large quantity of artifacts at the site in general and in the destruction deposits in particular, suggests that an occupation longer than a few weeks is represented here. Thus the destruction deposits are more likely associated with the November destruction than the June one. While this ejection was a tragedy for the women and children, it was not the end of the battle. The harshness of this action, which caused the death of more than 100 refugees from exposure and disease, created an uproar that the women’s allies used to reach the ear of high ranking Washington officials and the northern public. For instance, an article printed in the New York Tribune on November 28 and reprinted in William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator on December 9 described the ejection and its ramifications as follows (Sears 2002:138–140): Cruel Treatment of the Wives and Children of U.S. Colored Soldiers This camp has recently been the scene of a system of deliberate cruelty, which in ferocity of design and brutality of execution, suggests painful misgiving as to whether we, indeed, live in an enlightened age and a Christian land. At this moment over four hundred helpless human beings—frail women and delicate children—having been driven from their homes by United States soldiers, are now lying in barns and mule sheds, wandering through woods, languishing on the highway, and literally starving, for no other crime than their husbands and fathers having thrown aside the manacles of slavery to shoulder Union muskets. These deluded creatures innocently supposed that freedom was better than bondage, and were presumptuous enough to believe that the plighted protection of the Government would be preserved inviolate. (Correspondent of the N.Y. Tribune) Camp Nelson, Ky., November 28, 1864

Ultimately, these actions were reversed and army policy amended so that refugees were resettled in a newly constructed “Home for Colored Refugees” within Camp Nelson (Fig. 5.1). These actions also led to the March 3, 1865, Congressional Act that freed the wives and children of U.S. Colored Troops (Sears 2002:183–184). In this latter case, the events at Camp Nelson led to policy with national repercussions. So, by March 1865 the “Second Battle of Camp Nelson” was a victory for the African-American refugees: they gained their freedom and created a home for themselves within Camp Nelson, although at a cost of over 100 lives. By July 1865 the Home for Colored Refugees housed over 3,000 women and children and in 1866 it became the community of Ariel, following its purchase by Reverend John and Matilda Fee (Fee 1891; Sears 2002:lx).

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Preservation and Interpretation What I like to call the “Fourth Battle of Camp Nelson” (the “Third” relates to the Home for Colored Refugees and is for another paper) is continuing today. This is the effort to create a park at Camp Nelson to tell the story of these women and children and the African-American soldiers. These efforts began in 1992, when planned highway construction raised concerns for the preservation of the Camp Nelson site. By this time the former site, except for the Camp Nelson National Cemetery, was in private ownership, and had been since June 1866. While preservation issues within the highway right-of-way, including archaeology (McBride et al. 2003), were managed by the state historic preservation office (Kentucky Heritage Council) under Section 106 laws, there was much concern that associated development might impact privately owned sections of the former camp. To help these efforts the Kentucky Heritage Council (KHC) awarded Jessamine County Fiscal Court a grant to produce a preservation management plan for Camp Nelson. This plan identified significant historic sites and suggested land acquisition and preservation easement priorities, other preservation strategies, and funding sources (Stewart and McBride 1994). A local friends group, the Camp Nelson Restoration and Preservation Foundation, was soon created to assist in the preservation efforts. The Foundation consists primarily of concerned local and regional citizens, some of whom are descendents of Camp Nelson Civil War soldiers, both African-American and white. The non-regional members of the foundation consist of an even higher proportion of descendents and often attend an annual re-enactment event. We seem to be winning this “Fourth Battle” since between 1992 and today nearly 500 acres of the former Camp Nelson site have been purchased by Jessamine County and turned into Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park. This park was officially opened in April 2001. The park includes the only standing building remaining from the Civil War, a residence used as officers’ quarters, five preserved earthen fortifications, one reconstructed (through archaeology) fortification, infantry entrenchments, the powder magazine, the bakery ovens, and numerous sites with only archaeological remains, including some at the former “Home for Colored Refugees” and the refugee encampment discussed in this paper. Many of the above mentioned sites have interpretive signs along the nearly five miles of interpretive trails on the park. Since so little remains from the Civil War era above ground, Camp Nelson is very much an archaeological park and partly dependent on archaeology to tell its story. For this reason, these remains are closely protected. The park’s new interpretive center is where the visitor learns most about Camp Nelson’s complex history from its beginnings as a U.S. Army supply depot and hospital to its position as one of the nation’s largest recruitment camps and emancipation centers for African-American troops and as a large refugee camp for these soldiers’ families. These stories are told through exhibits and a documentary. Many of the exhibits also utilize archaeological remains and illustrate archaeology’s role in telling the Camp Nelson story. The creation of the park is a great victory of sorts for a site that was forgotten, perhaps purposefully, by the white population of Kentucky. I should also note

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Fig. 5.7 Present Camp Nelson historic highway marker (photo by W. Stephen McBride)

that the Camp Nelson highway marker mentioned earlier is now gone and has been replaced by one that tells and celebrates the site’s African-American history (Fig. 5.7).

Conclusion Hopefully these efforts will make Camp Nelson and its “battles” a place of history – to inscribe in our collective memories and in our history texts. To leave Colonel Clark’s statement unchallenged is to miss the complexity and different players and agendas that make up the Camp Nelson story. One must also realize that the landscapes of the Civil War are not historically neutral and archaeology has an essential role in documenting past conflicts and their resolution as lived experiences. That African-American women and children, still legally enslaved, but escaped and living as free people, were able to build homes and engage in various enterprises at Camp Nelson to legitimize their claim to that landscape, is a chapter in the history of the war that is now being told through interpretation of the archaeological record.

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References Berlin, Ira, Joseph P. Reidy and Leslie S. Rowland 1982 Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867. Series II, the Black Military Experience. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Burnside, Pvt. John 1864 Testimony to Capt. E.B.W. Restieaux, December 15, 1864. National Archives, Military Records, RG 92, Entry 225, Box 720. Washington, D.C. Davidson, James M. 2004 Rituals Captured in Context and Freedman’s Town (1869–1907), Dallas, 22–54.

Time: Charm Use in North TX. Historical Archaeology

Dallas 38(2):

De Cunzo, Lu Ann 2004 A Historical Archaeology of Delaware: People, Contexts, and the Culture of Agriculture. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Dickson, Capt. J. Bates 1864 Letter to Capt. T.E. Hall, June 20, 1864. National Archives, Military Records, RG 393, Entry 2168, Telegrams Sent, Vol. 62/117:74. Washington, D.C. Dyer, Frederick H.A. 1908 A Compendium of the War of Rebellion: Compiled and Arranged from Official Records. 2 vols. Dyer Publishing Company, Des Moines, Iowa. Fee, Rev. John Gregg 1864 Letter to Brother Strieby, September 22, 1864. American Missionary Association Archives No. 44038. Berea College, Berea, Kentucky. 1891 Autobiography of John G. Fee, Berea, Kentucky. National Christian Association, New York, New York. Ferguson, Leland 1992 Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African American, 1650–1800. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. Fry, Brig. Gen. Speed S. 1864a Orders, August 24, 1864. National Archives, Military Records, RG 393, General Orders. Vol. 111/256:79. Washington, D.C. 1864b General Orders No. 4, July 12, 1864. National Archives, Military Records RG 393, General Orders. Vol. 111/256:54. Washington, D.C. Gladstone, William 1990 United States Colored Troops: 1863–1867. Thomas Publications, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Hanaford, Lt. George A. 1864a Letter to Lt. John McQueen, June 17, 1864, National Archives, Military Records, RG 393, Press Copies, Vol. 107:234. Washington, D.C. 1864b Order from Brig. Genl. S.S. Fry, July 3, 1864, National Archives, Military Records, RG 393, Press Copies, Vol. 107:354. Washington, D.C. 1864c Letter to Capt. J. Bates Dickson, July 6, 1864. National Archives, Military Records, RG 393, Press Copies, Vol. 107:370. Washington, D.C.

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1864d Letter to Capt. J.H. Johnson, June 17, 1864. National Archives, Military Records, RG 393, Press Copies, Vol. 107:235. Washington, D.C. Higgins, Pvt. John 1864 Testimony to Capt. E.B.W. Restieaux, November 28, 1864. National Archives, Military Records, RG 92, Entry 225, Box 720. Washington, D.C. Hunter, Tera W. 1997 To ‘Joy My Freedom’: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jordan, Elizabeth G. 2006 It all comes out in the Wash: Expanding Archaeological Interpretations of the Female Slave Experience. Paper presented at the 2006 Society for Historical Archaeology Conference. 2005 ‘Unrelenting Toil’: Expanding Archaeological Interpretations of the Female Slave Experience. Slavery and Abolition 26(2):217–232. Lucas, Marion B. 1992 A History of Blacks in Kentucky, Volume I: From Slavery to Segregation, 1760–1891. The Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort. McBride, W. Stephen and Kim A. McBride 2006 Civil War Housing: Insights from Camp Nelson, Kentucky. In Huts and History: The Historical Archaeology of Military Encampments during the Civil War. Edited by C. R. Geier, D. G. Orr, and M. B. Reeves, pp. 136–171. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. McBride, W. Stephen, Susan C. Andrews, J. Howard Beverly, and Tracey A. Sandefur 2003 From Supply Depot to Emancipation Center: The Archaeology of Camp Nelson. Report submitted to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Frankfort. Wilbur Smith Associates, Lexington, Kentucky. Miller, A.B. 1866 Map of Camp Nelson Showing the Location of Buildings. Cartographic Section, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Mullins, Paul R. 1999 Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African American and Consumer Culture. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, New York. Rawick, George P. (ed.) 1977 The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. Supplement. Series 2, Vol. 16. Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia, and Tennessee Narrative. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut. Resteaux, Capt. E.B.W. 1864 Letter to Maj. Gen. M.C. Meigs, December 16, 1864. National Archives, Military Records, RG 92, Entry 225, Box 720. Washington, D.C. Scofield, Rev. Abisha 1864 Testimony to Capt. E.B.W. Restieaux, December 16, 1864. National Archives, Military Records, RG 92, Entry 225, Box 720. Washington, D.C. Sears, Richard 2002 Camp Nelson, Kentucky: A Civil War History. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington. Smith, John David 1974 The Recruitment of Negro Soldiers in Kentucky, 1863–1865. Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 72(4):364–390.

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Stewart, Beth K. and W. Stephen McBride 1994 Camp Nelson Preservation and Management Plan. University of Kentucky Program for Cultural Resource Assessment, Report No. 346, Lexington. Thomas, Brig. Gen. Lorenzo 1864 Orders No.24, July 6, 1864. National Archives, Military Records, RG 92, Entry 225, Box 720. Washington, D.C. Vetter, John 1864 Testimony to Capt. E.B.W. Restieaux, December 16, 1864. National Archives, Military Records, RG 92, Entry 225, Box 720. Washington, D.C. Wilkie, Laurie A. 1995 Magic and Empowerment on the Plantation: An Archaeological Consideration of AfricanAmerican World View. Southeastern Archaeology 14(2):136–148. Young, Amy 1996 Archaeological Evidence of African-Style Ritual and Healing Practices in the Upland South. Tennessee Anthropologist 21:139–155.

Chapter 6

Remembering the Women of Vine Street: Archaeology and Historic Preservation of an Urban Landscape in Lancaster, Pennsylvania James A. Delle and Mary Ann Levine

Introduction This chapter analyzes a gendered landscape in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, based on our excavation of a property once owned by a free African-American woman, Lydia Hamilton Smith, who was the housekeeper of Thaddeus Stevens, an abolitionist and leading congressman during the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. Stevens and Smith were only the most famous residents of the property; in this chapter we examine this property as an example of a microcosmic landscape through which we interpret changes in the social and physical landscape of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, over time. Our focus is on an urban houselot, located at the corner of Queen and Vine Streets in Lancaster, known locally as Lot 134. There are many ways to study and understand urban landscapes like Lot 134. Many urban archaeologists try to make sense of the relationships that exist between people and buildings, how people experience specific neighborhoods, the phenomenology of experience as people move through the city, and how the spatial form of the city helps to shape ethnicity and other modes of identity. Some conceive of the city as a theater, and city life as performance, where people display and create themselves through everyday activities set on the urban stage (e.g., Beaudry and Mrozowski 2001; Hayden 1995, 1997; McCarthy 2001; Orbasli 2000; Rothschild 2008; Yip 1995). And indeed, in Lancaster one could explore the many ways that race, class, age, and gender have been experienced on the streets of the city. In this chapter we follow a recent trend in historical archaeology, known as “contextual” archaeology, which focuses on “microhistories,” using the experiences of ordinary people as examples, metaphors, or microcosms of broader historical processes (e.g., De Cunzo and Ernstein 2006; Hicks and Beaudry 2006). In a way,

J.A. Delle (B) Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, Kutztown, PA 19530, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_6,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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urban landscape archaeology can be seen as a form of this “contextual” archaeology. Urban archaeologists are often able to identify specific individuals who lived on urban sites – particularly if they owned property – and by combining analyses of the often detailed documentary evidence typically associated with deed transfers and other city records with specific archaeological deposits found in pit features like privies, can often paint a very detailed picture of the lives of individual people (Mrozowski 2006). It is our goal in this chapter to paint such a vivid portrait of a few individuals who lived and worked within the urban landscape of Lot 134. Some of these people were quite ordinary – a seamstress, factory worker, the widow of a tavern keeper – while others, living within the same small landscape, were powerful influential people who helped to shape extraordinary events during the critical years surrounding the American Civil War. By examining their lives and the spaces in which they lived, we hope to explore the changing nature of gendered landscapes in 19th-century Lancaster, and how preservation efforts in the city have worked to selectively preserve the landscapes of some of Lot 134’s residents while simultaneously destroying the landscapes of others.

Lancaster’s Dynamic Landscape The city of Lancaster is the seat of Lancaster County (Fig. 6.1). First settled by Europeans in the closing decade of the 17th century, the county was established in 1729. The town that would become Lancaster City was platted under James Hamilton’s supervision in 1730, chartered as a borough in 1742, and incorporated as a city in 1818. The borough initially served as the market town and administrative center for Lancaster County, however, as industrialization took hold in the late 18th and into the 19th centuries, Lancaster developed into a major industrial city (Loose 1978; Winpenny 1982; Wood 1969; Schuyler 2002). The advent of late 20th-century deindustrialization, suburbanization, and various urban renewal projects greatly impacted the settlement of both Lancaster City and the outlying county. Hundreds of farms were subdivided into suburban developments; the concomitant rise in automobile traffic led to dramatic changes in the landscape of the city as scores of buildings, some dating to the 18th century, were demolished to make way for parking lots. By the late 20th century, urban planners and middle-class residents perceived Lancaster to be in decline. As early as the 1960s, city planners considered a number of urban renewal projects, resulting in the eventual demolition of entire city blocks, some of which were in-filled with modernist shopping centers and housing projects (Delle and Levine 2009; Schuyler 2002). The most recent of these plans, and the one that precipitated our archaeological work on Lot 134, was the construction of the Lancaster County Convention Center and attached Marriott Hotel (Delle 2008; Delle and Levine 2009; Delle and Levine 2004; Levine and Delle 2009; Levine et al. 2005), a project that has radically changed the urban landscape of downtown Lancaster.

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115 L IM E ST

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Fig. 6.1 Location of the Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith site, in downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Drawing by John Svatek of Kerning Pair Design

The Development of Lancaster’s Urban Landscape When the earliest Europeans settled in Lancaster, they generally built small story and half houses out of logs, frame, or brick; a few of these still survive scattered about the city. In the 18th century these houses were built on 60 feet by 240 feet lots delineated by the Hamilton plan in the 1730s; the houses tended to be 30 feet square or smaller, with outbuildings scattered behind. This created a landscape characterized by open spaces; houses were located directly on the streets, and the areas behind the houses were the locations of early cottage industries, including brick works, blacksmith shops, gun shops, printing offices, and potteries. As the city grew in the early 19th century, these spaces were eventually enclosed, changing the nature of the relationship between people and the outdoors. As was the case in larger cities like Philadelphia, the wooded, rural character of Lancaster changed, and the city evolved into a densely populated urban center (Cotter et al. 1992; Yamin 2008). Nevertheless, the Hamilton plan, which divided the city into 60 feet by 240 feet houselots, remained the primary organizational template for the urban landscape in Lancaster (Fig. 6.2). As the commercial and administrative elites of 19th-century Lancaster prospered, new and bigger houses replaced most of the modest houses of the 18th century. By

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Fig. 6.2 A mid-19th-century rendition of downtown Lancaster, showing the houselots configured by the Hamilton Plan

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mid-century, a number of heavy industries, including textile mills, had been established in Lancaster. The industrial growth of Lancaster engendered a rapid growth in the city’s population, as people moved into the city to work in the mills and warehouses that were transforming the social and physical landscape of the city. As the city grew, the open lots were subdivided and filled. Small houses occupying half of the frontage of a lot were extended and connected; structures were expanded both horizontally and vertically, creating nearly impenetrable facades enclosing smaller open spaces within. At the same time that the scale of architecture in Lancaster enclosed space, the locus of industrial production shifted from cottage industry and small-scale shop and mill to large scale production in factories. As this was happening, courtyards began to spring up between houses, and became the primary outdoor space experienced by the population of Lancaster. The open spaces of the city were condensed into narrow places between buildings. By the end of the 19th century the urban landscapes of Lancaster were two sided, as facades and exteriors created an external landscape in which the pageantry of public life unfolded, and courtyards created internal landscapes in which the dynamics of family life, gender roles and relationships, were negotiated.

The Urban Landscape of Lot 134 Lot 134 is a corner lot bounded to the west by Queen Street, the primary north–south thoroughfare in Lancaster; to the south by Vine Street, and the west by Christian Street, a narrow alley. To the north is Lot 133 (Fig. 6.2). Like many of the city’s houselots, Lot 134 has experienced radical change over the centuries. In the early 18th century, a small 30 feet by 30 feet house was built on the northwest corner of the lot. Excavations conducted on the lot in 2003 revealed that in this earliest European occupation of the lot, an open-pit lime kiln was operating behind this small house; the lime was most likely used for mortar and other construction material needed in the late 18th century as brick buildings rapidly replaced the older frame and log houses that had characterized early 18th-century Lancaster. By the late 18th century, the Kleiss family had acquired the lot, and operated a blacksmith shop and a brewery there (LCWBG pp. 635–637). The Kleisses constructed a number of outbuildings on the property, fronting both on Queen Street to the west and Christian Street to the east (Kleiss Inventory 1800). After half a century of occupation, in 1843 the lot passed out of the Kleiss family to Thaddeus Stevens (LCSDB v. 1 p. 317). Our archaeological investigations indicate that Stevens expanded the small 18th-century house to connect to the Kleiss brewery and tavern, and built an extensive wing behind the expanded house, creating a large urban house (Delle 2002). He sold at least one subdivided parcel off of the lot in the early 1860s to his housekeeper, Lydia Hamilton Smith (HPTLC 2002:10). Upon Stevens’s death, Mrs. Smith purchased the entire property, renting several houses on the lot to working class families in Lancaster and operating a boarding house out of the old Stevens house (LCDBE v. 12 pp. 189–191). She eventually subdivided the lot, selling the

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southern moiety to the Effinger family. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, a number of other businesses came and went on the lot, including a hardware store, veterinary hospital, a hotel, a livery stable, an auto body shop, and a number of warehouses. In the early 21st century, the remnants of all of these buildings – save the facades and front bays of the Stevens House, Kleiss Saloon, and two small houses in the southeast corner of the lot known as the Lydia Hamilton Smith houses, were demolished to make room for the Lancaster County Convention Center complex. Throughout the 19th century, Lot 134 was divided into a series of smaller spaces. By the mid-1850s, these included 45–47 South Queen Street (Thaddeus Stevens house and law office); 49 South Queen Street (the Kleiss Saloon, owned by Stevens but leased and operated as a tavern); a one and one-half story structure that may have been a carriage house facing Christian Street; and 21 and 23 East Vine Street (Fig. 6.3). In the postbellum era, these houses became predominantly female spaces, not only through the domestic management of women as housewives and housekeepers, a common phenomenon in Victorian America (Wall 1994), but as primary residents and property owners (Table 6.1).

Fig. 6.3 a: The primary landscape features on Lot 134, c. 1843. Drawing by James A. Delle. b: The primary landscape feature of Lot 134 during the Lydia Hamilton Smith occupation, c. 1855–1884. Drawing by James A. Delle

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Table 6.1 Probable occupation of Vine Street houses 21 East Vine Tenant

Owner

23 East Vine Tenant

1840

Kleiss Family

Kleiss Tenant?

1850

Thaddeus Stevens Thaddeus Stevens/Lydia Hamilton Smith Thaddeus Stevens Estate

Lydia Hamilton Smith Unknown Tenant

1860

1870

Catherine Galster (Servant)

1880

Sarah Caldwell Susan Dick Sarah Caldwell Charles Caldwell

1890

1900

1910 1920

Lydia Hamilton Smith

Catherine Effinger Michael Bowers Cecelia Bowers Albert Bowers Florence Bowers Marie Bowers Conrad Schaeffer Martha Schaeffer Arthur Weaver Carlotta Weaver

Catherine Effinger

Martha Schaeffer Conrad Schaeffer

Owner Kleiss Family Thaddeus Stevens Lydia Hamilton Smith

John Lebkicker (Shoemaker) Catherine Amelia Effinger Lebkicker George Spielman Annie Speilman Lizzie Speilman Annie Speilman J.B. Lebkickers C. Amelia Lebkicker

Lydia Hamilton Smith

Catherine Effinger C.Amelia Effinger Lebkicker Harry E. Effinger Harold Parker, Jr. Arthur Moedinger Ella Moedinger William Moedinger

C. Amelia Lebkicker

Lydia Hamilton Smith C. Amelia Lebkicker

William Moedinger William Moedinger

The Women of Vine Street Although many stories can be told about the landscapes of Lot 134, our focus here is on a group of women we call the Women of Vine Street. The first among these women is Lydia Hamilton Smith. Mrs. Smith was not the only independent woman to live on Lot 134; in the later part of her life, Mrs. Smith rented her properties to widows and members of the urban working class, transforming what for a brief time had been an elite landscape owned and occupied by one of the country’s most powerful politicians, to the residential and occupational space of the working class. The paragraphs that follow provide brief historical vignettes about four households that lived on Lot 134 from the time that Thaddeus Stevens purchased the properties in the 1840s to the opening decade of the 20th century. Each of these four households was at one time or another headed (or, in the case of Lydia

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Hamilton Smith, managed) by widows (Smith, Catherine Effinger, Amelia Effinger Lebkicker, Sarah Caldwell). Each of their stories is followed by an analysis of the landscapes in which they lived. In relating their histories and analyzing their landscapes, we can better understand how the changing dynamics of Lancaster’s urban landscape was reflected in the physical changes wrought to Lot 134 and better understand how these phenomena impacted the lives of the Women of Vine Street.

Lydia Hamilton Smith: 1845–1868 For most of its history, the corner of Queen and Vine was an ordinary houselot inhabited by ordinary people. The quotidian nature of the houselot changed in 1848, when Thaddeus Stevens, a radical politician who would one day challenge the power and authority of the president of the United States, purchased the lot at a Sheriff’s Auction. By the early 1850s, Stevens’s law office and residence were established on South Queen Street. As had happened in every generation since the town plan had been established, the lot was transformed by construction and use during Thaddeus Stevens’s occupation of the property. Collaborating with Stevens on the transformation of the corner of Queen and Vine was his housekeeper and confidante, Lydia Hamilton Smith. Lydia Hamilton Smith was born, possibly in Gettysburg, PA, on February 14, 1813, the child of an African-American woman and a white man (Brodie 1959:53). Lydia’s early life is shrouded in some mystery. One of Thaddeus Stevens’s biographers contends that she was raised in the household of Enoch Hamilton, a sometime slave trader, leaving open the very real possibility that Lydia and her mother were both enslaved (Singmaster 1947). If Lydia had been born enslaved, she would have been freed by statute upon her 28th birthday, in 1841, according to Pennsylvania’s gradual abolition law. She married Jacob Smith, a barber and musician, either in 1836 or 1837; the couple had two sons, William, born in 1835, and Isaac, born in 1847 (Brodie 1959:87). Within a year of Isaac’s birth, Lydia left Gettysburg behind, taking her two young sons with her to become a housekeeper for Thaddeus Stevens; there is some disagreement as to whether Lydia’s husband had died or she left him (Brodie 1959:53; Korngold 1955:72). In 1848, she took up residence in a small house on the southeastern corner of the lot, at 23 East Vine Street (Brodie 1959:53; Korngold 1955:72). During the 1840s and early 1850s, Thaddeus Stevens represented Lancaster in the U. S. House of Representatives (Korngold 1955:79; McCall 1899:65). In 1851, Stevens was part of the defense team that sought to exonerate a number of defendants who allegedly had participated in the “Christiana Riot,” an incident in which a white slave owner had been killed trying to apprehend fugitives harbored by the African-American William Parker (Slaughter 1994). Stevens’s role in the controversial trial encouraged his party, the Whigs, to nominate another candidate for the Lancaster seat for the election of 1852 (McCall 1899:89ff; Trefousse 2005:84–86). The erstwhile congressman returned to Lancaster to practice law and run his several

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businesses; Stevens was eventually returned to congress as a leader of the radical wing of the new Republican Party in 1856 (Trefousse 2005). During the break in his political career, Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith took up permanent residence on Lot 134. Stevens expanded the house at 45 South Queen Street; at this point, Mrs. Smith most likely moved from her small house on the corner to reside in the main house with Thaddeus Stevens. Mrs. Smith was able to use her connection to the congressman – and quite possibly a generous salary – to accumulate property in Lancaster. In 1860 she purchased a subdivided parcel with a brick dwelling house on Lot 134, likely the corner where she had initially taken up residence upon coming to Lancaster, for $500; she thus became one of only three women of color to own property in Lancaster County in the antebellum years (HPTLC 2002:10). She eventually accumulated several additional properties in Lancaster, and at various points in her life owned property in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC (HPTLC 2002:10). Upon his death in 1868, Stevens bequeathed $5000 to Mrs. Smith, money that she used to purchase his house and the remaining property on Lot 134 (Korngold 1955:73; Rottner 2003:17–18). Lydia Hamilton Smith died of a stroke on February 14, 1884 (Rottner 2003:18). Mrs. Smith’s Landscape When Mrs. Smith came to Lancaster, she resided in a small one-story brick house on the southeast corner of the lot that had stood there at least since 1798 (Fig. 6.3). Mrs. Smith would live on and/or own some part of Lot 134 until her death in 1884. The four decades during which Mrs. Smith was associated with the lot witnessed significant change in the social and physical spaces of Lancaster; it was during these decades that Lancaster became a city of enclosed rather than open spaces, and Mrs. Smith became a pioneering businesswoman through her owning and renting properties, paving the way for women of color to own property and to achieve high social status during a time when racial bigotry in the United States was at a high point. She was an example of an African-American woman who could, with social grace and a keen sense for business, rise from being a domestic servant to a wealthy landowner. Mrs. Smith lived at a time when urban landscapes were being rapidly transformed, and the nature of male and female spaces changed dramatically, at least for members of elite households like the one in which Mrs. Smith lived. Although the “separate spheres” hypothesis of Victorian gender relations did not apply to female factory workers or the many women who owned and operated businesses since the colonial period (Spencer-Wood 2007), structural discrimination against women typically limited the roles they could play in public life, particularly political life (Wall 1994; Wurst 2003). Nevertheless, many women like Mrs. Smith were invisible – or semi-visible – partners and social gatekeepers in their husbands’ businesses. Although Mrs. Smith was a housekeeper, and thus a paid employee of Mr. Stevens, she had the opportunity to interact with people of the highest social rank. Mrs. Smith also lived at a time when the physical, as well as the social, landscape of Lancaster was dramatically changing. When Thaddeus Stevens purchased

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Lot 134, the property contained a blacksmith shop and a brewery, two traditional crafts that were practiced on home lots in the early 19th century. By the time of her death, such cottage industries were rare in the urban center; while small-scale craft production did not completely die out, many such cottage industries had given way to centralized production in factories. The exterior spaces of houselots like 134 were more focused on the chores of domesticity than domestic production by the end of the 1880s. Mrs. Smith was managing the household when Stevens expanded his house on Lot 134. The expansion included the bounding of much of Lot 134 and its infill by the larger house. While an open paved yard connecting Vine Street to a back carriage house remained open, newly created courtyards became a focal point of domestic space. A courtyard was created between the back extension of the Stevens House and the Daisz Grocery immediately to the north; a similar courtyard was created to the south (see Fig. 6.3). In these years Mrs. Smith also came into legal ownership of two houses in the southeast corner of the lot, at least one of which Mrs. Smith paid to erect herself. Like the new courtyards established at the Stevens House, the new housing complex owned by Mrs. Smith enclosed a courtyard; the northern boundary of the courtyard was established by a narrow alley leading between Christian Street and the paved yard between the Stevens carriage house and the main house. These courtyards were extensions of private space; they could not be seen from the street. Private activities were conducted here, most likely including the hanging of wet laundry, but most definitely were the places where privies were located. Both the airing of soiled linen and the use of the necessary outhouse could be done outside of the public gaze. Our excavations behind the Stevens and Smith houses revealed a number of landscape features, including a modified cistern we uncovered beneath the courtyard between the Kleiss Saloon (49 South Queen) and Stevens house (45–47 South Queen). The courtyard immediately above the cistern was paved in dry-laid brick over a sand bed. Several artifacts were recovered from the matrix between the bricks, all dated to the late 18th/early 19th century (c. 1760–1820). The archaeological evidence suggest that the cistern was constructed most likely in the first quarter of the 19th century (Delle and Levine 2004; Moyer and Rush 2002). Artifacts recovered from features surrounding the cistern suggest that it was probably out of use by the 1850s. At about that time, the eastern wall of the vaulted cistern was rebuilt. This reconfiguration of the cistern included the construction of a small penetration into the cistern that was bricked in at some later point. A trench feature dug into the sandy soil underlying the brick pavement as well as the heavy clay deposited on top of the vaulted cistern was apparently dug to expose the eastern wall of the cistern and soon after filled (Fig. 6.4). The modification of the wall suggests that the cistern may have been used as a hiding place. We discovered a patch in the foundation wall of the Kleiss Saloon immediately behind the filled-in trench. It was thus possible for a person to enter the cistern from the basement of the saloon without being seen. Taken together, the penetration through the foundation, the trench, and the rebuilt eastern wall of the

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Fig. 6.4 The modified cistern located beneath the courtyard between 47 and 49 South Queen St., during excavation. Photograph by James A. Delle

cistern suggest that modifications were made to the Kleiss Saloon and the cistern that would have allowed a person to crawl from the basement of the building into the cistern. The artifacts recovered from the trench feature indicate that it was filled sometime between 1850 and 1885, suggesting that these modifications would have been in play during the 1850s. We have elsewhere interpreted the cistern as a hiding place for fugitive slaves escaping through Lancaster on the Underground Railroad (Delle 2008; Delle and Levine 2004; Levine and Delle 2009). Although another as yet to be determined function for the crawl way between the basement of the saloon and the abandoned cistern may eventually be discovered, the fact that the saloon building would have been owned by Stevens (a noted abolitionist and radical egalitarian) and likely monitored by Smith (reputed by local oral tradition to have been a conductor on the Underground Railroad) strongly support an Underground Railroad connection. The upright position of a spittoon recovered from the floor of the cistern suggests that it was in use by someone in the cistern; a hole broken into the roof of the cistern could have let both light and air enter the cistern after it was no longer used for water storage. The archaeological evidence clearly suggests that the cistern was no longer used for water storage after 1850 and was filled by 1920. The artifacts recovered from the trench fill suggest that this feature was filled sometime before 1885, but

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most certainly before the first quarter of the 20th century when the entire courtyard was filled and paved over with concrete. Mrs. Smith’s landscape may well have been a landscape of freedom.

Catherine Effinger: 1870–1901 One woman of Vine Street who lived on Lot 134 for several decades was Catherine Effinger. Born in Switzerland in 1824, Catherine married Jacob Effinger, a German immigrant. By the time the Effingers first appeared as residents of Lancaster in the 1860 census, the Effinger’s eldest child was 12 years old, suggesting that the Effingers likely were married either in 1847 or in 1848, when Catherine was 20 and Jacob 25. Jacob was a pattern maker in 1860, an occupation similar to what we now know as tool and die making. In 1860, Catherine was the mother of five children, ranging in age from 3 months to 12 years. The household also included Frederick Saman, a German immigrant who lived with the Effingers as a boarder. The family was affluent enough at this time to have a domestic servant, 18-year-old Elizabeth Link. By the 1870 census Jacob had given up the pattern making trade, and the Effinger family moved onto Lot 134, residing in and operating the former Kleiss Saloon. In the 1870 census, Jacob was listed as a “restaurant keeper,” suggesting that he and his family had taken over the business on the corner of Queen and Vine. At this time, Catherine was living with her husband, six of her children (ranging in age from 4 to 15), and Catherine Galster, a 22-year-old German-born domestic servant. Catherine’s oldest daughter, Catherine Amelia Effinger – known as Amelia – was married and also living on Lot 134, most likely in Lydia Hamilton Smith’s former house at 23 East Vine. Because he passed away during the census enumeration, we know from the 1880 census return that Jacob died in April of 1880 of a bowel affliction described as “gangrene of the colons.” By the summer of that year, the widowed Catherine Effinger was living with her bachelor son Charles, with whom she ran the old Kleiss Saloon business. Catherine’s occupation in the 1880 census is listed as “keeps brewery,” while Charles’s occupation is noted as “keeps bar.” Another two of Catherine’s adolescent sons continued to live with her; 18-year old Henry was apprenticed to a painter, while 14-year-old George was still in school. The Effingers were assisted in the brewery business by a German-born boarder, Joseph Hardinger. By the 1890 census the Effingers had given up the brewery/tavern business, a turn of events that may have resulted from the death of Charles Effinger. In 1890, Catherine Effinger owned 21 East Vine Street, and was most likely living there with her surviving son, Henry. In the 1900 census, only four of Catherine’s children were living, including Annie, Henry, and Amelia. At this time, the elderly Catherine Effinger lived with two of her adult children, her widowed daughter Amelia, and her bachelor son Henry. The family lived at 23 East Vine Street, which was owned at this time by Amelia. Catherine died a short time later, on October 12, 1901 (LCWBO, v. 2, pp. 372–73).

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Mrs. Effinger’s Landscapes The Effinger occupation of Lot 134 exemplifies the way that urban landscapes are dynamic and ever-changing. When the Effingers moved onto the lot, Jacob was a former craftsman, who took up the business of running a restaurant. In something of a foreshadowing of late 20th-century urban change, a skilled manufacturing worker shifted to service employment. In the early years of the Effinger occupation, the exterior landscape would have been an extension of home life. It is likely that Mrs. Effinger, her older daughters, and possibly Catherine Galster, the domestic servant, prepared food for customers, using the back kitchen and courtyard for food preparation. The Effinger household at this time contained several young children; archaeology in the courtyard space behind their one-time house produced a number of toys, including marbles and porcelain dolls, that date to the later 19th century. The courtyard at this time would have been a place for both work and play. Although the preparation of food for customers certainly would have been on a different scale than making and serving meals for a family, the kinds of activities taking place (e.g. preparing and cooking food, washing dishes and clothes) was of a kind with domestic chores but on a larger scale. It is important to note that archaeology cannot distinguish between preparing and cooking food for a household and a saloon, except, perhaps, in the larger proportion of glass drinking vessels and tobacco related artifacts recovered at saloons. By 1880 the landscape was transformed back into an industrial space. Jacob had passed away, and Catherine Effinger and her surviving family had resurrected the old Kleiss brewery on Lot 134. It is likely that some of the infrastructure for the brewery had remained on the site, and the Effingers may well have taken on a boarder (Joseph Hardinger) with experience in the brewing trade. The temporary shift back to a cottage industry may have been precipitated by the Panic of 1873, a very poorly understood financial crisis that resulted in a deep economic depression in the United States. Our work on other sites in Lancaster has demonstrated a massive drop in property values in the 1870s; some properties lost as much as 70% of their value between 1870 and 1880 (Delle 2004, 2007). The depression of the 1870s, precipitated by bank failures resulting from over speculation in railroad securities, forced some urban residents to reshape their lives and landscapes. On Lot 134, this resulted in the temporary restoration of small-scale industrial production on the site. It would appear that while the restaurant business may have suffered from the economic depression, beer sales may have provided a more steady income for people like the Effingers.

Catherine Amelia Effinger Lebkicker: 1870–1910 Catherine’s eldest daughter, Catherine Amelia Effinger, was also a long-term resident of Lot 134. Born in February 1848, Amelia first appears in the census records in 1860, when she was a 12-year-old schoolgirl. By 1870, Amelia was the 22-year-old wife of the 32-year-old shoemaker John B. Lebkicker (variously spelled Leibkicker,

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Libkicher, Lebkeichler). Lebkicker was the eldest son of a clerk, David Lebkeichler, and was possibly raised by a stepmother. John lived with his father David, his stepmother (or mother) Mary, three younger brothers ranging in age from 8 months to 4 years, and a teenaged girl named Susan A. Christ. No occupation is listed for Susan, suggesting that she was not a domestic servant (an occupation commonly listed in Lancaster in 1850). No relationship is listed between Susan Christ and David Lebkeichler; it may be possible that she was a ward of the family, either an orphaned niece or possibly a relation of David’s first wife, if such existed. In the 1860 census a Susan Christ, of the same approximate birth date, was living in rural Lancaster County working as a domestic servant for a farmer, Nathaniel Urban, a fact that could support either scenario. Like Susan, John had left the David Lebkeichler household by 1860. While Susan apparently left Lancaster city for rural employment, John crossed the Susquehanna River and took up residence in nearby York, Pennsylvania. John was listed as a shoemaker, and lived with one other person, 18-year-old Annie Lebkicker, most likely his wife. The Lebkickers were apparently poor, as John’s personal estate was valued in the 1860 census at $50. In comparison, his grandfather David Lebkeichler (listed as a “gentleman” in the 1860 census), had a personal estate worth $1500 and real estate worth $3000; his father, a clerk, also named David, had a personal estate worth $2500 and real estate worth $1200. It seems that, like John, the rest of the third generation of Lebkeichler men were on a downward economic slope; Henry (16) was listed as a laborer, and Edwin (13) was already employed as a shop boy. Two younger brothers, Andrew (9) and Samuel (7) were still at school. Soon after his marriage to his young bride Annie, John Lebkicker enlisted in the Union forces at the outbreak of the Civil War.1 Lebkicker apparently remained in the war until its conclusion, as he was discharged from the 79th Pennsylvania Infantry as a second lieutenant in July of 1865 (Union Army 1908, v. 1, v. 2). By the 1870 census, he was settled back in his trade as a shoe and boot maker in Lancaster. Whatever happened to Annie Lebkicker, his young York bride, remains unclear; according to the census returns by 1870 John was married to Catherine Amelia Effinger and living on Lot 134 with his new bride’s family.

1 Lebkicker was apparently one of the Lancastrians to join the 1st Ohio Infantry; this unit was organized immediately upon Lincoln’s call for volunteers in April of 1861. The 1st Ohio was ordered to Washington, but mustered in at Lancaster on April 29, 1861. The unit, along with Private John B. Lebkicker, continued on to Washington, and was engaged at the First Battle of Bull Run. In August of 1861, the regiment disbanded at the end of the three-month term of service under which it had been organized (Union Army 1908:v. 2). According to the Veteran’s schedule of the 1890 federal census, in October of 1861 Lebkicker reenlisted as a sergeant in the 79th Pennsylvania Infantry. The 79th Pennsylvania saw action in Tennessee and Georgia; Lebkicker would likely have participated along with his unit in a long series of battles and skirmishes, including engagements at Chattanooga, Nashville, Chickamauga, and Murfreesboro in Tennessee. The regiment eventually joined the campaign against Atlanta, and marched with Sherman to Savannah, saw heavy action in the Carolinas, and made its way to Richmond and eventually back to Washington following the fall of the Confederacy (Union Army 1908:v. 1).

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John and Amelia most likely rented the small house at 23 East Vine Street, while her parents and the extended household remained in the leased property at 49 South Queen. When Thaddeus Stevens, the owner of the property, died in 1868, his executors continued leasing the property to the Effingers. In 1871, Lot 134 was subdivided, with the Effingers taking ownership of 49 South Queen; by 1873 Lydia Hamilton Smith came into full possession of the houses at 21 and 23 East Vine, as well as the Stevens house at 45–47 South Queen (LCDBC v. 10, pp. 502–503, pp. 524–525). By this time, Mrs. Smith was an established businesswoman and resided in Washington, owning property there as well as in Lancaster. Her Lancaster properties were rented, including 21 and 23 East Vine Street; these houses remained her property until her death, as the administrators of her estate sold them in 1886 (LCDBX v. 12, pp. 386–388; LCDBO v. 12, pp. 128–129). Amelia and John’s fortunes changed for the better in 1880. In April of that year, Amelia’s father had died, and it is possible that his daughter and son-in-law received a small inheritance, as by June the Lebkickers had the resources to take up independent residence at 27 West Chestnut Street, several blocks to the north of the corner of Queen and Vine. John had given up the shoemaking trade by this time, and was listed in the census return as a saloon keeper, further evidence that the production and sale of alcohol were less affected by the depression of the 1870s than other occupations. The West Chestnut Street household was composed of the childless couple (John and Amelia), Amelia’s younger sister Annie (at 15 years old, she was 17 years junior to Amelia), George Arnold (a bar man who worked for the Lebkickers and boarded at their house), and 18-year-old Elizabeth Martin, a domestic servant. Neither Annie (at home) nor Amelia (keeping house) were listed with a paid occupation. This newly found prosperity, in which Lebkicker, the former poor shoemaker, was able to hire a bar man, keep a domestic servant, and support his teenaged sisterin-law, was short-lived. By 1888, the Lebkickers were once again living at 23 East Vine Street and were apparently trying to make a go of it running a small oyster saloon at 17 East Vine Street, an address that would have been located on Lot 134 (Williams 1888:186, 1892:223). The 1890 veteran’s schedule indicates that by 1882, at the age of 44, Lebkicker had applied and was approved for a veteran’s invalid pension for his service in the Union Army. Notably, he was not listed with any disability in the 1880 census, which specifically gathered this information; however, in 1890, Lebkicker was listed on the veteran’s schedule of the census with a disability described as a “rupture” – likely an abdominal hernia. This suggests that between 1880 and 1882 Lebkicker had either suffered a disabling accident, or had experienced such a reversal of fortune that he petitioned the federal government for aid. By 1888, and perhaps as early as 1886, the Lebkickers were once again living at 23 East Vine Street; in 1886, Amelia Effinger Lebkicker – not her husband John – purchased the property from Lydia Hamilton Smith’s estate. The veteran’s schedule of the 1890 census lists Lebkicker’s address as 23 East Vine Street, owned at that time by his wife (LCDBX v. 12, pp. 386–388). In September of 1889, the elder Mrs. Effinger reached an agreement with Lebkicker allowing him to rent land on

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Lot 134 for a period of 8 years; thus John Lebkicker and Amelia Effinger Lebkicker became tenants of Amelia’s mother, possibly leasing an old outbuilding to run their oyster saloon (LCDBE v. 13, pp. 51–52). John Lebkicker did not live to see the end of the lease agreement; in 1892, at age 44, Catherine Amelia Effinger Lebkicker applied for a widow’s pension from the federal government (Pension Index, nd). She continued to live at 23 East Vine Street; by 1900, she shared the house with her elderly mother and her younger brother, the bachelor coach painter, Harold E. Effinger, who died in 1903. Amelia’s mother Catherine died in 1901; the 21 East Vine Street property was sold to settle her estate, while the 23 East Vine Street property remained in the family until 1905 (LCDBS v. 17, pp. 470–471). The house at 49 South Queen, the old Kleiss Saloon that the Effingers had once run as a restaurant and brewery, had been sold by the elder Catherine Effinger in 1894. By the 1910 census, Catherine Amelia Effinger Lebkicker had left Lancaster and was living in Philadelphia with her sister Annie Effinger Parker – who had lived with Amelia as a teenager – Annie’s husband and their two adolescent sons. Mrs. Lebkicker’s Landscapes The landscapes of Lot 134 changed both physically and socially during Mrs. Lebkicker’s occupation of the lot. Between 1886 and 1891, a small two-story addition was constructed behind the house at 23 East Vine Street. This addition bounded on Christian Street, and served to completely segregate the courtyard behind the houses from the alley. According to the 1886 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Lancaser, the old Thaddeus Stevens house had become a hardware store selling agricultural implements, though it is likely that the upper stories of the building remained in use as a boarding house. Attached sheds were constructed behind the house in the 1880s, possibly to create additional storage space for the hardware store. The expansion resulted in one of the old Thaddeus Stevens courtyards being enclosed and paved over. The expansion also resulted in the further reduction of outdoor space; the lot, like the city surrounding it, was becoming further enclosed. During this process of spatial enclosure, second-story, overhanging porches began to spring up around Lancaster, further reshaping the urban landscape. Porches became a new medium through which Lancastrians experienced the outdoors. As fewer open spaces remained in the city, porches provided a semi-private space in which people could be outside, but simultaneously remain in their houses. The Sanborn Fire Insurance maps indicate that by 1886, second-story overhanging porches had been added to the houses at 21 and 23 East Vine, both overlooking the small courtyard now surrounded on three sides by brick walls and that by 1891, Mrs. Effinger’s house at 49 South Queen also had a porch overlooking its courtyard. Exterior space continued to disappear throughout the Lebkicker occupation of Lot 134. Following the sale of the old Kleiss saloon by old Mrs. Effinger, the new occupants of 49 South Queen Street expanded a small stable that abutted 21 East Vine Street, spatially segregating the properties on Queen

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from those on Vine. The new livery stable was constructed to service a new business at 49 South Queen Street, the Southern Market Hotel, which itself was opened to service a new farmer’s and fish market, Lancaster’s Southern Market, which had opened across Queen Street in 1888 (http://www.co.lancaster. pa.us/lancastercity/cwp/view.asp?a=869&q=551176). The hardware store added more warehouse space behind the old Stevens house, and the Southern Market Hotel added a small kitchen wing along Vine Street. These physical changes to the landscape dramatically changed the residential landscapes of the people who had made Lot 134 their home. The open spaces in which children had played, women had cooked and washed, and men (and possibly women) had brewed beer were significantly reduced. The lot continued its transformation from a space of local production – Catherine Effinger’s brewing, Lebkicker’s shoemaking – to one based on consumerism, whether through the purchase of agricultural implements or hospitality at the new Southern Market hotel. The landscapes also became more vertical, as overhanging porches replaced the old courtyards as the primary expression of exterior domestic space.

The Sarahs Caldwell and Lizze Speilman: 1880–1890 The widow Sarah Caldwell was, in all likelihood, the last tenant to rent 21 East Vine Street from Lydia Hamilton Smith prior to the property being purchased by the elder Catherine Effinger. According to the 1860 census, at that date the Caldwells lived in a boarding house, apparently attached to a mill, in Gloucester, Virginia. In 1860, the 50-year-old Sarah lived with her husband (listed as E. Caldwell) and six children: Susan (age 22), William (20), Henry (14), Edward (8), Sarah (5), and a 1-month old unnamed infant. The Caldwell family first appears in the Pennsylvania returns of the federal census in 1870, at which time Mrs. Caldwell and the younger children lived in York. Although the 1870 census did not record marital status, it is likely that Mrs. Caldwell was already a widow, as she lived alone with her two young children, the younger Sarah (14), and Charles (10). Mrs. Sarah Caldwell was keeping house at the time, and although neither of her two children was employed, the younger Sarah Caldwell had a personal estate valued at $150, perhaps an inheritance from her father. At this time, the two Sarahs and Charles lived in York, across the river from Lancaster. By the 1880 census the Caldwells had moved to Lancaster, and had taken up residence with their daughter and sister, the widowed Susan Caldwell Dick. Susan Dick’s story is a difficult one to trace. According to the 1860 census, while an unmarried woman of 22 living in the Gloucester boarding house with her family, Susan had a neighbor, a 20-year-old man named J. Dick, who lived in a nearby boarding house and worked as a carpenter. Although it is still a matter of conjecture, young J. Dick may have eventually married Susan, providing her with the married name of Susan Dick. Also a matter of some conjecture is the maternity of the young infant Caldwell; family relationships were not recorded on the 1860 census. While it is possible that the infant of 1860, who most likely was the 10-year-old Charles

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Caldwell of the 1870 census, was the son of Sarah Caldwell, she would have been 49 or 50 at the time of his birth, an advanced maternal age for the late 19th century. It remains a possibility that the boy was actually the illegitimate child of 22-year-old Susan Caldwell by young J. Dick, who may have eventually married Susan. This, however, remains a matter of conjecture. At the time of the 1880 census, neither of the widows was employed. However, Charles, at age 20, had found work as a store clerk and the younger Sarah was working in a cotton mill. It is likely that the family was supported by the income of its two younger members. The Caldwell’s next-door neighbors in 1880 were the Speilman family. George, a machinist, lived with his wife Annie, and his daughters Lizzie (24) and Annie (9). Lizzie was also employed, but at home as a dressmaker, while Annie was still in school. Like the Caldwells, the Speilmans rented their home at 23 East Vine Street from Lydia Hamilton Smith. It is likely that both families moved following the sale of the properties after Lydia’s 1884 death. By the 1890 census, the Effinger and Lebkicker families were residing at 21 and 23 East Vine Street. While it is still unclear what happened to the Caldwell widows, the unmarried younger Sarah Caldwell was still working in a textile mill in 1900, at age 44. At that time of the 1900 census, she was boarding at the house of Frederica Groff, sharing her accommodations with the widow Groff, her brother Gottleib Deichler, and two other textile workers, Henry Fellman, who worked in the dye house of a mill, and 41-year-old Mary Weitzel, who, like the younger Sarah Caldwell, was unwed and working in the carding room of a textile mill. The Misses Caldwells’ Landscapes Urban landscapes are frequently fleeting, not only due to the rapid changes that take place to the physical fabric of cities like Lancaster, but because there is significant turnover in the transient world of urban working-class tenants. The Caldwells represent such phenomena; their landscape is thus the most difficult to interpret. The Caldwells would have shared the small courtyard between 21 and 23 East Vine Street with the Speilmans. Our excavations behind the house revealed but one outhouse shaft, suggesting that both households would have shared this necessary facility. Additional chores would have likely taken place in the small courtyard, which, given the density of population, would have been a very crowded place indeed. By the time the Caldwells lived on Lot 134, Lancaster was a fully urban landscape; a large cotton mill was established just a few blocks away (Conestoga Mills). Unlike their New England cognates in Lowell or Pawtucket, Lancaster’s textile mills tended to hire individual local men and women as hands. In a demographic study of Lancaster’s textile industry, Thomas Winpenny (1982) concludes that the majority of mill hands were local, unmarried young women, most of whom were the daughters of laborers or widows; about half had siblings or parents working in the mills (Winpenny 1982:61–63). The vast majority of workers, 92%, lived at home as opposed to boarding (Winpenny 1982:60); the majority of female workers were in their teens and twenties (Winpenny 1982:56). Some women could, like Lizzie

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Speilman, try to continue living and working at home at various tasks like dress making, though by the closing decades of the 19th century it was becoming common for many women, like young Sarah Caldwell, to work in textile mills and other factories for the better part of their lives.

Preservation Efforts: Landscapes of the 21st Century The physical and social landscapes of Lot 134 continued to change throughout the 20th century; in the early 21st century, the entire lot was enclosed during the construction of a convention center and attached hotel. While most of the 19th century landscapes created and lived by the Women of Vine Street were destroyed to make way for the convention center, a selective preservation effort did preserve some elements of Lydia Hamilton Smith’s landscape of freedom. Our archaeological project on Lot 134 was precipitated by the construction of the Lancaster County Convention Center. Although the initial plans drawn up in the early 2000s called for the leveling of the entire block, including the houses then standing on Lot 134, a compromise between the developers and the preservation community was eventually reached. The Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County – the local preservation group that sponsored the excavations – reached an agreement with the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority to construct and operate a new museum commemorating Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith on Lot 134. The project will incorporate the restored facades of several historic structures on Lot 134 (Fig. 6.5). Thus, although the Convention Center Authority has leveled most of the interior of Lot 134, plus several lots to the north, some parts of the landscapes of Lot 134 will be preserved and interpreted. The museum project consists of two components: the restoration of the historic buildings still standing on the property, and the construction of museum exhibition space between the buildings. There are four structures involved: the Thaddeus Stevens House (45–47 South Queen Street), the contiguous Kleiss Saloon building (49 South Queen Street), and the Lydia Hamilton Smith Houses (21 and 23 East Vine Street). The first phase of the project involves the selective restoration of the exterior of the buildings. Ironically, the restoration has included the demolition of several segments of all four structures, including the three-story wing constructed by Stevens in the 1850s; this demolition has taken place to accommodate the construction of the convention center which will adjoin the museum. The back wings of the Kleiss Saloon and Lydia Hamilton Smith Houses have likewise been demolished. The interior landscapes of the courtyards have been destroyed; it is the external-facing landscapes of the house facades that have been preserved. The sole exception to this demolition is the cistern we discovered and have interpreted as an Underground Railroad hiding place. The central focus of the proposed museum will be the life and times of Thaddeus Stevens; one of the primary interpretive themes of the museum – described in a recent planning document as the

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Fig. 6.5 a and b: The Lydia Hamilton Smith Houses, 21 and 23 East Vine Street, undergoing partial demolition. Photographs by James A. Delle

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“Quest for Freedom” – will be installed around the cistern we excavated in 2002. According to the planning document produced by the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County, the exhibit space is designed to provide a “unique opportunity for interpretation. . ..in the operation of the Underground Railroad. . ..These exhibits will establish the context in which these spaces may have served as a ‘station’ in the larger regional network of the Underground Railroad. This network takes in sites in nearby Lancaster, Gettysburg, Caledonia, Columbia. . ..Visitors will be encouraged to visit these sites as part of a larger Underground Railroad interpretive experience. . .” (HPTLC 2004). Although the life of Lydia Hamilton Smith will be interpreted in the museum, the landscapes that she helped to shape, and which in turn shaped her life, will not be preserved. The public facing facades of the structure, while evocative of the people who lived within the walls, represent a partial preservation effort. While not perfect, this arrangement was the best that the Historic Preservation Trust could negotiate. While the gendered landscapes will all but be gone, the preservation of the cistern can be interpreted through the lens of gender and race; it was most likely Mrs. Smith, rather than Mr. Stevens, that directed underground railroad activity on the site. Her efforts will be remembered, even if the landscapes of Catherine and Amelia Effinger, Annie Speilman and the Sarahs Caldwell, are erased from the emerging landscape of 21st-century Lancaster (Fig. 6.6).

Fig. 6.6 Lot 134 during the construction of the Lancaster County Convention Center. Photograph by James A. Delle

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Conclusion Historically, only those landscapes that are thought to be remarkable are preserved in urban settings. Because the quotidian nature of stereotypical gender roles and relationships has long been misunderstood as a natural state of being, rather than historically shaped social constructs, those places and spaces in which seemingly ordinary events took place are rarely preserved (see Spencer-Wood 1991). In Lancaster, this was clearly the case with the construction of the Lancaster County Convention Center. Indeed, the plans to preserve what little of the landscape that has been saved were formalized only after our discovery of the cistern. Having found such an extraordinary landscape feature, both the Historic Preservation Trust and the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority realized that the landscape of freedom constructed by Mrs. Smith could be transformed into an interpretive theme for a museum, and give the convention center a unique identity, which could be marketed to tourists and conventioneers. In a way, one could perceive the obliteration of the remnants of historic occupation on Lot 134 as the logical progression of Lancaster’s urbanization. From the early 19th century through to the early 21st, urbanization in Lancaster has resulted in the progressive enclosure of space. When the Hamilton Plan structured space in Lancaster, the vision of the city was one of green spaces and small houses. Nineteenth-century growth and industrialization transformed the open lots and cottage industries to a densely packed industrial landscape. Courtyards replaced open lots, and porches replaced courtyards. In the 21st century, the convention center will contain virtual outdoor space; the remnants of the courtyard in which we found the cistern will be enclosed by a building, further removing Lancastrians from the outdoors. While most of the landscapes we have analyzed are now forever gone, we have been fortunate to have worked with the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County. Our archaeological work on Lot 134 has revealed many stories of the generations of women who made the corner of Queen and Vine their home. Although the landscapes of Lot 134 have been eradicated by the construction of the Lancaster County Convention Center, the landscape lived by Lydia Hamilton Smith will not be forgotten so long as the museum stands within its fabric. We can only hope that through our efforts, the remaining Women of Vine Street will also be remembered. Acknowledgments We would like to thank our students and colleagues who have helped us with this project. First and foremost we extend our gratitude to Sherene Baugher and Suzanne SpencerWood for inviting us to participate in this volume, and we do appreciate the unending patience they extended to us through the preparation of this chapter. We would also like to acknowledge all of those students and colleagues from Lancaster and Kutztown who helped and supported the Women of Vine Street project, especially the members and staff of the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County and the students of both Franklin and Marshall College and Kutztown University who worked on this project, particularly Bethany Rottner who completed a senior honors thesis on the Lydia Hamilton Smith materials. Thanks also go to John Svatek of Kerning Pair Design for his preparation of Fig. 6.1. Some of the information contained within this chapter was previously presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology meetings in 2004 and at the Council for Northeast Historical Archaeology meetings in 2007.

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References Manuscript Sources Kleiss Inventory: Inventory Philip Kleiss, 1800, on file, Lancaster County Historical Society, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. LCDBC: Lancaster County Deed Book C, Lancaster County Courthouse, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. LCDBE: Lancaster County Deed Book E, Lancaster County Courthouse, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. LCDBO: Lancaster County Deed Book O, Lancaster County Courthouse, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. LCDBX: Lancaster County Deed Book X, Lancaster County Courthouse, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. LCSDB: Lancaster County Sheriff’s Deed Book, Lancaster County Courthouse, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. LCWBG: Lancaster County Will Book G, Lancaster County Courthouse, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Pension Index: General Index to Pension Files, 1861–1834, Microfilm T288, certificate number 393.449 (Lebkicher John B.) National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

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2007 Feminist Theory and Gender Research in Historical Archaeology. In Women in Antiquity: Theoretical Approaches to Gender and Archaeology, edited by S. Nelson. pp. 29–74. Altamira Press, Walnut Creek, California. Staski, Edward 2008 Living in Cities Today. Historical Archaeology 42(1): 5–10. Trefousse, Hans 2005 Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. Walker, Mark 2008 Aristocracies of Labor: Craft Unionism, Immigration, and Working-Class Households in West Oakland, California. Historical Archaeology 42(1): 108–132. Wall, Diana DiZerega 1994 The Archaeology of Gender: Separating the Spheres in Urban America. Plenum Press, New York, New York. Williams, J.E. 1888 Williams’ Annual Lancaster City Directory for 1888. New Era Book and Job Printing, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 1892 Williams’ Annual Lancaster City Directory for 1892. New Era Book and Job Printing, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Winpenny, Thomas R. 1982 Industrial Progress and Human Welfare: The Rise of the Factory System in Nineteenthcentury Lancaster. University Press of America, Washington, District of Columbia. Wood, Jerome Herman 1969 Conestoga Crossroads: The Rise of Lancaster, PA, 1730–1789. PhD Dissertation, Dept. of American Civilization, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Wurst, Lou Ann 2003 The Legacy of Separate Spheres. In Shared Spaces and Divided Places: Material Dimensions of Gender Relations and the American Historical Landscapes, edited by D. L. Rotman and E.-R. Savulis. pp. 225–238. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Yamin, Rebecca 2008 Digging in the City of Brotherly Love: Stories from Philadelphia Archaeology. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. Yip, Christopher L. 1995 Association, Residence, and Shop: An Appropriation of Commercial Blocks in North American Chinatowns. In Gender, Class, and Shelter: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture V, edited by E. C. Crumley and C. L. Hudgins. pp. 109–117. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. The Union Army A History of Military Affairs in the Loyal States 1861–1865 – Records of the Regiments in the Union Army: – Cyclopedia of Battles – Memoirs of Commanders and Soldiers. 8 vols. Federal Publishing, Madison, Wisconsin 1908.

Part III

Gendering Multi-ethnic Landscapes

Chapter 7

(Re)Constructing la Tierra de la Guerra: An Indo-Hispano Gendered Landscape on the Rito Colorado Frontier of Spanish Colonial New Mexico Jun U. Sunseri

Introduction Every day, many a carload of visitors drives northwest from Santa Fe, pushing toward some frontier of personal discovery as they head to yet another attempted channeling of the famous painter, Georgia O’Keefe, at her shrine-like Ghost Ranch. Exiting north from the constant flow of tourists between Santa Fe and Abiquiu, one can almost feel the quieting of the road, like a lateral from the mother ditch, as it begins to narrow into a lonely strip of asphalt that wends its way up the Rito Colorado Valley. The cottonwoods trace the remnant trickles of the river itself, deeper in the middle as it passes between the southern ramparts of the valley, then opening up into a broad plain that will pinch closed again only at the extreme northern end. Just past the sign which announces entry to the Carson National Forest, across the river and just at peripheral vision, adobe walls fade into and out of focus. Many who are not looking for it, and even some who are, miss the ruins of Casitas Viejas because its adobe walls are the same color of the surrounding earth from which they were made. But if one is prepared to see it emerge from the piñonjuniper llano into sharp relief, it seems as if it remains to formally announce arrival into the valley, still steadfastly standing guard after almost 300 years. Casitas Viejas has gone by many names. Teqwa’ebukeji, Teqwa’ekeji, Kasitabukeji, Kasitakeji, Casita, Harrington’s Casitas, Old Casita, ER3, AR-03-0202-00015/2, and LA 917 are but a few names recorded by ethnographers, historians, archaeologists, and residents of Abiquiu and modern El Rito, located 7 miles up the valley from the ruins (Harrington 1916). Self-described “relic hunters” from communities near and far have picked at the slowly eroding walls of the chapel architecture as well as dug in and around the site – searching for the mythical chest of Spanish gold hidden beneath the altar. At some point, someone even took to

J.U. Sunseri (B) Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3710, USA e-mail: [email protected]

S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_7,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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shooting at the back wall of the chapel, cratering the adobe with large caliber ammunition, perhaps frustrated by the elusive mythological gold. Yet, even these modern weapons were not always capable of breaching the remains of the earthen rampart. In so many ways, Casitas Viejas seems to have been able to withstand the test of time, shielding from constant violent raids, shedding erosive floods, undermining rodents, greedy looters, archaeologists, and even outright vandals. Casitas was built to last, as was the community who created it and survived the frontier experience. In this chapter, a historical background to the Spanish colonial engagement with the indigenous landscape of the Rito Colorado Valley will contextualize archaeological interpretation of tactical, engineering, and ritual landscape aspects. Just as the colonial settlers were aware of how the landscape they entered was very much in play for their indigenous friends and foes, the present day preservation challenges at Casitas Viejas are part of a living history for contemporary communities. Working from this perspective, the opportunities afforded by the El Rito community to archaeologists and historians who work with the materials from Casitas Viejas demand respect for its continuing role as a vanguard of frontier heritage and memory.

Identities on the Northern Frontier In the 18th century, communities in Spanish Colonial New Mexico were populated by diverse groups of people with heritages derived from Europe, Africa, indigenous Mexico, Southwest Pueblo, Plains, and other nomadic Indians. Though marked gender roles existed in these groups, the most overt set of criteria framing this multiplicity of people was the sistema de castas, which has been described as a “cognitive and legal system of hierarchically arranged socioracial statuses created by Spanish law and the colonial elite in response to the growth of the. . . population in the colonies” (Chance and Taylor 1977:460). Historical records testify to colonial officials’ attempts to maintain the casta hierarchy, but two centuries of colonists’ renegotiations of their social status in that system, both within the bounds of set gender roles and those of mixed ancestries, became the cornerstone of colonial life. Moreover, historical accounts contain tantalizing suggestions of the situational expression of varying social identities by individuals and communities. In Northern New Mexico, culture contact occurred along a frontier shared with nomadic Indians, Pueblo Indians, Spanish colonists, and colonized captive and client groups (Brooks 2002; Rothschild 2003). In such fluid circumstances of conflict and collaboration over land, resources, and captive people, social status was for many people not a fixed unitary identity, but rather one that was situationally expressed. In other words, different aspects of one’s multiple status criteria, such as gender or ethnic heritage, could be invoked at different times, to defuse potentially dangerous or unstable social situations by asserting a prior personal affiliation among participants. This has been illustrated vividly in historical accounts by

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Brooks (2002) and perhaps exemplified by the Nuevomexicano story of Eufemia who, in cooking a culturally specific meal which appeased a raiding Indian party, saved her village from destruction (Bryan 1973). Such adaptable and changing attachments are created and recreated by social practices that enact and reinstantiate affinity (Barth 1969; Bentley 1987; Bourdieu 1977). Archaeologists rely on the material record of such social practices and so must identify how they pattern at multiple scales to compare and contrast the situational nature of different social performances. While household practices occupy one end of the scale, communitycreated landscapes are complementary investigative foci for tracing dynamics of culture identification and contact, especially in colonial situations. Though the archaeological investigation of foodways at the principle research site is discussed elsewhere (Sunseri 2009), the following preliminary results of an archaeological study of cultural landscape relate an equally nuanced tale of community life in the later half of the 18th century. The Rito Colorado Valley of North Central New Mexico (Fig 7.1) provides an ideal location to explore how frontier settlers created and reproduced their social

Fig. 7.1 Northern New Mexico Study Location

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identities at different scales and contexts of practice. A series of archaeological sites in this valley, most likely inhabited from A.D. 1735 to approximately A.D. 1820 (Quintana and Snow 1980), were once part of an intermontane system of buffer settlements. These buffers were established by the Spanish colonial administration – during the most intense and disruptive period of conflict ever seen on the northern frontier – to protect centers of administration from marauding nomadic Indian raiders who captured and enslaved women and children from the colony and their Indian allies. LA 917, known to the modern descendant community as Casitas Viejas (little old houses) and to archaeologists as the type site for Casitas Red-on-Brown Pottery (Dick 1964), was one focus of buffer settlement during this volatile period. Villages such as these, scattered along raiding and trading routes through the Southern Rocky Mountains, were composed largely of non-Iberian-born people living in mixed communities, at what colonial administrators considered the geographic margins of New Mexico (Brooks 2002; Swadesh 1974). Anthropologists and historians have long distinguished Spanish Colonial frontier villages from other colonial communities by describing the latter’s traditions as hybridized (Chavez 1979; Gutiérrez 1991; Kessel 1979; Levine 1992; Magnaghi 1994; Swadesh 1974). However, attaining legal title to land from the government created an implicit tension in pluralistic colonial communities, because certain requirements of ethnicity and religion, a Spanish or Hispanicized identity, had to be met by grantees (Jimenez 1972; Jones 1979), as well as particular, legislated layouts for settlement, irrigation, and defense (Simmons 1969). In contrast to the desired colonial mode of the aggregated pueblo/placita, these buffer villages are distinguished by anthropologists and historians from surrounding communities by their unregimented settlement structure and hybrid traditions (Simmons 2001), traits that have not been fully explored as hallmarks of the formation of new corporate identities. In New Mexico, the use of the term castas itself went through a transformation, wherein everyone had a casta rank, but the use of the noun itself referred to people of mixed, indefinable but non-Iberian ancestry. This use bespoke the process of collapse of the typology into fewer categories in New Mexico, which meant not only a blurring of hierarchical distinction, but also opportunity to reinvent categories. It was within this context of opportunity that genízaro communities stood most to benefit from flexible categories of gendered and class status. Genízaros, ostensibly detribalized Indian child captives raised in Spanish homes, were low in the social order of the administrative elites but would be proven by later historians (Chavez 1979; Lamadrid 2003; Magnaghi 1994; Swadesh 1974) to comprise some of the most important and socially dynamic communities on the New Mexican frontier. To colonial administrators, low casta people placed on the frontier were expendable and obliged to serve as buffers because they were indebted to the colony by virtue of their position in New Mexican society, as well as their need for supply, support, and legal representation. These men and women’s liminal position between slave and citizen made for perfect candidates for settlement of hostile territories away from central towns. The potential for advancement in the social

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order through grants of land and development of economic and military prowess were a strong motivation for people denied such opportunities elsewhere in the colony. Though most often investigated by archaeologists, everyday practices of social identity on the 18th-century frontier of New Mexico did not operate only in the quotidian arena of household labor and production. Aspects of social identity also played out in all the places, in and around the Rito Colorado community location, where people lived out the majority of their lives. However, the very premise of inhabiting a land grant community in the Spanish Colonial era came with many legislative strings attached. Principal among the legal arrangements, notations about the social position and expectations of the land grantees went hand in hand. But how closely did the practices of the community that built Casitas Viejas match the top-down colonial identity classifications devised by Spanish officials? Cultural landscape creation is a complex synthesis of individual or family choices constrained by differential access to tools and materials, framed by cultural constructs of appropriateness, prestige, and necessity. When colonial frontier settlers negotiated their identities, the fluidity of a given situation dictated the means and methods by which any given aspect of identity would be recorded by the material record. Maintenance of the categories by which the colonial administration pigeonholed people on the frontier required ascribing specific behavior to each casta designation. The scale at which these practices were created and at which they constrained further action created different contexts of archaeological record preservation. So, while some of these behaviors could be more privately enacted within systemic household contexts (such as foodways), some scales of behavior must have made it harder to conceal practices that were not favorable to invigilating eyes. Building and maintaining architecture and features on the landscape undoubtedly made secrecy in choices of practice far more challenging, but, as we will see, not impossible.

Gendered Landscape There existed a discrete set of rules by which settlers were to establish and maintain a new settlement if they were to retain title to a land grant (Nuttall 1921). In the context of lower casta people obtaining land grants from the administration, these rules were particularly important to follow, at least in ways that addressed some (probably sliding scale of) minimum requirements. Therefore, a landscape scale of social performance may have served as an overt declaration of subscription to colonial practice. The requirements for colonial settlements on the northern frontier were a masculinized arrangement between administrative officials, military officers, and the leaders of frontier communities. The signatories of the land grant petitions were all men. Mayodomos and comisionados were high status positions related to community structures and irrigation systems, known as acequias. These roles were also filled by men and even today rarely are held by women (Rodríguez 2006).

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However, women participated in and managed most of the household industries that structured the layout and operation of frontier villages (Simmons 1983), have been linked to maintenance of the ritual scheduling of processional events (Rodríguez 2002), and were often alone when the majority of men left frontier settlements for long military campaigns (Brooks 2002; Ebright and Hendricks 2006). It stands to reason that women were not only instrumental in planning the layout of the village, but also managing its daily operations for a significant proportion of its occupation. This command of the means of production occurred in an integrated agricultural and economic system placed intentionally in harm’s way. Moreover, the particular timing of this settlement placed its establishment squarely in the center of the most explosive period of captive raiding and trading along the northern frontier. In this context, women’s exchange value as captives, and their wealth-producing labor in pottery and hides, has been argued to be pivotal in the competition over prestige among masculine communities (Brooks 1996; Habicht-Mauche 2000). The change in women’s abilities to control the products of their own labor suggests a modality of gendered relations whereby ambitious males took advantage of social disruptions to enhance their individual power and prestige (Habicht-Mauche 2005). While Spanish administrators wrestled with how to deal with the brisk trade in captives along their northern frontier (John 1975), some genízaros were being inducted into the colony as born free to captured mothers, yet able to be considered Pueblo if married into Pueblo society (Chavez 1979). What ramifications would such contradictions have for Spanish Colonial gendered social positions located within the heartland of a matrilineal Tewa Pueblo landscape (Ortiz 1969)?

Previous Settlement in the Rito Colorado Valley: Palimpsests of Place The Rito Colorado Valley was anything but a blank slate when the first Spanish Colonial land grants were settled. I argue here that colonial communities had an intimate knowledge of Pueblo ideology concerning making place on the landscape and mapped themselves onto this landscape accordingly. Early Spanish explorers noted Pueblo ruins and these places retained names in use by contemporary indigenous groups (Harrington 1916; Poling-Kempes 1997:14). After the Great Indian Revolt of 1680, colonial settlers must have made adjustments to their policies regarding landscape tenure, even beyond those legislated by authorities in the Recopilacion de Leyes de las Indies. As friars accommodated some indigenous practice within the scope of Catholic theology, there was also explicit understanding of the landscape as part of Tewa cosmology (Ebright and Hendricks 2006:13). Ancestral Pueblo peoples had established one of the largest aggregated settlements in the southwest in the Rito Colorado Valley, well before the 16th-century entradas of the first colonials. This is attested to by the numerous prehistoric archaeological sites up and down the valley, the largest of which is the Pueblo ruin of Sapawe (LA 306), considered the largest adobe pueblo in New Mexico (Maxwell 2000:72). This

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Fig. 7.2 Sapawe Pueblo (LA 306) from the air (courtesy United States Forest Service)

massive site (Fig. 7.2) was inhabited in the 14th century and supposedly abandoned by the time colonial-affiliate settlers arrived in the valley (Maxwell 2000; Skinner 1965). What is unusual about the 18th-century settlement pattern is how the colonists divided and utilized space throughout the valley while not incorporating the area of the large pueblo ruins. Sapawe appears never to have been co-opted by the colonial settlers as space for economic infrastructure, nor turned into a major center of settlement architecture in the valley. This was uncharacteristic of the settlement behavior associated with colonists under Spanish rule, where colonial settlements were located very near or on top of ruins, such as at Santa Cruz (Spicer 1962), Pecos (Kessel 1979), or nearby Abiquiu (Carrillo 1997). Furthermore, Pueblo aggregation such as that which occurred at Sapawe gave the large precontact community ensconced within its massive walls an advantage in dealing with nomadic peoples in this region of inter-indigenous contact. It would seem that the military preoccupations of the colonial administration were only part of the considerations of settlement placement for the Casitas community.

The Tactical Landscape: Frontlines of la tierra de guerra A tactical landscape is an amalgam of features associated with place-making concepts, themselves based upon a larger collection of physical spaces that play stage to armed conflict. For the purposes of this study, the tactical landscape of the Rito Colorado Valley includes features hypothesized as having been used as strongholds (e.g., at Casitas Viejas), observation points, defensible areas, and lines of advance and retreat. The material record of tactical behavior is investigated via the patterning

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among four aspects of the landscape: (1) locations of fortified defense, (2) historic routes of trade and raiding, (3) areas within a viewshed of fortified defense that allow observation of routes of trade and raiding, and (4) areas of agricultural potential within close proximity to fortified defense, allowing maintenance of subsistence economy during periods of intensified conflict. These aspects, if in alignment with the masculinized doctrine of frontier settlement and military preeminence, should present clear aspects of authority on the landscape, much as forts elsewhere have legitimated the new power order by placement of an imposing fortified structure (Comer 1996). The frontier land grants were, by design, located as buffers between the centers of colonial administration and raiding bands of nomadic Indians. The Rito Colorado Valley settlement was a hard day’s ride from the closest administrative settlement of Santa Cruz de la Canada. Santa Cruz was just south of the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Chama River, near the modern town of Española (Fig. 7.3), and has been hypothesized as the place of origin for settlers not originally from Abiquiu (Quintana and Snow 1980:41). Like the Rio Arriba of today, many families were interconnected across the settlements, so Abiquiu and Santa Cruz de la Canada were logical retreats because most settlers would have had relatives living there (Carrillo 1997; Poling-Kempes 1997; Swadesh 1974). It was just as crucial for colonial administrators to confer land grants establishing frontier outposts to regulate trading with groups of Ute, Navajo, Apache, and Comanche traveling the Chama corridor as it was to protect against groups raiding for crops, livestock, and human captives. The first of these land grants were given out in the 1720s at the southern

Fig. 7.3 Approximate extent of the New Mexican frontier in the mid-18th century (with modern placenames)

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end of the valley, near the confluence of the Rio del Ojo Caliente and Chama River, with subsequent grants continuing up into the Rito Colorado Valley (Quintana and Snow 1980). Land grantees had to be self-sufficient in growing all their own crops and making their own clothes, as travel down valley to other settlements for such necessities was hazardous. Nomadic Indians preyed upon travelers between settlements, which restricted travel and required preparation at all times for frequent raids, the intensity of which escalated remarkably in the mid-18th century (Brooks 2002; Poling-Kempes 1997; John 1975). Several times in the early years of Rio Arriba settlement, intense raids forced retreats to Santa Cruz, even from the much more entrenched position of Abiquiu (Ebright and Hendricks 2006). These were often extremely violent confrontations, on par with those encountered in other northern outposts. Accounts of the raids in the north resonate with the desperation of frontier settlers to withstand withering Comanche campaigns during the mid- to late 18th century. Fray Domínguez’s recounting of a raid in the Taos area relates the fate of a handful of men, along with untold numbers of women “who had fought like men,” holding the defenses against the Comanches (Domínguez 1776 (1956):251) until all defenders were slain. The over 50 remaining household members were taken into captivity. Similar cycles of slave raiding and counter-raiding in the north were well-established between indigenous groups before the New Mexican colony developed. Historians argue that the colonial settlers quickly became part of and subject to these patterns of captive-taking and engaged fully with the “patriarchal notions about the socially productive value and exchangeability of women and children” (Brooks 2002:35). As a result, stories of women and children who had experienced captivity and yet become important members of frontier communities are a common theme in histories of the north (Rael-Gàlvez 2002). The irony of such tales, at least in part, is how they chronicle the deep cultural influences that women and child captives had across wide portions of the frontier, perhaps more so than the men whose travel was ostensibly less constrained. Settlers could be motivated to return to these dangerous locations because colonial authorities could threaten to take away the land grants if they were not reoccupied. Lower casta colonists rarely had opportunities to develop and hold title to land such as those offered in the frontier communities. The fear of losing a land grant pressured these settlers to maintain occupancy regardless of the volatile conditions (Poling-Kempes 1997). A primary means by which a settler community could maintain occupancy would have been to construct the well-fortified plaza required by the Spanish Colonial administration. However, the majority of settlements in the region were residences (ranchos) dispersed across the landscape close to their fields and flocks, a common characteristic of that time period in northern New Mexico (Simmons 1969) and one lamented by authorities. A dispersed community having a fortified plaza nearby, such as the one at Casitas Viejas, would have been afforded a temporary fall back position without a full retreat to Abiquiu or Santa Cruz. This would ameliorate the subsequent complications of colonial authorities discovering that the land grants had been vacated. Also, for ranchos in close proximity to the fortified plaza, localized agricultural maintenance could still have been possible during

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some periods of prolonged raiding potential. Thus, the presence of fortified village centers would not only have helped settlers in the basic survival of a raid, but also as a means of slowing the colonial administration from redistributing property to other groups.

The Engineered Landscape: A Background to acequia Agriculture Settlers at Casitas Viejas began their occupation in the Rito Colorado Valley within a framework of not only military forces pushing from outside the frontier, but also internal administrative and social forces pulling them out to those buffer locations. These colonial pressures and opportunities included stringent standards for the establishment of new land grant communities and regulations for the occupation and maintenance of grant titles. For a community comprised of low-casta people like genízaros, abiding by these standards was another way to retain land of their own. The Castilian king set ordinances by which Spanish medieval practices related to land and water were to be enacted in the New World (Ordenanazas de Descrubriemiento, Nueva Poblacion de las Indias dadas por Felipe II en 1573), and it was expected that not only would these practices sustain the livelihood of the settlement, but also that they would allow circumscription of the communities into organized, self-invigilating “proper villages.” One principal form of organization, established early in the sequence of any colonial site occupation, was the irrigation committee, comprised of alcaldes, mayors, and other administrative units. These male-centered groups organized labor around the creation and maintenance of the acequias that fed intricate agricultural systems for the entire community, but were also responsible for adjudicating disputes, negotiating water practices with nearby communities, and defending the interests of the corporate community (Rodríguez 2006). Acequia irrigation, as practiced in New Mexico, was a suite of practices based upon Arabic hydraulic engineering and land use traditions brought to Spain via the Moorish occupation before the Reconquista (Beekman et al. 1999). The word “acequia” itself is Arabic and along with other words (such as qanat) reflects the degree to which the Moors had integrated disparate communities of practice in the Iberian peninsula into agrarian systematics that translated well into the New Mexican colonial situation. These practices were institutionalized in the ordenanzas with ordinances 35 and 39 including requirements that new settlements should be located in areas with “good and plentiful water supply for drinking and irrigation” (Nuttall 1921). The very nature of space, ownership, and identity was legislated around the acequia system by processes of initial parceling of land into suertes, individual sections of land that required layouts conducive to irrigation waterworks (Rivera 1998:6). Subsequent patrilineal divisions of land made among family members are overlain on these initial plots and over generations have led to the quilt pattern evident in most arable valleys in Northern New Mexico. Frontier communities like nearby Abiquiu, established by genízaros, often had outliers, staffed by

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extended family and other household members. It is hypothesized that the “Spanish” ruins at Casitas Viejas were established this way and that the surrounding land, and the irrigation ideology upon which it was organized, was created and recreated by people who brought not only Spanish ideas of agriculture, but an intimate knowledge of indigenous techniques as well. Indigenous knowledge systems, enacted materially upon landscapes of the greater Tewa basin, had legal protection in Colonial New Mexico. The Leyes de las Indies stipulated that Indian lands under cultivation were not to be encroached upon by colonists. This was especially true for areas “in which [Indians] have made ditches for irrigation or any other benefit, with which by their personal industry they have fertilized” (DuMars et al., in Rivera 1998:3). Historians generally agree that self-sufficiency was a hallmark of colonial communities of this era, especially concerning food production (Simmons 1969; Swadesh 1974). If the settlers of Casitas Viejas did not build upon the ruins of Sapawe, and did not take advantage of the arable lands in its vicinity, then there must have been some mode of hydrological engineering nearer to Casitas Viejas that allowed them to maintain some agricultural base. The style, technology, and execution of this engineered landscape appear to be more complex than a cursory examination of colonial settlement could reveal. Creation, recreation, and management of the engineered system certainly did not occur in a conceptual vacuum, nor on a blank landscape, free from anthropogenic features. Historians have extensively documented the pueblo of Abiquiu, just south of the Rito Colorado Valley, as settled by Genizaro Indians, including people of Hopi and Tewa cultural extractions (Ebright and Hendricks 2006; Horvath 1977; PolingKempes 1997). If a contingent of this community was tasked to establish the fortified plaza at Casitas Viejas by land grantees connected to that community, then people with Tewa heritage and/or worldviews may have had considerable stake in deciding the site. Movement and cycles of occupation characterize the Tewa use, abandonment, and reuse of sites in the Rio Arriba (Anschuetz 2001; Lightfoot 1998; Rodriguez 2001, etc.). Taken together, this suggests that LA306 (Sapawe) was still “in play” for some cross-section of people still frequenting the valley, if not within the ranks of the settlers themselves. Such a retention of Sapawe in a systemic context of possible agricultural use and ritual meaning makes sense from analyses of the Tewa patterns of behavior concerning their largest ancestral sites just before contact (Anschuetz 2007).

The Ritual Landscape: Exploring espacio sagrado With what thread can we weave these understandings of landscape together into a coherent tapestry of cultural landscape? Though it does not lend itself easily to GIS analysis, it may be argued that the location of the Rito Colorado Valley, in a ritualized middle ground between indigenous nomads to the north and the sedentary Pueblo and Spanish Colonial villages to the south, was a defining aspect in

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both tangible and intangible aspects of placemaking. Ebright and Hendricks identify this concept as the indigenous Mesoamerican Nahua idea of napantla (Ebright and Hendricks 2006:177), carried to the northern frontier upon the many vectors of colonization. If occupancy of this middle ground operated in a way similar to other frontier locations, then the spiritual efficacy of such a location may well have affected the balance of power while materially conveying a new social order in the Rio Chama area. Such was the case for the ritualized transactions and landscape occupation that legitimated the new power at Bent’s Old Fort, near the Santa Fe Trail in what is now Colorado (Comer 1996). Looking at individual categories of these landscapes of power, such as sanctified land or dwellings (Fowles 2004), processional space (Rodriquez 2002), or attached outdoor areas (Kidder 2004; Robin and Rothschild 2002), exposes practice-structured dispositions toward managing the organization and use of these large-scale social arenas. Any investigation of the palimpsest of place created in the Rito Colorado Valley must first recognize the “big-site” (Anschuetz 2007) ritual anchor represented by the ruins of Sapawe pueblo. Historians record many instances of regular archaeological site visitation and collective recognition of a number of sacred points on the landscape, including Sapawe, by Tewa villagers (Harrington 1916; Ortiz 1969). Associated with this site are numerous stone shrines dotting the valley floor in an array that centralizes Sapawe. Though ethnographic accounts can be confusing regarding a systematized spatial logic to their distribution (Parsons 1974 [1929]) it is clear from oral history that such landscape marking and ritual practice involving shrines occurred across northern New Mexico and was crucial to maintenance of ties to the supernatural world (Basso 1996; Ortiz 1969). It is not much of a stretch to posit that the Rito Colorado Valley was a sacred landscape centered upon the large Pueblo of Sapawe before the first colonists ever set foot in it. Perhaps more convincing are intersecting accounts of gendered interpretations regarding similar circular shrines found in comparable contexts elsewhere. In exploring shrine motif relationship to fertility beliefs, Fowles relates investigations at the site of Te ewi (Wendorf 1953:83) as “of particular interest because, beside one of the nearby rock circle shrines, Wendorf found a crude female figurine similar in basic layout to the Picurís Earth Mother fetish...” (Fowles 2004:535). Perhaps because of their potency, it was these very landscape marking elements that were to be among the first targeted by colonial ecclesiastics. In the account of the alcalde mayor of Abiquiu, during the infamous witchcraft trials of the 1760s, a devil-possessed woman identified symbols of idolatry that needed to be exorcised and destroyed. One of the idols identified was “a powerful stone located in an ancient ruin of an Indian pueblo near the ranch that belonged to [Juan José] Lobato” (Ebright and Hendricks 2006:192). The ruin referred to is none other than Sapawe in the Rito Colorado Valley. After a protracted program of exorcism, shrines in the area, such as the Stone Lions of Bandelier National Monument, as well as petroglyph panels, still show defacement by Fray Juan José Toledo. But how successful was the attempted isolation of people in the Rio Arriba from the influences of the ancestral Tewa world? Sylvia Rodríguez writes that generations later, “key foci in the sacralized cultural landscapes of aboriginal, historic,

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and living populations” remain shared and that for both Indian and Hispanos alike, these included “the same hydrological, techno-economic, and symbolic kinds of locale: springs, lakes, streams, ditches, reservoirs, fields, buildings, burial grounds, and shrines” (Rodríguez 2002:15). This brings us back to a consideration of the middle ground inhabited by frontier communities in this region. Ebright and Hendricks (2006:177) argue that the tensions which were the inevitable consequence of the collision of incommensurate worldviews in the genízaro settlement at Abiquiu mirrored a frontier of transition from the old to the new and resulted in a time of both danger and opportunity. It may well be that the diverse frontier communities, populated by people who otherwise would have lower social status, such as the genízaro s, took advantage of their situation to reinforce the bonds between the people and their land. In the case of the exorcisms of Abiquiu, Spanish ecclesiastics meddled with what may have been a process of affirmation of local traditional moral precepts (including ancestral landscape knowledge). In doing so, these visiting authorities may not have fully appreciated how such processes could have helped, rather than hindered, the healing of disturbing thoughts and wounded spirits, as has been observed in other Indian groups (Basso 1996). In healing other wounds, the relation of sacred extramural space to women’s autonomy is connected to the story of Doña María de la Cabeza, wife of the most popular saint in New Mexico, San Isidro. In New Mexican popular versions of her tale, Maria de la Cabeza takes her leave from her husband regularly to observe her faith. Suspiciously following her, San Isidro is humbled to find her in prayer in the mountains. Sylvia Rodríguez argues that this gendering of space is an important dimension of Nuevomexicano religious tradition, whereas “the mountain wilderness seems conventionally accessible only to men. . .Dona María de la Cabeza manages to pull off excursions into the greater outdoors (beyond village space, perhaps the fields) through prayer” (Rodríguez 2006:149). These forays beyond protective walls were framed by the context of not only lurking raiders waiting to take women captive, but also the exploitive designs of those who believed themselves superior, either by casta designation or gender. A complaint brought by female genízaras in Albuquerque, against the master of the household for sexual assault in the pastures (Brooks 2002:135), is but one glimpse of this daily reality. Reclaiming the spaces beyond the fortified placitas was undoubtedly no small project for women on this frontier. Two hundred years later, the reclamation of the landscape-scale material record of these intimate and performative struggles began with preservation work by an army of men and women who, almost overnight, built a bustling new town in the scrub of the Rito Colorado Valley.

Protecting a Guardian of the Frontier: Preservation and Archaeology of a Colonial Buffer Village Landscape In the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps crew chiefs somehow recognized this landmark’s importance to the nearby community of El Rito. During the Great

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Depression, scores of people, living in a temporary city between Casitas and modern El Rito, strained their backs and calloused their hands in hard labor to preserve the Rito Colorado landscape from flooding and erosion. Written records relating how these men came to understand their role in preserving the site of Casitas and its associated landscape may never come to light. However, their landscape legacy of check dams, linear cobble grids, and arroyo head-cutting arrest devices testify to countless man-hours invested in altering the land to mitigate further damage to the site. Obviously, Casitas has not only long been worth visiting, but it has maintained a mythology and cultural valence that have both fascinated and been deemed worthy of protection. In the mid- to late 1950s Herbert Dick (then of Trinidad State Junior College, Southern Colorado) looked to several northern New Mexican sites as worthy of a large-scale project to turn into the definitive monograph on Spanish Colonial archaeology (Martha Dick 2003, personal communication). In the summer of 1959, Dr. Dick began full-scale excavation with students at Casitas, but his assemblages were never analyzed. Correspondence between Dr. Dick and the Congress suggests that the status of land grant properties within federal purview was in a dynamic state of reevaluation. Such concern over his treatment of archaeological investigation attests to an understanding, at the highest levels, of the need for sensitivity in pursuing research at Casitas and how the site was connected to a larger context within the social life of the nation at large. In the interim between Herb Dick’s excavations and my own project at Casitas, some prominent Southwest archaeologists, conducted limited testing (unpublished) near Casitas and at the site itself. Charlie Carrillo’s select surface collection at Casitas was integrated into his analysis of craft specialization in pottery (Carrillo 1997) which included historic genizaro sites of the region. Quintana and Snow’s seminal historical review piece became the foundation for later academic and cultural resource management investigations in the Rito Colorado Valley (Quintana and Snow 1980). Building upon my microscale analyses of Herb Dick’s excavated faunal and ceramic assemblages, investigation of cultural behavior at the scale of landscape provided a complementary perspective on the dynamics of pluralistic frontier society. GIS analysis allowed the viewsheds of Casits Viejas to be overlain with vectors of historic routes of entrance that raiding groups took into the valley. These routes were derived by digitization of trails from GLO (Government Land Office) maps and cross-referenced to historic maps in personal collections of the local community, which listed raids by year and location. Along these digitized routes of entry to the valley, points were added at intercepts with the viewsheds. These represent the farthest point along an entrance route which could have been observable from the site of Casitas Viejas, labeled LA 917 (Fig. 7.4). These points effectively represent when someone would have first been able to spot a raiding group coming into the valley. In more highly resolved comparisons than linear measurements alone, this exploratory spatial analysis suggests that the community at Casitas Viejas not only had a tactical advantage in regard to the level of preparedness it would have had for raids originating from the northern entrances to the valley, but also had

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Fig. 7.4 Viewshed from Casitas Viejas (LA 917)

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greater opportunity to successfully execute a retreat to other locations along the Rio Chama. However, this proximity to and probable use of these lines of retreat had social ramifications in regards to the Spanish masculine Nuevomexicano notion of vergüenza, or shame (Valdez 1979, as quoted in Rodríguez 2006:100). Unlike the Tewa, who regularly utilized kin connections in a worldview which implicitly connected movement on the landscape with life (Anschuetz 2007), Nuevomexicano masculinity did not valorize relying upon other landholders for succor, or being subordinate in labor or military status. Moreover, actions that placed one community in the debt of another did not maintain equality between independent landowners, a serious breach of social equity that very much played upon masculine vergüenza. In sum, the differences between ideologies of Spanish and Tewa masculinity were played out in different uses of the landscape. Both settler and indigenous colonial people relied heavily on the productive nature of New Mexican field systems. As mentioned above, those attachments were intimately connected with colonial mandates for land grant communities. However, hydrological modeling of known and historical acequias, in conjunction with an analysis of Pueblo agricultural space suggests that irrigation was not practiced near Casitas Viejas in a way that was completely within Spanish colonial parameters. In other words, if settlers were supposed to have established irrigation agriculture as mandated by the colonial administration, but couldn’t actually get water into those required ditches, what strategy did they employ? The only other example of successful farming to precede the buffer settlement in the Rito Colorado Valley is chronicled by the archaeological features associated with Sapawe pueblo. Characterization of topography in and around hydrological and agricultural features by high-resolution sampling, suggests that linear features near Casitas were located in places almost identical to those where the Sapawe community practiced non-acequia techniques (Fig. 7.5). Just as ancestral Tewa peoples utilized “dry farming” techniques to manage water flow to agricultural fields (Anschuetz 2001), it appears that people at Casitas Viejas may have used similar means to bring water into their acequia- style linear features. This would give the appearance of acequia usage, but drew upon much older, deeply rooted understandings of sustainable agricultural processes in the Tewa Basin. This most visible, intentional hybridization of technologies, a way of “hiding in plain sight” from colonial invigilation, may have required some reorganization of traditional male roles, such as Mayodomos and comisionados, to account for missing landscape components of a formalized acequia system.

Preservation Efforts Some four decades after Dr. Dick’s excavations, Robert Lawrence, District Archaeologist for the United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, El Rito Ranger District took steps to protect Casitas. Among his first steps was to organize archaeological survey, inspection, and fencing funding to protect the fragile

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Fig. 7.5 a: Characteristic topography of Sapawe hydrological features (in averaged slope per sample point, N = 1000) b: Characteristic topography of Casitas Viejas hydrological features (in averaged slope per sample point, N = 1000)

site from the trampling hooves of grazing livestock (Lawrence 1996). This simple, yet deceptively complicated task of getting a solid fence put up via the federal bureaucracy is a testament to Lawrence’s perseverance in getting something concrete in place to protect the site. Immediately afterward, Lawrence initiated another process of protection for the standing adobe architecture of the site, as it became apparent that bioturbation and subsurface rodent excavations along the cobble foundation were seriously undermining the stability of the chapel walls. In combination with the unprotected surface of adobes exposed to rain and freeze/thaw cycles, it seemed as though the devastation wrought by elements and rodents would soon rob the Rito Colorado Valley of one of its most prominent colonial-era landmarks. Stabilization (Lawrence 1997a) and archaeological testing of one of the breaches in the chapel walls (Lawrence 1997b) established a baseline of information for the Forest Service to monitor the slow return of the site to its earthen origins, as well as helping to develop a context for how this site fit into valley-wide settlement patterns.

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Perhaps most telling about his commitment to preserving what may be the linchpin aspect of the Rito Colorado Valley colonial landscape, Lawrence secured funding to curate as much of Herb Dick’s excavated materials from Casitas Viejas as he could find (Lawrence 2002). By placing these assemblages in the Laboratory of Anthropology, at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Lawrence permitted multiple analysts to bring to light archaeological narratives of life on this frontier. Lawrence’s efforts, along with a community-based history of the valley conducted in relation to the establishment of a nonsectarian cemetery near present El Rito (Anschuetz et al. 2001) are the most recent efforts to formally acknowledge the preeminence of Casitas Viejas in the cultural history of the valley. My own research builds upon these independent historic preservation projects in the Rito Colorado valley. Though some of these projects were archaeological, historical, ethnographic, or architectural studies undertaken to comply with legally mandated historic preservation requirements, an ongoing active protection of the site is still part of daily life for the El Rito community. Community members, teachers, and activists have requested that current project information be not only disseminated in community forums that the author has been asked to speak at, but also integrated into local school curriculum and interpretive projects for the fledgling community library. More than one local teacher expressed the importance of tying interpretation of the Rito Colorado Valley archaeological landscape into hard skills (e.g., GPS and total station mapping projects) and respect for heritage with the current generation. Local advocates are proud of their cultural heritage and look for ways to reinvigorate celebration and respect for it as one means to buffer their communities from the teen pregnancy, gang violence, alcoholism, and suicide that plague their youth. As an older generation comes of age and important abuelos (living libraries of information about the traditional lifestyles, foodways, and land management) pass on, many see it is a crucial time for a revival of community history and education about heritage. The dream of college-bound children, armed with the kind of education that would bring them back to northern New Mexico as consultants for other Spanish land grant communities, may be a reachable goal. Everyone knows that the youth of the community will be the ones to protect the rich loci of cultural heritage across the entirety of the valley. No signage or interpretive works describe the site standing silently at the entry to the Rito Colorado Valley behind its low modern fence line (Fig. 7.6). Nonetheless, contemporary “relic hunters” who have been found on the site have hastily dropped their spoils when confronted with El Rito community concerns about site preservation. Sometimes these concerns are expressed by onsite researchers such as myself; sometimes they are less subtly demonstrated by armed community patrols on horseback, which have been observed to materialize magically when a non-local vehicle or group wanders too far onto the open areas around the site. Whether on horseback, in four-wheel drive vehicles, or on foot, members of the local communities of El Rito and Placitas are often found in this region of the Carson National Forest. All have been forthcoming with their desire for protection and interpretation of the site and its already excavated assemblages, though very few opine that more excavation would be well-received. From firsthand experience, this author can attest to

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Fig. 7.6 Standing adobe walls at Casitas Viejas in 2007(Photograph by Jun Sunseri)

the invigilating eyes of those who are suspicious of anyone “poking around” near the Casitas site. From my very first day on site, phone calls to the ranger station to confirm my intentions were proof of deep commitments to protect Casitas from looters. As if in some form of retirement from its long tenure as the protector of the Rito Colorado gateway in the north, the adobe ruins of Casitas Viejas, and the cultural landscape they are situated in, have deservedly enjoyed various forms of active protection since the earliest days of standing watch on a challenging frontier.

Conclusion This study of landscape-scale cultural processes on the farthest northern frontier of Spanish Colonial New Mexico challenges implicit assumptions about gendered power dynamics related to the creation and maintenance of a buffer settlement. What appeared to be, at first glance, a purely masculinized endeavor – of men signing onto a bold program of frontier defense and agricultural colonization – has been reconstructed by archaeological investigation to have been something subtly different, yet equally encompassing of human experience in the northern borderlands. Perhaps this variant from the prescribed colonial landscape stems from the indigenous Tewa world in which it was set. In a system where defense of the frontier took second priority to safe passage away to kinsfolk and in which irrigation officials would

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have been relegated to lesser roles by lack of headgates and other acequia trappings, it is difficult to envision how a completely male authority could have been instantiated. The presence of a major Tewa site in the heart of the settlement structure only reinforces the connections between the ancestral landscapes associated with the agricultural practices that obviated a strictly colonial irrigation technology. Few would dispute that the clash of these concepts occurred against a longstanding backdrop of intense masculine competition over women captives and the products of their labor. This set a stage for any number of constant reappraisals of social status, based not only on ethnic heritage, but also gender and captivity. Synthesizing these lines of investigation builds upon recent studies of culture contact, further exposes how various modes of identity and expressions of community membership correlate or crosscut each other, and situates different aspects of historic identities in tension with each other. Most importantly, these narratives articulate with contemporary concerns about the preservation of landscape-scale heritage resources that speak to their diverse heritage, much in defiance of dichotomous schema such as Indian or Hispanic. In this sense, it has been the community itself, along with dedicated co-champions like their local district archaeologist, that has driven protection measures for the archaeological landscape of the Rito Colorado Valley. And community mandate has allowed this author to explore the linkages between the heritage concerns of local communities and the actions of their ancestors, who differentially participated in the reflexive processes of creation and transformation of physical space into culturally transmissive place. When one considers the multiplicity of possible choices that a wise community must have made to situate themselves on this landscape, it is impossible not to admire their ability to synthesize so much information successfully and translate those choices into making a home in such a complex place. Acknowledgments The author would like to express his deepest gratitude to the community of El Rito (especially Gonzales, Martinez, and Ussery families) as well as to Robert Lawrence of the US Forest Service. Portions of this research were made possible by funding from the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States.

References Anschuetz, K. F. 2007 Room to Grow with Rooms to Spare: Agriculture and big-site settlements in the Late Pre-Columbian Tewa Basin Pueblo Landscape. Kiva 73(2):155–172. Anschuetz, K. F., E. Gonzalez, T. Naranjo and S. Smith 2001 Data treatment investigations of AR-03-02-0296/0543 (LA 89391/LA 118494) within the proposed El Rito Cemetery Association special-use permit parcel, El Rito Ranger District, Carson National Forest, Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. Rio Grande Foundation for Communities and Cultural Landscapes. Barth, F. (ed.) 1969 Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of culture difference. Allen and Unwin, Bergen, Universitetsforlaget.

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Basso, K. 1996 Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western Apache. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Beekman, C. S., P. C. Weigland and J. J. Pint 1999 Old World irrigation technology in a New World context: Qanats in Spanish colonial Western Mexico. Antiquity 73(280):440–447. Bentley, G. C. 1987 Ethnicity and practice. Comparative Studies in Society and History 29:24–55. Bourdieu, P. 1977 Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Brooks, J. 1996 “This Evil Extends...Especially to the Feminine Sex”: Negotiating Captivity in the New Mexico Borderlands. Feminist Studies 22(2):279–309. 2002 Captives and cousins: Slavery, kinship, and community in the Southwest borderlands. Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. Bryan, H. 1973 Interview with Lou Sage Batchen. In The Albuquerque Journal, pp. E–12. WPA ethnography division, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Carrillo, C. M. 1997 Hispanic New Mexican pottery: Evidence of craft specialization 1790–1890. LPD Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Chance, J. K. and W. B. Taylor 1977 Estate and Class in Colonial Oaxaca: Oaxaca in 1792. Comparative Studies in Society and History 19(3):454–487. Chavez, F. A. 1979 Genizaros. In Handbook of N. American Indians, vol. 9: edited by A. Ortiz, pp. 198–200. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Comer, D. C. 1996 Ritual Ground:Bent’s Old Fort, World Formation, and the Annexation of the Southwest. University of California Press, Berkeley. Dick, H. 1964 Six Historic Pottery Types. Journal of the Southwest. Domínguez, F. F. A. 1776 (1956) The Missions of New Mexico, 1776: A description. Translated by F. A. Chavez and E. B. Adams. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Ebright, M. and R. Hendricks 2006 The Witches of Abiquiu: The governor, the priest, the Genizaro Indians, and the Devil. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Fowles, S. M. 2004 The Making of Made People: The prehistoric evolution of hierocracy among the Northern Tiwa of New Mexico [Ph.D. dissertation], University of Michigan. Gutiérrez, R. A. 1991 When Jesus came, the Corn Mothers went away: Marriage, sexuality, and power in New Mexico, 1500–1846. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.

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Lightfoot, D. R. and F. W. Eddy 1995 The construction and configuration of Anasazi pebble-mulch gardens in the Northern Rio Grande. American Antiquity 60(3):459–470. Magnaghi, R. M. 1994 The Genízaro experience in Spanish New Mexico. In Spain and the Plains: Myths and realities of Spanish exploration and settlement on the Great Plains, edited by R. H. Vigil, F. W. Kaye and J. R. Wunder, pp. 114–130. University Press of Colorado, Niwot. Maxwell, T. 2000 Looking for Adaptation: A comparative and engineering analysis of prehistoric agricultural technologies and techniques in the Southwest. Dissertation, University of New Mexico. Nuttall, Z. 1921 Ordinances concerning the Laying out of new Towns. The Hispanic American Historical Review IV(4):743–753. Ortiz, A. 1969 The Tewa World:Space, Time, and Becoming in a Pueblo Society. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. Parsons, E., Clews 1974 [1929] The Social Organization of the Tewa of New Mexico. In Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association. Kraus Reprint Co., Millwood, New Jersey. Poling-Kempes, L. 1997 Valley of Shining Stone: The story of Abiquiu. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Quintana, F. L. and D. H. Snow 1980 Historical Archaeology of the Rito Colorado Valley, New Mexico. Journal of the West 19(3):40–50. Rael-Gàlvez, E. 2002 Identifying Captivity and Capturing Identity: Narratives of American Indian Slavery, Colorado and New Mexico, 1776–1934., University of Michigan. Rivera, J. A. 1998 Acequia Culture: Water, land and community in the Southwest. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Robin, C. and N. A. Rothschild 2002 Archaeological ethnographies: Social dynamics of outdoor space. Journal of Social Archaeology 2(2):159–172. Rodríguez, S. 1987 Land, Water, and Ethnic Identity in Taos. In land, Water, and Culture: New perspectives on Hispanic land grants, edited by C. L. Briggs and J. R. Van Ness pp. 313–404. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 2002 1–26.

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2001 Spanish Pathways: Readings in the History of Hispanic New Mexico. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Skinner, S. A. 1965 A Survey of Field Houses at Sapawe, North Central New Mexico. Southwestern Lore 31(1):18–24. Spicer, E. H. 1962 Cycles of Conquest: The impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest 1533–1960. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Sunseri, J.U. 2009 “Nowhere to Run, Everywhere to Hide: Multi-scalar identity practices at Casitas Viejas,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz. Swadesh, F. L. 1974 Los primeros pobladores; Hispanic Americans of the Ute frontier. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana. Valdez, F. 1979 Vergüenza. Colorado College Studies 15:99–106. Wendorf, F. 1953 Excavations at Te’ewi. In Salvage Archaeology in the Chama Valley, New Mexico, edited by F. Wendorf, pp. 34–93. Monographs of the School of American Research. vol. 17. School of American Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Chapter 8

Sailors’ Snug Harbor: A Landscape of Gender and Power Sherene Baugher

Introduction Sailors’ Snug Harbor was a nineteenth century private charitable institution on the northern shore of Staten Island in what is now one of the boroughs of New York City (Fig. 8.1). It was the first home built specifically for retired seamen in the United States (Hardin 1983). This chapter focuses on the complex power dynamics reflected in this institution’s gendered landscape. Gendered landscapes can be found in diverse archaeological locations including residential sites, work places, military sites, religious sites, and institutional settings such as reformatories, prisons, and almshouses. Sailors’ Snug Harbor evolved within the context of almshouses in the colonial and early national periods, but unlike most almshouses that served both men and women, Sailors’ Snug Harbor was established exclusively for males. But because Sailors’ Snug Harbor employed women as well as men, its history reflects a gendered landscape within which issues of power and class were played out. Many almshouse studies have focused on research associated with class and power dynamics (e.g., Casella 2007; Garman and Russo 1999; Piddock 2001). A few almshouse articles have addressed both landscape and class questions (e.g., Baugher 2001; Huey 2001; Feister 2009). Occasionally archaeologists also have examined the gendered power dynamics reflected in the landscapes of institutions such as in the Magdalen Society for Fallen Women in Philadelphia (De Cunzo 1995, 2001), the Female Convict Prison in Tasmania, Australia (Casella 2001), or the gendered landscape of the Poor House in Falmouth, Massachusetts (Spencer-Wood 2009). But Sailors’ Snug Harbor differs from many other almshouses in two profound ways: (1) it was a permanent retirement home, not a temporary residence, and (2) because of its large endowment, it was never strapped for funds. While Sailors’ Snug Harbor was established in the tradition of almshouses, its large endowment enabled the administrators and the Board of Trustees to provide a better quality of life for its

S. Baugher (B) Department of Landscape Architecture, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA e-mail: [email protected]

S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_8,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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Fig. 8.1 Map showing the location of Sailors’ Snug Harbor within New York City (Illustration by Hans Klein-Hewett)

male and female staff and its all-male inmates than was found in other nineteenthcentury almshouses. This quality of life is reflected in its buildings and grounds – its gendered landscape. Sailors’ Snug Harbor was an elegant retirement complex on 160 acres of land situated in New Brighton, a middle-class Staten Island community. The complex contained dormitories, dining halls, recreation spaces, offices for male and female staff, residential homes for male and female staff, a carpenter shop, a blacksmith shop, a laundry, a large hospital complex, a church, a boat house, a dock house, and a large working farm. While the institution served only male seamen, the residential spaces included homes for married staff and for single staff. Among these, the Matron’s Cottage was specifically intended for single female employees. Thus the cultural landscape of Sailors’ Snug Harbor was a complex gendered landscape. In spite of the comfortably built environment at Sailors’ Snug Harbor, there were power struggles between male and female staff members and also between the

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director (the governor) and the residents. The archaeological material dates from the mid- to late-nineteenth-century covering this period of conflict. This chapter provides an analysis of the various nineteenth-century power struggles that left tangible evidence on this gendered landscape in terms of the placement of buildings, pathways, gardens, orchards, and in the buried material culture found throughout Sailors’ Snug Harbor. The site is now owned by New York City and is a cultural center. The landscape has been transformed from a nineteenth-century charitable institution to a twenty-first-century cultural institution. During this transformation, this has been and continues to be a contested landscape. Thus this chapter also discusses the challenges of preserving and interpreting this historic gendered landscape.

Brief Historical Background of Sailors’ Snug Harbor Robert Randall, a successful New York merchant, was the founder of what Randall named “Sailors’ Snug Harbor.” Although he was too busy in life to bring his dream to reality, when Randall died in 1801, his will bequeathed a large fortune to build and maintain his vision. In the eighteenth century, he and his father made their fortune from the sea and shipping (Barry 2000:6–17). Randall was a member of the Marine Society of the City of New York, founded in 1770. The goals of the society were to improve maritime knowledge and to provide for sea captains who had fallen on hard times (Shepherd 1979:14). Unfortunately, officers such as first mates and ordinary seamen who were old and/or injured could not receive financial support from the Marine Society; they had to turn to relatives or the almshouse for help. Randall, through his will, established Sailors’ Snug Harbor to meet the needs of all seamen. Randall was aware of the hard life at sea since both his father and brother had been captains and his brother had died at sea (Barry 2000). The demanding life at sea with harsh weather and dangerous working conditions produced sailors who were “worn-out” by the time they were middle-aged (Shepherd 1979:18). Many sailors suffered from accidents that left them maimed and prematurely ended their working days (Fingard 1988:109–114). Randall decided to use his wealth to help seamen. His will stated that the bulk of his fortune and lands were to be used to establish “Sailors’ Snug Harbor,” an institution to house and care for “aged, decrepit, and worn-out sailors” (Randall 2000:186). Randall owned an extensive amount of the real estate in New York City’s Greenwich Village (in Manhattan), and his estate was considerable (Barry 2000:18, 49). When Randall died a bachelor in 1801, distant relatives contested the will because there was so much money at stake. Although the relatives were ultimately unsuccessful, it took almost 30 years to resolve all the legal battles (Clute 1877:242; Barry 2000:23–34). In 1830, an eight-member Board of Trustees finally established Randall’s charitable institution (Barry 2000:35, 186). The land they purchased for the institution consisted of 160 acres of land on the north shore of Staten Island (Clute 1877:242). The property contained shore front land and offered views of New York Harbor. Because the board leased Randall’s economically valuable Manhattan land, the rental income provided more than enough operating funds for Sailors’ Snug Harbor (Barry 2000:50–58).

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In 1831, the cornerstone was laid for the first building, an impressive Greek revival building designed by Minard Lafever (Shepherd 1976). The institution opened in 1833 with 37 residents (Shepherd 1979:16, 18). Two additional Greek revival buildings were quickly added to the complex (Barry 2000:40). The considerable extent of Randall’s lands on Manhattan and the lands’ ever-increasing profits from leases allowed the Trustees to enlarge the complex continually, although most of the buildings were added during the mid- to late-nineteenth century (Shepherd 1979). The main complex of buildings along the Staten Island shoreline impressed anyone arriving by boat or by land. The seamen who lived on the 160-acre grounds resided in dormitories surrounded by numerous buildings that eventually included shops, barns, laundry, a hospital, a church, and residential structures for those male and female employees who lived on the grounds. The most influential Governor (director) of Snug Harbor was Thomas Melville, the brother of Herman Melville (author of Moby Dick). As governor between 1867 and 1884, Thomas Melville became the landscape’s major transformer. Melville added four dormitories for the sailors and five houses for staff (Fig. 8.2). He built two wings to the existing hospital and then added an additional hospital building

Fig. 8.2 Bird’s eye view of Sailors’ Snug Harbor in 1898. The five Greek Revival Dormitories face the waterfront and form the grand front street of Sailor’s Snug Harbor. The governor’s mansion is in the lower right-hand side of the picture. The governor’s orchard is to the left and rear of the house (Courtesy Staten Island Museum)

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(Gibson et al. 1979). He renovated existing buildings and improved the shorefront landscape by adding a dock house, a boathouse, and a bathhouse (Gibson et al. 1979:4.1.24). Furthermore, Melville’s interest in landscape design resulted in an aesthetic placement of buildings, trees, paths, and various plantings. He added two elegant gatehouses and extended an existing iron fence so that it enclosed the entire property (Shepherd 1979:25; Shepherd 1977:81–82). Melville purchased one hundred maple trees and a number of small cedar trees, which he had planted adjacent to roads, lanes, and buildings (Governors Quarterly Reports, March 1871). He authorized major grading operations to level the grounds around the main buildings and added new paved walkways (Governors Quarterly Reports, March 1871, March 1872). The cultural landscape of Sailors’ Snug Harbor expressed both the wealth of the benefactor, Robert Randall, and the energy of Melville’s efforts as designer and transformer of this institutional landscape. Architectural historian Barnett Shepherd (1979:28) notes that “with its magnificent buildings surrounded by graveled walks and flower-bordered lawns it [Snug Harbor] presented the atmosphere of a grand resort.” After Melville’s death in 1884, Governor Gustavus Trask (1884–1898) added three buildings: a church, a music hall, and a sanatorium (Shepherd 1979:26–27). By 1900, the population of Snug Harbor reached 1,000 sailors (Shepherd 1995:1032). However, after World War II, the population of seamen declined and the institution started to sell off property within Snug Harbor’s eighty acres of farmland (Shepherd 1979:32–33). Finally, in 1976, the institution and its population of retired seamen moved to a new facility in North Carolina (Barry 2000:161). The remaining 80 acres were sold to New York City (Shepherd 1979:35). The city-owned property contains all of the institutional buildings and the shoreline property, including seven New York City landmarked buildings (Baugher et al. 1985b). The city-owned property has been transformed from a retirement home for seamen into a cultural center with botanical gardens, a performing arts center, museums, and a park.

Archaeological Research at Sailors’ Snug Harbor The first archaeological work at Snug Harbor was undertaken in 1982 by a CRM firm (Cotz 1984). This work was continued between 1984 and 1990 by the City Archaeology Program at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Prior to any new construction, the archaeology team, under the director of the author, conducted new research and new excavations, examining properties throughout Snug Harbor (Baugher et al. 1985b; Baugher and Lenik 1990). Our team tested in numerous locations including the lawns in front of the main buildings and the yard areas of the homes of the primary administrators of the institution: the governor’s mansion, the physician’s house, and the chaplain’s house (Baugher et al. 1985a). We also excavated yard areas associated with the sailors’ residences and the yard of the female employees at the Matron’s Cottage (Baugher et al. 1985a; Baugher and Baragli 1987). All archaeological research was conducted prior to major

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underground work and landscape changes by city agencies. After these excavations were completed in 1990, additional primary source documents from Sailors’ Snug Harbor were made available to scholars. In light of the additional documentary evidence, I have reanalyzed the diverse Snug Harbor archaeological assemblages.

Landscape Hierarchy Sailors’ Snug Harbor was a closed community. This was emphasized by the fences and walls that separated it from the surrounding neighborhood of New Brighton. Within the institution, there was a clearly defined hierarchy, with the director (the governor) at the apex, followed by the physician; the steward (who also served as the assistant director); the chaplain; male and female support staff; and, finally, the seamen. This hierarchy recreated on land the very strictly ranked society that existed onboard a ship. In this sense, the role of the Board of Trustees was similar to that of the directors of a shipping company, as they financed the efforts of the governor and supervised the overall goals of Sailors’ Snug Harbor. The built environment of Snug Harbor reflects this hierarchy. The 160-acre parcel was rectangular in shape and fronted on the north shoreline of Staten Island, facing the harbor of New York City. Of the 160 acres, the “front” 80 acres that faced the harbor contained all the buildings (Fig. 8.3), while the “rear” eighty acres included pasture, farm fields, and a cemetery. The Trustees provided rent-free homes for the top male administrators and for those male and female staff members who resided on the grounds. Two equally imposing identical homes were built on opposite sides of the property facing Snug Harbor’s terrace and the harbor. These homes housed the two highest-ranking people at the Harbor, the governor and the physician. The governor’s house was in a more prominent position, while the physician’s home was set back. In between the two homes and also facing the front terrace in the most prominent position were the primary institutional buildings. These main buildings contained office space, recreation rooms, and living quarters for the sailors and dining halls (Bagger 1873). In the late nineteenth century, they provided a home for approximately 800 retired sailors (Barry 2000:98–99). The homes of the steward and the chaplain were along a secondary street. The support buildings (work spaces and the home of the female employees, the Matron’s Cottage) did not directly face the harbor and were in the center of the property. The Matron’s Cottage was one of these buildings and housed the seamstresses, laundresses, scrub women, and the Cottage cook. Homes for married male employees and their families were located on the west side of the property.

Thomas Melville, Governor of Sailors’ Snug Harbor (1867–1884) Thomas and Herman Melville were born into an affluent family (Fig. 8.4). Their father, Allan Melville, was a prosperous New York City merchant and importer but through a series of bad investments he went bankrupt in 1830; with help from

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Fig. 8.3 A 1907 map showing the location of the buildings at Sailors’ Snug Harbor. The arrows point to the homes of the governor, physician, Matron, and steward (noted on the map as the Commissary‘s Cottage”). Randall’s grave and obelisk are in front of the Greek revival dormitories (buildings A–E). Number 1 marks the location of Randall’s statue and number 2 is the location of the Neptune fountain. (Source: E. Robinson’s Atlas of the Borough of Richmond, City of New York, Plate 2)

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Fig. 8.4 Thomas Melville (when he was the Governor of Sailor’s Snug Harbor) with his brother Herman Melville (Photographer unknown, courtesy of the Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

wealthy relatives he tried other investments, failed miserably again, was heavily in debt, and died in 1832 (Hillway 1963:29–31). Allan’s widow, Maria Gansevoort Melville, and their eight children were forced to live frugally and survive on charity from relatives (Hillway 1963:32). Both Herman and Thomas went to sea as young men. At age 21, Herman Melville joined a whaler bound for the South Seas and

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spent 4 years as a seaman (Hillway 1963:32–39). Although he found that seafaring wasn’t his career path, his adventures did provide material for many of his books. In contrast, a life at sea became the career path for Thomas Melville. He went to sea at age sixteen and by the time he was twenty-nine he was the captain of a clipper ship (Boies 1966:25). In the mid-nineteenth century, clipper ships were the most graceful and fastest large ships afloat (Bathe 1967:202–218; Kemp 1976:172–173). When Thomas Melville accepted the Governorship of Snug Harbor, he made a new career move that was both financially and socially rewarding. The Board of Trustees of Sailors’ Snug Harbor provided Melville with a very good salary and a rent-free, elegant, three-story, thirty-room mansion (Fig. 8.5) plus seven to eight servants (Parker 2002:652). Melville was successful in doubling the Snug Harbor enrollment to eight hundred sailors and in adding numerous buildings (Shepherd 1979:23, 25). The trustees appreciated his accomplishments and Melville was rewarded with steady increases in salary, privileges, and power that further separated him from other staff.

Fig. 8.5 Melville’s three-story mansion at Sailors’ Snug Harbor (Courtesy: Staten Island Historical Society)

Melville was a paradox. While he became involved in intense rivalries with middle class male and female staff, he could be considerate and supportive of those male and female staff members whom his era regarded as socially inferior. For example, early in Melville’s years at Snug Harbor, he realized that the seventy-year-old gardener, who had worked and lived at Snug Harbor for 28 years, would not be able to carry out the ambitious landscape plans for the redesign of the grounds. However, Melville recommended to the Board of Trustees that the old gardener be retained at his old wages even though a new head gardener would have to be hired (Governor’s

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Quarterly Reports, March 1868). Melville was also responsible for the building of new homes for the engineer, baker, gardener, farmer, and all their families. These homes were completed just a year after Melville’s untimely death in 1884 (Gibson et al. 1979:4.33/1). The rent-free homes for these employees were on a tree-lined street with ample private space in the backyard of each home. In addition to housing, Melville was concerned with providing the staff with the appropriate tools and equipment in order to make his staff’s work more efficient and easier. For example, he purchased a sewing machine because “the Matron and Seamstress have so much mending for the inmates to do besides making and repairing sheets, pillow cases, table cloths, etc.” (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, March 1868). Melville’s support for the working-class staff also included concern for their dietary needs. For example, while the institution had always provided food for the employees, in 1877 the Matron requested more food supplies for her female staff. Melville suggested to the Board of Trustees that they should give the Matron a food allowance to purchase additional food (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, December 1877). While the existing records do not reveal whether or not the Matron’s request was granted, it is probable that the Trustees approved Melville’s suggestion.

Gendered Space for Working-Class Women While numerous women worked at Sailors’ Snug Harbor, most of these women were not year-round employees. Between 1872 and 1883, many local women were hired as temporary employees for a few weeks every spring to clean the buildings (Melville’s Daily Journals 1872–1883). Some women were also employed as servants in the Snug Harbor homes of the doctor, the chaplain, and other upper echelon staff (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, June 1868). These women probably resided in these residences. The only building set aside to provide free lodging for full-time female employees was the Matron’s Cottage. The seamstresses, laundresses, scrubwomen, and female cook were all single and lived there. These women were from diverse ethnic groups but were primarily of English, Irish, and German backgrounds (Matron’s Records 1873–1900). The Matron’s Cottage was a large two-story brick house with a cellar and an attic (Fig. 8.6). This building, originally known as the “Steward’s Residence,” was built in 1845 (that is, before Melville’s tenure as governor began in 1867). This “Steward’s Residence” was divided into two equal apartments; one apartment was for the steward and his wife, while the other was for the single female employees (Gibson et al. 1979, vol. 2:4.11/1). From 1845 to 1873, the “Matron” (the supervisor of the female employees) was also the wife of the steward; therefore it was useful to have the Matron living in the same building with the female employees (Baugher and Baragli 1987:46–47). In 1880, during the administration of Melville, the steward moved into a new residence. The former “Steward’s Residence” became known as the “Matron’s Cottage” and was henceforth used exclusively as a residence for an unmarried Matron and her female staff (Gibson et al. 1979, vol. 2:4.11/1).

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Fig. 8.6 The Matron’s cottage (Photo: Sherene Baugher)

The working-class women residing in the Matron’s Cottage enjoyed a lifestyle superior to that of the working-class women in factories (Baugher 2009). The Matron’s Cottage provided by this private charitable institution offered the women ample space and modern conveniences. The female employees enjoyed large, bright, well-ventilated quarters. The large windows throughout the building provided both air and light, while the windows on all four sides provided for good cross-ventilation. The rooms for the women in the Matron’s Cottage were spacious compared to factory housing. At a factory-owned boarding house at Boott Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, “six women had to share a room measuring 14 ft. by 16 ft.” (Mrozowski et al. 1996:51). This small factory boarding house bedroom for six women is in dramatic contrast to the female employees’ bedroom at the Matron’s Cottage (34 ft. 8 in. by 18 ft.), which was shared by only four women (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, 1872). Fresh air, sunlight, and ample living quarters were not the only standards for healthy living conditions. By the 1860s, health reformers in cities in the northeast had major concerns regarding sanitation. However, it took decades for the sanitary improvements to reach the homes and apartments of the working class (Cantwell and Wall 2001; Geismar 1993). For example, in Lowell, Massachusetts, it wasn’t until 1890 that the city ordered “all privies to be abandoned and replaced by water closets hooked up to sewer lines” (Mrozowski et al. 1996:52). But despite this order, the archaeologists excavating the boarding houses of Boott Mills in Lowell found that the privies were not filled until at least 1910, “twenty years after the city demanded that it be done” (Mrozowski et al. 1996:53). The archaeologists found that the drinking water for these Boott Mills boarding houses was unsanitary

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because the wells were placed too close to the privies and the well water became contaminated (Mrozowski et al. 1996:53). In contrast, the sanitary conditions for the working-class women at Snug Harbor were dramatically different. In 1866, water closets were installed in the Matron’s Cottage (Greene Street Collection, Box 33, file 13). In 1867 and 1868, Melville arranged for water lines and sewer lines to be connected to all the buildings at Sailors’ Snug Harbor, including the Matron’s Cottage (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, March 1868). Clay drain pipelines unearthed in the yard of the Matron’s Cottage and in the yards near the sailors’ dormitories are the archaeological evidence of these early amenities. In fact, the Matron’s Cottage had sewer and water lines decades before other New York City working-class households had these conveniences (Baugher 2009). Other indications of advanced sanitation at Sailors’ Snug Harbor were the disposal of garbage and the cleanliness of yard space. In the archaeological excavations at the Matron’s Cottage, the side and rear yards were fairly clean with very few artifacts except for a midden in the rear of the western side yard (Baugher and Baragli 1987). This was in dramatic contrast to the backyards of the Boott Mill boarding houses where archaeologists found rat bones and evidence of rats having gnawed on food bones (Mrozowski et al. 1996:53). No rat bones were found at the Matron’s Cottage (Morgan 1987). In fact, the Matron’s Cottage faunal assemblage was small partly because Sailors’ Snug Harbor collected discarded animal bones and sold them (Greene Street Collection 1875). The animal bones were processed for animal feed, for fertilizer, and for glue (Morgan 1987:128). Even though the Matron’s Cottage was located in the service area of Snug Harbor, near the laundry and shops, open spaces surrounded the women’s home. Thomas Melville improved the over-all grounds of Sailors’ Snug Harbor by adding lots of trees, scrubs, flowers, orchards, and paths (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, 1871 and 1872). Compared to the crowded living conditions for the urban factory workers, the greenery and open spaces of the Snug Harbor landscape must have seemed a respite for these working-class women.

Matron and Melville The governor, steward, physician, and chaplain were the officers of the institution. The Matron, on the other hand, was lower in the hierarchy. She directed the female staff. The Matron had to be literate because her responsibilities involved keeping an inventory of all laundry supplies, bedding supplies for the inmates, and household supplies used by the female employees (Baugher 2009). In terms of gender roles, the steward’s wife serving in the paid role of Matron certainly had a higher standard of living than the single women who served as Matron after 1873. As the wife of the steward, she also had more power because she could influence his purchase of both her supplies and the supplies of the institution at large. Eventually, however, a power clash occurred between the Matron and Melville, who as a former sea captain was used to having total control. Melville’s report to the

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Trustees in March 1873 notes that he was in a power struggle with the Matron, “Mrs. Nicklason” the wife of the Steward, “Captain Nicklason.” Melville was outraged by the independence of Mrs. Nicklason, noting: The present matron has told me several times when I have spoken to her that she was appointed by the Trustees and that I had nothing to do with her or her department (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, March 1873).

Melville strongly suggested to the Board of Trustees that the functions of the steward and Matron should be clearly separated and that it was nepotism to have the paid position of Matron filled by the steward’s wife (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, March 1873). Mrs. Nicklason was fired. A single woman (Miss Gleason) was hired as the new Matron, and she moved into the female employees living quarters in the fall of 1873 (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, December 1873). Captain Nicklason was so angry that he undermined Melville’s authority, and Melville complained to the Board of Trustees that he could no longer work with Captain Nicklason (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, December 1873). Captain and Mrs. Nicklason left Snug Harbor in January 1874, although the records do not indicate whether he resigned or was fired (Melville’s Daily Journals, January 1874). The presence of the new Matron required separate quarters for her inside the female employees half of the Matron’s Cottage. By 1878, the women’s quarters were so overcrowded with additional female staff members that Governor Melville recommended the building be used only for the single female staff and that a new home be built for the steward (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, December 1878). After 1880, the Matron’s Cottage was used solely for the single Matron and her single female staff (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, June 1880).

Gendered Space for the Retired Sailors When Sailors’ Snug Harbor opened in 1833, the seamen who were admitted were usually in dire economic straits (Shepherd 1979:18). These impoverished residents at Sailors’ Snug Harbor were from all ranks, from common seamen to former captains. The residents were an ethnically diverse group, and by 1850, a third of the retired sailors were foreign citizens (Barry 2000:78). However, most of the residents at Snug Harbor were of Northern European backgrounds, that is, English, Irish, Scottish, German, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish (Bagger 1873). Since Snug Harbor was a private institution, sailors had to apply for admission. The entrance requirements were 10 years at sea and that men had to be at the end of their seafaring careers because of age or disability; however, seamen who were alcoholics or were of “immoral character” could be denied admission (Barry 2000:42). Sailors’ Snug Harbor Board of Trustees and administrators admitted only career sailors who they judged to be “deserving poor.” The rejected sailors had to find housing at a public almshouse or with friends and/or relatives. The surviving records do not indicate how many men had once held the rank of first mate or other ranks below captain, but 20% of Snug Harbor’s residents were

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former captains (Barry 2000:80). Whether or not these captains had served on large or small vessels, they were still used to being in charge, a built-in hazard to the hierarchical governance of Snug Harbor. In addition, this high percentage of captains and probably other officers meant that the institution had a mix of middle-class and working-class seamen. Snug Harbor’s spacious dormitories were in marked contrast to the modest and often cramped quarters in many nineteenth-century almshouses (Fig. 8.7). The rooms had large windows and were bright and airy. Each bedroom was designed for two men. There is no written evidence of how rooms were assigned except for the fact that blind men and African-Americans lived in the basement. The basements, though, were well-ventilated and contained numerous windows for air and light. All sailors were provided with beds and dressers, but they could bring their own possessions. For example, in 1873 one sailor “had acquired a private library, numbering some forty volumes, which he had in his room, nicely arranged in a bookcase of his own manufacture, with glass doors” (Bagger 1873:194). Sailors’ Snug Harbor always employed a physician because many of the residents had physical disabilities. A hospital was built in 1850, wings were added in 1879,

Fig. 8.7 The main dormitory buildings at Sailor’s Snug Harbor, Staten Island, New York (Photo: Sherene Baugher)

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and an additional building was erected in 1885 and that was connected to the original hospital (Shepherd 1979:47). As early as 1868, the dormitories, the hospital, and all the other buildings had water closets, bathtubs, sinks, water lines, and sewer lines (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, 1868). There were shaded paths and numerous park benches so that the retired sailors could leisurely enjoy the landscaped property. In addition, the refreshing breezes along Snug Harbor’s shoreline property enhanced the health of all the Mariners as well as the staff.

Landscapes of Intemperance By the early nineteenth century there was a growing problem of alcoholism in America, and in response to the problem, temperance movements promoted drinking in moderation (Rorabaugh 1979:187–196). But in the mid-nineteenth century the movement increasingly preached abstinence (Johnson 1978:80–82). Because seamen were stereotyped as “drunken sailors” – not without reason – the mariners were prime targets for temperance reformers. In New York City as well as in other port cities, Christian missionaries ran low cost boarding houses for sailors, but the sailors had to sign a temperance pledge (Gilje 2004:221). Having sailors give up alcohol completely may have been an idealistic goal, but it was not grounded in reality. Aboard ships, the sailors were given a daily ration of a half a pint of rum or whiskey (Shepherd 1979:20). The rum or whiskey could be diluted with water to create grog. The end result was that sailors drank both on land and at sea. With the opening of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, the administrators, like the Christian missionaries in the boarding houses, tried to get the sailors to give up alcohol. In his notes to the Snug Harbor Board of Trustees, Captain John Whetten, the first governor of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, noted that almost every day some sailor was intoxicated (Barry 2000:91). Some men went to town and came back relatively sober while others were found drunk on the road or so intoxicated that strangers had to bring them back to Snug Harbor (Shepherd 1979:20). In 1842, the second governor of Snug Harbor, Fred Augustus Depeyster, had an elegant seven-foot iron fence erected around the institution (Shepherd 1977:81). Governor Depeyster may have thought that an iron fence would pose a serious physical challenge to the old and disabled sailors, but he was wrong (Fig. 8.8). Sailors were used to going up and down rigging and masts and even the old Snug Harbor residents “demonstrated that they could still scale the seven feet in a jiffy” (Barry 2000:91). There was a consistent wording in the various updates of the nineteenth-century By-Laws of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, which prohibited alcohol on the premises (Sailors’ Snug Harbor 1848, 1876, 1888). The By-Laws of 1876 and 1888 note that packages sent to mariners were to be searched for alcohol (Sailors’ Snug Harbor 1876, 1888). However, mariners of all ages continued to drink. A reporter noted that one of the notorious Snug Harbor drunks was an 82-year-old man who was always going out “to celebrate his birthday” (Bagger 1873:188). The residents drank whenever they had freedom to travel into New York City, and they drank

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Fig. 8.8 A postcard view of the fence and west side gatehouse at Sailors’ Snug Harbor. The west side of the three-story Governor’s mansion can be seen in the left side of the picture (Courtesy: Staten Island Museum)

in the taverns in the neighboring town of New Brighton. Governor Thomas Melville expelled mariners who brought liquor onto the grounds (Melville’s Daily Journals 1867–1869). However, the smuggling continued. Evidence of alcohol on the premises is no surprise. The outdoor pathway between the front and rear row of dormitory buildings provided entrances to the somewhat hidden exterior spaces between the buildings (Fig. 8.3). These were ideal spaces for drinking in private. The archaeological excavations in these spaces uncovered evidence of these “illegal’ activities. In the archaeological trenches in six secluded spaces by the residents’ dormitories, a total of seven alcohol bottles were found including five amber beer bottles and two olive green wine bottles (Cotz 1984). In addition, the excavations also revealed six dark green bottles, which might have contained rum. These hidden spaces enabled the men to resist the temperance regulations. The retired sailors resistance to Snug Harbors’ temperance policy continued throughout the nineteenth century, and the sailors continued to bring alcohol onto the grounds. One seaman even brought rum into the hospital, and Governor Melville expelled him (Governor’s Quarterly Reports, June 1869). In the 1880s, reporters exposed the scandal that seamen at Sailors’ Snug Harbor earned money for alcohol by selling their votes in state elections (Shepherd 1979:25). For decades, the sailors wrote letters to complain to the Board of Trustees regarding the alcohol prohibitions and punishments (Shepherd 1979:19–27). Finally in 1970, the alcohol prohibitions were lifted and “cocktail parties on Harbor grounds were held for the mariners on such special occasions as the Fourth of July and Christmas” (Barry 2000:94).

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Power Battles Between Melville and the Sailors Governor Melville’s grand plans for landscaping Sailors’ Snug Harbor included his expectation that the retired sailors would provide unpaid labor. In Melville’s revision of the By-Laws of Sailors’ Snug Harbor (1876:14), inmates were required to pick up litter, remove garbage, and take care of the grounds including cutting grass, weeding, pruning shrubs and trees, and maintaining the roads and pathways. The archaeological record provides evidence of this inmate required work; we found almost no artifacts from the period 1870–1900 on the lawn in front of the main buildings or on the grounds surrounding the homes of the governor, the physician, and the chaplain. The seamen, including the former captains and officers, were not opposed to working, but they wanted to earn a wage. In response to Melville’s work requirement, some seamen united together in a cooperative letter writing campaign to the Board of Trustees, politicians, and to the press (Shepherd, 1979:24–25). For years the seamen continued to protest Melville’s required work without pay. The Trustees finally relented and decided to pay the inmates 20 cents per day (Barry 2000:97). By 1880, the monthly records of the steward, the assistant director of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, show that a wage of twenty cents a day was being paid. Even though the wage was a modest sum, this was still an economic victory for the inmates.

Landscapes of Power The landscape of Sailors’ Snug Harbor reflected the institution’s power hierarchy. Thus the hierarchy of the various administrative and service staff was reflected in how and where their residences were placed (Figs. 8.2 and 8.3). For example, the physician was the second highest ranking staff member after the governor. His home was the mirror image of the governor’s home except that it was set back further from Snug Harbors’ front lawn, and thus the governor’s home had a more prominent position (Fig. 8.3). The chaplain’s home was a modest home next to the Snug Harbor church. The steward originally had an apartment in the same building that housed the female employees (the Matron’s Cottage) and then in 1880 he had his own home. Even the centrally placed, elegant Greek Revival dormitories for the seamen visually emphasized the primary, hierarchical purpose of Sailors’ Snug Harbor. The landscape at Snug Harbor also reflected power struggles between Melville and some of his staff. For example, the first two stewards that worked with Melville were both former sea captains and thus not easily intimidated by Melville – another captain. Melville fired the first one, Captain Curtis (Melville’s Daily Journals 1871). The second steward, Captain Nickolas, either was forced out by Melville or resigned after Melville fired his wife, the Matron (Melville’s Daily Journals, January 1874). Subsequent stewards were not former captains, and Melville seemed to have a much better working relationship with them.

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Melville was concerned with outward displays of his prestige and status. Because Melville was in charge of the grounds, he was able to enhance the appearance of the land around his elegant home. For example, Melville added a fenced-in orchard of apples, pears, peaches, and grapes for sole use by his family, a fact confirmed by the archaeological evidence of tree roots found in the approximate location of the governor’s orchard (Baugher et al. 1985a:8–11). But no fruit trees were installed near the homes of other high-ranking officials of Sailors’ Snug Harbor (Shepherd 1979:24). Documentary evidence indicates that Melville also added pathways, a circular drive for carriages, a small garden, and a pond added to the area around his home. The archaeological data confirms these improvements with evidence of plantings and garden paths near the governor’s home (Baugher et al. 1985a). But the other staff homes lacked these amenities. Melville had flower beds planted at the front of the institution and near his home but not near the homes of other staff (Governors Quarterly Reports, June 1871). Thus the landscape design reflected Melville’s dominant role and his high status at Sailors’ Snug Harbor. Not surprisingly, Herman Melville called his brother Thomas’ governor’s mansion and grounds “Tom’s paradise” (Davis and Gilman 1960:236).

Conclusion and Preservation Challenges In summary, Sailors’ Snug Harbor perpetuated on land the same male hierarchy, power dynamics and strictly ranked society that had existed on ships at sea. This charitable institution and its cultural landscape are also a reflection of nineteenthcentury class, occupation, and gender roles. Men and women were afforded a “safe snug harbor” in which to live and work but within that same “Snug Harbor,” the retired mariners, staff, and supervisors all lived within the economic and social limitations of their gender, class, and occupation. The era’s gender roles, power hierarchy, power dynamics, and power struggles were also reflected within the cultural landscape of Sailors’ Snug Harbor. The buried landscapes of Sailors’ Snug Harbor that are revealed by archaeologists reflect this gendered and powered landscape. But today this complex story is not evident to the visitors who walk across the current landscape of Snug Harbor Cultural Center. The sailors’ elegant Greek Revival dormitories now house cultural institutions that obscure the original purpose of the complex. The buildings and the eighty acres surrounding them are being developed as a cultural center without an agreed-upon master plan. The various attempts at master plans have been highly contested by the leaders of the diverse cultural institutions residing at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, as the institutional directors vie for power and control over the landscapes surrounding their specific institutions. Currently the site is being developed piecemeal, and the contemporary institutions go about their business with little regard to the significance of the historic landscape. For example, the Staten Island Botanical Garden opened an elegant Chinese garden in 2001 even though there was no ethnic or historical connection to the nineteenth-century Euro-American

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mariners at Sailors’ Snug Harbor. Each year, the director of the Botanical Garden seems determined to incorporate more outdoor space into new attractive gardens that have no connection to the historic landscape. In fact, the only nineteenth-century landscape features that remain are: a gatehouse; the nineteenth-century iron fence at the front of the property; Randall’s Statue and a pond near the site of Governor Melville’s demolished home, Randall’s Gravestone Monument in front of the Greek Revival main buildings; and the Neptune Fountain that bubbles on the front lawn near the main buildings (Fig. 8.9).

Fig. 8.9 (a) Bronze replica of the original Augustus Saint-Gaudens statue of Robert Randall; the original statue was moved to North Carolina. The marble pedestal is the original base to the statue. (b) A restored nineteenth century pond that was near Governor Melville’s private orchard and gardens. (c) The restored Neptune fountain near the main buildings at Snug Harbor. (d) An obelisk (1834) marks Robert Randall’s grave. Randall’s body was moved from his Manhattan gravesite to be reburied in 1834 in front of the main building at Sailors’ Snug Harbor (All photographs by the author)

As designers attempt to develop a master plan for the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, they need to take a closer look at the site’s landscape history. Through excavation, archaeologists uncovered tangible, three-dimensional remnants of the

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past. These artifacts and landscape features can serve as visuals links between the past and the present, but thus far they have not been integrated into any master plan. Clearly, the landscape design challenge for Snug Harbor is how to develop a new master plan that includes a landscape that not only meets contemporary user needs but also inspires the public to appreciate the rich history of this powered and gendered landscape. Acknowledgments I appreciate all the help from the archivists at the Noble Maritime Museum, the State University of New York (SUNY) Maritime College, and the Staten Island Historical Society. I thank Brant Venables for all of his time in transforming color slides into good quality black and white digital images and Hans Klein-Hewett for drafting the fine map of Sailors’ Snug Harbor within New York City. I especially thank my husband, historian Robert W. Venables, for reading drafts of this chapter and providing excellent comments.

References Bagger, Louis 1873 The Sailors’ Snug Harbor. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. Vol. 67, January 73: 186–197. Barry, Gerald J. 2000 The Sailors’ Snug Harbor: A History. Fordham University Press, New York, New York. Bathe, B.W. 1967 The Clipper’s Day. In The Great Age of Sail, edited by J. Jobe translated by M. Kelly, pp: 191–228. Edita, Lausanne, Switzerland. Baugher, Sherene 2001 Visible Charity: The Archaeology, Material Culture, and Landscape Design of New York City’s Municipal Almshouse Complex, 1736–1797. International Journal for Historical Archaeology, vol. 5 (2): 175–202. 2010 The Archaeology of the Matron’s Cottage: A Household of Female Employees at Sailors’ Snug Harbor, Staten Island, New York. Northeast Historical Archaeology 2008 vol. 37:1–20. Baugher, Sherene and Judith Baragli 1987 The Archaeological Investigation at the Matron’s Cottage, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York. Monograph on file at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Baugher, Sherene and Edward J. Lenik 1990 An Archaeological Predictive Model of the Shoreline Property of Snug Harbor Cultural Center Staten Island, New York. Report on file at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Baugher, Sherene, Judith Baragli, and Louise DeCesare 1985a An Archaeological Report of the Field Testing at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island. Report on file at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Baugher, Sherene, Judith Baragli, Louise De Cesare, and Robert W. Venables 1985b An Archaeological Predictive Model of Snug Harbor Cultural Center. Report on file at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Boies, J. J. 1966 Melville’s Staten Island “Paradise.” Staten Island Historian 27: 24–28.

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Cantwell, Anne-Marie and Diana diZerega Wall 2001 Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. Casella, Eleanor C. 2001 To Watch or Restrain: Female Convict Prisons in 19th-Century Tasmania. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5(1): 45–72. 2007

The Archaeology of Institutional Confinement. University of Florida Press, Gainesville.

Clute, J.J. 1877 Annals of Staten Island, from its Discovery to the Present Time. Press of Chas. Vogt, New York, New York. Cotz, Jo Ann E. 1984 Cultural Resource Study at Sailors Snug Harbor. Report on file at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Davis, Merrell R. and William H. Gilman 1960 The Letters of Herman Melville. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. De Cunzo, Lu Ann 1995 Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions; The Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1800–1850. Historical Archaeology 29(3): 1–168. 2001 On Reforming the “Fallen” and Beyond: Transforming Continuity at the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1845–1916. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5(1): 19–43. Executive Committee Report 1846 Executive Committee Report in the Sailors’ Snug Harbor Collection on file in the Archives of the New York Maritime College, Bronx. Feister, Lois 2009 The Orphanage at Schuyler Mansion. In The Archaeology of Institutional Life, edited by A. Beisaw and J. Gibb, pp: 105–116. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Fingard, Judith 1988 Jack in Port (Original 1982, Reprinted 1988). University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Ontario. Garman, James C. and Paul A. Russo 1999 “A Disregard of Every Sentiment of Humanity”: The Town Farm and Class Realignment. Historical Archaeology 33(1): 118–135. Geismar, Joan H. 1993 Where is Night Soil? Thoughts on an Urban Privy. Historical Archaeology 27(2): 57–70. Gibson, David, Barnett Shepherd, and Steven Bauer 1979 Sailors’ Snug Harbor, An Historic Structures Report. 4 Vols. Report at the New York State Office of Parks and Recreation Historic Preservation Division, Albany. Gilje, Paul A. 2004 Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Governor’s Quarterly Reports 1867–1881 Quarterly Reports of Governor Melville, Director of Sailors’ Snug Harbor; reports on file in the Archives of the New York State Maritime College, Bronx. Greene Street Collection 1830–1930 Sailors’ Snug Harbor Records labeled “Green Street Collection.” Material on file in the Archives of the New York State Maritime College, Bronx.

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Hardin, Mel A. 1983 Jack’s Last Port: A History of Life at Sailors’ Snug Harbor 1833–1976. Exhibit catalogue, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Francis J. Cardamore, Staten Island, New York. Hillway, T. 1963 Herman Melville. Twayne Publishers, Inc., New York, New York. Johnson, Paul E. 1978 A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837. Hill and Wang, New York, New York. Kemp, Peter (ed.) 1976 The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Matron’s Records 1873–1900 On file at the archives of the Noble Maritime Museum, Staten Island, New York. Melville’s Daily Journals 1870–1883 Thomas Melville’s Daily Journal. Journals are on file in the Archives of the State University of New York (SUNY) – Maritime College, Bronx. Morgan, Kate 1987 Appendix III: Matron’s Cottage Faunal Analysis. In The Archaeological Investigation at the Matron’s Cottage Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York, edited by Sherene Baugher and Judith Baragli, pp: 106–134. MS on file at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Mrozowski, Stephen A., Grace H. Ziesing, and Mary C. Beaudry 1996 Living on the Boott: Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses, Lowell, Massachusetts. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst. Parker, Herschel 2002 Herman Melville: A Biography, Vol. 2, 1851–1891. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland. Piddock, Susan 2001 “An Irregular and Inconvenient Pile of Buildings”: The Destitute Asylum of Adelaide, South Australia and the English Workhouse. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5(1): 73–96. Randall, Robert R. 2000 Last Will and Testament of Robert R. Randall (original 1801). In The Sailors’ Snug Harbor: A History, Gerald J. Barry, Appendix A: 185–188. Fordham University Press, New York, New York. Rorabaugh, W.J. 1979 The Alcoholic Republic. Oxford University Press, New York, New York. Sailors Snug Harbor 1848 By-Laws of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, 1848. Snug Harbor Collection, Staten Island Historical Society Archives, Staten Island, New York. 1876 By-Laws of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, 1876. Snug Harbor Collection, Staten Island Historical Society Archives, Staten Island, New York. 1888 By-Laws of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, 1876. Sailors’ Snug Harbor Collection, SUNY-Maritime College, Bronx, New York.

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Shepherd, Barnett 1976 Sailors’ Snug Harbor Reattributed to Minard Lafever. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 35(2): 108–123. 1977

The Iron Fence at Sailors’ Snug Harbor. Nineteenth Century 3(3): 81–83.

1979 Sailors’ Snug Harbor, 1801–1976. Publishing Center for Cultural Resources, New York, New York. 1995 Sailors’ Snug Harbor, In The Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by K. T. Jacksin, pp: 1032. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. 2009 A Feminist Approach to European Ideologies of Poverty and the Institutionalization of the Poor in Falmouth, Massachusetts. In The Archaeology of Institutional Life, edited by A. Beisaw and J. Gibb, pp: 117–136. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Steward’s Records 1873–1900 On file at the archives of the Noble Maritime Museum, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York.

Chapter 9

Gendered Power Dynamics Among Religious Sects, Ethnic Groups, and Classes, in Jewish Communities on Greater Boston’s Landscape at the Turn of the Century Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood

This chapter analyzes changing gendered power dynamics during the diaspora of Jewish communities as they moved across Greater Boston’s landscape. Gender power dynamics are analyzed from a feminist perspective focusing on the social agency of Jewish women and men in developing Jewish-American identities by selectively adopting, adapting, and integrating aspects of the dominant American gender ideology and material culture into a Jewish culture that has retained its distinctiveness. This analysis uses my feminist inclusive model of a diversity of fluid powers, moving between relational categories of hierarchical dominating “powers over” others that control and limit actions; “powers under” others, ranging from compliance to resistance; heterarchical “powers with” others, ranging from inspiring and empowering to collaborating with others; and social agency “powers to” retain or change cultural ideologies, identities, practices, and gendered power dynamics. This chapter provides examples of some of these powers and their interactions in creating what I call “powered landscapes,” defined as landscapes that express social power dynamics. See my commentary chapter for a full explication of my feminist inclusive model of a multiplicity of powers connected with people’s complex, intersecting, and fluid identities. A feminist approach is particularly appropriate in analyzing Jewish communities because gender power dynamics are foundational to Jewish culture, identities, and landscapes. Further, third-wave feminist theory is useful in analyzing the diversity and complexity in Jewish-American gender systems, including multiple fluid Jewish ideologies, identities, and relationships constructed from the complex interactions between gender, ethnicity, class, religion, age, etc. (Spencer-Wood 1999). In this chapter the historical context of diversity in Jewish gender systems is first presented, followed by the results of my research analyzing the spread of Jewish communities across Greater Boston’s landscape. This analysis was conducted by mapping the locations of major Jewish synagogues and community organizations, S.M. Spencer-Wood (B) Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Oakland University, Rochester Hills, MI 48309, USA; Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA e-mail: [email protected], [email protected] S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_9,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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because these institutions were at the heart of Jewish communities (Figs. 9.1 and 9.2; Appendices 1 and 2). While addresses were not available for all synagogues or organizations, mapping the major ones totaled 102 sites, providing an accurate picture of changing gender, ethnic, and class relationships expressed through movement of Jewish institutions and communities across Greater Boston’s landscape. Next a dramaturgical approach is taken to reconstruct the experience of an immigrant Jewish family arriving in Boston’s North End and moving over the landscape among community institutions during daily life. The last sections of this chapter present an analysis of the gendered landscape of the last surviving historic synagogue and the process of its preservation in the heart of Boston.

Historical Diversity in Gender Systems of Jewish Immigrants to America and Boston Although a great diversity of Jewish sects developed in Europe and America, space limitations lead to a normative focus on the two main groups of Jews who traveled across a variety of European landscapes and over the ocean to Boston between 1840 and 1924. Most of the c.150,000 immigrants to America 1820–1880 were so-called “German” Jews from Western and Central Europe, who were predominantly of the Reform sect, working or middle class, liberal, and often educated, including women (Smith 1995:52). However, 73% of the c. 3,000 Jews who immigrated to Puritan Boston by 1875 came from Orthodox villages in Germanconquered lands of Poland, Prussia, and southern Russia (Gamm 1995:132–133). Nonetheless, after these “German” Jews assimilated into American culture, they stereotypically viewed the subsequent so-called “Russian” Jewish immigrants as stupid and dirty. Many “German” Jews opposed the admission of “Russian” Jews to the United States1 (Ebert 1995:214). The massive immigration 1880–1924 of over 2 million “Russian” Jews from eastern Europe, including 90,000 to Boston, were predominantly Orthodox families composed of a literate husband with a skilled trade, an illiterate wife, and small children (Braverman 1995:71–72,74). As early as 1885, 87% of Boston’s Jewish men and 15% of the women were employed, most working as peddlers, taking in boarders, or in the garment industry, where they formed the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (Fein 1976:45,48–49). In Orthodox binary gender ideology men were defined as pious, intellectually superior, public and dominant over women, who were defined as domestic, physically and intellectually inferior to men, 1 In

the winter of 1882–1883 the “German” Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society was overwhelmed by a boatload of 450 “Russian” immigrant families. When aid was not forthcoming most of the “Russian” Jews returned to New York and others requested that they be returned to Europe. The Emigrant Aid Society was interested in assisting but lacked sufficient funds. When the Massachusetts Board of Charities agreed to return all Jews identified by the United Hebrew Benevolent Association, and placed the remaining 75 poor immigrants in the Tewksbury almshouse, the “German” Jews became embarrassed and asked in the future that Jewish immigrants be sent to them for support (Ebert 1995:214).

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and subordinate (Hyman 1995:26,28,36). The highest status men could achieve was the learned position of rabbi and secondarily scribe, cantor (chanter of holy texts), teacher in a Hebrew school, and leader in charitable societies. Men could reach heaven by studying God’s Torah, while women could only reach heaven by serving her “Lord” husband. Mothers usually taught daughters domestic tasks, how to read Yiddish, and enough Hebrew to read prayers in the Siddur (Jewish prayer book) (Braude 1982:151,181; Hyman 1995:28,54). Many women assisted in family businesses and acquired basic skills from family and/or often by attending primary school, acquiring more secular education than the majority of boys, who attended Hebrew school (Hyman 1995:54–55,58–60,65). Although Judaism is traditionally patriarchal, making women dependents of men, with a sexual double standard and inability to divorce, women had some important sources of power, including the ability to own property and to run a business. Jewish ethnicity is matrilineal and motherhood is a respected and honored position in Jewish society (MacHaffie 1986:7; Marcus 1981a:914; Zucker 1998:203–204). Traditional gender segregation provides women with sources of power because different but complementary gender roles made men and women interdependent. Men could not meet their religious obligations, including procreation and daily and holy day rituals, without establishing a marital relationship with a woman who provided children, kosher meals, and special foods, and other tasks required for Jewish rituals. Women’s roles were essential to the performance of rituals such as Friday night Shabbes in the home, which was viewed as sacred. Homes were so sacred that a room was often used as a synagogue in communities that were too poor and/or oppressed to be able to hold religious rituals in a separate building. Women had separate prayers and prayer books in Yiddish. Jewish women could become powerful respected matriarchs by performing their domestic and religious duties well, and through arranging upwardly mobile marriages for their children. In addition, parts of the Talmud Rabbinic writings contradicted Orthodox ideology and provided high-status role models for women by glorifying several prophetesses, queens, female intellectuals, religious teachers, leaders, and pious learned mothers (Braude 1982:152). Contrary to Orthodox gender ideology, the public roles of women in the Talmud, in conjunction with poverty, oppression, and men’s paramount concern with religion, led c.20% of Jewish-American women to work by 1920 (Marcus 1981a:107). Although in Jewish patriarchy men traditionally held all positions of power in synagogues, communities, and families, Jewish women raised their status through “powers with” the dominant Protestant gender ideology, which valorized women’s supposedly innate piety, legitimating them as guardians of moral homes and families and as founders and leaders of charitable organizations (Hyman 1995:25–33). Jewish women’s organizations funded and in some cases created major institutions on the landscapes of Boston’s Jewish communities (Ebert 1995:213–227). The traditional public Jewish gender system, similar to the Anglo-American gender system, was largely gender segregated, with separate institutions and landscapes for each gender, or if an institution served both genders, separate entrances, stairs, rooms, seating areas, etc., for each gender. Jews of all classes established

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self-improvement societies, such as intellectual clubs and social clubs, which were usually gender segregated (Smith 1995:62). The most exclusive Jewish social club in Boston, the male Elysium Club, was formed by members of Adath Israel in 1880 near the temple (Fig. 9.2:38; Appendix 2, Kaufman 1995:176). While gender segregation meant that women were excluded from the more prestigious men’s organizations, gender segregation also provided women with opportunities to found and lead women’s organizations, which would have been more difficult to achieve in mixed-gender organizations dominated by men.

The Development of Diverse Jewish Sects and Gender Systems on Boston’s Landscape This section analyzes how diversity and change in Jewish gender ideologies, identities, and relational power dynamics were materially expressed in synagogue cultural landscapes and built environments as they spread over Greater Boston’s landscape. Synagogues have always been the center of Jewish communities, so the mapped movement of major synagogues represents the movement of different religious communities over the landscape (Fig. 9.1; Appendix 1, Fig. 9.2; Appendix 2). Immigrant congregations followed a pattern of first meeting in homes, then renting rooms, renting buildings, buying buildings, and finally constructing purpose-built synagogues. This section describes how Jewish-American identities materially developed as traditional gender segregation in synagogue built environments and landscapes began to change in the 1870s. “German” Jews used their social agency “powers to” develop the American Reform movement by adopting, adapting, and integrating selected Protestant practices, including gender integration, into sacred landscapes and architecture that remained distinctively Jewish. Starting in the 1880s the “Russian” immigrants predominantly belonged to Orthodox/traditional synagogues that retained gender segregation in their built environments and landscapes. The Conservative movement that developed in the early 20th century adopted fewer Protestant practices later than Reform synagogues (Kaufman 1995). The first Boston Jewish congregation of fewer than 100 “German” families was founded in the poor mixed-race neighborhood of the lower South End in 1843 by 18 “German” Jewish men whose occupations ranged from hotelkeeper to peddler. They initially met in rented rooms on Carver Street (Gamm 1995:132–133). These men and some more Orthodox Polish men formed the Ohabei Shalom Congregation and used their social agency “powers to” construct the first Boston synagogue in 1851, dedicated in 1852, on Warren Street, adjacent to Carver Street (Figs. 9.1a and 9.2:1; Appendix 2, Grossman 1981:7, 18). The synagogue was invisible on the landscape, looking like a large Italianate house with pilasters extending from its front corners, possibly influenced by widespread anti-Semitism and discrimination against Jews because they were considered a non-white inferior “race” (SpencerWood 1999:285). However, to Jews the architecture was similar to the earlier Touro synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, and the upper central double-outlined pair of rounded windows symbolized Moses’ two tablets of the Ten Commandments (Kaufman 1995:169). The synagogue was gender segregated in typical ways, with

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Fig. 9.1 The movement of Jewish Communities across Greater Boston’s Landscape, 1843–1936. (continued)

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a

b

c

Fig. 9.1 The movement of Jewish Communities across Greater Boston’s Landscape, 1843–1936. (a) Ohabei Shalom synagogue, constructed in 1852 at 73 Warren Street, now Warrenton Street (Coolidge 1854:63) (b) Adath Israel German-church style synagogue, constructed in 1885, 600 Columbus Avenue, corner of Northampton Street. Now a Haitian church. Photograph by André Ruedi. (c) Ohabei Shalom synagogue center, constructed in 1928 on Commonwealth Avenue, Brookline. Still in use. Photograph by André Ruedi

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Fig. 9.2 Major Jewish sites and communities across the landscape of Boston Proper, 1843–1930

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a gated side alley entrance to a gallery where women were hidden behind a screen, so men would not be distracted from their prayers in the sanctuary below. The synagogue was traditional in including rooms for a school, business meetings, and two gender-segregated charitable associations. In the rear was a mikveh, a deep pool for gender-segregated total immersion in water after contact with things associated with death or loss of life in a variety of situations, and before some rituals (Coolidge 1854:63). As Poles came to dominate the congregation and demanded Polish forms of worship, the German Jews left in 1854 with the rabbi, torah, and shofar (ram’s horn trumpet), formed the Adath Israel Congregation, and renovated a house for a synagogue on nearby Pleasant Street. In 1858 Mishkan Israel branched off from Ohabei Shalom, becoming the most traditional synagogue and moving north in the lower South End in order to serve early Orthodox immigrants (Fig. 9.2:2a,3a,3b; Appendix 2, Kaufman 1995:171,175–176). All these synagogues implemented traditional forms of rituals expressed in landscapes of gender-segregated walkways, stairs, and entrances. Distinctive interior Jewish features included the Bima (raised platform for the cantor), the Ark of the Covenant cabinet holding sacred scrolls used by male leaders, and gender-segregated seating, with a screened gallery for women (Kaufman 1995:169–170,203). The growth of the Ohabei Shalom Congregation led it to sell its Italianate synagogue building in 1863. It bought and renovated a larger Greek Revival church across the street as its synagogue, leading to a mixed-gender religious school, and the first confirmation of girls as well as boys in 1870 (Fig. 9.2:1a; Appendix 2). The widespread use of churches for synagogues, along with Reform Judaism, influenced the adoption of some Protestant practices and their integration with Jewish rituals, such as landscapes with single mixed-gender walkways and entrances where families approached and entered the synagogue together. Further, by 1875 both Ohabei Shalom, and its Reform German offshoot Adath Israel, adopted family mixed-gender pews, mixed-gender choirs, use of organ music, and a shorter more Protestant-style service, including German sermons and Sunday Schools (Kaufman 1995:172–173). The material Protestantization of worship was undertaken to appeal to the younger generation, which sought JewishAmerican identities, including less gender segregation. In 1887 the now-fully Reform Ohabei Shalom bought a single-entry Romanesque church for its synagogue in a fashionable neighborhood of bow-windowed brick row houses in the newly filled-in land of the upper South End, which was widened from a narrow isthmus. New stained-glass windows of Old Testament figures were installed in the synagogue, which some considered a transgression of the Biblical injunction against making idols (Ehrenfried 1963:357,359–361; Kaufman 1995:175; Whitehill 1968:104,124). Greater gender equality continued to develop in both congregations as they moved further inland and constructed new synagogues that dominated the surrounding landscape and prominently displayed symbols of famous historic Jewish patriarchs. In 1885 Adath Israel built a synagogue that dominated the landscape of an intersection of major avenues near the southern boundary between the upper South End and Roxbury. The synagogue was built in a German church style with a gender-integrated landscape of a single walkway to a single mixed-gender entrance.

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It prominently displayed patriarchal Jewish symbols, including Stars of David on top of its spires and in a stained-glass window, as well as a sculpture of Moses’ two tablets of the Ten Commandments on the pinnacle of its front gable. This imposing building is now a Haitian church (Fig. 9.1b). In 1907 Adath Israel, followed by Ohabei Shalom in 1928, moved to the western suburb of Brookline and built highly visible monumental synagogue centers with Zionist oriental architecture and single mixed-gender entrances on a major avenue and boulevard, respectively (Kaufman 1995:176–195). By 1930 the 8,000 Jews in Brookline were served by the two Reform synagogue centers and one Modern Orthodox synagogue, which had adopted a mixed-gender entrance and seating in constructing its temple in 1925 (Gamm 1995:132–133,150; Kaufman 1995:190–191). In 1950 a Reform congregation developed to the south in Newton, which became a major Jewish suburb (Kaufman 1995:198). Most “Russian” Jewish congregations remained or fluidly returned to more Orthodox forms of worship as they moved across the landscape from the North End to the West End and then south to the suburbs of Roxbury and Dorchester (Bushee 1903:147–148; Kaufman 1995:175; Sarna 1995:6). Adath Jeshurun in Dorchester, a daughter synagogue of Orthodox Beth Israel in the North End, exemplified the multidirectional fluidity of Jewish gendered worship practices. The synagogue was purpose-built in 1906 as a combination of the old German church style with newer Zionist oriental elements, reflecting the two generations in the congregation. In 1914 the new rabbi provided two different religious services to appeal to everyone: A mixed-gender Friday-night service for the younger generation and an Orthodox service Saturday morning for the dwindling older generation (Kaufman 1995:186– 188). However, the elders in the congregation halted the mixed-gender service, sending the synagogue into decline as the younger generation left, forming a new congregation a short distance away (Fig. 9.2:6; Appendix 2). Adath Jeshurun and the two other principal synagogues in Dorchester and Roxbury discontinued late Friday evening services, mixed-gender family pews, choirs, hymn singing, and a variety of youth activities. Continued gender segregation was materially facilitated by their Orthodox landscape and architecture, including separate walkways, stairs, entrances, and seating areas for men and women. In sum, while Reform and Conservative synagogues integrated some Protestant material culture and gendered practices into their distinctively Jewish services, Orthodox synagogues continued more traditional rituals although they might try out Protestant gender ideology, identities, and material culture. Starting in the 1930s Conservative and Orthodox communities began to move inland to Newton, which became the largest and wealthiest Jewish suburb in Boston (Gamm 1995:148–153). In 1957 Mishkan Tefila built a new modernist synagogue center in Newton, leaving its monumental synagogue center, which had been the “dominant institutional presence in Roxbury” since 1925, in its hilltop landscape, entered by a single large stairway (Kaufman 1995:192–193,197–198). In all the major early synagogue-center built environments on major streetscapes, distinctively Jewish symbols and practices were retained, even when some aspects of Protestant gendered worship were adopted and adapted in forming JewishAmerican identities (Fig. 9.1; Appendix 1, Fig. 9.2:1,2; Appendix 2, Kaufman 1995:

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175–177,194–196). While large Orthodox or traditional synagogues in the North and West Ends included Hebrew schools and function rooms (Fig. 9.2:5,9,10,30, 39; Appendix 2), Adath Jeshurun, Mishkan Tefila, Ohabei Shalom, and Adath Israel constructed the earliest large synagogue centers with complex footprints on the landscape, including separate single-entry schools, a kosher kitchen where members’ wives cooked special ritual foods; a banquet and public hall or auditorium; meeting rooms; a library; and sometimes gyms, museums, music rooms, and recreation rooms (Fig. 9.1:6b,3e,1c,2c; Appendix 1, Kaufman 1995:177,184,194–196). The spacing and location of synagogues on Boston’s landscape varied among Jewish sects. Compared to other Jewish sects, Orthodox synagogues were more closely spaced on the landscape due to the religious prohibition against using transportation on the Sabbath, and the resulting need to be within walking distance for their congregation (Gamm 1995:150). Reform synagogues were larger centers more widely spaced on the landscape and centrally located to attract worshipers from downtown as well as the western suburbs. Synagogues were also closely spaced due to the frequent fissioning of congregations as younger generations used their social agency “powers to” adopt greater gender equality from the dominant American Protestant culture (Fig. 9.2:1,1a,2a,3,4,5,7,8,9,10,12,17,18,30; Appendix 2, Grossman 1981:2,18,23,27). The fluidity of Jewish-American identities was symbolized and implemented through changes in religious practices and accompanying synagogue built environments and landscapes, as they moved with their communities over Greater Boston’s landscape. The two main ethnic groups of Jews developed a diversity of religious sects (Ultra-Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, etc.) and moved over the landscape to different areas of Greater Boston, largely due to class and ethnic differences that were correlated with different gender systems. Mapping the movement of major synagogue sites showed that Orthodox communities moved from the poor, European-appearing North and West End ghettos, to southern suburbs that were close to the coast, unwittingly remaining literally as well as ideologically closer to eastern European Orthodox Jewish gender ideology and practices. In contrast, Reform synagogues moved inland earlier with their communities as they developed greater gender equality, following American trends. The movement of Orthodox and Reform synagogues and communities across the landscape reflected their degree of maintenance of traditional Jewish culture, including gender segregation. (Fig. 9.1; Appendix 1, Gamm 1995:132–133; Sarna 1995:5; Smith 1995:52).

Gendering Jewish Charities Central to Jewish religion, society, and cultural values was a strong tradition of philanthropy, involving “powers with” each other that created a web of obligation between wealthy and poor Jews both within and between Jewish communities of differing ethnicity, class, and religious sect. Jewish charities used “powers with” others to link people in a social network that gave Jewish communities a coherent identity on the landscape. Jewish charities were usually segregated by gender and

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ethnicity, as were many Anglo-American charities. The Jewish religious obligation to help other Jews led to the founding of separate Jewish organizations paralleling Protestant organizations that excluded Jews, were proselytizing, and/or did not provide important gendered aspects of Jewish culture. While Jewish men continued their traditional mutual benefit organizations, women were empowered to found and lead their own charities by traditional Jewish gender segregation and charitable values in combination with Protestant gender ideology concerning women’s innate piety, morality, and special suitability for charitable work. Jewish women’s and men’s organizations separately used their social agency to borrow ideas and methods from Protestant charities, which were adapted for Jewish purposes. Some “German” Jewish women’s and men’s organizations excluded “Russian” Jews, who established their own charities in the North and West Ends because they were loath to receive patronizing assistance from the “German” Jewish organizations (Jick 1995:95; Marcus 1981b:51,105–106). Jewish charities were initially founded in synagogues and moved across the landscape with their communities. First, men’s mutual benefit organizations were established for the male members of the congregation and their families, which were usually ethnically homogenous. As in Europe many male mutual-aid Jewish lodges and clubs provided sick and death benefits to paying members. In Boston’s 1899 Directory of Charities, 13 of the Jewish mutual benefit organizations listed were for men, three for women, and two had segregated “lodges” for each gender (ACB 1899:278–280). Some male leaders, including rabbis and reverends, organized and led women’s auxiliary fund-raising societies for synagogues and women’s lodges because women lacked organizational experience. However, many women’s auxiliaries, such as ones established at Ohabei Shalom in 1851 and 1861, were short-lived unless women were empowered by men or took social agency in running them. Women’s auxiliaries became the primary supporters of synagogues, organizing Jewish events and raising funds using American methods, such as rummage sales, fairs, whist parties, and cookbook sales (Coolidge 1854:63; Ebert 1995:544– 545; Ehrenfried 1963:474,461,481,501; Marcus 1981b:51,80,106,128; Weissbach 2005:260). Jewish women were renowned for founding the Hebrew Sunday School movement in 1838 and continuing to support this primary institution of Jewish socialization (Marcus 1981b:52–53). Jewish women used their social agency of “powers with” each other as “powers to” create and run their own charitable organizations to provide assistance or loans to needy Jews of the same ethnic community. These organizations moved across the landscape with their communities and some lasted several decades. Women and their organizations also founded Jewish hospitals, homes for destitute children, social settlements, and a home for elderly Jewesses (Fig. 9.1:19,20,21,22; Appendix 1, Fig. 9.2:16,20,24b,29,31,33,34,36; Appendix 2, ACB 1899:90–91; Ebert 1995: 219; Ehrenfried 1963:473,481,502; Marcus 1981b:51,106). Hebrew ladies’ benevolent societies were considered “essential to the structure and very being of the entire Jewish group in any town” (Marcus 1981a:204). Jewish community landscapes became increasingly gendered as Jewish women used their “powers to” found and lead women’s charitable organizations that were separate on the landscape from men’s organizations. In the early 20th century some women’s

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societies merged with women’s auxiliaries in synagogues, which were soon called sisterhoods (Goulston 1918; Olitzky and Raphael 1996:75,82,169). In 1913 the Reform sisterhoods formed the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, followed a few years later by the Conservative movement’s national Women’s League of the United Synagogue (Marcus 1981a:80). In 1893 “German” Jewish women created the National Council of Jewish Women to assist immigrants, including families abandoned by husbands; to prevent child labor; and to gain women’s rights, adopting aspects of the American women’s rights and reform movements that created the International Council of Women (Fein 1976:46; Rogow 1993). The location of the Boston Council of Jewish Women, on the prestigious Anglo south slope of Beacon Hill near the Protestant Women’s Club on Beacon Street, and also on the border of the “Russian” north slope, was a cultural landscape expression of “German” women’s cross-ethnic reaching out both to “Russian” women down the slope and to Anglo women on the south slope. Records of the Boston branch of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods show that this “German” Reform organization sought to reach across ethnic boundaries and also include Orthodox “Russian” sisterhoods as members (Fig. 9.2:27; Appendix 2, Goulston 1918; Hyman 1995:30,122; Marcus 1981b:81). A number of separate charitable organizations were founded by “German” and “Russian” Jews to assist poor Jews, most of whom were “Russian” Jews. Jewish charities were social agents in choosing to adopt Protestant methods of charity work, such as traveling across the landscape to visit poor families and judge who were “worthy” of assistance (Ebert 1995:212). Jewish charities further chose to adopt Protestant community fund raising methods using the “powers with” others of inspiration, persuasion, and empowerment, rather than the Catholic model of command from the top of a male hierarchy. Jewish charities drew ideas from Protestant charities because they recognized their similar need to inspire donations and voluntary participation in charitable organizations (Greenberg 2009). The United Hebrew Benevolent Society, founded in 1864 by 26 men from Adath Israel and Ohabei Shalom, raised money for Jewish purposes by sequentially adopting Anglo fundraising practices: throwing charity balls from 1869, annual picnics from 1870, and annual banquets from 1874 (Ebert 1995:212). The Benevolent progressively moved closer to the poorer “Russian” immigrants, starting from the South End synagogues, and moving first downtown to Summer Street in 1880, followed by moving by 1886 into the Charity Building on Chardon Street, which was closest to the West End, and a bit farther from the North End (Fig. 9.2:21; Appendix 2, ACB 1886:28). The movement of this “German” Jewish organization indicates increasing spatial proximity expressing “powers with” the poorer “Russian” immigrants.2 2 The United Hebrew Benevolent Association limited its assistance to needy Jews with 2 years’ residency in Boston, and sent needy residents to relatives or back to Europe, in the latter instance through cooperation with the State of Massachusetts. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society met incoming boats and helped immigrants find relatives or their destination, providing transportation, legal aid, and sometimes paid transportation back (ACB 1886:28, 1891:65, 1899:89,124, 1907:3, 1914:50–51).

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The Benevolent was traditional in being male dominated, so there were no women on the organization’s Board of Directors until 1895. Only one woman became President of the Benevolent, in 1911, after it became the Federation of Jewish Charities in 1908 and added three “Russian” institutions to its original “German” charitable organizations. By this time Jewish women, especially poor “Russian” immigrants, had demonstrated their abilities in charitable work by creating their own organizations and successfully raising funds to aid other immigrants and fund Jewish institutions on Boston’s landscape (Ebert 1995:221,223). In the 20th century “German” and “Russian” Jews increasingly used cooperative cross-gender “powers with” each other to create and fund charitable institutions, interconnecting the expanding landscape of Boston’s entire Jewish community. As Orthodox and Conservative working-class Jews moved to Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan, and middle-class and wealthier Reform Jews moved to Brookline, “German” and “Russian” Jewish women’s organizations initiated fund-raising and used “powers with” each other and with “German” and “Russian” men’s organizations to establish a number of Jewish charitable institutions in Boston and its Jewish suburbs, such as the Beth Israel hospital. In another instance, the Hebrew Ladies Sewing Society, the “German” men’s Benevolent, the “Russian” men’s Montefiore Society, and Leopold Morse, the first Jewish member of the US Congress, all collected funds to establish the Leopold Morse Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and Orphanage, which opened in 1889 with 60 beds in a mansion near Mattapan Square in Milton (Ebert 1995:215). Male orphans were trained in a variety of trades so they could be successful once they left the Home. Jewish institutions provided kosher meals, Jewish rituals, and Jewish doctors not available in Protestant institutions that often excluded Jews and African-Americans (Fig. 9.1:15,18; Appendix 1, Ebert 1995:225–227).

Dramaturgical Exploration of Jewish Immigrant Gender Power Dynamics Given this background, let’s start dramaturgically with a mythical Orthodox Jewish woman, let’s call her Rochel, who came from Lithuania with her family and arrived in Boston’s North End in 1896. The first Jewish immigrants to the North End were predominantly Lithuanian. The partly hilly urban ghetto landscape of narrow, winding, dirt streets crowded with tenements, some of which had stores on the first floor, looked a lot like the urban neighborhoods where most immigrants lived in Europe (Kaufman 1995:178). Rochel and her family emigrated because of increasing Russian legal restrictions that made it difficult for Jews to move over the landscape and make a living, as well as increasingly virulent anti-Semitic tracts, attacks on Jews and destruction of their houses and businesses in the nearby Warsaw Jewish ghetto in 1881, and the expulsion of Jews from Moscow in 1891 (Barnavi and Eliav-Feldon 1992:190–191; Braverman 1995:71; Hyman 1995:51).

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Fig. 9.3 Turn-of-the-century institutions in Boston’s North End (a) Benoth Israel Sheltering Home, 15 Cooper Street. Photograph by André Ruedi. (b) Cockerell Hall, 287 Hanover Street, on the 2nd and 3rd floors housed the North End Talmud Torah 1883–1892, Shomre Beth Abraham 1886–1893, Chevra T’hilim 1893–1899, with Christian missionaries on the first floor. Photograph by André Ruedi. (c) North Bennet Street Industrial School, 39 North Bennet St., 1880–present. Photograph by André Ruedi. (d) Civic Service House, 110–112 Salem Street, established in 1901. Photograph by André Ruedi

After passing through the immigration station near the shore, Rochel and her family would not have to travel far up the hill to find housing in the large North End Jewish community. If they were destitute they could find temporary support at the Benoth Israel Sheltering Home, just off Salem Street, the main street of Jewish shops. The sheltering home was created by a group of North End “Russian” immigrant mothers who used “powers with” each other to collect funds for a permanent institution, after years of sheltering new immigrants in their own homes. When it was incorporated in 1891 the home had a ladies Board of Directors under a male president. However, when the home opened with 40 beds in 1896, men had taken over its administration (Fig. 9.3a, Ehrenfried 1963:544–545). This typical development demonstrates how men’s patriarchal “powers over” women worked to keep women from public positions, even when they had raised the funds for the

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institution. The home remained in the same building until at least 1914 because immigrants arrived in Boston at the North End immigration station (Fig. 9.2:6; Appendix 2). If Rochel or her family were ill on arrival they might have been attended in the North End by the Ladies Bikur Cholim Society, which served the sick starting in the 1880s. They could also go to gender segregated free dispensaries sponsored by the men’s United Hebrew Benevolent Society from 1892 to 1899. The free North End Jewish Dispensary for Women and Children operated in the Benoth Israel Sheltering Home, while the Baron de Hirsch Dispensary for Men was established across the street. In 1902 Jewish doctors (men), who were not hired at Boston’s Anglo hospitals, organized the Mt. Sinai Hospital Association Dispensary in the West End, offering free outpatient services in Yiddish as well as English (Ebert 1995:220–221, Fig 9.2:25, Appendix 2). It treated over 5,000 Jewish and non-Jewish immigrants in its first year, which could have included Rochel’s family if they had moved to the West End by then, along with the majority of Boston’s Jews. Rochel could have participated in one of the “Russian” Jewish women’s organizations from Roxbury to East Boston who used cooperative “powers with” men’s organizations to raise funds to purchase the old Dennison estate on Townsend Street in Roxbury and refurbish the house as the Beth Israel Hospital, which opened in 1917. When a new large Beth Israel Hospital was constructed in 1928 on Brookline Avenue (still in use), the Jewish Memorial Hospital, which had evolved from the Roxbury Ladies Bikur Cholim Society, bought the Dennison house (Fig. 9.1:18; Appendix 1). Jewish hospitals supplied kosher food, Jewish rituals, Jewish doctors, and Yiddish as well as English, none of which were supplied by Protestant hospitals, where Jewish patients did not do so well. The Beth Israel Hospital Association Annual Report of 1918 recognized that Jewish women were “the first to realize the urgent need of the Hospital for the Jewish poor of this city.” Women used “powers with” each other to lead the effort of establishing two Jewish hospitals, in contrast to male Jewish leaders who had used their dominating “powers over” the community to resist and delay creating a Jewish hospital (Ebert 1995:213,215,220–221,224–225,227). From the Benoth Israel Sheltering Home Rochel’s family could have easily walked to Hanover Street to attend any of a number of Orthodox synagogues in rented rooms (Fig. 9.2:17b; Appendix 2, Fig. 9.3b). More likely, the family could instead have walked a shorter distance up Salem Street to Baldwin Place, to worship at Orthodox Beth Israel synagogue, which in 1890 bought and refurbished a Baptist church at the end of the alley (Kaufman 1995:178–179). This synagogue became the center of Boston Orthodoxy and hosted all kinds of social events, such as American and Jewish holiday celebrations, public lectures, Zionist forums, lodge meetings, and technical school classes. Or Rochel’s family could have worshipped at the even closer Anshe Vilna synagogue that in 1903 was replaced by the new Shaarey Jerusalem synagogue on Carroll Place, which was renamed Jerusalem Place after the dedication of the purpose-built synagogue (Kaufman 1995:179–180). These synagogues are typical in having been destroyed. Rochel’s husband could seek work by walking quite a distance to the lower South End “German” Employment Bureau at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, founded in 1874 in the vestry of the Ohabei Shalom synagogue. The YMHA

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was important as a youth wing of the synagogue, which adopted and adapted aspects of the YWCA next door, which it used as a model (ACB 1891:188, 1899:245; Grossman 1981:2–3; Kaufman 1995:173,178–179). This example shows how a Protestant institution could unwittingly have cross-gender “powers with” to inspire the development of a parallel Jewish institution. The YMHA was an example of Jews establishing their own organizations to avoid Protestant proselytizing. The YMHA moved to the upper South End with the “German” Jewish community and then continued south into Roxbury and stayed there as the “Russian” Jews moved into the area (Fig. 9.1:17; Appendix 1, Fig. 9.2:37; Appendix 2). Rochel’s daughters as well as sons could attend either a mixed-gender or gender-segregated Hebrew school on the Jewish landscape of the North End. Gender-segregated schools were established in 1890 on the second floor of the Orthodox Beth Israel synagogue, but a Talmud Tora Free Hebrew School for Jewish boys was established in 1891 in a separate building on one side of the alley (Kaufman 1995:179). This school was still in Baldwin Place in 1899, and the mixedgender North End Hebrew Free School was on nearby Stillman Street, across from a synagogue. Although the West End Hebrew School was only for boys, the one in the South End was for girls as well as boys, although it was in an Orthodox synagogue (Fig. 9.2:8,12,9,30; Appendix 1, ACB 1899:203–204). Ohabei Shalom had had a mixed-gender Hebrew school since the 1850s (Ehrenfried 1963:350–351). Mixed-gender Hebrew schools were usually gender-segregated by teaching girls and boys on different days. It is extraordinary that there were three Hebrew schools that admitted Orthodox girls, since Hebrew schools for Orthodox girls were not established in Eastern Europe until 1918 (Hyman 1995:65). The establishment of Hebrew schools for girls indicates that Orthodox as well as Reform Jews recognized the advantages of Hebrew education for girls, who came to be seen as the guardians of the moral Jewish home, legitimated by the dominant Protestant gender ideology (Antin 1912; Smith 1995:61). Perhaps Orthodox immigrants were more liberal in applying the American ideology of democracy to gender, compared with Orthodox Jews who did not come to America and retained gender inequality longer in Hebrew education. Had Rochel arrived in 1880–1881 she could have earned money as a laundress by using the hot water, sinks, irons, ironing boards, and other equipment charitably supplied by the North Bennet Street Industrial School for Girls (NBSIS), founded further up Salem Street in 1879 by local women. According to Grossman (1981:2) the Hebrew Industrial School was founded in this location. Starting in 1880 the NBSIS was funded by a Swiss immigrant and widow of an industrialist, Pauline Agassiz Shaw (NBSIS 1881:13, 1887:4–5). The school soon became a social settlement, where reformers lived in a poor neighborhood and offered a wide variety of predominantly gender-segregated charitable programs and vocational classes useful to many immigrants from the 1880s through the 1920s (Fig. 9.3c, Henry, Williams, and Stanton 1985:1,16–19,26–29,34; NBSIS 1886:2). While most NBSIS programs were popular, military marching was not, probably due to the mistreatment of Jewish men forced into the Russian army (Spencer-Wood 1996:433).

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Poor Orthodox Jews such as Rochel’s family could also obtain services from Jewish charitable institutions established by “German” Jews. Rochel’s family might have celebrated their first Chanukha with the Hebrew Ladies Sewing Society (HLSS), which since at least 1886 had been in the Charity Building located in between the North and West ends. First established in 1869 by women from the Adath Israel synagogue, the HLSS was revived in 1878 by Lina Hecht and became an auxiliary to the Benevolent (Ebert 1995:215). Lina established the HLSS due to the exclusion of Jewish women from the Protestant Mystic and Boston Ladies Sewing Circles (ACB 1880:31, 1886:34,51, 1891:34,65, 1899:90,106,146, 1907:17). This example shows how Anglo exclusionary “powers over” Jews did not prevent Jewish women from using their social agency as “powers to” establish their own parallel charitable institutions. In 1880 the HLSS was located on prestigious Commonwealth Avenue (a double road with a wide green median containing trees and statues of historic figures), possibly in Lina Hecht’s home, where the well-todo Jewish ladies who were members would gather to cut material that they would pay poor women to sew into garments to give to the poor. By 1886 the HLSS had moved into the Charity Building on Chardon Street, which was much closer to the poor women who had to walk to pick up and drop off sewing from the Jewish areas of the West and North Ends. By 1900 the Hebrew Women’s Sewing Society also had an office in the “German” Jewish community, on the border between the upper South End and Roxbury. It was located in Minot Hall with the Young Women’s Hebrew Charitable Association and the Boston YMHA (Fig. 9.2:21b,36,37a,40; Appendix 2). The locations on the landscape of the Sewing Society’s two offices express its work to assist poor seamstresses in both “Russian” and “German” Jewish communities. The gathering of women’s and men’s charities at Minot Hall indicates some cross-gender cooperation, at least to minimize costs by renting space together. The HLSS held Calico balls for the wealthy to raise funds for winter clothes, blankets, and Chanukah parties for the poor. Lina no doubt learned about methods of Protestant women’s organizations as an officer of the Boston Women’s Educational and Industrial Union (WEIU), which was originally founded as a Protestant women’s prayer group (JELFH; WEIU 1892). Lina lived in the Back Bay along with many Protestant reformers who lived in apartment hotels. Members of the WEIU were also members of a wide variety of Protestant women’s organizations, forming a complex interconnected charitable network on the landscape that came to include Jewish women’s organizations due to shared concerns for assisting poor women, children, and families (Spencer-Wood 1988). Lina Hecht and her husband Jacob were the first couple of Jewish philanthropy, with a home on prestigious Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay (Gal 1980:34). They no doubt had “powers over” servants, many of whom were women, who produced meals, laundry, and a clean house so that the Hechts could pursue their philanthropies. Jacob, who had started out as a Jewish peddler and became a wealthy merchant, was a founding member and president of the Benevolent and the elite male Jewish Elysium Club (Fig. 9.2:38; Appendix 2, Fein 1976:45). Lina, through her leadership in many charities, used empowering “powers with” two generations

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Fig. 9.4 Turn-of-the-century institutions in Boston’s West End, including part of Beacon Hill (a) Elizabeth Peabody House, 87-9 Poplar St., 1896-1912, Chassidic congregation 1920s–1940s, destroyed in 1960s urban renewal (EPH 1911:10–11; Gamm 1995:134) (b) Phillips School, site of the Twelfth (colored) Baptist church used by the Vilna Shul 1906–1915. Photograph by André Ruedi. (c) 27 Anderson Street, where the Vilner Congregation worshipped from 1915–1919. Photograph by André Ruedi. (d) Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 47 Mount Vernon Street. Photograph by André Ruedi

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of young Boston Jewish women, who affectionately called her “Aunt Lina,” adopting her as a fictive kin member – the childless aunt. She had to travel a fair distance from her home in the Back Bay to her charitable work in the North End (Braverman 1995:72; Ebert 1995:213). By 1890 Rochel’s daughters might have attended the Russian Hebrew Industrial School (RHIS) for girls, first on Hanover Street, and on Baldwin Place by 1899, when “Russian” was dropped from the institution’s name (ACB 1891:148, 1899:193). This institution drew its inspiration from the North Bennet Street Industrial School for Girls, and is an example of Protestant women’s cross-ethnic “powers with” of inspiring Jewish women to create parallel institutions that particularly supported Jewish rituals, lifeways, and culture. The Hebrew Industrial School (HIS) was created in 1889 by two elite Jewesses: Lina Hecht and Golde Bamber, who Lina initially hired as a teacher in her North End Sunday school. Golde used persuasive “powers with” Lina to convince her to establish the HIS, where hundreds of girls took traditional sewing, tailoring, millinery, and cooking classes (Ebert 1995:215). However, some of the girls’ parents, possibly including Rochel, were not passive recipients of this traditional female education, and requested that intellectual education also be provided for their daughters (Solomon 1977 Vol. II: 8-406). This is extraordinary since in traditional Orthodox gender ideology women were only considered to need domestic education. In new institutions in the New World, some Orthodox parents used “powers with” each other to organize “powers under” the dominant “German” Jewish Industrial School to argue for more intellectual education for their daughters than was allowed in Old World shtetls. It may well be that the parents were responding to the ambitions of their daughters to become some of the new professional women whose institutions visibly dominated areas of Boston’s male-associated public landscape, including Anglo women’s social settlements that Jewish girls often attended. A Hebrew Industrial School for boys opened in 1892 in the West End (Ebert 1995:215). By 1895 the HIS for girls had taught more than a thousand immigrant children to be “wage earners, breadwinners, and self-respecting intelligent citizens.” The HIS moved into the West End and expanded to also serve boys (Gamm 1995:135). By 1901 the HIS offered a Home Improvement Club, Good Manners Club, Soap and Water Club, Civics Club, Library Club, Orchestral Club, concerts, dances, political debates, and classes in machine sewing, embroidery, dressmaking, millinery, cooking, housekeeping, and drafting. Machine-sewing classes trained women for jobs in the garment industry, in contrast to hand-sewing classes that were used in the Magdalen Asylum in Philadelphia to train working-class women to conform to ideals of domestic womanhood (De Cunzo 1995). In the 1910s the HIS sponsored summer kindergartens and outings for mothers and children (Ebert 1995:216,224). In 1922 the HIS became a social settlement called Hecht House, inspired by “powers with” the mixed-gender North Bennet Street Industrial School, which earlier became a social settlement (Spencer-Wood 1994:190). Hecht house was typical in exerting “powers with” the “Russian” Jewish community, by moving across the landscape with this population, from the North End to the West End, to Dorchester in 1936, where it closed in the 1960s because it was racist in not admitting the poor

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African-Americans who were coming to dominate that town (Fig. 9.1:16; Appendix 1, Fig. 9.2:20; Appendix 2). Some Jewish settlements, empowered by the example of Protestant reformers and institutions, stayed in the same neighborhood for many years. For instance, the young Jewish men’s Excelsior Club used exceptional social agency of “powers with” each other to establish West End House and gain funding from the Protestant progressive reformer James J. Storrow, who bought them a series of three buildings in the same neighborhood. West End House was established for the many West End boys’ clubs (Ueda 1981:33–34). Meyer Bloomfield established Civic Service House, founded 1901 in the North End. He and Philip Davis, both “Russian” Jewish graduates of Harvard, led the settlement in helping organize three women’s unions in the garment industry (Braverman 1995:80–81; Fig. 9.3d). This settlement had strong ties to the nearby North Bennet Street Industrial School (Woods and Kennedy 1911:108). Two Jewish sisters, funded by their brother, founded the Louisa May Alcott Club in 1895 to teach housekeeping to girls in the South End. The club was concerned with child welfare in poor homes, offered a variety of educational classes, and also had a summer vacation house in Hingham, south of Boston (Fig. 9.2:33; Appendix 2, Woods and Kennedy 1911:118). These Jewish institutions as well as the Benoth Israel Sheltering Home all stayed in the same building or neighborhood for a decade or more. In social settlements reformers lived in poor immigrant neighborhoods and used “powers with” immigrants in offering a wide range of free or low cost programs to preserve ethnic cultures while assisting immigrants in becoming citizens. Courses that assisted immigrants in becoming citizens and getting jobs included English, civics, math, American history, and vocational classes. Programs that helped preserve ethnic cultures included ethnic dances, Yiddish plays, and craft fairs where women generated income through embroidery and other ethnic sewing (SpencerWood 1994). Reformers soon realized that ethnic cultures needed to be preserved to prevent “the breakdown of Neighborhood structure” and “the breakdown of family life” as people became too assimilated into “immoral” aspects of American capitalist culture, such as saloons, pool halls, dance halls, theaters, and movie houses (Woods and Kennedy 1911:129,143–144,149,161). Because participation in settlement programs was voluntary, it was not possible for the “German” middle class reformers to impose their values and practices because they did not have dominating “powers over” the working-class immigrants, as argued by the social control school of history. While reformers offered programs they thought would be useful for building a local community, gaining citizenship, a job, childcare, after-school programs, etc., enrollments in which local participants voted with their feet determined whether programs were continued or not. My research has uncovered a number of cases in which settlements recorded in annual reports that they changed the programs they offered or created new ones in response to local needs or participants’ requests (Spencer-Wood 1994, 1996, 2002). When Rochel and her family moved to the West End, they probably would attend programs at the Elizabeth Peabody House (EPH), because it exemplified how

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Protestant middle-class reform women used “powers with” Jewish women to reach across class and ethnic/racial lines to offer programs useful to the Jewish community (Fig. 9.2:26; Appendix 2, Fig. 9.4a). For instance, in 1902 EPH (1903:8) provided rooms for the Young Hebrew Charities Club and for a class in Jewish history conducted by a young Jewish lady. The EPH provided a dancing class for married Jewish women “at the earnest solicitation of the women themselves, and continued until preparation for the Passover completely filled the women’s time” (EPH 1906:10). This class, as well as the dressmaking class, basketry classes, and large kindergarten club were all supported by class members from the predominantly Jewish immigrant neighborhood (EPH 1906:11). When immigrant mothers visiting the settlement’s milk station requested English lessons, these were provided in conjunction with instruction in caring for babies and cooking demonstrations (EPH 1915:16,21). Kindergartens were popular and usually overenrolled. The positive responses of parents were exemplified in a 1907 kindergarten mother’s meeting where one Jewish mother said she came to see “what kind of teachers we were that had learned her Yetta so many nice things already!” (EPH 1908:25–26).

Fig. 9.5 The exterior landscape of the Vilna Shul on the north slope of Beacon Hill, Boston (a) Vilna Shul set back near the corner of Phillips and Garden Streets. (b) Vilna Shul front entryway and side walkways. Photograph by André Ruedi. (c) Vilna Shul’s left (east) walkway (d) Vilna Shul’s right (west) walkway and stairs to women’s entrance. Photograph by André Ruedi

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Settlement annual reports are exceptional in actually recording immigrant voices. The EPH annual report for 1902 noted that there were so many upwardly mobile immigrants “Eager to fit themselves for American life” that overenrolled evening classes in English, mathematics and American history had to be moved to the larger Hebrew Industrial School nearby (EPH 1903:7). This last example shows how Eva W. White, headworker of the EPH, also used “powers with” Jewish reform women such as Golde Bamber and Lina Hecht in order to develop cooperative powers that connected institutions of different ethnic groups across the landscape. This is an example of women’s ability to use “powers with” each other to reach across ethnic barriers inscribed on ethnically segregated neighborhood landscapes separating tenements from wealthy residences.

The Orthodox Vilna Shul on Beacon Hill, in Boston’s West End If Rochel’s family moved to the West End as early as 1906 they would have been able to choose from a number of synagogues, including the Lithuanian Vilna Shul, which had purchased the old Twelfth (colored) Baptist church at 45 Phillips street, located about one-third of the way up the northeast slope of Beacon Hill (Fig. 9.4b, Kaplan et al. 1989:8). In 1915 this building was bought by the city to convert it to Phillips School, and the Vilner Congregation moved to 27 Anderson Street (Fig. 9.4c). In 1919 they constructed their first purpose-built synagogue at 14-18 Phillips Street, near Garden Street (Fig. 9.5a, Kaplan et al. 1989:8; Kaufman 1995:179– 180,183, 205). The preserved Vilna Shul is visibly a synagogue on the landscape, with Jewish architectural details, including a small Star of David on top of the wrought iron entrance gate, a large Star of David in stained glass in a round window above the double-door entrance, and a course of brick headers marking every seventh course (Fig. 9.5b). Seven is a number rich in Jewish symbolism, marking the 7 days of creation and the weekly occurrence of the Sabbath, which was observed in the Shul (JESN). Since the synagogue was built by members of its congregation it seems likely that the brickwork contained Jewish symbolism. The tall narrow windows are typical of synagogues in northwestern Europe. The L-shaped plan of the Orthodox Vilna Shul may have been designed after the 1213 AD Worms, Germany, synagogue, since both are unusual in having an L-shaped plan with the women’s section on the same floor as the men’s section (Kaplan et al. 1989:14–15), suggesting greater gender equality than the usual women’s balcony. The Vilna Shul’s cultural landscape includes a small front courtyard and paved walkways down each side of the building. The synagogue is raised four steps above the sidewalk and set back behind the small paved courtyard, which is fenced separately from the walkways on each side of the building. The wrought iron fence has an arched double door for the main entrance to the synagogue, and a smaller single door into the walkway on each side of the building (Fig. 9.5b). Both of the walkways slope up the hill, gradually on the left and steeply up many steps on the right. There are also small unpaved yard landscapes with trees on the left side of the synagogue and behind it in an apartment courtyard. The walkway on the left continues around

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the back of the synagogue, separating it from the building behind and permitting windows on all but the back wall of the women’s section (Fig. 9.5c). The Vilna Shul was constructed by removing three tenements previously constructed on a 100-foot-deep L-shaped property that the congregation bought (SCLC 1917). Stanhope Place, a 10-foot-wide boardwalk alley running lengthwise through the center of the property, originally provided access up a slight incline to the two tenement buildings to the rear of the property on either side of the alley (JBREB 1886–1910). The women’s section of the Shul was constructed over the back 40 feet of Stanhope Place and one of the tenement buildings in the back of the L, probably by constructing first floor retaining walls and filling them in with rubble from the destroyed tenements. The boardwalk alley was replaced by a fabricated hill landscape paved with a narrower outdoor walkway and 21 cement stairs that Rochel and other women would have climbed to the entrance into the segregated women’s wing of the second-floor sanctuary. The single gate in the wrought iron fence for the women’s walkway appears to symbolize the lower status of women compared to the double gate to the double-door main entry to the synagogue, which was used by men (Fig. 9.5d).

Fig. 9.6 The interior sanctuary landscape of the Vilna Shul, Boston (a) Vilna Shul sanctuary from back of men’s section. Photograph by André Ruedi. (b) Vilna Shul view of back wall of men’s section with plaque of 210 male synagogue members between the double entrance doors leading to the vestibule and two staircases to the first floor. Photograph by André Ruedi. (c) Vilna Shul four-foot wall with gates segregating the women’s section. Photograph by André Ruedi. (d) Vilna Shul plaque listing 110 women’s auxiliary members on back wall of women’s section. Photograph by André Ruedi

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On the second floor of the synagogue, the women’s section is at right angles and almost completely invisible from the men’s seating in the main sanctuary. The men’s section is flat and has a front view of the Bima (raised platform) in the center of the sanctuary and the large Ark of the Covenant cabinet on the wall behind. Viewing the sanctuary from the men’s section, the women’s section is through the large arch to the right of the Bima (Fig. 9.6a). The men entered the sanctuary through the front vestibule, up double staircases to the second floor vestibule at the level of the Starof-David stained-glass window and through two doors into the sanctuary (Fig. 9.6b). The women’s wing is segregated by a four-foot-high wall that has two doors in it for access to the sanctuary (Fig. 9.6c). Originally a curtain hung from the ceiling and attached to the top of the wall, making the women completely invisible to the men praying in the sanctuary (Kaplan et al. 1989:13–14). Although this is the interior of a building, the women’s section has a sloping floor that follows the topography of the constructed landscape beneath it. The sloping floor with stadium-style rows of pews is similar to a landscape in having topography that provided a side view from all seats of the Bima in the center of the sanctuary and the Ark on the wall behind it. Entering the women’s section behind the wall and curtain, Rochel would have proudly shown her daughter the plaque on the back wall of the women’s section because it listed the 110 members of the women’s auxiliary, many of whom were named Rochel, including the President (Fig. 9.6d). The sisterhood raised money through concerts and plays to buy Torah ornaments and an ornate Ark, which in 1907 were donated to the Vilna Shul in the Baptist church and were then transported to the new purpose-built synagogue (JA 1907). It is probably no coincidence that this sisterhood was active early and was run by women. The sisterhood also supplied food for holy day celebrations and ceremonies, such as the men’s parade of the Torahs down Phillips Street in front of the Vilna Shul. The men’s mutual benefit organization, called the brotherhood, included most of the 121 male synagogue members listed on a plaque on the back wall of the men’s section, between the two doors (Fig. 9.6b). It organized events such as a concert by leading cantors to raise money for a family that had lost its breadwinner (husband/father) (JA 1915). The sisterhood and the brotherhood used “powers with” each other to organize charitable and ceremonial events at the synagogue. The first floor of the Vilna Shul exists only under the men’s section. Behind the main entrance with the stairs to the sanctuary above and a floor tile design spelling out “Vilner Congregation,” a hall leads to a smaller meeting room with a smaller ark, used for daily prayer and community events (Fig. 9.7a). Off the hall Rochel and the other women could go to the women’s section on the left, or the kitchen on the right side of the hall. In the kitchen women cooked kosher foods on a 1920s enamel stove and oven and cleaned up in an enamel sink, both of which have been retained (Fig. 9.7b). The kitchen and the basement women’s section both have windows so that the women could see the ceremonies in the basement sanctuary while being properly screened from the men’s view (Fig. 9.7c). These windows are visible in the kitchen and women’s section but are blocked on the other side by the exhibit in the function room (Fig. 9.7d).

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Fig. 9.7 Interior first floor of the Vilna Shul, Boston (a) Vilna Shul entryway with tiles spelling Vilner Congregation in blue. Photograph by André Ruedi. (b) Vilna Shul first floor kitchen with 1920s stove and sink. Photograph by André Ruedi. (c) Vilna Shul first floor women’s section room with windows on function room. Photograph by André Ruedi. (d) Vilna Shul first floor function room exhibit: The Boston Jewish Experience. Reconnect with the Tapestry. Photograph by André Ruedi

The Vilna Shul was built into the steep north slope of Beacon Hill. On the south slope of Beacon Hill high status Anglos still live near the Massachusetts State House. One hundred years ago Jewish Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis lived in townhouses near Charles Street at the foot of Beacon Hill, on the border of the West End, symbolizing his high status as well as his exclusion by the Anglo community. Interestingly, two Jewish sites were located on the south slope: the West End Young Men’s Hebrew Association (WEYMHA) and the Council of Jewish Women (Figs. 9.4d, 9.2:27,28; Appendix 2). These locations of Jewish institutions on Boston’s landscape symbolized and implemented the upward social mobility of Boston’s Jews.

Preservation of the Vilna Shul Of the c.40 synagogues or shuls on Boston’s downtown landscape in the first quarter of the 20th century, the Vilna Shul is the only one that has been preserved as a synagogue (Kaplan, et al. 1989:5). The Vilna Shul was the longest operating synagogue in Boston, from 1919 until 1985 (Grossman 1981:23–24; Kaufman 1995:183; Seligman 1989a:2). The preservation of the Vilna Shul is the result of more than 2 decades of cooperative “powers with” each other of a large number of people and

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organizations. It is a complex story and there is only space here to cover the highlights. It began in the fall of 1985, when Mendel Miller, the last active member of the Vilner Congregation, was mugged when setting up for Shavuoth services that were not attended. He petitioned the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for dissolution of the congregation, with a plan to sell the building and its assets and send the proceeds to Israeli charities (Bronner 1986; Seligman 1989a:2). The case was assigned to Justice Ruth Abrams. The Vilner Congregation ran up debts in court battles with former worshippers who contested the dissolution, and with the Charles River Park Synagogue (now Boston Synagogue), which claimed the proceeds from the sale of assets of the Vilna Shul because it would be the only surviving Orthodox synagogue in Boston (under the “cy pres” law specifying that proceeds from the sale of a dissolved charity go to the most similar organization in the area) (Scondras 1990:3; Seligman 1989a:3). An alliance of local community, preservation, and Jewish organizations used “powers with” each other to contest the planned sale, in order to preserve the Vilna Shul. Prominent in this movement were Historic Boston, Incorporated; the Boston Landmarks Commission; the Boston Preservation Alliance; the Beacon Hill Civic Association; and the Massachusetts Council of Rabbis. Although these organizations and nearly 300 individuals voiced their support, the nomination of the interior of the Vilna Shul as a Boston Landmark came up one vote short of approval by the Boston City Council (BPA 1989; BLC 1989:2; Keva 1990). The exterior of the Vilna Shul has been protected by being in the Beacon Hill historic district, so it could not be altered. Further, the land could not be commercially developed because a nonprofit charitable institution can only be sold to another organization of the same kind. In spring 1990 Stanley Smith, Executive Director of Historic Boston Incorporated (HBI), began negotiations with the courtappointed receiver, Terry Seligman, for a new nonprofit to be organized to buy the Vilna Shul for a Jewish museum and cultural center (HBI 1990:1, 1991:1). The nonprofit Vilna Center for Jewish Heritage (VCJH) was organized and raised the money to buy the Vilna Shul in 1995 for $260,000 (Glater 2009; Mintz 2009; P&S 1995). The historically significant interior of the Vilna Shul has been retained intact. The Massachusetts Historical Commission in 1997 and 1998 provided grants primarily to repair, and replace parts if necessary, of the roof, windows, and masonry (Steinitz 2009). The building and its historic sanctuary have been stabilized and preserved but have not been restored. Now the Vilna Shul is operated as a nonprofit museum of Boston’s historic Jewish immigrant communities and as Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture. The first floor function room now houses the exhibit about the growth and spread of historic Jewish communities on Boston’s landscape, entitled “The Boston Jewish Experience. Reconnect with the Tapestry” (Fig. 9.7d). An interactive computer provides pictures and information on the large number of historic synagogues in Boston that have been destroyed or re-used. Jewish artifacts are displayed, such as a silver menorah and the pushkies – piggy banks where families would slowly gather pennies to donate to the charitable organization of the synagogue, which supported Jewish widows and provided funds for burial in a Jewish cemetery. On one side of

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the exhibit is a small library of major books on Jewish institutions and communities, focusing on Boston but including some books on New York and the Jewish immigration to America in general. DVDs about the Vilna Shul and other Jewish projects are also available for viewing. Another major aspect of the exhibit is the opportunity for people to connect by putting pins on a map of Europe and America to indicate where their ancestors came from. Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture offers a schedule of lectures on historic and contemporary topics. The Vilna Shul is the focus of a vibrant Jewish community called Havurah on the Hill, which regularly fills the sanctuary for free-form services and high holy-day celebrations. Hundreds of people come to the Vilna Shul to celebrate the Jewish heritage of Boston and the preservation of this beautiful space (www.vilnashul.com).

Conclusion In the larger context it needs to be remembered that two-way intracultural exchanges occurred during the interactions between Americans and Jewish immigrants on powered landscapes. American culture has been enriched by adopting numerous Jewish cultural contributions in a wide variety of areas, from health care, education, the labor and women’s movements, and political and juridical leaders, to Jewish songs, plays, movies, foods, metaphors, concepts, and words (Spencer-Wood 1999:305). This chapter focuses on the ways that Jewish immigrants to Boston used their social agency “powers to” develop a plurality of changing Jewish-American identities, Jewish sects, and institutional powered landscapes that retained distinctive Jewish lifeways and material culture, while adopting, integrating, or rejecting aspects of Protestant gender practices and power dynamics in worship, charitable institutions, and synagogues. As Smith (1995:61) puts it “changes were not made to accommodate or imitate Protestant culture so much as to ensure the strength and continuity of Judaism.” Many Jewish women raised their status by creating and leading their own charitable organizations, legitimated by Protestant gender ideology concerning women’s innate roles as moral guardians of homes and communities. Women who participated in charities gained status due to the valorization of charitable work traditionally conducted by men in Jewish communities. Mapping charitable sites revealed how Jewish community landscapes became increasingly gendered as women established and led more separate charitable organizations and institutions over time. An explosion of gendered charitable sites occurred on Jewish community landscapes around the turn of the century (Fig. 9.2, Appendix 2). The mapped locations and movements of major historic Jewish charitable institutions on Greater Boston’s landscape expressed intersections between class, ethnicity, and changing gender systems in a variety of religious sects. Women’s organizations reached across ethnic and gender lines to use “powers with” Jewish women and men of other ethnicities to raise funds for centrally located institutions such as hospitals for the entire Boston Jewish community. Increasing cross-ethnic

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cooperative “powers with” each other were also expressed in the movement of “German” charities closer to poor “Russian” communities. Further, the Hecht House settlement, founded and led by “German” Jewesses, moved with the “Russian” community that it served. Most Jewish charities were founded by and for their communities and moved with them across the landscape, but some were centrally located. Some Jewish women also developed “powers with” Anglo-American women by travelling across the landscape to become members and leaders in Protestant women’s organizations, such as Boston’s WEIU and the women’s suffrage movement (Kuzmack 1990:147; Lerner 1998:968–971,975–978). Similarities in women’s roles, experiences, and gender ideology led women to develop “powers with” each other and with men first within their Jewish community and then further across the landscape with women in different classes and ethnic groups. These varied interactions were important in the development of the diversity of gendered Jewish-American identities expressed in built environments on Boston’s landscape. The degree of adoption of dominant Protestant gender ideology, practices, and material culture in Jewish sects was expressed on landscapes as Reform communities first moved inland while Americanizing more than Orthodox communities, which until the mid-20th century coincidentally remained in areas of Boston that were closer to Europe. Reform synagogues first adopted gender-integrated landscapes and built environments by using Protestant churches as synagogues, while Orthodox synagogues more often retained gender-segregated landscapes and built environments. Orthodox “Russian” working-class synagogues were closely spaced on the landscape to be within walking distance for their congregation, while larger Reform and Conservative synagogue centers developed in central locations to attract worshippers from downtown as well as the suburbs. A great diversity of Jewish sects developed with different degrees of adoption and integration of Protestant gender practices in the formation of Jewish-American identities. These research findings will be used to enhance presentation of the exhibit in Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture in the gender-segregated Orthodox Vilna Shul, further bringing alive the memory of historic Jewish communities and enriching our lives by materially reconnecting us with the fascinating diversity in Boston’s past (Greenberg 2009). Acknowledgments I would like to thank the people who provided information that made this chapter possible: the Vilna Shul staff, especially Steven Greenberg, Executive Director, his assistant Rachel Cylus, and volunteer Mark Nystedt; Ellen Lipsey, Executive Director of the Boston Landmarks Commission; Sarah D. Kelly, Executive Director of the Boston Preservation Alliance; Sean Casey, Rare Book Librarian at the Boston Public Library; Michael Steinitz, Director of the Preservation Planning Division of the Massachusetts Historical Commission; Stanley M. Smith, previous Executive Director of Historic Boston, Incorporated, and Program Associate Kimberly Hanna; David Glater, the first President of the Board of the VCJH and former congregant of the Vilna Shul, and Richard G. Mintz, Board Member and past President of the Vilna Shul Boston Center for Jewish Culture. My gratitude to everyone who shared their knowledge and to Sherene Baugher for her great comments on this chapter. Of course any remaining inaccuracies are my responsibility.

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Appendix 1 Figure 9.1 The Movement of Jewish Communities across Greater Boston’s Landscape, 1843–1936

1. Ohabei Shalom (Polish/German, traditional to Conservative), founded in 1843, moved from (1a) and (1b) in the South End (Fig. 9.2, Appendix 2); to (1c) 1187 Beacon Street, Brookline, built 1928, still used (Gamm 1995:130; Grossman 1981:7,18; Kaufman 1995:168, 171,175,195). 2. Reform Adath (Temple) Israel (German), founded in 1854, moved from (2a) and (2b) in the South End (Fig. 9.2, Appendix 2); to (2c) Commonwealth Avenue, built 1907 (now Morse Auditorium of Boston University); to (2d) Riverway and Longwood, built 1928 with modernist 1974 addition, still used (Gamm 1995:130; Grossman 1981:18; Kaufman 1995:170,176–177,196). 3. Mishkan Israel (E. Prussian, traditional to Conservative) later Mishkan Tefila, founded in 1858, moved from (3a) to (3b) in the lower South End until 1898 (Fig. 9.2, Appendix 2). After merging with Shaaray Tefila in 1895 to form Mishkan Tefila, the congregation moved in 1898 to (3c) a church building on the corner of Madison and Shawmut in lower Roxbury, extant; to (3d) Moreland and Copeland Streets, Roxbury, in 1907 (destroyed church); to (3e) Seaver Street, built 1925, sold 1958, now a Haitian church. The Young Men’s Hebrew Association was located one block to the west (1897 Map of Boston Proper; ACB 1899:245; Gamm 1995: 130; Grossman 1981:18,27; Kaufman 1995:180,184,193; SMC 1887:Plate 52; Whitehill 1968:31,121,123). 4. Orthodox Shaaray Tefila (Polish), founded in 1876, moved in the lower South End (Fig. 9.2:4a,4b, Appendix 2). In 1895 Shaaray Tefila merged with Mishkan Israel to form Mishkan Tefila (Kaufman 1995:174–175). 5. Orthodox Beth Israel (Lithuanian), founded in 1888, called the “Baldwin Place Shul” in the North End, destroyed (Fig. 9.2, Appendix 2). 6. Orthodox Adath Jeshurun founded in 1891 at (6a) Naures Hall on Tremont Street, north of Ruggles; moved to Dudley Street in 1894; moved to a “frame chapel” on Blue Hill Avenue, corner of Lawrence Avenue in 1900; and (6b) 1905-06 built the first synagogue in Roxbury at 397 Blue Hill Avenue, used into the 1950’s (now First Haitian Baptist Church of Boston). It was a predecessor of synagogue centers. Blue Hill Avenue included many Jewish stores and restaurants (Gamm 1995:130, 144, 146; Grossman 1981:2; Kaufman 1995:179,184,186). 7. Orthodox Anshe Libawitz, 1899–1940s, in the former African Meeting House off Joy Street on the north slope of Beacon Hill, in the West End; a preserved historic African-American site (Fig. 9.2, Appendix 2). 8. Anshe Vilner Congregation, called the “Vilna Shul” (Lithuanian), founded in the late 1890s in the North End, moved in 1903 into the West End at (8a), destroyed, and built a synagogue at (8b) in 1919, preserved (Fig. 9.2:8,8a,b,c,d, Appendix 2).

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9. Orthodox Beth Jacob synagogue, called the “Wall Street Shul,” in the West End, destroyed (Fig. 9.2:9, Appendix 2). 10. Conservative Kehillath Israel, founded in 1911 and chartered in 1917, the first congregation in Brookline, met in private homes until it built in 1923– 1925 a synagogue center at 384 Harvard Street, still used. Harvard Street includes many Jewish bookstores, kosher restaurants, and kosher butchers (Gamm 1995:130,148–149; Kaufman 1995:190–191). 11. Beth El, Conservative to Orthodox, the first congregation in Dorchester, founded in 1908 on Fowler Street, built an extant synagogue building in 1910– 1912 that combined round-topped doors and windows with a Greek pediment over the entrance decorated by a Jewish star. The flat roof of the square main structure was topped with a large dome, echoing Temple Israel (Gamm 1995:130, 145, 148; Kaufman 1995:189). 12. Beth Hamidrash Hagadol, Conservative to Orthodox, established in 1904 in the West End, destroyed (Fig. 9.2:39, Appendix 2); built (12) a large synagogue at 105 Crawford Street in 1915, extant, of a similar shape to Mishkan Tefila’s synagogue centre (3e), but with a German-style gable entrance with narrow round-topped windows flanking a central large round arch over a rose window. It was a predecessor of synagogue-centers. (Gamm 1995:130,145, 148; Kaufman 1995:188, 191). 13. Hadrath Israel, founded in 1908 in Roxbury, first occupied the Elm Hill Baptist Church at the beginning of Crawford Street (east of number 12, later the Hebrew Teacher’s college of Boston), moved in 1914 to Dorchester and bought (13) a building on Woodrow Avenue in 1919. In 1928 Chevra Shas built its synagogue next to Hadrath Israel, extant. Across Blue Hill Avenue the Young Israel congregation, a 1920s offshoot of Adath Jeshurun, established a synagogue in 1930 (Grossman 1981:27; Gamm 1995:130; Kaufman 1995:188–189). 14. Agudath Israel Anshei Sfard, an offshoot of Hadrath Israel, founded in 1915, built its synagogue in 1923, on Woodrow Avenue across the street from Hadrath Israel. These synagogues (13,14), extant buildings, formed a community center with the neighboring G&G Delicatessen on Blue Hill Avenue, and American Kosher Products at the corner of Morton Street (Gamm 1995:130; Grossman 1981:26–27; Kaufman 1995:190). 15. Leopold Morse Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and Orphanage, incorporated 1888, opened 1890, Mattapan St. just outside Mattapan Square in Milton, 1888–1911 (ACB 1891:65; 1899:61; 1907:31; Ebert 1995:215). 16. Hecht Neighborhood House, 160 American Legion Highway, 1936–1960 (Grossman 1981:27, 29). 17. Boston Young Men’s Hebrew Association on Humbolt Ave.,1911–1960, extant building (Grossman 1981:27; Sammarco and Rosenberg 2007:20). 18a. 45 Townsend Street, Dennison House bought for Beth Israel Hospital, 1916–1928, when it was bought by Greater Boston Bikur Cholim, now the Jewish Memorial Hospital (Ebert 1995:225, 227).

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18b. Beth Israel Hospital, 1928-present, 330 Brookline Avenue. The first Jewish hospital to become a teaching hospital for a university: Harvard Medical School in 1928, followed by Tufts Medical School (Ebert 1995:227; Grossman 1981:30–31). 19. Helping Hand Temporary Home for Destitute Jewish Children at the intersection of Fort Avenue and Beach Glen, Roxbury, by 1900 (Adler 1900:283). 20. Home for Jewish Children, funded by Ladies Helping Hand Association, incorporated in 1909, opened in 1911 at Canterbury and Austin Sts., Dorchester. Merged in a few weeks with the Morse Home (ACB 1914:93, Ebert 1995:223). 21. Roxbury Ladies’ Aid and Fuel Society, established in 1895, incorporated in 1896. Apply to Miss Jewell Levy at 112 Thornton St. (ACB 1899:90; SMC 1888:89). 22. Hebrew Ladies Home for Aged, by 1907 at 21 Queen St., Dorchester, supported by the Hebrew ladies’ Moshave Zekainim Association, President Albert Titlebaum (ACB 1907:91; 1914:112; SMC 1888:91,92,93). 23. Men of Shepatofka, mutual benefit association incorporated in 1896, 55 Centre St. (ACB 1899:279). Site locations mapped using Arrow Official Map of Boston and Suburbs, Arrow Publishing Co., Inc., Canton, Massachusetts.

Appendix 2 Figure 9.2 Major Jewish Sites and Communities on the Landscape of Boston Proper, 1843–1930 1. Ohabei Shalom (Polish/German, traditional to Reform), founded in 1843, moved from a room on Carver Street (destroyed house); to Albany Street (destroyed house); to (1) 73 Warren Street, built in 1851 and dedicated in 1852 (destroyed); (1a) diagonally across the street to 76 Warrenton Street in 1863 (now the Charles Playhouse); to (1b) 11 Union Park St. in 1887 (now a Greek Orthodox Church) (Bromley 1902:Plates 15,17; Ehrenfried 1963:357,363; Gamm 1995:132–133; Grossman 1981:7,18; Kaufman 1995:167–168,171,175,195). 2. Reform Adath (Temple) Israel (German), founded in 1854, moved from (2a) Pleasant Street (destroyed house, now corner of Melrose and Broadway); to (2b) 600 Columbus Avenue, corner of Northampton Street, built 1885 (now a Haitian Church) (Bromley 1902:Plate 15; Gamm 1995:130 and personal communication; Grossman 1981:18; Kaufman 1995:170,176–177, 196). 3. Mishkan Israel (E. Prussian, traditional to Conservative), later Mishkan Tefila, founded in 1858, moved from (3a) “a little room in a tenement House” on Oswego Street; to “a small hall” rented nearby on Harrison Avenue in 1863; north to a “fairly commodious hall,” renting the whole building on Orange

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Street in 1867; north to (3b) Ash Street in 1871, where a new “modest frame” synagogue was constructed with “a gallery for the women and school rooms in the vestry” (Daniels 1958:15–16) All these sites were destroyed (Bromley 1902:Plate 14; 1897 Map of Boston Proper; ACB 1899:245; Gamm 1995:130; Grossman 1981:18,27; Kaufman 1995:170–171,175; Whitehill 1968:31,121,123). Orthodox Shaaray Tefila (Polish), founded in 1876, (4a) first met in Paine Hall, extant on Appleton Street, in back of Adath Israel’s Sunday School in Theodore Parker Memorial Hall, 49 Berkeley Street (extant church building with Jewish star in round window). Then in 1877 the rabbi bought (4b) a church building on the corner of Church Street and Winchester, which was used as a synagogue until 1895, when the congregation merged with Mishkan Israel, forming Mishkan Tefila, which moved to Roxbury in 1898. In 1889 the congregation rebelled against its rabbi and rented a room in Paine Hall because he broke Orthodox rules by allowing his daughter to read aloud in the anniversary service for her deceased mother. In 1885 Rabbi Marcus added a second synagogue in the Pleasant Street building that was previously Adath Israel (2a) (Bromley 1902: Plates 15,18; Kaufman 1995:174–175). Orthodox Beth Israel (Lithuanian), founded in 1888 by a group of younger men seceding from Shomre Beth Abraham, bought the Second Baptist church at the end of Baldwin Place and renovated it as a synagogue in 1890. A Hebrew school for girls was held on the second floor of the building (destroyed). A Talmud Torah, the “Baldwin Place Hebrew Free School” for boys opened in 1891 in a building on the south side of the alley, 4 Baldwin Place (destroyed). On the north side of the alley at increasing distance from Beth Israel, were the Boston Hebrew Charitable Cemetery Association, incorporated in 1904, at 3 Baldwin Place (ACB 1907:64), and Congregation Sharai Chedeck, at 5 Baldwin Place 1902–1907 (ACB 1907:356). Many Jewish stores were located on the two major North End streets (mapped), especially Salem Street, nearest the Shul (ACD 1899:204; Bromley 1902:Plate 6; Cole 1902a; Grossman 1981:2; Kaufman 1995:179). The Benoth Israel Sheltering Home and Jewish Dispensary for Women and Children at 15 Cooper Street. The Baron de Hirsch Dispensary for Men was across the street (ACB 1899:27,91, 1907:11, 1914:46; Bromley 1902:Plate 6; Cole 1902a; Ebert 1995:217; Grossman 1981:2). The Boston Young Business Men’s Association, incorporated in 1898, was at 17 Cooper Street (ACB 1899:279). Orthodox Anshe Libawitz bought the former African Meeting House on Smith Court in 1899 and slightly altered it into a synagogue, used until the late 1940s (preserved historic African-American site). In the early 20th century it was joined by two other landsmanshaft shuls, Anshe Stonier and Anshe Zytomir (Bromley 1902:Plate 3; Cole 1902b; Grossman 1981:22–3; Kaufman 1995:179). This is the first African–American church transformed into a Synagogue in the USA (Goldfeld 2009). Orthodox Anshe Vilner Congregation, “the Vilna Shul” (Lithuanian), founded in the late 1890s initially worshipped in a church at the end of Carroll Place;

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then (8a) in 1903 moved to a small apartment at the corner of Cotting and Lowell Streets; (8b) in 1906 moved into the 12th (colored) Baptist church at 43-7 Phillips Street; (8c) in 1915 moved across the street to 27 Anderson Street; and (8d) in 1919 built a brick Rondebogenstil-style synagogue at 14–18 Phillips street (historic site) (Bromley 1902:Plates 6,3; Cole 1902b; Grossman 1981:3,23–24; Kaufman 1995:179–180,182–183,205). Orthodox Beth Jacob synagogue, founded in 1888, called the “Wall Street Shul,” and its West End Hebrew Free School for boys, both at 28 Wall Street. Destroyed with most of the West End, by urban renewal in the 1960s. (ACB 1899:203; Bromley 1902:Plate 5; Cole 1902b; Gamm 1995:134; Grossman 1981:23; Kaufman 1995:207). Orthodox Shaarey Jerusalem, at (10a) 23 Cooper St. in 1899, moved to (8) Carroll Place in 1903, which was renamed Jerusalem Place at the dedication of the new synagogue, and merged with Beth Hamedrash by 1907. Near (8) at the intersection of Jerusalem Place and 112 Salem Street was Civic Service House, a settlement founded in 1901 by young Jewish men, that provided Hebrew, Italian, and Polish newspapers, naturalization aid, academic and vocational classes (ACB 1899:245, 1907:355, 1914:215; Bromley 1902:Plate 6; Cole 1902a; Grossman 1981:2; Kaufman 1995:180). Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, 104 Salem St. (ACB 1914:72). North End Hebrew Free School, offering instruction in Hebrew language and religion to boys and girls, 12 Stillman Street. Located diagonally across the street from Congregation Chebra Thilim in the middle of the block (ACB 1899:203; Bromley 1902:Plate 6). King David Association for Jewish men, incorporated in 1898, 16 Parmenter St. (ACB 1899:279; Bromley 1902:Plate 6). Praner Charitable Association for Jewish men born in Praner, Russia, incorporated in 1888, 27 Prince St. (ACB 1899:280; Bromley 1902:Plate 8). North Bennet Street Industrial School for Girls, funded starting in 1880 by Pauline Agassiz Shaw at 37–39 N. Bennet St., corner of Salem St. (Bromley 1902:Plate 6; Cole 1902a; Henry, Williams and Stanton 1985:1). The Hebrew Industrial School was founded in this institution according to Grossman (1981:2). North End Ladies’ Aid Association, incorporated 1897, President Israel Fish, at 224 Hanover St. (ACB 1899:138; Bromley 1902: Plate 8). Orthodox Shomre Shabbes congregation (17a) formed 1875 and met in a small leased hall at 219 Hanover St. (destroyed), (17b) merged with parts of Beth Abraham congregation in 1885, forming Shomre Beth Abraham, and moved to Cockerell Hall, extant at 287 Hanover St., in 1886, joining communal Talmud Torah established there in 1883 (Bromley 1902:Plate 8; Kaufman 1995:178). The beginning of this number covers the Young Men’s Hebrew Union at 213 Hanover Street (Adler 1900:287). Orthodox Beth Abraham Congregation, (18a) 193 Hanover St. in 1879, (18b) unmerged part moved to 231 Hanover and adopted the English name, the House of Prayer. Both buildings destroyed (Bromley 1902:Plate 8; Kaufman 1995:178).

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19. 170 Hanover St., B’nai Zion Education Society for Jewish young men, with library, debating club, lectures in art, social science, literature, etc. Destroyed (ACB 1899:204; Bromley 1902:Plate 8). 20. Russian Industrial School for Girls (20a) founded by Lina Hecht and Golde Bamber in 1889 at 53 Hanover St.; (5) dropped “Russian” from the name and moved to Baldwin Place before 1899; (20b) 17 Allen St. 1899– 1905, incorporated as Hebrew Industrial School in 1902; (20c) 80 Charles St. 1906–1908; (20d) 154 Charles St. 1909–1921, bought by Federated Jewish Charities; (20e) in 1922 became Hecht House and moved to 22 Bowdoin St. All destroyed except 80 Charles St. (ACB 1891:148, 1899:193, 1907:293, 1914:238; Bromley 1902: Plates 2,4,5; Cole 1902b; Spencer-Wood 1996:441) 21. United Hebrew Benevolent Association (UHBA) founded in 1864, (21a) by 1880 was at 105 Summer St. (ACB 1880:31); (21b) by 1886 moved with the Hebrew Ladies Sewing Society to room 13 in the Charity Building on Chardon and 43 Hawkins Streets (ACB 1886:28, 1891:65; Bromley 1902:Plate 4). By1899 the building also housed the American Committee for the Amelioration of the Condition of Russian Refugees, the Charitable Burial Association, and the Federation of Jewish Charities, the last two both incorporated in 1894 (ACB 1899:89,124; 1907:31; 1914:50; Bromley 1902:Plate 4). In 1900 the Federation added the Free Employment Bureau and in 1908 the first “Russian” member organizations: the Helping Hand for Destitute Jewish Children, the Mt. Sinai Dispensary, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (Ebert 1995:221). 22. Hebrew Young Men’s Star Association (1895), mutual benefit organization, 160 Canal St. (ACB 1899:279; Bromley 1902:Plate 6). 23. Brothership of Birsen, incorporated in 1891, mutual benefit organization, 27 Wall St. (ACB 1899:279; Bromley 1902:Plate 5). 24. West End House, at (24a) 9 Eaton St. 1906–1912 (destroyed); (24b) 45 Chambers St. 1912–1929 (destroyed); (24c) 16 Blossom St.1929–1966 (extant marked site) (Ueda 1981:112–113,115,147; Bromley 1902:Plate 3; Grossman 1981:23). 24a. Near the “a” was the first Jewish Burial Ground in 1735 (Grossman 1981:23). 24a. Jewish People’s Institute, founded in 1908, incorporated in 1909, at 62 Chambers St. by 1914. Maintained Hebrew school for children (ACB 1914:239; Bromley 1902:Plate 3). 24b. Hebrew Ladies’ Helping Hand Association, incorporated in 1898, 42 Lynde St. (ACB 1899:80; Bromley 1902:Plate 3). 25. Mt Sinai Hospital Society of Boston, incorporated in 1902, (25a) at 130 Chambers St. until 1903, moved to (25b) 17 Staniford St. by 1907 (ACB 1907:197, 1914:149; Bromley 1902:Plates 3,5; Grossman 1981:23; Ebert 1995:220). 26. Elizabeth Peabody House, incorporated in 1896, (26a) at 156 Chambers St., moving to (26b) 87–89 Poplar St. 1901–1911, expanding to 91 Poplar St. 1909; (26c) moving to 357 Charles St. in 1910. The Chassidic congregation

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30.

31.

32.

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of Grand Rabbi Pinchas D. Horowitz bought 87 Poplar St. in 1915 and used it as a synagogue until the 1940s. The Jewish Moore’s Market was located on Chambers St., near its intersection with Poplar Street (ACB 1907:54; Bromley 1902:Plate 5; Gamm 1995:134; Spencer-Wood 1996:440). Boston Council of Jewish Women, founded in 1898, incorporated in 1911, at 4 Joy St. by 1914 (ACB 1914:274; Bromley 1902:Plate 2). West End Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 47 Mount Vernon Street (Bromley 1902: Plate 2; Gamm 1995:139). This number covers two site locations by 1899. The Tifereth Israel Association (1870), mutual benefit association for Jewish men, was at 247 Washington Street. At 277 Washington Street was The West End Ladies’ Aid Association, incorporated in 1895, President Harry Gordon, and The Boston Dramatic and Aid Association, incorporated 1898 (ACB 1899:280,90). Orthodox Kennesseth Israel, called the “Emerald Street synagogue,” which included the South End Hebrew School for girls and boys, 15–17 Emerald Street (ACB 1899:204; Bromley 1902:Plate 18; Woods and Cole 1898). South End Ladies’ Society, Independent mutual benefit association, incorporated in 1897, President Fanny Bronsky, 15 Lucas St. (ACB 1899:280; Bromley 1902: Plate 14). South End Hebrew Benevolent Association, mutual benefit organization for men incorporated 1898, 23 Rochester St. (ACB 1899:280; Bromley 1902: Plate 14). Louisa May Alcott Club, incorporated in 1895 by two Jewish sisters and a brother, at 15 Oswego St. (ACB 1907:194, 1914:224; Bromley 1902:Plate 14; Woods and Cole 1898). Boston Hebrew Ladies’ Aid Association, incorporated in 1898; (34a) at 820 Washington St. by 1907; (34b) moving to 995 Washington St. by 1914 (ACB 1907:11, 1914:46; Bromley 1902: Plate 14). Hebrew Association of Janauschek for Jewish men, incorporated in 1895, 138 Dover St. (ACB 1899:279; Bromley 1902: Plate 16). Young Women’s Hebrew Charitable Association, established in 1891, incorporated in 1897, at 157 W. Newton St. by 1899; moved to (37a) Minot Hall at Springfield and Washington Streets in 1900 (ACB 1899:90; Adler 1900:287; Bromley 1902:Plate 25). Young Men’s Hebrew Association founded in 1874 at (1a) Ohabei Shalom. The YMHA was inspired by the adjacent YWCA, defunct by 1880, incorporated in 1882; (37a) at Minot Hall, 68 West Springfield, corner of Washington by 1886; (37b) 39 E. Concord St. by 1907 (ACB 1886:53, 1899:165, 1907:204, Bromley 1902:Plate 27; Kaufman 1995:173). Elysium Club, for men, 218 Huntington (Adler 1900:282; Bromley 1902: Plate 24). Beth Hamidrash Hagodol, Conservative to Orthodox, founded in 1904, located on North Russell Street by 1907, where it built a synagogue-center in 1923 (ACB 1907:355, 1914:356; Bromley 1902: Plate 3; Grossman 1981:23; Kaufman 1995:207).

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40. Hebrew Ladies Sewing Society, established in 1878, apply to President, Mrs. J.H. Hecht, 113 Commonwealth Avenue (ACB 1880:31; Bromley 1902: Plate 21). By 1886 it moved to (21b), the Charity Building on Chardon and Hawkins Streets, where it remained through at least 1914, changing its name to Hebrew Women’s Sewing Society by 1899 (ACB 1886:28, 1891:65, 1899:90, 1907:31, 1914:50). The organization was incorporated in 1895. By 1900 the Hebrew Women’s Sewing Society also had an office in Minot Hall at Washington and Springfield Streets, (37a) (Adler 1900:283). The Women’s Educational and Industrial Union (WEIU) that Lina Frank Hecht belonged to moved from Park Street in 1877, to Tremont Street across from the center of the Boston Common in 1880, to Boylston Street across from Boston Common near the Public Garden in1883, further down Boylston Street across from the middle of the Public Garden in 1890, and further down Boylston Street between Berkeley and Clarendon Streets from 1917 to the present (Spencer-Wood 1996:440) Site locations mapped using Arrow Official Map of Boston and Suburbs, Arrow Publishing Co., Inc., Canton, Massachusetts.

References ACB = Associated Charities of Boston, Compiler. 1880 A Directory of the Charitable and Beneficent Organizations of Boston, Together with Legal Suggestions, etc. A. Williams and Co., Boston, Massachusetts. 1886 A Directory of the Charitable and Beneficent Organizations of Boston, Together with Legal Suggestions, etc. 2nd Edition. Cripples, Upham, and Co., Boston, Massachusetts. 1891 A Directory of the Charitable and Beneficent Organizations of Boston, Together with Legal Suggestions, etc. 3rd Edition. Damrel and Upham, the Old Corner Bookstore, Boston, Massachusetts. 1899 A Directory of the Charitable and Beneficent Organizations of Boston, Together with Legal Suggestions, Laws Applying to Dwellings, etc. 4th Edition. Damrel and Upham, the Old Corner Bookstore, Boston, Massachusetts. 1907 A Directory of the Charitable and Beneficent Organizations of Boston, Together with Legal Suggestions, etc. 5th Edition. Damrel and Upham, the Old Corner Bookstore, Boston, Massachusetts. 1914 A Directory of the Charitable and Beneficent Organizations of Boston, Together with Legal Suggestions, etc. 6th Edition. Cripples, Upham, and Co., Boston, Massachusetts. Adler, Cyrus (ed.) 1900 The American Jewish Year Book 5661: September 24, 1900 to September 13, 1901. Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Antin, Mary 1912 The Promised Land. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Massachusetts. Barnavi, Eli and Miriam Eliav-Feldon (eds.) 1992 A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People. From the Time of the Patriarchs to the Present. Schocken Books, New York, New York.

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BLC = Boston Landmark Commission 1989 Report of the Boston Landmark Commission on the Potential Designation of the Vilna Shul (Interior), 14–18 Phillips Street, as a LANDMARK under Chapter 722 of the Acts of 1975, as amended. Document at the Vilna Shul. BPA = Boston Preservation Alliance 1989 Letter notifying friends that the Vilna Shul interior was designated as a Boston Landmark December 12. Document at the Boston Preservation Alliance. Braude, Anne 1981 The Jewish Woman’s Encounter with American Culture. In Women & Religion in America. Volume 1: The Nineteenth Century. A Documentary History, edited by R. R. Ruether and R. S. Keller, pp. 150–192. Harper and Row, San Francisco, California. Braverman, William A. 1995 The Emergence of a Unified Community, 1880–1917. In The Jews of Boston: Essays on the Occasion of the Centenary (1895–1995) of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, edited by J. D. Sarna and E. Smith, pp. 69–90. Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. Bromley, George W., and Walter S. 1902 Atlas of the City of Boston: Boston Proper and Back Bay. From Actual Surveys and Official Plans. G.W. Bromley and Co., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bronner, Ethan 1986 Beacon Hill Proposed Sale of Vilna Synagogue Assailed. Officials cite a lack of support while opponents say they want to preserve Jewish heritage. Boston Globe 2/3. Document at the Vilna Shul. Bushee, Frederick A. 1903 Ethnic Factors in the Population of Boston. Publications of the American Economic Association. Third Series, Vol. IV, No. 2. Cole, William I. 1902a Institutions in the North End. In Americans in Process: A Settlement Study, edited by R. A. Woods, p. 288. Houghton, Mifflin and Co, Boston, Massachusetts. 1902b Institutions in the West End. In Americans in Process: A Settlement Study, edited by R. A. Woods, p. 320. Houghton, Mifflin and Co, Boston, Massachusetts. Coolidge, George 1854 Boston Almanac for the Year 1854. John P. Jewett & Co., Boston, Massachusetts. Daniels, A. G. 1958 From Ghetto to Temple. In Temple Mishkan Tefila: A History, 1858–1958, by Temple Mishkan Tefila, pp. 15–17. Temple Mishkan Tefila, Newton, Massachusetts. De Cunzo, Lu Ann 1995 Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions; the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1800–1850. Historical Archaeology 29(3). Ebert, Susan 1995 Community and Philanthropy. In The Jews of Boston: Essays on the Occasion of the Centenary (1895–1995) of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, edited by J.D. Sarna and E. Smith, pp. 209–238. Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. Ehrenfried, Albert 1963 A Chronicle of Boston Jewry, From the Colonial Settlement to 1900. Irving Bernstein, Boston, Massachusetts.

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EPH = Elizabeth Peabody House 1903 Seventh Annual Report of the Elizabeth Peabody House: Report for the year 1902. Thomas Todd Co., Boston, Massachusetts. 1906 Tenth Annual Report of the Elizabeth Peabody House: Report for the year 1905. Thomas Todd Co., Boston, Massachusetts. 1908 Twelfth Annual Report of the Elizabeth Peabody House: Report for the year 1907. Thomas Todd Co., Boston, Massachusetts. 1911 Fifteenth Annual Report of the Elizabeth Peabody House: Report for the year 1910. Thomas Todd Co., Boston, Massachusetts. 1915 Nineteenth Annual Report of the Elizabeth Peabody House: Report for the year 1914. Thomas Todd Co., Boston, Massachusetts. Fein, Isaac M. 1976 Boston – Where It All Began: An historical perspective of the Boston Jewish community. Boston Jewish Bicentennial Committee, Boston, Massachusetts. Gal, Allon 1980 Brandeis of Boston. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gamm, Gerald H. 1995 In Search of Suburbs: Boston’s Jewish Districts, 1843–1994. In The Jews of Boston: Essays on the Occasion of the Centenary (1895–1995) of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, edited by J.D. Sarna and E. Smith, pp. 127–164. Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. Glater, David, first President of the Board of the Vilna Center for Jewish Heritage 2009 Personal communication regarding independent appraisal of the Vilna Shul for 1992 P&S, and the real estate market. Goldfeld, Alex 2009 Personal communication by historian and writer to Steven Greenberg. Greenberg, Steven, Executive Director of Boston’s Center for Jewish Heritage at the Vilna Shul 2009 Personal communication concerning the reasons Jewish charitable organizations drew fund-raising ideas from Protestant charities that also solicited voluntary contributions, and the lack of contact with Catholics because of their dominating male hierarchy. Grossman, Brigitte S. 1981 Experiencing Jewish Boston. Jewish Community Center of Greater Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. Goulston, Theresa H. 1918 Letter to Madam President, reporting activities of Boston committees in touch with National Departments of the Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, including her correspondence, as Chair of the Committee on Co-operation and Propaganda, with both Reform and Orthodox sisterhoods, leading to two new affiliations with the Federation. Papers of Theresa Hirschfield Goulston, on her activities in Jewish women’s organizations in Boston, 1868–1919. Boston Public Library Rare Book Department. HBI = Historic Boston, Incorporated 1990 Vilna Shul Preservation Moves Ahead. Press Release for Immediate Release 9/26. 1991 Letter concerning the failure of the Vilna Center for Jewish Heritage, Inc. to meet the $429,000 price for the Vilna Shul specified in the purchase and sale agreement. Document at the Boston Preservation Alliance.

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Henry, Sarah, Mary A. Williams and Laura Stanton 1985 North Bennet Street School: A Short History 1885–1985. North Bennet Street School Press, Boston, Massachusetts. Heidlage, Richard C. 1995 Affidavit of Richard C. Heidlage as Temporary Receiver of the Vilner Congregation. January 30. Document at the Boston Preservation Alliance. Hyman, Paula E. Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women. University of Washington Press, Bellingham. JA = Jewish Advocate newspaper 1907 Concert at Wilna Synagogue. 11/22. Document at the Vilna Shul. 1915 About 800 men and women attended a sacred concert given at the Vilna Synagogue. 10/15. Document at the Vilna Shul. JBREB = Joshua Bennet Real Estate Book 1886–1923. c.1886–1910 12–18 Phillips Street. Bostonian Society, Boston. Photo VW0050/- #00263. JELFH = Jewish Encyclopedia. 1901–1906 Lina Frank Hecht. Complete transcribed 12 volumes accessed at http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/ JESN = Jewish Encyclopedia. 1901–1906 Symbolism of Numbers. Complete transcribed 12 volumes accessed at http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/ Jick, Leon A. 1995 From Margin to Mainstream, 1917–1967. In The Jews of Boston: Essays on the Occasion of the Centenary (1895–1995) of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, edited by J.D. Sarna and E. Smith, pp. 91–110. Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. Kaplan, Barbara, Hallie Pinta, Stanley M. Smith and Michael Liu and Architectural Team 1989 Study on the Feasibility of Preserving the Interior of the Vilna Shul, 14–18 Phillips Street, Boston. Historic Boston, Inc., Boston. Unpublished study. Document at the Vilna Shul. Kaufman, David 1995 Temples in the American Athens: A History of the Synagogues of Boston. In The Jews of Boston: Essays on the Occasion of the Centenary (1895–1995) of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, edited by J. D. Sarna and E. Smith, pp. 165–208. Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. Keva, Bette 1988 New Twist in Battle over Vilna Shul. Jewish Advocate 12/15. Document at the Vilna Shul. 1990

Council Overturns Vilna Landmark. Jewish Advocate 2/1. Document at the Vilna Shul.

Kuzmack, Linda G. 1990 Woman’s Cause: the Jewish Woman’s Movement in England and the United States 1881– 1933. Ohio State University Press, Columbus. Lerner, Elinor 1998 Jewish Involvement in the New York City Woman Suffrage Movement. In American Jewish History, Vol. III, edited by J. S. Gurock, pp. 963–983. Routledge, London, UK. Marcus, Jacob R. 1981a The American Jewish Woman: a documentary history. KTAV Publishing House, Newark, New Jersey. 1981b The American Jewish Woman 1654–1980. KTAV Publishing House, Newark, New Jersey.

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McHaffie, Barbara J. 1986 Her Story: Women in Christian Tradition. Fortress Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mintz, Richard G., board member and past President of the Vilna Shul Boston Center for Jewish Culture. 2009 Email concerning the negotiation of the 1992 P&S Agreement between Richard Heidlage, Temporary Reciever for the Vilner Congregation, and the select Real Estate Committee for the Vilna Center for Jewish Heritage, whose members were Paul Gass, Barbara Hunt, and Richard G. Mintz. 5/22. NBSIS = The North Bennet Street Industrial School 1881 Report of the North-End Industrial Home. 39 North Bennett Street. January, 1880 to April, 1881. Frank Wood, Printer, Boston, Massachusetts. 1886 The North Bennet Street Industrial School. Paper leaflet, dated April, 1886. North Bennet Street School Press, Boston, Massachusetts. 1887 The Work of the North Bennet Street Industrial School from 1881 to 1887. Rand Avery Company, Franklin Press, Boston, Massachusetts. Olitzky, Kerry M. and Marc L. Raphael 1996 The American Synagogue: A historical dictionary and sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, Connecticut. P&S = Purchase and Sale Agreement 1995 Purchase and Sale Agreement between the Temporary Receiver of the Vilner Congregation, Richard C. Heidlage, and the Vilna Center for Jewish Heritage, Inc. Document at the Vilna Shul. Rogow, Faith 1993 Gone to Another Meeting: The National Council of Jewish Women 1893–1993. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Sammarco, Anthony M. and Charlie Rosenberg 2007 Then & Now: Roxbury. Arcadia Publishing, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Sarna, Jonathan D. 1995 The Jews of Boston in Historical Perspective. In The Jews of Boston: Essays on the Occasion of the Centenary (1895–1995) of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, edited by J.D. Sarna and E. Smith, pp. 1–20. Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. SCLC = Suffolk County Land Court 1917 Gertrude Ryan. Docket 6684. Document at the Vilna Shul. Scondras, David, Boston City Councillor 1990 Letter outlining his position in the debate regarding preservation of the Vilna Shul. Document at the Boston Preservation Alliance. Seasholes, Nancy S. 2003 Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston. MIT Press, Boston, Massachusetts. Seligman, Terry J. 1989a Verified Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief against Defendant Boston Landmarks Commission. The Vilner Congregation, Plaintiff, v. The Boston Landmarks Commission, Defendant. Civil Action No. 89-7105. Commonwealth of Massachusetts Superior Court Department of the Trial Court. Suffolk, SS. 12/22. Document at the Boston Preservation Alliance.

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1989b Motion to add Boston Landmarks Commission as additional Defendant and to Preliminarily Enjoin Commission from Interference with the Receiver’s Removal and Transfer of the Ark of the Vilner Congregation for Religious Purposes. The Vilner Congregation, Plaintiff, v. The Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Defendant. No. 85-290. 12/22. Document at the Boston Preservation Alliance. SJC = Commonwealth of Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, nd Order Suffolk, SS. nd Order. The Vilner Congregation, Plaintiff, v. The Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Defendant. No. 85-290. Document at the Boston Preservation Alliance. SMC = Sanborn Map Company 1887 v.2 Back Bay and South End. In Boston, Massachusetts 1885–1888. Sanborn Map and Publishing Company, New York, New York. 1888 v.3 Roxbury, West Roxbury and parts of Brighton and Brookline. In Boston, Massachusetts 1885–1888. Sanborn Map and Publishing Company, New York, New York. Smith, Ellen 1995 "Israelites in Boston," 1840–1880. In The Jews of Boston: Essays on the Occasion of the Centenary (1895–1995) of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, edited by J.D. Sarna and E. Smith, pp. 47–68. Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Boston, Massachusetts. Solomon, Maida H. 1977 Oral Memoir. 3 Vol.s. William E. Weiner Oral History Library of the American Jewish Committee. Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. 1988 Of Sisterhood and Unity: A Framework for Analyzing 19th Century Domestic Reform Networks. Paper Invited for the Seminar Series, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, March 24. MS in author’s files. 1994 Diversity and Nineteenth Century Domestic Reform: Relationships Among Classes and Ethnic Groups. In Those of Little Note: Gender, Race and Class in Historical Archaeology, edited by E. M. Scott, pp. 175–208. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 1996 Feminist Historical Archaeology and the Transformation of American Culture by Domestic Reform Movements, 1840–1925. In Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, edited by L. A. De Cunzo and B. L. Herman, pp. 397–446. Winterthur Museum and University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. 1999 The Formation of Ethnic-American Identities: Jewish Communities in Boston. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge, edited by P.P.A. Funari, M. Hall and S. Jones, pp. 284–307. Routledge, London, UK. 2002 Utopian Visions and Architectural Designs of Turn-of-the-century Social Settlements. In Embodied Utopias: Gender, Social Change and the Modern Metropolis, edited by A. Bingaman, L. Sanders and R. Zorach, pp. 116–132. Routledge, London, UK. Steinitz, Michael, Director of the Preservation Planning Division of the Massachusetts Historical Commission 2009 Email regarding purposes of 1997 and 1999 MHC grants to the Vilna Shul. 5/21. Ueda, Reed 1981 West End House 1906–1981. West End House, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts.

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Weissbach, Lee Shai 2005 Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. WEIU = Women’s Educational and Industrial Union 1892 Historical Sketch of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union. In Report of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, 264 Boylston, Boston, Massachusetts, for the Year ending May 1, 1892. WEIU, Boston, Massachusetts. Whitehill, Walter M. 1968 Boston – A Topographical History. 2nd Edition. Belknap Press of Harvard Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Woods, Robert A. 1902 Livelihood. In Americans in Process: A Settlement Study by Residents and Associates of the South End House. North and West Ends, Boston, edited by R. A. Woods, pp.104–147. Houghton Mifflin and Co., Boston, Massachusetts. Woods, Robert A. and William I. Cole, compilers 1898 VII. District map – Institutions and Meeting-Places. In The City Wilderness. A Settlement Study by Residents and Associates of the South End House, South End, Boston, edited by R. A. Woods, p. 176. Houghton Mifflin and Co., Boston, Massachusetts. 1923

The Neighborhood in Nation-Building. Houghton Mifflin and Co., Boston, Massachusetts.

Woods, Robert A. and A. J. Kennedy (eds.) 1911 Handbook of Settlements. Charities Publications Committee, New York, New York. http://www.vilnashul.com website for Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture at the Vilna Shul. Zucker, David J. 1998 American Rabbis: Facts and Fiction. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland.

Part IV

Gendering Religious Landscapes

Chapter 10

The Dynamics of a Shaker Landscape in Canterbury, New Hampshire David R. Starbuck and Paula J. Dennis

Introduction It has often been stated that the term “Shakers” is derived from the expression “Shaking Quakers,” but the official name for this religion and communal style of living is “The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing.” There were at least 19 Shaker Villages in the Eastern United States, from the first that was “gathered” (formally established) at Watervliet (Niskeyuna), New York, in 1787 up until the present day (Andrews 1963:290–292). However, if short-lived communities are also included, then this figure rises to 24 (Newman 1989:310). Today the Shakers are best remembered for their craft manufactures, charismatic religious ideology, celibacy, and conservative mode of dress. Still, they have been described as a 19th-century reaction against the growing industrialization of mainstream America, outsiders whom they referred to as “the World’s People.” Shaker Villages were located in rural areas where members – known as Brothers and Sisters, Deacons and Deaconnesses, Elders and Eldresses – were highly self-sufficient and where they grew or manufactured much of what they needed. Women were consistently in the majority, more so with the passage of time (Borges 1988), and during the early years Shakerism offered women a chance to be reasonably equal with men throughout a period when men were more typically recognized as the head of their households. The Shakers were also abolitionist and admitted African-Americans and Native Americans into their communities as equals. In the case of Canterbury Shaker Village in New Hampshire, Sister Edith Green was a prominent 20th-century African-American, and Sister Winifer Denbo was a Native American (Borges 1988, 1993). The modern popularity of Shaker craft manufactures once prompted a Maine Shaker, Sister Mildred Barker, to declare, “I don’t want to be remembered as a chair”

D.R. Starbuck (B) Department of Social Science, Plymouth State University, Plymouth, NH 03264, USA e-mail: [email protected]

S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_10,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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(Newman 1989:321). This is a very understandable response to the public’s fascination with collecting “all things Shaker.” But if we step outside the popular subfields of Shaker scholarship – craft manufactures, theology and design – and focus more on the relationships that existed between men and women, then anthropologists and archaeologists have the potential to drive research in new and productive directions.

Shaker Ideology, Duality, and Gender Issues To understand the distinctive nature of Shaker life and culture means going back to the early stages of this religious sect, founded in Manchester, England, in 1747 by Quakers Jane and James Wardley. Known to evoke displays or physical manifestations of their faith, the “shaking” sect anticipated the Second Coming of Christ. It was in 1770 that a young, charismatic woman, “Mother” Ann Lee, became their prophetess and spiritual guide (Campion 1990). Comparing Ann Lee to other women of her day, Flo Morse has asked whether Mother Ann became “the first American feminist” after she brought a small group of her followers to America in 1774. Morse observed: “she [Ann Lee] was an activist in liberating the colonial woman. She saw women in a strong role as the spiritual equals of men. . .. She promised a great reward: salvation. After her death, . . . dual government was established, in which the position of women was equal to that of men. . . .deity . . . is dual, male and female, Father and Mother.” (Morse 1980:99)

Any number of commentators on Shaker culture have wondered whether Ann Lee’s loss of several children at childbirth and in infancy led to her strong views on the rights of women and the virtues of celibacy. But whatever her motivations, the radical new sect of Ann Lee outraged many Americans, not just because she preached equality of the sexes at a time when every woman was expected to be a dutiful wife and mother, but she believed that she represented the second appearance of the Christ spirit, what her followers called “Holy Mother Wisdom” (Newman 1989:304). For the Shakers, there was no Christian Trinity; instead, their early prophetess had raised women to the status of men in all things (Andrews 1963:11,19). And this was incendiary. It led to violent and repeated assaults upon Mother Ann until her death in Watervliet, New York, in 1784, and it caused “the World’s People” to abhor Shakerism during its early stages (Andrews 1963:40–44). As Shakerism took root and developed its central tenets, the Shakers were “Called to Order” in 1787 under the Central Ministry at New Lebanon, New York, and in 1821 Father Joseph Meacham put forth the Millennial Laws, the boundaries by which the Shaker communities were governed (Andrews 1963:54–67). Ideology, expressed as behavior deemed appropriate to either men or women, carefully guided life within this closed society. These beliefs translated into tightly ordered, wellmanicured landscapes, including buildings, orchards and fields, where every design

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or act reflected the Shakers’ devotion to God. Often deemed as charismatic and separatist due to their form of religious dance, their practice of pacifism and celibacy, and the communal sharing of property, the Shakers were indeed progressive for their time in their approach to industry, economy, and gender equality. Both Elders and Eldresses equally guided their followers through the process of self-discipline born of routine and structure (Andrews 1963:255–257). As the Shakers developed their faith, the duality of male and female principles resulted in a built environment that enforced a strict spatial division between men and women during most of their daily routines. It has sometimes been implied that this was done to ensure that no “impropriety” would occur between the sexes, but in reality men and women did not compete for mates. Instead, they worked together in a mutually supportive environment where service to God was uncomplicated by worldly concerns or lusts. The rich 19th-century literature about the Shakers has gender – who does what and with whom – as a very central theme, and for the Shakers, “the root of all evil in the world stemmed from lust and procreation” (Wittenstein 1979:219). The chief devotion and loyalty of every Shaker believer was to God, not to earthly families. Because of the primacy of worship and the desire to achieve separation from worldly concerns, Shaker governing principles forbade “a brother to pass a sister on the stairs, for a brother to go into a sister’s room without knocking, for a sister to go to a brother’s shop alone, for brethren to shake hands with the sisters and give them presents, and so on” (Andrews 1963:178). Though these laws broke down over the years, this structure highly influenced the development of their planned model communities. Later, especially in the 20th century, these divisions between the sexes were hard to maintain, and at Canterbury Shaker Village in central New Hampshire the last few Shaker men were allowed to interact with the Shaker Sisters more fully. For example, Shaker photographs taken in the 1920s and 1930s reveal that Brother Irving Greenwood drove the Sisters everywhere; he worked side by side with the Sisters in manufacturing fancywork from poplar wood; and they ate and picnicked together (Starbuck and Swank 1998). The duality of Shaker spaces was famously manifested by separate doorways for men and women; separate staircases; separate dining tables; and separate work spaces. Brothers and Sisters were not to speak or otherwise interact if others were not present; and only senior Shaker males could become Trustees, allowed to engage in business dealings with “the World’s People” (Andrews 1963:257–258). And even when Brothers and Sisters occupied the same Dwelling House, they typically slept on opposite sides of the long hallways (Hayden 1976:81), with the most senior Shakers residing in between those who were more junior in their faith (Bertha Lindsay 1978, personal communication to Starbuck). There were, however, some curious customs that allowed some associations between Sisters and the Brethren, e.g., assigning to each sister general ‘oversight over the habits and temporal needs’ of the brother opposite her – taking care of his clothes, looking after his washing and mending, providing new garments when they were needed, and so forth – in return for which the brethren ‘did needful favors for the sisters. (Andrews 1963:180)

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In all interactions, individual and coupled behavior was overseen by the Elders and Eldresses according to the gender of the believers. The famous rhythmic dancing of the Shakers was one of the clearest outward expressions of their separate but dually bonded nature, affirming that men and women chose not to function without each other. In practice, Brothers and Sisters came from gender-specific areas of the Dwelling House (Fig. 10.1). They were funneled together side by side along a single granite path, to divide again as they entered gender-specific doors of the Meeting House (Fig. 10.2). Then they marched in circles singing, an ebb and flow of the two genders entwined in spirit – forever joining, forever dividing. As they left the worship, they again divided, exiting through separate doors, to join again on the single stone path, to divide once more as they re-entered their dwelling(s). Throughout the whole, this was a tightly choreographed ballet of the two genders, forever aware of each other’s dependency and presence, yet bound to never come into physical contact with each other.

Fig. 10.1 The Church Family Dwelling House (south elevation), Canterbury Shaker Village. Photo by David Starbuck

This idealized picture of Shaker gender separation was perhaps the norm, but the system did not always function as intended. The last Shaker Sister living at Canterbury Shaker Village, Ethel Hudson, loved to tell stories about Brothers and Sisters running away together, much to the horror of the last Eldresses (Fig. 10.3), who did not want their image tarnished in any way (Starbuck 2004:45). But such was the reality of communities that tried, and sometimes failed, to suppress or sublimate sexual urges. Canterbury “gathered” as a Shaker community in 1792, and its population peaked in the 1860s with a high of 333 souls (Borges 1988, 1993), spread among several

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Fig. 10.2 The Church Family Meeting House (west elevation), Canterbury Shaker Village. Note the two separate entrances for Shaker Brothers and Sisters. Photo by David Starbuck

Fig. 10.3 Shaker Eldresses Gertrude Soule (left center) and Bertha Lindsay (right center) pose with students in front of the Church Family Trustees’ Office at Canterbury Shaker Village, 1978. Photo by David Starbuck

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residential and administrative units known as Shaker “Families.” New recruits and orphans stayed the decline for some time after that. The Sisters generally outnumbered the Brethren by two to one, with a steady decline in both sexes until the last Canterbury Brother died in 1939 (Swank 1999:223). The village converted into a museum in 1969, “Canterbury Shaker Village, Inc.,” and Sister Ethel Hudson died in 1992 (Swank 1999:223). During the two centuries of their existence in Canterbury, the Shaker population enjoyed the benefits of self-determined industry, property wealth, and agrarian labors. Their advance into the market economy was accompanied by a folk legacy: highly prized furniture and fancywork that is still researched and reproduced to this day. The Shaker community found synergy through a collective effort. Shaker Sisters managed the extensive housekeeping industry, the manufacturing of woven goods and of boxes from poplar wood, the supervision and education of the children, as well as the sharing of farm harvesting chores (Starbuck and Swank 1998). Over time, the Shaker Elders increasingly employed hired men to assist with construction, farm, and mill activities (Starbuck 1986:13,35). New male recruits often brought additional skills in manufacturing and the trades as they worked in the extensive mill operations (Starbuck 1986, 2004: Chapter 2). Young women found support in a sisterhood of cooperative life and industry. The collective Shaker work ethic thrived on a joyful working spirit spared from monotony and shielded from the effects of attrition through job rotation. Both Brothers and Sisters benefited from a communal approach where each member was urged to master several skills (Andrews 1963:108), and this no doubt was of practical benefit if someone suddenly died or otherwise departed.

Shaker Gendered Architecture and Landscape The landscape at every Shaker Village was marked by a linear distribution of buildings and open spaces, sited according to spiritual hierarchy and functional class. Detailed maps and watercolors exist for practically every Shaker community (Emlen 1987), showing the layout of buildings, paths, stone walls, and orchards. (The finest Canterbury watercolor map was drawn by Elder Henry Blinn in ca. 1848 – see Swank 1999:21.) Buildings and spaces joined and divided daily activities as well as the sexes. It was the belief of Brother Isaac Youngs of New Lebanon Shaker Village in New York (Wergland 2006; Swank 1999:96) that well-lit expansive design and delimiting paths would free the minds of Brethren and Sisters to contemplate the spiritual realm. Youngs’ addition of stone paths and fence lines guided their movements throughout the landscape – to work, to rest, and to prayer. Dual entrances, mirrored stairwells, pillars, and posts efficiently and elegantly steered the flow within. Even as members were deliberately channeled, orderliness in all things led to architecture that was expressed as graceful, functional, minimalist forms. Akin to the circulation realms of a well-planned city, the environment was easily understood, without conscious attention (Alexander et al. 1977:482).

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Fig. 10.4 A view of the Church, Second and North Families at Canterbury Shaker Village (left to right), facing northeast. (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, July 1857, p. 15)

In Canterbury, which possesses amazing integrity across its 4,000-acre landscape (Fig. 10.4), believers moved out of the central core of buildings of each Shaker Family (the Church, Second, North and West Families) and into a larger landscape that was divided into areas that were functionally seen as male (the hayfields, barns, the mill system), female (herb and seed gardens), or somewhat mixed (the orchards). However, gender clustering of buildings (with either men’s or women’s cooperative work buildings clustered together) “was not a rule or the universal practice” (Spencer-Wood 2006:170). Lines were not always tightly drawn, but it was seen as inappropriate for women to enter men’s work spaces. In conducting many interviews with Eldress Bertha Lindsay, we could never elicit any specifics about the operation of mills or barns because she had never been there when they were functioning (Lindsay to Starbuck 1978–1990, personal communication). On the other hand, she had been there on cleaning days and for picnics with her fellow Sisters when their work was done. Only one woman in Canterbury truly succeeded in transcending the spatial restrictions placed upon her gender, and that was Mildred Wells. Mildred had been placed with the Canterbury Shakers when she was a girl, but she had never made the decision to officially become a Shaker when she turned 21 (Starbuck 1984:78). Instead, she remained with the Shakers for the rest of her life, freely moving between male and female zones. An entertaining example of her freedom of movement was a story she told about how she was able to walk across the muddy beds of the millponds – on snowshoes – whenever the millpond dams broke and the ponds lost

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their water (Starbuck 2004:40). By her own statement, she was free to move among the mills where, by convention, the Sisters were not (Mildred Wells 1980, personal communication to Starbuck). As long as Canterbury Shaker Village functioned as a fully gendered community (before 1939), women were ever-present within the core of buildings, even as men were predominant within the fields and mills. However, the herb gardens within and surrounding the Church Family core were planted and tended by the Sisters, and these provided key ingredients for the patent medicines that the Sisters made in their Syrup Shop. With the passing of the last Shaker Brothers in the 1930s, there was a modest continuation of activities in the fields and mills – using hired men – until the 1950s, but there was no subsequent movement of women into these male-dominated areas (Starbuck 1998:7). In fact, with the Brothers gone, the Sisters began to sell off the more outlying parts of their community, and in the 1950s the Second, East, and North Family areas were sold to Quaker families that wanted to take up residence in the area (Starbuck 1981:30). In many ways, the 1950s saw the most radical changes to the Canterbury landscape because the formerly male areas were largely eliminated from the Village, and male-dominated barns and mill buildings were taken down or sold. The remaining Shaker Sisters – growing older and focused chiefly on their craft industries and on the rise of tourism – were tightly circumscribed within the core of Church Family buildings, where they did accept one man into their midst, Charles “Bud” Thompson, in 1959 to become their first curator (Swank 1999:223). It had become a community shaped exclusively by women, and it was this small community of Shaker women that welcomed the transition to museum status in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1978, at the urging of the New Hampshire State Historic Preservation Office (NHSHPO), they allowed David Starbuck to assemble a team of archaeologists, historians and preservationists at Boston University in order to begin systematic studies of the Village. Similar studies had not previously taken place at any other Shaker Village, and this intensive effort included surface mapping of the Shaker landscape, the preparation of historic structure reports for all of the standing buildings, inventories of all manuscripts and photographs in the Village’s archives, and a small amount of archaeology. All of these activities were seen by the NHSHPO as essential to the Village’s achieving museum status, and documenting every resource was a critical “first step” before the museum could apply for grant funding (Starbuck and Smith 1979; Starbuck 1981). The last of the Canterbury Shakers and their Board of Trustees graciously accepted this outside intrusion into their lives, and the Canterbury community subsequently existed as both home and museum until the passing of Sister Ethel Hudson in 1992. The transition to museum status was thus complete.

Canterbury Shaker Archaeology Archaeological work has been ongoing since 1978 at Canterbury Shaker Village, and thousands of objects of Shaker manufacture, dumps, and archaeological sites

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lie scattered across fields and woods, and along the length of the community’s twomile-long mill system (Starbuck 1986). The built landscape has always been the central focus of our archaeological research, especially during the 1970s and 1980s when all of the cultural and natural features were mapped on 500+ acres of landscape (Fig. 10.5), and when excavations were occasionally conducted as sites were threatened during farming activities on land not controlled by the museum (Starbuck and Smith 1979; Starbuck, 1981, 1990a, 1990b). It was not until the 1990s that systematic excavations were conducted in the Shaker dumps, and at that time our perceptions of Shaker life and material culture began to change. The heretofore faceless adherents of the Shaker lifestyle and faith began to be seen as more complex than we had imagined, and the contents of Shaker dumps began to suggest individualized behavior. Once archaeologists began to examine their trash, the Shakers were shown to be avid consumers of mass culture. Their dishes were attractively decorated, they experimented with many types of patent medicines, they used fancy bone napkin rings and drank Saratoga Congress water, and they consumed Shaker-banned substances such as alcohol, pork, and tobacco. The Shakers and their lifestyle have often been characterized as “simple,” but archaeological evidence at Canterbury Shaker Village suggests they were anything but simple (see Starbuck 1998, 1999, 2004). Many of the Canterbury Shakers of the early 20th century owned cameras; as many as 6–8 Shakers at a time rode together in their Packard and Pierce-Arrow automobiles and in the large motorboats that they operated near their private camp on Lake Winnisquam in New Hampshire; and they even performed theatricals in spaces that had previously been restricted to religious services (Starbuck and Swank 1998). Years of archaeology (1978–2004) have demonstrated that practically every artifact in the Canterbury dumps implies individual decision-making and occasional deviations from approved or expected behavior. While it would be wrong to criticize the Shakers for the choices they made, we nevertheless believe that many of the “popular” books written about them have created an idealized society that never existed. The bland, homogenized, androgynous Shaker is a creation of the innumerable Shaker buffs who want to imagine an egalitarian lifestyle in which everyone was looked after, a type of primitive socialism. But it seems more likely that it is because of the cultural distance between them and ourselves, and the passage of time, that the Shakers have come to be portrayed as sexless and humorless (and not solely as industrious and religious). This colorless image has the men wearing broad-brimmed hats and the women wearing bonnets, modestly covered from head to toe, but otherwise portrayed as indistinguishable from each other. However, it may be much more constructive to view the entire Shaker-built environment as structured through complex interactions between male and female Shakers. Male and female cooperation was assuredly at the heart of every Shaker community. (For a discussion of Shaker households, see Starbuck 1984.)

Fig. 10.5 A plan view of the center of the Canterbury Church Family, as mapped in 1983. The entire Shaker landscape was drawn at this level of detail.

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Canterbury Shaker Artifacts Because Shaker functional areas appear to be defined and delineated in a genderspecific way, we initially believed that it would be possible to examine the artifacts from a particular building or functional area through a gender-specific lens. However, upon closer examination, few buildings pertained exclusively to either gender. The Church Family Brethren’s Shop was used solely by men, and it housed the print shop, the physician, spinning wheel makers, shoemakers, and the farmers. On the other hand, in the building known as the Sisters’ Shop, the Sisters held workshops and conducted musical instruction (all of the instrumental groups in Canterbury were composed solely of women), ran a dressmakers shop, and it housed the women’s confessional. However, the Sisters’ Shop was not exclusive to women because the tailor shop (run by men) was there, and some of the Elders later occupied a portion of the Sisters’ Shop. The bottom line is that we do not see as rigid a physical separation of the sexes as is often implied by Shaker rules or by secondary Shaker literature. Examples of artifacts that might have been exclusive to the male gender would be those taken from processing and manufacturing shops in Canterbury such as the mills and blacksmith shops, and those found in farming areas and hayfields (and from associated dumps). In the fields and barns, it was the Brethren who used farm tools and implements, and who operated the wagons, tractors and trucks, while the Sisters hand-harvested fruit, produce, and herbs. Sisters picked and sorted vast numbers of apples and stacked huge quantities of firewood that had been cut by the men. The historical record and photographs also indicate that Shaker Sisters entered the mill buildings for cleaning after the Brethren and hired men retired for the day (Starbuck and Swank 1998). It is not recorded whether the Sisters commonly had tasks inside the farm buildings, although they were responsible for production in the Creamery, where milk products were processed and stored, and the Sisters engaged in dairying lived upstairs in the Creamery (Starbuck 2004:108). In examining other occupational zones, female spaces included the Children’s House, a Spin Shop, the Syrup Shop (which held the distillery), the Laundry, and the School. (Teaching in the Schoolhouse was a female activity.) It has been observed elsewhere that Shaker Sisters sometimes rejected the idea of taking over men’s roles in the 19th century as the number of men declined (Savulis 2003), but as the ranks of men thinned over time, some activities began as male and slowly evolved into female. Beekeeping and working in the village Print Shop are both examples of exclusively male activities that evolved into exclusively female (Starbuck and Swank 1998). Residential and sleeping spaces were most likely to be delineated as exclusively male or female, although the other gender might enter these spaces to perform their appointed duties, such as maintenance and housekeeping (Bertha Lindsay 1978, personal communication to Starbuck). With the death of Irving Greenwood in 1939, the mill operations closed because this was not seen as appropriate work for women (Starbuck 1986 and Bertha Lindsay 1978, personal communication to Starbuck). But in the years that followed, the

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Shaker Eldresses maintained their vested interest in fancywork and kitchen industries, and in the summertime Shaker Sisters visited tourist areas, such as beaches, where they sold their craft products (Starbuck and Swank 1998). Ever mindful of the economy of scale, Shaker buildings continued to be reassigned or dismantled with the passing of the Brethren, or with the reduction in overall population, thus reducing the community to the remaining buildings that stand today. In the Shaker artifact assemblage that we have recovered since 1978, genderspecific items are not easily distinguished, and there is a lack of distinctive women’s versus men’s items of adornment as one might expect among “the World’s People.” But Shaker culture did not exist in isolation, and in most respects their artifacts resemble those of “the World’s People” at any given time. Women and men lived and worked in an integrated and functionally complex communal structure. They shared all material things. Whether or not we associate artifacts with a specific gender is no doubt a function of our own cultural perceptions, more a matter of what we consider to be “male” or “female,” rather than how the Shakers perceived gender roles and gendered artifacts. For example, when we think of pipe-smoking, we generally think of men. In 1996, we unearthed an extensive dump of redware smoking pipes – wasters – that had been manufactured in the Second Family Blacksmith Shop and discarded behind that foundation (Fig. 10.6) (Starbuck 2000). At the time, we thought of these pipes as made by and for men. But looking back over Shaker history, there were times when

Fig. 10.6 Tobacco pipe “wasters,” discovered in a dump behind the Second Family Blacksmith Shop. The Canterbury Shakers manufactured pipes here, for their own consumption and for sale to the World’s People. Photo by David Starbuck

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both Shaker men and women smoked pipes. For example, a “smoking meeting” was observed in 1826 where the ceremony “united brethren, sisters, and children in billowing smoke as all puffed on their pipes” (Stein 1992:105). And when our team of archaeologists unearthed whiskey and beer bottles in the Canterbury dumps, we initially assumed it was Shaker Brothers who had been secretly drinking, partially because the last Eldresses in Canterbury told every visitor who came through their door that the Shakers did not drink. But with some questioning, it turned out that Eldress Bertha Lindsay and Eldress Gertrude Soule had had wine with their meals in earlier times, and Bertha Lindsay described how “the Shakers made a good deal of wine and many varieties. Some of the best wines are homemade, I think. These were kept under the care of the Eldresses. . .” (Starbuck 2004:46).

Preservation of the Canterbury Landscape While Shakers no longer reside in Canterbury, there are increasing threats to their former home, ever raising the question of “What is the best way to preserve an exceptionally pastoral and intact 19th-century landscape?” When landholdings were sold to Quaker farmers in the 1950s, that marked the beginning of serious alterations to Shaker lands by non-Shakers. Extensive land clearing and plowing in the West Family area in the 1970s necessitated archaeological salvage efforts at West Family cellar holes (Starbuck 1981:199–208), and portions of that outlying Shaker family no longer exist. Much more controversial alterations to the Canterbury landscape occurred in the 1980s when a former director of Canterbury Shaker Village, Inc., was confronted with rising insurance costs and decided to install a massive fire-protection system. His decision-making resulted in the construction of new roads across open fields to permit easy access by fire trucks, and the rebuilding of mill dams on ponds that could no longer retain their water. Not only were scenic vistas destroyed forever, but the new construction looked nothing like the old: Dams and ponds were no longer Shaker-built, and dry-laid stone dams with huge stones, set in place by Shaker backs and Shaker-owned oxen, were replaced with small, homogenized stones laid up largely by machine. While the modern visiting public believes they are walking past attractive Shaker ponds, there is virtually no awareness that what made these “Shaker” ponds is largely gone. The old historic dams could no longer maintain adequate water levels, but in most cases the old dams were completely torn out and replaced with all-modern construction. The latest threat is perhaps the most devastating to the Shaker legacy: It is the construction and continued expansion of the New Hampshire International Speedway several miles away in Loudon, New Hampshire, open since June of 1990, and attended by about 600,000 racing fans each summer. Public protests, monitoring of noise levels, and legal action all failed to block the expansion. When the Speedway is contrasted with Shakers who truly wanted to find solitude and to worship God in a peaceful, rural setting (Fig. 10.7), it is undeniable

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Fig. 10.7 The Church Family at Canterbury Shaker Village as it appears today, facing north across Meeting House Field. Photo by David Starbuck

that “the World’s People” have forcibly invaded the Shakers’ once-pastoral world. Throughout the summer months of racing season, the thunderous engines of NASCAR – always running without mufflers – create sound pollution that is not conducive to quiet contemplation. The Shaker world has been sorely compromised, especially on overcast days when the sounds of the racetrack are omnipresent. For tourists who have traveled for hours to enter the serene world of the Shakers, their arrival in Canterbury is accompanied by the roar of the engines, by traffic backed up for miles on New Hampshire Route 106, and when there is a heavy cloud cover, there are times when every conversation must be shouted. A cultural landscape that had been shaped exclusively by Shaker Sisters since the 1930s, and by male–female cooperation since 1792, has now been overwhelmed by the outside world of race car enthusiasts and by competitive business. It definitely generates nostalgia for the days when Shaker farmers once tilled the land! Modern farming, insensitive reconstruction, and noise pollution are all-toofamiliar 21st-century encroachments upon historic landscapes. Rarely is harm intended, but it is increasingly difficult to maintain Canterbury Shaker Village in its original form. There are no Shakers left today to champion the preservation of their cultural landscape, and archaeologists and preservationists need to more aggressively champion the cause of this threatened religious landscape.

Conclusions Given Shaker religious tenets that required the separation of men and women, we have always considered Canterbury Shaker Village (1792–1992) to be the ideal community within which to examine gender segregation between the roles of men and women on the landscape. But now, a central conclusion of this study has to be that male-female divisions in space and in material culture may not have been as clear cut as formerly assumed. Rather, there was a blending of activities that was far greater than we expected, and there may be very few artifact categories at Shaker Villages

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that are truly gender-specific. True, we have found bottles of perfume or toilet water that probably were used by the Sisters, whereas hand tools and farming implements were most likely male in origin, as were bottles of hair restorer. However, many artifacts appear to be gender-neutral and used by all, and these include such things as patent medicine bottles and tablewares. The last Eldresses of the Shaker Society voted in 1965 not to accept any additional members, and the last of the Canterbury Shakers believed that Shakerism could not exist without its male component and without existing Elders to train potential Brothers in appropriate behavior (Newman 1989:314; and Eldress Gertrude Soule and Eldress Bertha Lindsay, personal communications to Starbuck). It cannot be overemphasized that Shaker men and women depended on each other, they needed each other. However, unlike Canterbury, the last Shakers in Sabbathday Lake, Maine, did not make the same decision to close, and that community continues today. Throughout the history of the Shaker faith in Canterbury, a great many activities had been defined as male, and while women could redefine some male activities into female, they could not or would not take over the areas that required heavy physical labor or the conduct of field chores. Shakerism after all had duality at its core: Jesus and Ann Lee; male and female; separate but equal; sharing with and supporting each other. The Shaker landscape, the separate paths, doors, staircases, and tables for men and women – all of these suggest separation and the desire to keep minds devoted to God and work (hence the famous Shaker saying, “hands to work and hearts to God”) – but we believe that Shaker communities are better described as places where men and women truly worked in harmony and partnership, “The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing,” as intended by Mother Ann Lee.

References Alexander, Christopher, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein, et al. 1977 A Pattern Language. Oxford University Press, New York. Andrews, Edward Deming 1963 People Called Shakers. Dover Publications, Inc., New York. Borges, Richard C. 1988 The Canterbury Shakers: A Demographic Study. The University of New Hampshire, Durham, Ph.D. Dissertation. 1993 “The Canterbury Shakers: A Demographic Study.” Historical New Hampshire 48(2&3): 155–181. Campion, Nardi Reeder 1990 Mother Ann Lee: Morning Star of the Shakers. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire. Emlen, Robert P. 1987 Shaker Village Views. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire.

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Hayden, Dolores 1976 Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790–1976. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Cambridge. Morse, Flo 1980 The Shakers and the World’s People. Dodd, Mead & Company, New York. Newman, Cathy 1989 “The Shakers’ Brief Eternity.” National Geographic 176(3):302–325. Savulis, Ellen-Rose 2003 “Zion’s Zeal: Negotiating Identity in Shaker Communities.” In Shared Spaces and Divided Places: Material Dimensions of Gender Relations and the American Historical Landscape, edited by D. L. Rotman and E. Savulis, pp. 160–189. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. 2006 “A Feminist Theoretical Approach to the Historical Archaeology of Utopian Communities.” Historical Archaeology 40(1):152–185. Starbuck, David R. 1981 Canterbury Shaker Village: An Historical Survey, Volume 2. University of New Hampshire, Durham. 1984

“The Shaker Concept of Household.” Man in the Northeast 28:73–86.

1986 “The Shaker Mills in Canterbury, New Hampshire.” IA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 12(1):11–38. 1990a “Canterbury Shaker Village: Archeology and Landscape.” The New Hampshire Archeologist 31(1):1–163. 1990b

“Those Ingenious Shakers!” Archaeology 43(4):40–47.

1998

“New Perspectives on Shaker Life.” Expedition 40(3):3–16.

1999

“Latter-Day Shakers.” Archaeology 52(1):28–29.

2000 “Waiting for the Second Coming: The Canterbury Shakers, an Archaeological Perspective on Blacksmithing and Pipe Smoking.” Northeast Historical Archaeology 29:83–106. 2004

Neither Plain Nor Simple. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire.

Starbuck, David R., and Margaret Supplee Smith, eds. 1979 Historical Survey of Canterbury Shaker Village. Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts. Starbuck, David R., and Scott T. Swank 1998 A Shaker Family Album: Photographs from the Collection of Canterbury Shaker Village. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire. Stein, Stephen J. 1992 The Shaker Experience in America. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. Swank, Scott T. 1999 Shaker Life, Art, and Architecture. Abbeville Press, New York. Wergland, Glendyne R. 2006 One Shaker Life: Isaac Newton Youngs, 1793–1865. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst.

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Wittenstein, Kate 1979 “Shakers and Society: Theory and Practice of the Equality of the Sexes in the Nineteenth Century.” In Historical Survey of Canterbury Shaker Village, edited by D. R. Starbuck and M. S. Smith, pp. 215–227. Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts.

Chapter 11

The Importance of an Ordered Landscape at Pleasant Hill Shaker Village: Past and Present Issues Kim A. McBride

Introduction Pleasant Hill Shaker village in central Kentucky, an interpreted historic site open to the public for day visits, overnight lodging, and conferences, is a powerful and complex place to visit. As I have explored it archaeologically since the early 1990s, I have observed both a high density of architectural features and some very unusual ones. In this chapter, I try to find a context to better understand some unusual archaeological features at a washhouse at Pleasant Hill and to make sense of its overall gendered landscape. I begin with a brief historical overview of the community, followed by an analysis of the archaeological material and the new insights it provides. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges in the preservation of the gendered landscape. Shaker communities are probably among the most well known of a host of communal and alternative communities founded in the United States in the nineteenth century. This familiarity may in part be related to their numerical prominence, with over 20 communities and over 6,000 active members. Most Shaker villages were organized in three to seven key communal families of up to 100 persons, with from several hundred to about 600 persons in total. Most of the communities were located in the northeast, though a few short-lived ones were in Florida or Georgia, and six long-term communities flourished in Kentucky, Ohio, or Indiana, which was termed the West by the Shakers (Stein 1992). The name Shakers (in reference to the frenzied movements during worship) was not of their choosing, though they did come to accept it. Their official name for themselves was The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. The development of the Shaker belief system and way of life in America (after origins as an offshoot from the Quakers in England at the end of the eighteenth century, see Stein 1992) is a subject too complex for this chapter, especially since Chapter 10 by

K.A. McBride (B) Kentucky Archaeological Survey, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-9854, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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Starbuck and Dennis, this volume, gives considerable historical background, including treatment of the trend to misinterpret the Shakers by an overemphasis on design and select material culture (see also McBride 1995; Treays 1990; Stein 1992). We can perhaps capture some of the Shakers’ most germane and important contributions by noting several key principles in which their communities differed from mainstream Christian communities of the nineteenth century. These include communal ownership of property; celibacy, and gender segregation in many daily activities; a broad conception of worship that embraced everyday actions and especially labor; an emphasis on the public and private confession of sins; and a dual gendered deity composed of a female Holy Mother Wisdom as a counterpart to a male Almighty God, with corresponding dual leadership roles for men and women in the community (Stein 1992). The fact that the Shakers were founded as the result of one woman’s holy visions is probably related to their conception of God as equally female and male, which legitimated the construction of Shaker society with equal female and male leaders, as well as Shaker support for women’s rights. At various times the most influential Shaker leaders were women, beginning with founding figure Ann Lee(s) and Eldress Lucy Wright at the lead village of New Lebanon, New York. Shakers’ contribution to, and involvement in, promoting women’s rights issues has been studied in great detail (Benningfield 2004 gives a fairly recent synthesis, see Spencer-Wood 2006 for more direct applications to archaeology). It was Shaker Eldress Lucy Wright who developed a policy of westward expansion and ordered the sending out of Shaker emissaries to the West, leading to the formation of Pleasant Hill, and other, western villages. At Pleasant Hill, the early leadership was split between Elder John Meacham and Eldress Lucy Smith, but after Meacham’s recall to New York, Eldress Lucy Smith was seen as the key Pleasant Hill leader through much of its formative years, though she shared power with various Elders (Nickless 2004; Rhorer 2007; Stein 1992). The story of Pleasant Hill Shakers has been well documented (Clark and Ham 1968; Lancaster 2001; Nicklass 2004; Rhorer 2007; Stein 1992; Thomas and Thomas 1973). This history began in 1805 when Shaker missionaries journeyed from their founding colonies in New York to the Kentucky frontier to seek converts at the large religious revivals that were taking place in Kentucky. Here they recruited several families and established a settlement at the farm of convert Elijah Thomas. This farm was 140 acres located on Shawnee Run, a tributary of the Kentucky River, in Mercer County, Kentucky. Recruitment continued and in December 1806, 44 persons signed the first family covenant. As the community grew in numbers, more land was purchased and in 1808 they began construction of two log cabins on the large elevated plain they called Pleasant Hill, just several miles northeast of the Elisha Thomas land along Shawnee Run. This was the start of the permanent village of Pleasant Hill. Pleasant Hill grew rapidly and experienced economic success, especially in agriculture and agriculturally related manufacturing, such as the broom industry, and was sometimes referred to as “Mother’s topmost Bough” in recognition of its success (Nickless 2004). Women’s handicrafts, so important in the economy of the

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eastern Shaker villages, were not very important in the west, though areas such as preserve and patent medicine production, with major contributions by women, were important in the Pleasant Hill economy (Clark and Ham 1968). The main families established at the original Pleasant Hill settlement location were the East Family, Centre Family, and West Family, all clustered fairly close together (Fig. 11.1). About a half mile to the north was the Tanyard Family, located at a strong spring which eventually was used to supply water to the main village. About a mile away from the main cluster was the North Lot family (for novitiates), and the West Lot family was located about 1.5 miles away, further downstream along Shawnee Run from the Elisha Thomas land. It was the center of the farming operation, and included a fulling mill, a grist mill, and a sawmill. The Pleasant Hill Shakers bought much property. Our research in deed records suggests that they controlled (though not all at once) over 5,000 acres. Large acreage was crucial to Pleasant Hill’s focus as an agricultural community. Most of this land was south of the Kentucky River, but they also owned some land north of the River. Population peaked in the 1820s, with a membership of nearly 500. The Pleasant Hill community included many converts from Kentucky or other nearby regions, though at many times the key leadership was sent from the more established northeastern communities. Pleasant Hill accepted slaves and free blacks as equal members into its population; records there suggest that 22 of the residents were black (Larrie Currie 2008, personal communication). The prominent Shaker Elder Frederick Evans (based at New Lebanon) published in support of abolition (Stein 1992:205).

Fig. 11.1 The landscape of Pleasant Hill today (photo by Kim A. McBride)

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The second half of the nineteenth century saw a gradual decline until Pleasant Hill closed its doors as an active religious society in 1910. An agreement was then made with local businessman George Bohan that he would help look after the village until the last Pleasant Hill Shaker died, with him taking control of the village afterward. This milestone happened in 1923 with the death of Sister Mary Settles, and the land, buildings, and Shaker possessions were auctioned (Clark and Ham 1968). Pleasant Hill became another, albeit unique looking, small rural community, generally referred to as “Shakertown,” with multiple private property owners. Most of the Shaker buildings were readapted to modern uses (such as the Meeting House converted to the Shakertown Baptist Church), though some original Shaker structures, such as the Centre Family dwelling house, were largely untouched for many years while in private ownership. Luckily, no major new buildings were constructed at the site. Today, Pleasant Hill is a restored conference center and museum which interprets Shaker life and culture, with 34 restored Shaker structures and much open land enclosed by stone and plank fences (Fig. 11.1). I will discuss the restoration process of Pleasant Hill at the end of this chapter. But how can we best understand the overall structure of the Pleasant Hill site, including a high density of architectural features? What are some of the issues in the preservation and presentation of archaeological features? A few examples will be presented.

The Concept of Order in Understanding the Shaker Landscape Today many visitors comment on the peaceful and park-like atmosphere of Pleasant Hill. And if we look at the layout of the Pleasant Hill Village, as shown in the map in Fig. 11.2, it seems very ordered and patterned. The major Pleasant Hill structures are located along an east–west road, aligned in two basic rows on the north side and one row on the south side. The two major streets are oriented with the cardinal directions forming a grid. The large structures, the Centre, East, and West family dwelling houses, are fairly evenly spaced across the nearly level landscape, with no streams or gullies to divide it. The large Centre Family dwelling sits opposite another large building, the meeting house, or church. The village layout clearly demarks the different Shaker families and the central position of the Centre Family, opposite the important Meeting House, corresponds to the higher position of this family within a hierarchy of religious commitment and maturity. The central location of these two structures is probably one of the most constant features throughout the various Shaker communities. One of the most useful concepts for understanding the village is the concept of order, which appears in Shaker writings in three main ways. The first is in describing Orders, as organizational structures. Villages were divided into main Orders, along with a Novitiate or Gathering Order, to which various Shaker families belonged (the North and West Lots at Pleasant Hill). The second sense of order is that religious or other beliefs were often seen as orders from God, or from some other deity (like Holy Mother Wisdom) or perhaps the spirit of a departed Shaker elder. The

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Fig. 11.2 Layout of main buildings at West, Centre, and East families

third sense of order is probably the most germane to the goal of understanding the Pleasant Hill landscape; this is the sense of regularity and control, especially as stemming from obedience to a proscribed way of life. The importance of this sense of order is seen in instructions for many aspects of life, such as set times of rising and retiring, set forms of address between members, set situations in which men and women could interact, and at some points in time for some villages, proscribed diets. These orders were laid out in documents such as the 1821 Millennial Laws (reproduced in Kirk 1997: Appendix). The role of leaders within the Shaker society was in “promoting and maintaining union, order, and harmony throughout Zion” (Article I, Section 2 of Covenant). The protection of Union and Order, in the sense of conformity between all the scattered villages was not necessarily an easy task, and in many instances the western villages were seen as too independent from the founding eastern communities, and not “orderly” or in union with the entire society (Emlen 1987; Stein 1992). A visit by eastern Shaker leaders to Pleasant Hill in 1827 had been occasioned by a lack of adherence to procedures for choosing elders. One elder noted that as a result, “infidelity, pride, presumption, disorder [emphasis added], and confusion took deep root” (Brewer 1986:104). It is apparent that a regular, grid-like appearance of their cultural landscape was very important to the Shakers. Their Millennial Laws of 1821 proscribe that “It is considered good to lay out and fence all kinds of lots, fields, and gardens in a square form where it is practical, but the proportions, as to length and width, may be left to the discretion of those who direct the work” (cited from Kirk 1987:263). NonShakers who visited the Shaker villages often commented on the neatness. Examples include photojournalist Benson John Lossing, who noted after a visit in 1856 that

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“Order and Neatness there held high court with a majesty I have never seen before” (Stein 1992:221), or James Fenimore Cooper, who wrote that he had never seen “villages as neat, and so perfectly beautiful, as to order and arrangement, without, however, being picturesque or ornamented, as those of the Shakers” (Cooper 1828:248). A potential convert noted that “their outward deportment and order being such, that many may be induced to join them. . .” (Stein 1992:55). Pleasant Hill was described by a visitor as a village of “rare beauty and neatness,” and where “every important family arrangement is governed by the clock, and moves on with the harmony and regularity of clock-work, in BEAUTIFUL ORDER [emphasis mine](Collins 1847, quoted in Ham 1955:135,139). While order was itself an important concept in the Shaker religion, order and uniformity of behavior throughout the different villages was also important because it helped define boundaries and set the Shakers off from non-Shakers, a very important task for any alternative society living in the midst of a larger host society (Emlen 1987; Stein 1992:97). Although there was extensive variation in setting and details of layout, Shaker villages shared common features, such as the central location of the Trustees Office and Meeting House, the location of the Centre Family dwelling opposite the meeting house, the large number of large dwellings (as dormitories) and the (orderly) rows of buildings. This patterning can be seen in the village layouts presented by Emlen (1987). Special treatment of architecture was developed to accommodate the Shaker desire for segregation by gender during most working tasks (Emlen 1987 and Boice and Spence 1997 present maps of many villages). The gender issue is especially important since most of the families constructed Sisters’ and Brothers’ workshops as separate buildings on the landscape. In contrast, males and females occupied different floors or sides of a floor in the dwelling houses. Typically Shaker structures designed for use by both genders had a separate door for men and women, while those designed for use by one gender, such as the workshops, or the general public, such as the Trustees House at Pleasant Hill, only had one entry door. Some of these factors may help explain why archaeological fieldwork at Pleasant Hill, conducted by the author since the early 1990s (McBride 1995) and earlier by Don Janzen (Janzen 1981) has resulted in the identification of a very high density of architectural features such as support posts or piers, and foundations. Some proliferation of architectural features (representing structures) at Shaker sites may stem from the above-mentioned desire to maintain segregation of genders during work (thus two workshops where one may have otherwise sufficed). However, an equally important contributing factor may have been the proliferation of single purpose structures at Pleasant Hill, stemming from the Shaker interpretation of an orderly operation and its implementation within the built environment. For example, most nineteenth-century non-Shaker rural farm sites included a dwelling house, barn, smokehouse, and corn crib, and a few other structures, such as a dairy or spring house, maybe an ice house if the family was wealthy. Some included a separate hen house and hog house. Many more single purpose outbuildings were constructed at Pleasant Hill. In addition to the typical kinds of structures mentioned above, the East and Centre Family areas of Pleasant Hill, which operated

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jointly on some occasions, included an incredible array of special purpose structures. These include a garden house, a broom shop, a potato house, a milk house, a washhouse (for washing clothes), a wash mill shed, a bathhouse (for personal bathing), a dry house (for herbs and fruits or vegetables), a dye house, a preserve house, pressing house, a hemp mill, a soap house, a straw and palm leaf house, a loom house, an office, a school house, a malt house, a carriage house, a lime shed, a woodshed, a plow shed, a bee house, a flour house, a machine shed, a wagon shed, a blacksmith shop, a tool house, a scale house, a butcher house, and a cooper shop (Thomas and Thomas 1973, map of Shaker buildings by Mary Lawrence Young, see also Lancaster 2001). Even barns or stables were very orderly, and separate structures were erected as a cow stable, a sheep stable, a horse stable, an ox stable, a hog house, and a hen house. This general trend can also be seen at some other Shaker communities, many of which were recorded by the visits of Shaker elder Isaac Young (Emlen 1987). The Shaker’s communal organization eliminated the duplication necessitated by the typical individual nuclear family organization of most domestic spaces (i.e., every household having its own privy, crib, smokehouse, for every four to ten persons). But, it appears that the “space” gained by the communal organization of Shaker families, their “economy of scale,” was then utilized to construct so many single purpose structures that absolute economy was sacrificed. In this way, the ideology and social organization of the Shaker community is seen quite readily in the built environment. As far as we know, most construction was done by the Shaker brothers. The decision-making process regarding building location has unfortunately not been well documented. The segregating Shaker approach to the landscape can also be seen in their treatment of yards. A statement by a Pleasant Hill Shaker in 1846 is interesting both as a commentary on the large number of small structures being constructed, and in that it (inadvertently) provides a clue that yard landscapes also were seen in a segmented way. Also today the brethren began to lay the foundation of the pressing house (for pressing clothes) in the Centre Family’s clothes yard; and I think before long we will be without a clothes yard (too many houses in it) (Centre Family Journal 1843–1868, Filson Historical Society).

In most non-Shaker settlements, nothing such as a “clothes yard” would have existed separate from other yards or yard uses. The Shaker penchant for physical ordering of the landscape can also be seen in the proliferation of fences at Pleasant Hill. Fences are an integral component of any rural operation that involves animals, but historic photographs show many fences at Pleasant Hill, probably more than would have been absolutely necessary for this purpose. Also, excavations have revealed a multitude of linearly aligned wooden postmolds and stone fence bases across the Pleasant Hill landscape. A Shaker visiting from another village noted in 1847: . . . and they have about 14 miles length of stone fence on their land, they intend to keep on building stone fence as fast as they are able, until their whole premises are enclosed (Prudence Morrell’s Journal, Western Reserve Historical Society).

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The effort the Shaker men put into forming these features probably went well beyond what was required from a strictly functional (or efficient, or practical) perspective, and eventually involved some 40 miles of stone fence, at a cost of about $1,000 per mile (Thomas and Thomas 1973:15). However, when viewed within the context of the desire for neatness and order, coupled with the Shakers’ reverence for labor as a form of worship, the proliferation of fences becomes more intelligible. In addition to the construction of fences, much effort was also given by men at Pleasant Hill to the construction of stone walkways. These walkways undoubtedly served a practical purpose, especially in the wetter parts of the year. However, the Shaker sidewalks are generally wider and more finely constructed (of large slabs of high quality limestone) than necessary to perform their basic function, and they contribute to the overall sense of order at the village by providing a visible connection between structures. It is also significant that these walkways were not restricted to the major structures like the large dwelling houses and large outbuildings: . . . Finished laying a stone walk to the sister’s new shop, a branch of it to the new cellar door, and thence to the pump, and also to the woodshed, and one from the new shop door to the old loom house (Temporal Journal, East Family, 1843–1884, Filson Historical Society).

Such a network of laid walkways is not a common occurrence at non-Shaker sites in this region. The network of walkways suggests a sequence of gendered tasks on the landscape, with women carrying water from the pump and wood from the woodshed into the sister’s new shop via the new cellar door. The walkway from the new sister’s shop to the old loom house suggests that women continued to use both of these buildings and walked back and forth across the landscape between them in performing their tasks.

Excavations The West Lot Family of Pleasant Hill, located about a mile and half from the main village, and encompassing much of the drainage of Shawnee Run, has only three surviving Shaker structures: the dwelling house, the washhouse where women cooperatively washed clothes for everyone in the family, and one Shaker barn where men would have tended livestock, along with several modern barns. The West Lot family had been moved to the main village area. Then the land was sold by the Shakers in the mid-1880s, when they were experiencing financial difficulties as the decrease in their numbers, especially men, had made it hard to keep up with the property and with agricultural activities (Clark and Ham 1968; Thomas and Thomas 1973). About a century later, in 1986, this property became available and was acquired by Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Inc. and reunited with other adjacent Shaker tracts of land. In the summer of 1990, when we were beginning an archaeological survey at Pleasant Hill, restoration efforts were underway at the washhouse located down the hill from the main dwelling house. Washhouses were built for each family at Pleasant Hill, though larger items such as blankets, from any family, were sometimes washed at the larger fulling mill.

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After Pleasant Hill staff removed twentieth-century concrete and wood flooring, I was invited to conduct excavations in the center of the structure where a new chimney was to be built. In most of the structure we found about 1.5 feet of mud and gravel fill. This fill likely was placed in the structure after the sale by the Shakers, probably in preparation for the conversion of the building and its surrounding landscape to a residence. In the center of the room, the fill was just a few inches thick, as it overlay remnants of a number of unusual architectural features, including a firebox opening built of bricks typical of the Shaker style (Deiss 1987), sitting on limestone bedrock. As we excavated north of the firebox we found an enclosure of one course of brick, and filled with rubble. When the rubble was removed from the center, we found a castiron plate, laid on the bedrock and held in place by the bottom course of brick. Two more features, one made of brick and stone with a chamber dug into the bedrock and containing much ash, and one composed of a simple rectangular outline of bricks on top of the bedrock, were found on other sides of the firebox. Some of these features are shown in Fig. 11.3. The following entry in the Pleasant Hill journals helps explain these features. August 8, 1849 We finished setting up a furnace with cast iron plate in the Centre wash house on the north side of the brick chimney. It is constructed after M. Burnett’s plan, the first of the kind that we have ever had. If it succeeds well we expect all the families to be furnished with them. (Vol. 5, Temporal Book B, Filson Historical Society).

Fig. 11.3 Interior of West Lot washhouse after excavation (photo by Kim A. McBride)

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Our excavations suggest that the model established at the Centre Family washhouse (today in ruin awaiting excavation!) was successful enough to be followed and duplicated at the West Lot washhouse. What are these features? Some are likely the bases of furnaces (also often called arches in the Pleasant Hill journals) that were built by Shaker men for light industrial or commercial activities such as making preserves or candles, which women produced in the washhouse along with clean laundry. Also, excavations in the yard outside this structure produced an unusually large assemblage of very plain stub stem smoking pipe fragments (most likely made at Pleasant Hill for sale, two having partial marks of “Pleasant Hill, Ky,” shown in Fig. 11.4). Though we have not found a documentary reference to where pipes were made, it is possible that the pipes were fired in these furnaces at the washhouse, as well as having been smoked by the Shaker sisters engaged in laundry. Smoking was a well-documented activity for both men and women at Shaker villages, including both casual use and smoking ceremonies (Stein 1992:317; see also McBride 1995, 2005; Murphy 1978; Starbuck 2004).

Fig. 11.4 Clay smoking pipes made at Pleasant Hill (photo by Kim A. McBride)

One corner of the washhouse interior limestone foundation contained a break in the stonework, and the opening contained fill soils identical to those we had found covering the furnace features. This finding, coupled with local oral tradition that a creek had run through the washhouse, led us to expand the excavations outside this wall, where we found a thin layer of topsoil and about 6 of sticky clay fill before

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hitting the anticipated bedrock. Removal of this clay fill revealed the remnants of two perpendicular walls (Fig. 11.5). The area where we then anticipated a third wall, at the north end of the building, was disturbed by a modern parking area. A fourth wall to this structure was not needed, having been formed by the outside wall of the main washhouse structure. The walls delineated an addition to the washhouse which was 20 feet on a side and square. A lead pipe was found running through the center, lying in a channel that had been carved into the limestone bedrock. This pipe allowed water from the nearby spring to flow, via gravity, into the washhouse, and the structure had been very carefully sited in an area where the bedrock was gently sloping to allow for this.

Fig. 11.5 Side yard of West Lot washhouse, with shed walls and pipe bringing water from a nearby spring (photo by Kim A. McBride)

Exactly in the middle of this structure was a 6 square chiseled into the bedrock, surely to allow for placement of a square post. These features are shown in Fig. 11.5. We initially thought this post was for a roof support, but now, with more research on the Shaker’s approach to washing, it is likely that the post base relates to clothes washing activities. A copy of a May 3, 1825, newspaper article from the Richmond (Virginia) Inquirer on file at the Pleasant Hill research library says of the Pleasant Hill Shakers that “Their washing is done by a horsepower. . . .” Animal power seems to have been in use at Pleasant Hill, and perhaps also at South Union, the other Kentucky Shaker village, for quite a while. In 1873 eastern Shaker Henry Blinn visited the Kentucky villages and noted that at Pleasant Hill,

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They used the cylinder mills, which are propelled by horse power. The accommodations for washing are rather antiquated, which the sisters seem to understand and were anxious to have them made better. They press the water from the clothes or use the little put out wringer.

Blinn (1873) gives even more detail when describing the South Union washing arrangement: They have used one of the large wash mills made at Canterbury [Shaker village], but when that failed, they adopted the cylinder mills which are much cheaper and do pretty good work. The machinery was propelled by one horse that moved easily around his circle. A little girl was riding on the sweep [the arm connecting the horse to the shaft] and driving the horse. She seemed as happy as though she was in a carriage. The sisters commence washing at about 3 o’clock A.M. & finish at 1/2 p 9 A.M.

Conversely, Eldress Lucy Smith and others from Kentucky were taking notes on laundry improvements when they visited the eastern Shaker villages in 1868. Smith noted that In their [Canterbury] wash house they have a steam engine to boil the clothes with steam, run their Parker wash mill, which they recommend, and to turn their centrifugal dryer which they also recommend (cited from Irvin 1981:316).

This interest in labor-saving devices was not surprising, as washing clothes by hand was an extremely arduous women’s task, and the nineteenth century saw literally thousands of patents on washing machines (Leal 1968). In 1858 the Canterbury Shakers had patented a commercial washing machine (Irvin 1981); examples of Shaker washing machines can be seen at the Chatham Shaker Museum today. The Shakers were very receptive to labor-saving devices in general, and though they typically did not patent inventions, they are credited with inventing many household items, such as the flat broom, or a revolving oven, and making improvements to things like the circular saw (the latter two by Shaker sisters, see Irvin 1981). In the arena of washing clothes, largely a chore performed by women, the Shaker brothers were active in helping with labor-saving innovations, and it appears that this happened at the West Lot Washhouse, with some very innovative designs. After the West Lot washhouse side yard was excavated, we continued excavations around the corner of the building, in the back yard, where an opening for dirty wash water was uncovered along the back wall of the foundation. This opening, like its entry counterpart on the adjacent side, had been buried when the yard area had been filled, altering the previously constructed landscape in the early twentieth century. Out from the opening we found remnants of a stone-lined drain that would have carried the waste wash water down a slope and out of the yard area. These many features discovered under the fill at the West Lot washhouse obviously had research value and they seemed unique. Though perhaps not as up to date as the washing machine or steam system in use at the eastern villages, the West Lot system of bringing water by gravity from a nearby spring, and of the exterior stone-lined drain system, showed great creativity and skill in situating the building on a bed of gently sloping bedrock. The two extant washhouses at the West and East Families, and the ruin of the washhouse for Centre Family, all in the main village

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area, used more traditional means of water collection, i.e., cisterns. Shaker men put in substantial labor in constructing the washhouse features.

Preservation Issues We had a problem, because the West Lot washhouse features were found in the context of a grant-funded restoration project on a tight timetable. The restoration plan was to turn the washhouse into a family guest retreat, and the plans called for construction of a new fireplace and various plumbing fixtures right where the Shaker fireplace and furnace remains were located. This situation created a preservation tension. In most cases our archaeological findings are buried foundations located up to several feet below the modern surface. As they present safety and maintenance issues, they are typically documented and re-covered with dirt. But in this case we hoped for other options. Not only were the remains not deep in the ground, but they were found inside a structure which would give protection from the elements and provide a new perspective on the Shaker’s attempts to deal with the mundane but central task of laundry. Staff and board of directors of Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill were consulted and CEO James Thomas approached the Brown Foreman Foundation about altering the original restoration plans. All parties agreed on the importance of the finds, and the interior was stabilized and fitted with a viewing platform, while the upstairs, which had been a drying room for the laundry, was turned into two overnight lodging rooms. The architectural remains outside the building proved more difficult. The washhouse is about 1.5 miles from the main village, and so hard for the Pleasant Hill staff to monitor and protect. Also, it soon became apparent that the remnant architectural features from the shed addition were weathering once exposed to the elements and the best solution was to carefully document them and backfill the area. A photograph and diagram of these features is presented on an interior wall of the washhouse. Interpretation efforts were more successful in the back yard, where the stone drain was restored (Fig. 11.6). The washhouse preservation and interpretation issues do not end here, however. A refuse deposit located in the back (north) yard of the washhouse, near the stone drain, provided the best collections of mid-century Shaker ceramics found in the entire village, much of which is subject to mixing from Shaker (pre-1923) and post-Shaker deposits. The sherds were fragmentary but extremely informative. The assemblage is dominated by refined vessels such as whiteware and porcelain, with only one redware and one stoneware vessel represented. The assemblage is very low on food preparation and high in service and individual eating vessels. In terms of function, tea wares and table wares (most are plates) dominate. The absence of food storage and preparation vessels might be indicative of women eating meals but not preparing them at the washhouse. This would in fact be expected, since women would be more likely to prepare meals at the main West Lot family residence kitchen about 50 yards up the hill from the washhouse. We can picture Shaker women

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Fig. 11.6 Stone drain at West Lot washhouse after restoration (photo by Kim A. McBride)

moving across the landscape, transporting some meals or snacks from the West Lot family residence kitchen down the slope to the wash house. By the same token, tea could be taken with larger meals or as a small meal or event on its own, and could have a distinct non-communal aspect, i.e., one or a few persons taking a cup of tea as an individual action, as opposed to the group meals the Shakers are known to have consumed. Shaker meals were taken in a meditative silence and with diners separated by gender, but we have little knowledge of “snacks” or light meals. Does the recovery of these ceramics from the washhouse suggest that women eating there may have been a bit less ordered in this case? The other striking thing about the washhouse ceramics is the abundance of decorated vessels. This is at odds with table settings that have typically been displayed at Pleasant Hill, using mostly undecorated ceramics. It is likely that many Shakers had converted to plain whitewares and ironstones later in the nineteenth century, as had most other ceramic consumers. But since at Pleasant Hill the public interpretation is meant to represent the 1840s and 1850s, the display of plain wares suggests a uniqueness in the Shaker material culture that may not have existed at that time. But, plain wares are what most visitors expect to see, given the typical emphasis on the concepts of “simplicity” and “plainness” in interpretations of all things Shakers (overuse of these concepts is noted also by David Starbuck in his 2004 book Neither Plain Nor Simple, and see Chapter 10, this volume).

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Restoration Efforts, the Present Landscape, Archaeology and Interpretation Issues The landscape of Pleasant Hill today is the result of a complex and ongoing preservation efforts, and has recently been presented in fascinating detail by Parrish (2005). From the 1920s to the 1950s, many of the Pleasant Hill buildings had deteriorated to the point of being threatened. Some of the property owners and nearby citizens had hopes for the preservation of the site at least since the 1930s, but lacked the connections or resources for such a large and complex undertaking. Moore (2006) suggests that preservation efforts begun in the mid-1930s would likely have taken hold then except for the untimely death in 1938 of preservationist James Isenberg. Parrish (2005) shows how an unlikely boost came from the loss of several important historic structures in downtown Lexington, Kentucky, just 25 miles from Pleasant Hill, in the mid-1950s. This loss caused concerned citizens to band together and in 1957 to organize a preservation workshop by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, only the third workshop of this type conducted by the Trust in the United States, in Lexington. The workshop was conducted by leading preservationists and its attendees included many powerful figures from around Kentucky. The workshop included a tour of regional rural historic sites, including Pleasant Hill. This tour introduced preservationists of national prominence to Pleasant Hill, and their positive reactions to the potential and preservation need was great encouragement to the Pleasant Hill supporters. What followed were many years of advances and set backs, hard work and visionary leadership to draw in the right combination of philanthropists, financiers, and technical expertise to make the restoration happen. Parrish (2005:75–89) suggests that a major break came in 1961 when, after several failed attempts at funding, an application to the Area Redevelopment Administration (ARA), a U.S. Department of Commerce program to help economically distressed counties, resulted in a loan of two million dollars for land acquisition, restoration, and adaptive reuse of Pleasant Hill as an educational center, recreational site, and museum of Shaker culture. This was quite a coup, as ARA projects were typically for things like textile factories or high employment projects. The Pleasant Hill application had to demonstrate in detail the economic returns to the region, and show that the fees generated from lodging, dining, and interpretive exhibits would repay the loan. A major stumbling block to receiving the ARA funding was that U.S. 68, the main road connecting the county seats of Lexington (Fayette County) and Harrodsburg (Mercer County) ran down the center of the village. The ARA felt that the high traffic volume on this road jeopardized the success of a historic site and the viability of the loan. The preservation team worked with the state and federal agencies to have this highway relocated, just as they had worked with Kentucky Governor Burt Combs for a contribution from a state emergency fund when the whole effort was about to fall apart. Similarly, they relied on connections of later Kentucky Governor Louis B. Nunn with President Richard Nixon when they needed the favor of delaying loan payments. With the ARA loan, and many

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subsequent fundraising efforts, Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill opened in 1968 with six buildings restored. Other structures were restored gradually, with continuing fundraising, until today all 34 extant Shaker structures have been restored (Parrish 2005). Early on the importance of acquiring as much of the surrounding farmland was recognized, and today over 3,500 acres of land originally owned by the Shakers is owned and protected by the present nonprofit corporation, Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Inc. While the restoration has been applauded from many sectors, it has not been without critics. Moore (2006:57–58) notes the 1964 critique of Robert Meader, director of the Shaker Museum at Old Chatham, that the Pleasant Hill restoration was lacking in research. The initial restoration did not include archaeology (which began in the mid-1970s, see Janzen 1981), and important information about Shaker buildings and material culture was undoubtedly lost. For example, the West Family washhouse in the main village was restored as a small conference center. Were there any remnants of the kinds of arches or furnaces we found at the West Lot washhouse in the West Family washhouse? None exist today and we have no records of them. Today most major renovation projects do include archaeology and we are looking at ways to include more interpretation in the yards. Visitors can currently browse a number of sites around the village and request an archaeology walking tour brochure. A permanent exhibit on the archaeology of Pleasant Hill is planned for a room in the highly visited Centre Family Dwelling House circa 2010, based on a very successful archaeological exhibit in a rotating gallery in 2001–2002 and 2005. Interpretive efforts in the yards come with logistical modern landscape issues such as not creating obstacles for lawn maintenance, or safety issues such as not having below grade holes overnight lodging guests (who do walk about at night) could fall into. For example, in several cases we have found building foundation ruins that are nearly flush with the ground surface, and relatively easy to display, for only parts of the buildings. In other parts the top stones have been robbed in some areas so that to expose the foundation creates a deep and dangerous hole. We have recently decided that the best solution is for Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill stonemasons to build the robbed foundations up to level with the present grade. The same has been done with the excavated bases of several stone fences and with numerous post molds and holes that have been found archaeologically and used as a guide for the construction of replacement fences, including the oval fence at the outdoor worship area known as Holy Sinai’s Plain, a very significant site for the village. In this case the new postmolds were offset from the old so as to not destroy them (Fig. 11.7). In some cases the exposed foundation ruins are sufficient in themselves and maintenance consists of routine clearing of weeds and other vegetation (a continual job). In one case, post and rope barriers were installed around an exposed foundation to keep visitors away from a potentially dangerous elevation drop. It is clear that more could be done in terms of interpretation, but resources are limited, especially given the huge costs of maintaining the 34 restored Shaker structures.

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Fig. 11.7 Fence at Holy Sinai’s Plain outdoor worship area after restoration (photo by Kim A. McBride)

Conclusion At the beginning of this chapter I talked about the desire to enhance our understanding of some unusual architectural features found at the Pleasant Hill Shaker site, including the general high density of these kinds of features. I have suggested that an understanding of the Shakers’ approaches to community living and organization, including their focus on labor as worship, their propensity to innovate, and the importance of order are all useful in this endeavor. Order especially was an important concept for the Shakers, and also for other utopian communities, as evidenced by the name of one such community, Orderville (Berry 1992:77). It seems especially appropriate to try to connect our interpretations of the Shakers’ built environment with their own writings. The Shakers themselves made connections between their belief systems and villages, seeing their labors as an attempt to create Heaven on Earth. Many years ago archaeologist Mark Leone (1981) criticized the interpretations at Pleasant Hill, especially the emphasis on efficiency. His perspective mourned the loss of opportunity for a more critical undertaking, and for asking questions such as “If they were that different and we both come from the American past, how did we get to be so different from them?” (Leone 1981:312). As noted by Alison Wylie in her 1985 article “Putting Shakertown Back Together: Critical Theory in Archaeology,” Leone in subsequent works further fleshed out his perspective of

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an “emancipatory” agenda, in which hidden ideological assumptions are raised to surface awareness. In this agenda, ideas normally taken as “givens of everyday life, unnoticed, taken for granted, and activated and reproduced in use” are analyzed and exposed for critical evaluation (Leone et al. 1987:284). I have suggested elsewhere (McBride 1995) that the implementation of such an agenda at Pleasant Hill would be a most complex (though not necessarily undesirable) undertaking. The peaceful feeling a visitor encounters at the park-like landscape of Pleasant Hill (often commented on) is of course artificial, as the many small outbuildings and work areas discussed in this chapter are no longer extant. The Pleasant Hill restoration leaders clearly had their own agenda of creating a retreat-like conference center that would attract visits and repeat visits, and be economically profitable and stimulate the local Mercer County economy (a requirement of their founding grant, see above). The present landscape expresses the restoration agenda as much as anything (see Moore 2006 for this point about all the Shaker restorations). But as I argued in 1995, and still believe, the present limitations of the restored and simplified landscape have one advantage in making it easier to direct attention to the concept of Order, justifiable because the concept was so important to the Shakers. In doing this we at least encourage conversations about what the Shakers believed, such as the roles of men and women, boys and girls in this society, versus the chairs and wooden boxes the Shakers are famous for (Andrews 1953; Treays 1990). The more the Shaker beliefs are examined, the better is the visitor’s appreciation of the complexity of the American past(s), their awareness that myriad alternatives to mainstream capitalist society existed, and their understanding that the present is not so much a natural or inevitable outcome of a vague, distant, and impersonalized past, but rather a more interesting outcome of struggles, successes, failures, and accommodations by individuals and groups, some of whom you get to learn about at historic sites.

References Andrews, Edward Deming 1953 The People Called Shakers. Oxford University Press, Oxford, expanded edition in 1963 by Dover Publications, New York. Benningfield, Wendy R. 2004 Appeal of the Sisterhood: The Shakers and the Woman’s Rights Movement. Ph.d. dissertation, University of Kentucky, Lexington. Berry, Brian J. 1992 America’s Utopian Experiments: Communal Havens from Long-Wave Crises. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire. Blinn, Henry 1873 Journey to Kentucky in the Year 1873. Manuscript journal at the Western Reserve Historical Collection, reprinted in Shaker Quarterly 5 and 6, 1965–1966. Boice, Martha, Dale Covington, and Richard Spence 1997 Maps of the Shaker West. Knot Garden West, Dayton, Ohio.

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Brewer, Priscilla J. 1986 Shaker Communities, Shaker Lives. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire. Clark, Thomas D. and F. Gerald Ham 1968 Pleasant Hill and its Shakers. Pleasant Hill Press, Harrodsburg, Kentucky. Collins, Lewis 1847 Historical Sketches of Kentucky. F. A and U. P. James, Cincinnati, Ohio. Cooper, James Fenimore 1828 Notions of the Americans: Picked up by a Travelling Bachelor (2 vols). Henry Colburn, London. Deiss, Ron 1987 Shaker Bricks Types from South Union, Kentucky. Proceedings of the Symposium on Ohio Valley Urban and Historic Archaeology V:90–95. Archeology Program, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky. Emlen, Robert P. 1987 Shaker Village Views: Illustrated Maps and Landscape Drawings by Shaker Artists of the Nineteenth Century. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire. Ham, Francis Gerald 1955 Pleasant Hill: A Century of Shakerism, 1805–1910. M.A. thesis, University of Kentucky, Lexington. Irvin, Helen Deiss 1981 The Machine in Utopia: Shaker Women and Technology. Women’s Studies International Quarterly 4:313–319. Janzen, Donald E. 1981 The Shaker Mills on Shawnee Run: Historical Archaeology at Shakertown at Pleasant Hill, Mercer County, Kentucky. Pleasant Hill Press, Harrodsburg, Kentucky. Kirk, John T. 1997 The Shaker World: Art, Life, Belief. Harry N. Abrams, New York. Lancaster, Clay 2001 Pleasant Hill – Shaker Canaan in Kentucky: An Architectural and Social Study. Warwick Publications, Salvisa, Kentucky. Leal, Ronald 1968 Rub A Dub: A Short History of Home Laundry. Mankind 1(10):50–54. Leone, Mark P. 1981 The Relationship between Artifacts and the Public in Outdoor History Museums. In The Research Potential of Anthropological Museum Collections, edited by A. M Cantwell, N. Rothschild, and J. B. Griffin, pp. 301–313. New York Academy of Sciences, New York. Leone, Mark P., Parker Potter, Jr. and Paul A. Shackel 1987 Toward a Critical Archaeology. Current Anthropology 28(3):283–302. McBride, Kim A. 1995 Archaeology at the Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill: Rediscovering the Importance of Order. In Historical Archaeology in Kentucky, edited by K. A. McBride, W. S. McBride, and D. Pollack, pp. 391–408. Frankfort, Kentucky.

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2005 Lessons from Two Shaker Smoking Pipe Fragments. In Unlocking the Past: Celebrating Historical Archaeology in North America, edited by L. A. De Cunzo and J. H. Jameson, Jr., pp. 136–138. University of Florida Press, Gainesville. Moore, William D. 2006 Interpreting the Shakers: Opening the Villages to the Public, 1955–1965. CRM Journal 3(1):449–469. Murphy, James 1978 Shaker Reed 48–52.

Stem

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Nickless, Karen Kay 2004 “A Good Faithful Sister”: The Shaker Sisters of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, Columbia. Parrish, Thomas 2005 Restoring Shakertown: The Struggle to Save the Historic Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. University of Kentucky Press, Lexington. Rhorer, Marc A. 2007 Believers in Dixie: A Cultural Geography of the Kentucky Shakers. Ph.d. dissertation, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton. Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. 2006 A Feminist Theoretical Approach to the Historical Archaeology of Utopian Communities. Historical Archaeology 40(1):152–185. Starbuck, David 2004 Neither Plain nor Simple: New Perspectives on the Canterbury Shakers. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire. Stein, Stephen J. 1992 The Shaker Experience in America. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. Thomas, Sam W. and James C. Thomas 1973 The Simple Spirit. Pleasant Hill Press, Harrodsburg, Kentucky. Treays, Jane, director and producer 1990 I Don’t Want to Be Remembered as a Chair. Documentary produced for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Wylie, Alison 1985 Putting Shakertown Back Together: Critical Theory in Archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 4:133–147.

Shaker Journals Cited Most Shaker journal entries have been cited from notes on file or complete copies of journals at the research library at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, Inc. Locations of originals are provided below. Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky Centre Family Journal, Pleasant Hill, 1843–1868

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The Importance of an Ordered Landscape at Pleasant Hill Shaker Village Vol. 5, Temporal Journal Book B Western Reserve Historical Society Shaker Collection, Cleveland, Ohio Journal of Trip to West taken by Prudence Morrell and Elissa Share, Reel 6 Journey to Kentucky in the Year 1873, by Henry C. Blinn

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Chapter 12

A Chinese Temple in California, Lost and Found Roberta S. Greenwood

Introduction Cambria is a small town on the central California coast (Fig. 12.1). Originally part of the property of Mission San Miguel, the lands became available for private ownership through the land-grant system after the Missions were secularized in 1834. Gradually, the first grantees lost, subdivided, or sold their claims, and by the mid-1860s, land speculation was rampant. By 1880, Cambria, then known as a Slabtown, because many of its buildings were made of the rough wood from the local lumber resources, was the second largest town in San Luis Obispo County. Early industries supporting the growth included cinnabar mining, land sales, lumbering, dairying, grain and orchard farming, and raising beef cattle. By the 1870s, there were Chinese immigrants in the vicinity, engaged in mining and fishing. As late as 1920, there were only 330 residents, occupied as hotelkeepers, hardware store and garage proprietors, blacksmiths, and purveyors of meat and cheese (Merchants 2004:n.p.). The Chinese temple in Cambria, which served both social and religious uses, exemplifies a cooperative agreement in its location and construction, an ethnic monument, a designed historical landscape, and a reflection of an almost totally male community. While its period of significance was limited to a span between the 1880s and about 1920 when the Chinese abandoned the area, it has been restored to live again as a successful story in historic preservation and public interpretation.

Chinese Immigration to California It is not clear when Chinese first came to the central coast of California. Chinese fishing camps had been established along the southern beaches of the Pacific, and R.S. Greenwood (B) Greenwood and Associates, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272, USA e-mail: [email protected]

S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_12,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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Fig. 12.1 Location of Cambria and Vicinity

an abalone camp was present in Baja California in the early 1850s. No Asian individuals were enumerated on the 1860 Census for San Luis Obispo County, although there were Chinese fishermen in Monterey as early as 1854 who may well have ventured south along the coastline (Wey 1988). Yet by 1869, Chinese produce worth $3,000 was shipped from the nearby port of San Simeon (Angel 1883:331), and Chinese fishermen had been on board an unfortunate vessel that sank off the coast in the same year. In 1870, 49 Chinese men were listed in the census district, one explicitly in Cambria. This was Sam Su, a youth of 13 years. The others were in a loosely defined area around Arroyo Grande 49 miles to the south (Fig. 12.1), where the 34 Chinese men included 13 fishermen, together with cooks, domestic laborers, laundrymen, and one sheepherder. At and around Avila, 44 miles from Cambria, the 14 Chinese men included 8 fishermen. In 1880, 61 Chinese were named in the general vicinity, 58 men and 3 women. Some worked in the local quicksilver mines, yet most of the men relied on maritime resources for their livelihood. The large number of Chinese immigrants, a growing nativism, and fears of competition in the labor market prompted a series of restrictive actions. The depletion

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of readily available ores in the waning years of the California Gold Rush, commercial depression in the 1860s, and completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 led to general unemployment and rising anti-Chinese sentiment (Miller 1974:4). As early as 1868, the Burlingame-Seward Treaty upheld a decision not to allow the nationalization of Chinese as US citizens. In 1869, the Los Angeles News warned that the arrival of Asian workers would relegate the American middle class “back to a brutish, mere physical existence.” The paper claimed that the immigrants were “too frugal, too efficient and too hard-working” for the Americans to compete with (Zesch 2008:126). The Page Law of 1875, promoted to discourage prostitution (Tsai 1983:19), made it a felony to import women for that purpose. The enactment resulted in stopping female immigration temporarily (Sandmeyer 1991:81, 85). It not only deterred female Asian immigrants but actually impeded family formation and the growth of Chinese communities in the United States for decades (Joyner 2005:67). The laws that limited citizenship, such as the Burlingame-Seward Treaty of 1868, were used as a basis by California and other states to forbid land ownership to Chinese and other Asian immigrants. As an illustration of the extent of discriminatory restrictions on Chinese business, San Francisco imposed higher licensing fees on laundries that did NOT own horse-drawn vehicles, a category that included most of the Chinese (Sandmeyer 1991:40–56), and enacted an 1870 ordinance that outlawed the traditional custom of carrying baskets on shoulder poles as an obstruction of traffic (Siu 1987:51). The Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years, exempting teachers, students, merchants, and travelers who could present a certificate from the Chinese government. It permitted those Chinese already in this country to remain, travel abroad, and return, but continued to prohibit the naturalization of Chinese. In 1882, 1884, and 1885, Los Angeles even attempted to pass an ordinance that would have excluded all Chinese from city limits (Feldman 2007:529). The Scott Act of 1888 attempted to preclude the reentry of Chinese laborers who had visited their homeland by rendering void the certificates they had secured to assure their lawful return. This policy was superseded by the even more restrictive Geary Act of 1892. Chinese laborers already here could still travel to the homeland and return, but all were required to register and obtain a certificate within 1 year to prove their right to be in the United States. Otherwise they were subject to imprisonment or deportation. All prior enactments related to immigration were extended for another 10 years. The Chinese, who were not being served in San Francisco hospitals, petitioned to organize their own hospital in 1892, but the Board of Health denied permission because such an institution would be “a danger to the surrounding neighborhood” (Chow et al. 2007:72). In 1893, Tucson attempted to segregate its Chinese population, but did not succeed in requiring all Chinese to carry a photo ID that certified their residences (Chang 2008:6). The Immigration Act of 1917, also known as the Barred Zone Act, barred immigration to persons living within a specific set of global boundaries – which included China. The Alien Land Law of 1920 prohibited aliens from holding land in guardianship for their children who were citizens, and if an alien contributed any

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part of the money used to purchase land, that property would automatically be forfeited to the state. In 1921, the Immigration Quota Act limited immigration to 3% of the total number of people from a specific country as listed in the 1910 census. At the Angel Island Immigration Station, women were more likely to be detained than men (Barde and Bobonis 2007:103). The National Origins Act that followed in 1924 set specific quotas that discriminated against Asians as “aliens ineligible to citizenship” (Joyner 2005:67–69). Other restrictive acts followed, and it was not until 1943, when China and the United States were allies during World War II, that some of the restrictions and quotas were lifted, and the right to naturalization granted. Numerous other laws continued to restrict immigration until 1965. The Exclusion Laws were partly responsible for the decline in Asian populations in California, along with growing competition from Euro-Americans in the fishing industry (Nash 1973). In the late 1800s, partly fueled by national economic depression, anti-Chinese sentiment ran strong and many Chinese were shipped out of Arroyo Grande on railroad cars (McDannold 2000:67). By the Federal Census of 1900, there were only 12 Chinese men still in Cambria, with an average age of 37.7 years, and one woman. The men gave their occupations as fishermen – 6; cooks – 2; day laborers – 3; and gardener – 1. Que Lee, the only woman, was also known as Chinese Mary. She was born in Canton in 1846, listed her occupation as fisherwoman, and housed a male Chinese boarder. Her presence can only be confirmed from the late 1890s until her death in 1908. Local residents recalled that although the census reported that she could not speak, read, or write English, she was friendly to the local children, and looked after the Chinese men in the community, many still in their teens (Hamilton 1974:92). That the Chinese population in Cambria was nearly all male was typical of historical Chinese settlements in California. In most families, only the men came to America (Hsu 2000:116). The exclusion laws that served to restrict the arrival of women were not the only reason. Essentially, the men came to earn money to send back to their families at home, and few could afford even a concubine, much less a wife (Khaw-Posthuma 2002:265). There were few employment opportunities here for women, other than prostitution. Further, it was an old tradition, behind the custom of foot-binding, that a reputable Chinese woman did not leave her home, even with her husband (Tsai 1983:17). Separated families were thus common among Chinese Americans, a result of custom and culture as well as the Page Law (Chung 2002:228).

The Seaweed Trade As early as the Tang period (A.D. 618–907), the algae of the Chinese coastal waters had played an important part in the Chinese diet. In early-18th-century Peking (now Beijing), high quality edible seaweed was the second most costly of vegetable products, second only to honey and more expensive than the equivalent unit (chin) of grapes, cherries, pork, or mutton (Chang 1977:260–261). Later, during the austerity regime imposed by the revolutionary ideology of the 1920s, the

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Communist Peasants Association in Hunan identified kelp as one of the dishes too sumptuous to serve at feasts (Chang 1977:15). It was largely used to make soup in China (Lydon 1985:38), while in Cambria, the Euro-Americans toasted the leaves for use as a condiment, or used them fresh in soups and salads (Hamilton 1974:98). Ulva is a genus of the Family Ulvaveae, Phylum Chlorophyta, an alga that lives primarily attached to rocks in the low-to-middle intertidal zone, in nutrient-rich water. It is commonly called sea lettuce or green laver, and the shapes vary from round or oval to long and narrow, with leaves as long as 65 cm. The type specimen is very rich nutritionally, containing 15% protein, 50% sugar and starch, less than 1% fat, and 11% water when dried. It is very high in iron, iodine, aluminum, manganese, nickel, vitamins A, B1, and C, plus a host of minerals and trace elements (MBRI). The plant thrives on rocks that are exposed to sun and washed by tidal waters within a limited temperature range. It might actually be considered as a cultivar, since specific varieties considered the most desirable, such as the sea lettuce, or Ulva, were allowed to grow, while competing species of algae were eradicated so that the preferred variety could achieve maximum growth (Hamilton 1974:86).

Cambria On the central coast of California, Chinese men were engaged in the abalone and seaweed trade by the 1850s. The rocky shoreline below the bluffs, some 10 miles west of Cambria, was an ideal environment for seaweed, while the level grassy surface above provided space and sunlight for drying the leaves and baling the crop for shipment. During the optimum harvest season or when their attention was needed to clean the rocks, Chinese fishermen lived in isolated shelters along the coast. Distance from the nearest competitor and the availability of a suitable area for processing the crop would influence their choice of where to settle. Since Ulva grows in patches as much as 1 mile long, such camps were apt to be about 5 miles apart, to provide a catchment for each man adequate to provide his livelihood (Young 2002:159). One such entrepreneur was Wong How, whose life story and crude cabin (Fig. 12.2) have been subject to historical and architectural research (Greenwood et al. 2001; Greenwood and Slawson 2008). Born in the Canton area of China in 1895, he came to this country in 1909. Because his father had been born in California, he was able to enter the country legally as the son of a US citizen. From San Francisco, he came south to join his cousin, John Chin, who had already established a presence and a dwelling in Cambria. Although Chin claimed to own the house on the 1920 Census, the possession was not formalized in title or deed, but rather, was an example of squatter’s rights to a tiny parcel of land. Since Chin could not be nationalized, the restrictive enactments precluded legal ownership. He gave the enumerator his occupation as fisherman. The dwelling they shared still stands on the bluff, although in perilous condition. It was composed of three rectangular, one-story sections built of vertical

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Fig. 12.2 Home of Wong How. Photo by R. S. Greenwood, 2004

redwood planks with shingled gable roofs. With board-and-batten cladding, they represent successive additions to an original one-room core structure. On inspection, it became very apparent that the builders had no training in carpentry, and the dwelling simply grew by accretion as more space was needed. The structure incorporates a variety of recycled building materials, such as flattened cooking oil cans, Chinese newspapers, and scrap lumber, and illustrates improvised solutions to the problems of security, insulation against weather and vermin, and the provision of natural light. It never had running water (Greenwood et al. 2001). It would be a 10-mile trip for Wong How to visit the temple. Wong How would have been busiest at the coast in November and December when the rocks were cleared of other growth and in April and May when the leaves were gathered by hand. He carried them up the slope in conical baskets attached to a pole on his shoulders, and spread them on the level grassland where they could be cleaned, dried, and baled (Greenwood and Slawson 2008:69). Between seasons, when the weather was inclement, or merely for the sake of sociability, he would have joined the other men who often retreated from the open coast to Cambria. Social contact would be particularly welcome for those who worked alone, in both geographic and cultural isolation. There, they could enjoy interaction with their countrymen, converse in their native language, write letters home, share information, buy groceries, celebrate holidays, gamble, cook, and smoke opium Wong How, like other men in California before and after him, had left his wife and children behind in the homeland. In most families, only the men came

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to America, resulting in a profound disproportion in gender. In 1900, only 0.7% of the 1,250 Chinese immigrants were women, and as late as the 1960s, most of the Chinese men in the United States still lived without wives or children (Hsu 2000:93,97,116), one result of the 1875 Page Law (Chung 2002:228). Perceived and institutionalized limits on social, economic, and political mobility, combined with kinship and place of birth networks, reinforced the importance of places and events where the men would gather. The Lunar New Year holidays were especially festive and about 50 or 60 Chinese – presumably men – were said to come in from the coast to the Cambria center to celebrate and feast (Lyons, pers. comm. 2001). Pigs and chickens were purchased from the local townspeople and roasted above ground in a barbecue or in a cylindrical cooker. These features were a common component in Chinese sites. They were typically oval in shape with an open extension at the base serving as an air vent and place to add fuel. A surviving example in Fiddletown, 301 miles north of Cambria, is an oval brick structure with a draft or clean-out near the base. Such features were usually located in a communal or peripheral area, as though not intended for domestic cooking by a single household (Maniery 2001). The local example was on the creek side of the occupation area. From a photograph, it is apparent that it was made of stone coated with cement or plaster (Hamilton 1999:110). The food would be laid out on a long table in front of the temple, with rice wine and gambling included as part of the day-long festivities. The Sanborn maps illustrate the growth of the Chinese enclave in Cambria, with the earliest for this area depicting three dwellings and a Chinese laundry with a drying platform present in 1886. The cabins were clustered within an area no greater than 50 feet square, on an undivided lot 285 feet back from (south of) Centre Street, and a second laundry with a drying platform was mapped across a roadway that would later become Bridge Street. At the time, the former property was owned by Abraham and Johanna Gans, whose lot and dwelling fronted on Centre Street. Gans was a local merchant. Since the Chinese purchased staples and supplies from his and one other local store, sometimes on credit, it is possible that Gans allowed them to live on the southern end of his land both to encourage their trade and to keep an eye on those who owed him money. None of their shelters has survived, and it can only be assumed that the Chinese men built their own cabins, and that the methods and materials would be comparable to those that can be observed in the joss house. By 1895 (Fig. 12.3), the laundry had been enlarged, and the “Chinese Joss Ho” (temple) was present. By the time the Sanborn map was redrawn in 1913, the joss house had been relocated, or a different one built, or perhaps the artist simply recorded the old one slightly differently, and two additional “Chine Cabins” are depicted.

The Temple The so-called joss house or temple appears in historical photographs as a one-room structure with a porch and a parapet, or false front (Fig. 12.4). A large carved and painted wooden sign once hung horizontally over the entrance. Half of this, which

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Fig. 12.3 Temple in 1895

Fig. 12.4 Temple in 1925

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had been preserved as part of the sink drain board in a neighbor’s house, bears the date 1899. This may not denote the date of the temple’s construction, since this or a predecessor was already in place on the 1895 Sanborn map. It may designate the original or a subsequent dedication to Wu, a military reference to Guandi (or, Kuan Ti, Kuan Kung, or Kuan Yu). Guandi was a real person living from A.D. 161 to A.D. 219, later regarded as the god of war and also the patron of brotherhoods, literature, and financial matters (Williams 1976:211–212). The Mendocino temple is also dedicated to this deity. Usually depicted with a red face, Guandi was the principal deity of the Chee Kung Tong from the 1870s to 1914. The Chee Kong Tong, a Chinese fraternal society dating back to the 17th century, is commonly associated with temples. It was an overseas patriotic organization that attempted to rally its members against the Manchu regime prevailing in China and served as a de facto governing authority for the immigrant Chinese communities. Until the Manchu government was overthrown in 1911, it provided protection, an artificial family, lodging, financial aid, death insurance and other services to the immigrant community, and sponsored recreational activities and festivals. This identification tends to suggest that the temple also served as an association hall, either solely or concurrently with a religious function. Alternatively, since such a dual role is not typical of Buddhist temples, the date may instead relate to the succession of Chinese rulers. If so, it would denote the 24th year of the Guangxu reign. The temple is a one-room, one-story building that measures 16 3" by 14 4". According to the Sanborn map depictions, it is no larger than the cabins were. It is floored and lined with beaded tongue-and-groove redwood boards, in contrast to the fir employed in the Warren structure to which it had been joined. It has an altar niche flanked by storage cabinets on one of the shorter walls. This is opposite to the double doors that are also original. The two windows, one above the altar and the other on a long wall, and a second door were added by Warren. The altar shelf is 6 10" wide and 2 2 deep between the storage cabinets, all made from the same beaded boards. It would typically be furnished with one or two pairs of candlesticks, a sand pot for burning sticks of incense, a portrait or other representation of a deity, rice bowl, and flowers. There usually was a shelf or small table in front to receive offerings and decorative red drapes and scrolls embellished with calligraphy in gold. An elderly resident recalled that the altar in Cambria was red, blue, and gold, had a gold Buddha on the shelf, a picture hanging over it, benches in front, and that the whole room smelled of incense (Greenwood et al. 2001:31). Compared to the five other Chinese temples in California for which information is accessible, this example is notably less elaborate. Consistent with the small group of low-income immigrants it served, the Cambria temple was austere and considerably smaller than comparable Chinese structures in California, some of which had multiple rooms and balconies. Temples in Los Angeles, Monterey, and Santa Cruz all had two stories. Traits the small building in Cambria did share with the more elaborate temples in Marysville, Oroville, Weaverville, and Mendocino include the double entrance doors, lack of windows prior to modification, use of colors, bold signage, and the original location facing easterly toward a flow of water, characteristics that are compatible with feng shui. In outer appearance, its false front and porch

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resembled the two-story Ling Ying Association House in Auburn, 329 miles distant in northern California, although the latter had several rooms, the main floor providing a gathering place, a school room, and a kitchen, with sleeping rooms upstairs for a caretaker and for transient visitors. As it is currently displayed, the Auburn altar contains the traditional pewter candlesticks and vessels, a set of divination blocks and fortune sticks, plus a teacup and rice bowl with chopsticks for each of the gods represented. There is no evidence that the Cambria temple ever had a second room or even a cooking facility, unless the vents installed by Warren are obscuring an aperture for a stovepipe. Certainly at the larger examples, a vegetarian dish called Jai (or Tsai in Mandarin) was served during festivals of the lunar year. At the Ng Shing Gung Temple in San Jose, the recipe included whole mushrooms, vermicelli, lichen, black moss, bean curd stalks, bamboo shoots, bok choy, chestnuts, ginko nuts, gluten, fermented bean curd with chili and oyster sauce, the vegetables home grown, and the bean curd homemade (Yu, pers. comm. 2008). Like the others, the Cambria temple was made of redwood and may have had association with fraternal orders, as well as serving religious functions. In Los Angeles, for example, a comparable but larger structure was known as the Chinese Masonic Hall; at Marysville, it served the Chinese Free Masons prior to designation as a temple. At its peak, there were six such society halls on Maui, all lavish two-story buildings, built by the Chinese brought to work on Hawaii’s sugar plantations. That they served both fraternal and religious functions does not lessen the importance of the temples. The Chinese did not have a single regular day of the week for attending the temple but rather, visited to worship, pray for favors or good fortune, socialize with countrymen, or respect the ancestors as their inclinations or schedules permitted. Given the small and intermittent nature of the Chinese gatherings in Cambria, there would not have been the need or the funds to support a more grandiose building. The structure was adequate to serve many social and integrating functions for the few persons who worked and lived in isolation along the coast. By the 1910 Federal Census, the only remaining Chinese nearby were five fishermen and one servant. Three years later, the Chinese laundry in Cambria was no longer present, and in 1914, there was major flooding sufficient to alter the course and scour the banks of Santa Rosa Creek, washing out the bridge, cutting off communications, and causing the loss of homes along the channel (San Luis Obispo Telegram 1914:8). It is possible that the catastrophic flood combined with better economic opportunities elsewhere hastened the decline of the Chinese enclave. Many of the residents, like Wong How, had family and economic connections in San Francisco, and it was their common destination for recreation, socialization, employment for wages, and respite from harsh living conditions on the isolated coast. All evidence suggests that the Chinese had abandoned the settlement in Cambria by or before the early 1920s, and the area where their structures had been was depicted as vacant on the 1926 Sanborn map. In August 1919, William Warren purchased the property that had contained the Chinese settlement from the widowed Mrs. Johanna Gans for $10.00. His family

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moved into an existing four-room residence that fronted Center Street, and relocated the B. H. Franklin building from Main Street in the center of Cambria to serve as the kitchen (Greenwood et al. 2001:15). By 1925 or 1926, he had demolished all the other structures on the rest of his land, except for the Chinese temple. According to the Sanborn map, this still stood in its original location in 1925, but was moved soon thereafter since a 1926 photograph shows it joined to the Warren home. Dragged some 200 feet from its historical setting at the back of his property, it became the family living room and office of a local telephone exchange. The double doors that had been the entrance to the temple now opened into the kitchen, and Warren cut through two windows and a new door to the outside. The core dwelling and both additions were painted red, and the composite structure was locally known for the rest of its existence as the Red House.

Preservation The family and relatives of William Warren continued to occupy the Red House with its various additions until 1970, and although later vacant and used only for storage, ownership remained in the family until 1999 when it was sold to Greenspace, The Cambria Land Trust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preservation. The structure had severely deteriorated since it was last occupied. One wall of the core dwelling had fallen outward, the roof of the first addition (not the temple) had fallen in, while portions of the rooms were inaccessible because of roof-fall, fire damage, modifications, and unstable flooring. In contrast to the rest of the house, the redwood walls of the temple remained sturdy and intact, retaining the original exterior and interior finishes, hardware, the double doors, cabinets, and altar shelf beneath the added window. The grounds had become overgrown with weeds, roses, honeysuckle, nasturtium, and fruit trees with a dense thicket of wild berries bordering the bank above Santa Rosa Creek. In the area where the Chinese cabins used to be, stood a mature Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), a native of China, Taiwan, and northern Korea. The species was first brought to the United States from China in 1784 as an ornamental garden tree, but for the Chinese, it has a long history in medical texts back at least to the 3rd century B.C. as a cure for ailments ranging from mental illness to balding. It rarely lives more than 50 years, so the live specimen in Cambria is probably not the original, but it re-sprouts vigorously and is hard to eradicate once established (Wikipedia 2008). Another plant on the property with symbolic associations for the Chinese was the unusually large, mature dahlia (Dahlia imperialis), which stood some 20 feet tall in 2001. Immigrants brought many seeds with them, and both of these exotics are associated with Chinese settlements. When Greenspace acquired the property as part of the 1.6-acre Creekside Reserve, the site had been designated as CA-SLO-1435H for its archaeological values. The County of San Luis Obispo had approved “H” status (historic) in its General Plan, and consultants (Bertrando and Bertrando 1993; Parker 1993)

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had advised that it was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, although no nomination was prepared. As new owners of the property, Greenspace needed additional information and commissioned further historical, architectural, and archaeological research (Greenwood et al. 2001), which documented the importance of the property and recommended specific steps for its preservation and public interpretation. There was no feasible alternative to demolishing the deteriorated elements of the composite Red House, but Greenspace recognized the historic, architectural, cultural, and potential archaeological values of the adjoined temple, which retained its integrity. Its historical importance was recognized by the county designation and a small grant from The National Trust for Historic Preservation. An action plan with specific recommendations was developed for Greenspace (Greenwood 2001), followed by a formal restoration plan (Slawson 2005) that was reviewed and approved by the County of San Luis Obispo and the National Park Service. This identified the character-defining elements and those details of the temple which should be conserved, and the methods to be used during repairs and restoration. Because of its integrity and importance as a cultural resource, the part of the Red House comprising the old temple was preserved when the rest of the composite dwelling was demolished in 2001. It was carefully detached from the rest of the structure and set on rollers for the move. Using historic maps and photographs, the best possible estimate was made of its original location, and the vicinity was tested archaeologically for any surviving evidence of a foundation or debris (Foster and Greenwood 2006). There were no remains of the cabins that would have been adjacent to the temple, or artifacts that could be associated with the period of the temple’s significance, and it was then reestablished in its original location upon a sturdy new foundation. Archaeological efforts to relocate the old roasting oven were unsuccessful. It may have been washed away by the changes in the creek bed or perhaps some evidence yet survives, inaccessible beneath the impenetrable thicket now bordering the channel. Redwood fencing with a Chinese motif was installed around the site, interpretive signage was prepared, and it was officially opened to the public with a gala reception in 2008. Commemorative paving bricks with the donors’ names were sold for installation on the approach to the temple, although not within its fenced grounds. Scraps of the siding removed from the structure during repairs were re-used to build a number of bird houses for sale to the public. Finally, a major donation was contributed that will assure its preservation and maintenance for the future. Dedication Day on April 5, 2008, coincided with Ching Ming, the traditional festival for expressing respect for the ancestors. Volunteers from Greenspace and concerned local citizens worked to repair elements that were in poor condition and restore details, like the parapet and porch, that had been removed when the temple was joined to the Warren house. All efforts complied with the restoration plan (Slawson 2005) and The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties(Weeks and Grimmer 1995). The leaky roof was overlaid with new shingles of rough sawn Douglas fir, custom made by a small lumber mill in Oregon. From the same source, full dimension Douglas

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fir was milled to the thickness and lengths needed to repair the siding where it had been damaged by termites. The parapet was replicated from the historic photos, and the original front porch recreated. Modern coats of paint on the interior were laboriously scraped to reveal the vivid reds, blues, green, and yellow that had embellished the altar niche. Warren’s windows and the side door were closed with beaded tongue and groove redwood boards matching the rest of the interior. The double doors with their original latch and pull chain were stripped down to the original finish and the old hardware refinished. The grounds were cleared of intrusive growth, preserving the Tree of Heaven. The berry thicket bordering the creek could not be removed since it was protected as riparian vegetation. Greenspace, the Cambria Land Trust, had been actively keeping the project in the public eye, raising funds through a series of art auctions; one noteworthy occasion called East Meets West drew about 400 people. There were two guitar concerts and other performances as well. The Chinese Historical Society of Southern California was invited to pay a second visit in 1990, and there were public ceremonies when a Buddhist priest blessed the site in 2005 and when the mortgage was burned that same year. The temple was dedicated in a public function in 2008.

Fig. 12.5 Temple before Restoration, 2006

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Fig. 12.6 Rededication of the Temple, 2008

Fig. 12.7 Entrance to Preservation Area, 2008. (Above 3 photos by R. S. Greenwood)

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Conclusion The restored temple is an important and unique cultural resource for both the town of Cambria and San Luis Obispo County as a rare surviving example of a structure built in the vernacular tradition to serve the Chinese men employed in the seaweed export industry and perhaps other endeavors related to maritime resources and the nearby quicksilver mines. “The temple was in many ways their fortress against all that was unpleasant in the new country” (Mann 2007:139). It is the only local monument to an immigrant community and their bygone way of life. It had served an integrating function for a group of male workers, alien to the host community, who toiled in solitary endeavors along the coast but were brought together here by shared language, needs, traditions, and holidays. That it was used by men is a result of the site demographics. Removed from its original location and purpose to become the living room of a Euro-American residence, the temple has been restored to its historical setting and brought back to its original appearance. “Looking at places of cultural memory among Asian-Americans requires a careful interpretation of space, defined as much by what is gone as by what exists. . .Asian-American sites of cultural memory frequently bear no markers or may represent contested space within rural and urban landscapes” (Joyner 2005:16). Most often, they also fail to recognize the shift in American attitudes – from the initial warm welcome to Chinese when laborers were sorely needed in the years immediately following the Gold Rush, to the overt hostility and persecution in the later 1800s, to the gradual if grudging growth of respect after the misnamed “sojourners” became permanent and contributing members of their communities. Where for many years the Tree of Heaven stood as the only marker to suggest the historical Chinese presence to those few who might even be aware of its identity and significance, the temple has now been saved from destruction, relocated to its original setting, carefully rehabilitated, opened to the public, and interpreted to memorialize and reinforce an ethnic and religious landscape. Acknowledgments The Chinese temple would not have survived without the concern of Mr. Richard Hawley and the support of Greenspace, The Cambria Land Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to preservation that sponsored the research. Dana N. Slawson and John M. Foster, both the Greenwood and Associates, contributed to the architectural and archaeological studies, respectively.

References Angel, Myron 1883 History of San Luis Obispo. Thompson and West, Oakland. Reprint, Howell-North, Berkeley, 1966.

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Barde, Robert and Gustavo Bobonis 2007 Detention at Angel Island. In Chinese America Special 20th Anniversary Issue.History Perspectives 2007, p. 103. Chinese Historical Society of America, San Francisco, California. Bertrando [Luther] and [Betsy] Bertrando 1993 Preliminary Cultural Resource Evaluation of the “Red House” APN #013-264-014, 2264 Center St., Cambria, California. Prepared for Parker and Associates. San Luis Obispo. Chang, K. C. (ed.) 1977 Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. Chang, Yvonne 2008 Tucson’s Early Chinese Immigrants. News ‘n Notes, August 6. Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, Los Angeles, California. Chow, Edward A., Bernard Lau, Eric Leung, Richard Loos, and Brenda Yee 2007 The Development of a Community-based Integrated Health Care System for the San Francisco Chinese Community. In Chinese America Special 20th Anniversary Issue. History Perspectives 2007, pp. 71–80. Chinese Historical Society of America, San Francisco. Chung, Sue Fawn 2002 Between Two Worlds: The Zhigongtang and Chinese American Funerary Rituals. In The Chinese in America, edited by S. L. Cassel, pp. 217–238. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California. Feldman, Frances Lomas 2007 Human Services. In The Development of Los Angeles City Government, edited by H. Rudd et al., Vol 2, pp. 515–557. Los Angeles City Historical Society, Los Angeles, California. Foster, John M., and Roberta S. Greenwood 2006 Archaeological Investigation of CA-SLO-1435H, Cambria, California. Greenwood and Associates, Pacific Palisades, California. Prepared for Greenspace, The Cambria Land Trust. Greenwood, Roberta S. 2001 Action Plan for the Red House. Greenwood and Associates, Pacific Palisades, California. Prepared for Greenspace, The Cambria Land Trust. Greenwood, Roberta S. and Dana N. Slawson 2008 Gathering Insights on Isolation. Historical Archaeology 42(3):68–79. Greenwood, Roberta S., Dana N. Slawson, and Linda Bentz 2001 The Red House: An Historical Property in Cambria. Greenwood and Associates, Pacific Palisades, California. Prepared for Greenspace, The Cambria Land Trust. Hamilton, Geneva 1974 Where the Highway Ends. Williams, Cambria, California. Also, reissued 1999. Hsu, Madeline Y. 2000 Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home. Stanford, University Press, Stanford, California. Joyner, Brian D. 2005 Asian Reflections on the American Landscape: Identifying and Interpreting Asian Heritage. National Center for Cultural Resources, National Park Service, Department of the Interior, Washington, District of Columbia. Khaw-Posthuma, Bonnie 2002 Unbound Feet: A Metaphor for the Transformation of the Chinese Immigrant Female in Chinese American Literature. In The Chinese in America, edited by S. L. Cassel, pp. 260–273. AltaMira, Walnut Creek, California.

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Lydon, Sandy 1985 Chinese Gold, The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region. Capitola Book Co., Capitola, California Lyons, Wilfred 2001 Personal communication from local historian to the author. Maniery, Mary L. 2001 Fuel for the Fire: Chinese Cooking Features in California. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Long Beach, California. Mann, Joan 2007 The History of Two Taoist Temples. In Chinese America Special 20th Anniversary Issue, pp. 137–141. History Perspectives 2007. Chinese Historical Society of America, San Francisco, California. McDannold, Thomas A. 2000 California’s Chinese Heritage: A Heritage of Places. Heritage West, Stockton, California. 2004 Merchants, Tradesmen, and Manufacturer’s Business and Credit Directory, for Communities in San Luis Obispo County, California 1920. Published by Aaron’s Books, Salem, Ohio. Miller, Stuart Creighton 1974 The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 1785–1882. University of California, Berkeley. Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute [MBARI] 2005 Web site, http://www.mbari.org.botany. Nash, Robert Alan 1973 The Chinese Shrimp Fishery in California. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles. Parker, [John] and Associates 1993 Cultural Investigation of the Warren/Seek Property. Submitted to Linda Warren Seek, Cambria. Morro Bay, California. San Luis Obispo Telegram 1914 January 18:8. Sanborn Fire Insurance Co. Var. Maps of the City of Cambria for the years 1886, 1892, 1895, 1913, 1926. On file, Map Library, California State University Northridge. Sandmeyer, Elmer Clarence 1991 The Anti-Chinese Movement in California. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago. Siu, Paul C. 1987 The Chinese Laundryman: A Study of Social Isolation, edited by John Kuo Wei Tchen. New York University Press, New York, New York. Slawson, Dana M. 2005 Restoration Plan for the Chinese Temple, 2264 Center Street, Cambria, California. Greenwood and Associates. Prepared for Greenspace, The Cambria Land Trust. Tsai, Shih-shan Henry 1983 China and the Overseas Chinese in the United States, 1868–1911. University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville.

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Weeks, Kay D. and Anne E. Grimmer 1995 The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties with Guidelines for Preserving, Rehabilitating & Reconstructing Historic Buildings. National Park Service, Washington, D.C. Wey, Nancy 1988 History of Chinese Americans in California. In Five Views, an Ethnic Studies Survey for California, pp. 103–158. California Department of Parks and Recreation, Sacramento. Wikipedia 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ailanthus_altissima. Accessed Feb. 21, 2008. Williams, C. A. S. 1976 Outlines of Chinese Symbolism and Art Motives. Dover Publications, New York. Young, Dolores K. 2002 The Seaweed Gatherers on the Central Coast of California. In The Chinese of America, edited by S. L. Cassel, pp. 156–173. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California. Yu, Connie Young 2008 Email to the author, September 9. Zesch, Scott 2008 Prelude to a Massacre: Chinese Los Angeles in 1870–1871. Southern California Quarterly 90(2):109–158. Historical Society of Southern California, Pasadena, California.

Part V

Gendering Industrial Landscapes

Chapter 13

Gendering Mining Landscapes Donald L. Hardesty

Introduction Mining landscapes are among the most dramatic and visual material expressions of the human past (Fig. 13.1). They reflect the cumulative history of humanenvironmental interactions and the transformation of Nature into Culture. The transformation involves social and cultural constructions of the material world of mining; it takes place by means of distinctive land use and circulation patterns, the organization and material expression of mining technologies, responses to landforms and other natural features, the layout or spatial arrangement of landscape components, and the material expression of the symbolism of cultural traditions and ideologies. Sex/gender systems are among the most distinctive of the social and cultural constructions expressed in mining landscapes. They played a significant role in transforming landscapes during the colonization and establishment of mining frontiers in the American West. Mining landscapes reflect and evoke interactions between gender and ethnicity, class, and occupation and the organization of space within settlements and settlement systems from isolated households and small remote mining camps to urban centers and company towns. Sex/gender systems are expressed in the architectural and other material remains of mining households, local settlements such as company towns and satellites, regional settlement systems, and global interactions such as population migrations and world systems. Mining landscapes can be viewed as a physical expression of social networks that reflect the creative and active agency of human individuals and social groups and that operate within systems of behavior that are, in the words of Elizabeth Brumfiel (1992), “the composite outcomes of negotiation between positioned social agents pursuing their goals under both ecological and social constraints.” Social power, “the capacity (of one party) to impose its will on another by its potential to contribute or to withhold critical resources and rewards or by threatening

D.L. Hardesty (B) Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada 89557-0096, USA e-mail: [email protected]

S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_13,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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Fig. 13.1 Malakoff Diggings State Park, California, a hydraulic mining landscape. Photograph by author

or inflicting punishment” (Lipmann-Blumen 1994:110), is a key player. From this perspective, mining-related social systems can be viewed as overlapping networks of social power that may be ideological, economic, political, or military in origin (Mann 1986:1–2). Some mining-related social systems may be organized around power networks that are hierarchical (e.g., company towns). More typically, however, they are organized around “heterarchies,” power networks in which interactions among individuals and groups are situational, changing, flexible, and constantly being negotiated (Crumley 1994:186–187). Thus, mining systems involve the negotiation of power by individuals and groups to control resources such as ore deposits, capital, and labor (Hardesty 1998:94). Mining landscapes that reflect strategies of domination/resistance and cultures of violence are associated with hierarchical power structures such as company towns. In contrast, mining landscapes that reflect palimpsests of situational and changing power relations, including mobility and informal mining systems, are associated with heterarchical power structures (Hardesty 1998). In this paper, the landscape expression of gender identities and relations in mining communities is explored. It begins with a discussion of the landscape expression of social interaction networks. Following this are sections that focus on gender and occupation structure, gender and class structure, gender and ethnicity, women in mining households, and women and mining world systems. Finally, the paper concludes with a section on preserving mining landscapes.

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Mining Landscapes and Social Interaction Networks Landscape expressions of mining-related social hierarchies include geographically segregated settlements or neighborhoods with distinctive living conditions and lifestyles. Within this structure, social geography, class, occupation, and ethnicity play roles in defining gender. The asymmetrical social relationships between dominant groups and subordinate groups in such social hierarchies also lead to the development of distinctive strategies of domination and resistance that may be reflected in landscapes (see McGuire and Paynter 1991). In mining modes of production, for example, a typical domination strategy used by mine owners is “controlling labor” through mechanization to make workers produce more through specialization and repetition of tasks. Workers may resist such a strategy by forming labor unions and by striking. Consider, for example, the emergence of the Western Federation of Miners in Colorado’s Cripple Creek mining district during the early 20th century and the famous strike that followed, materially expressed on the landscape as the remains of rock fortifications on a hillside (Hardesty 1998). In addition to vertical organization, mining landscapes also reflect the geographical structure of social formations such as regional communities. Hardesty (1988), for example, argues that the spatial distribution of mines and mills for processing gold and silver ore in Nevada’s Cortez mining district created a network of relatively isolated population islands in the vicinity of the limestone “white cliffs” of Mount Tenabo (Figs. 13.2 and 13.3). The islands took the form of small mining camps such as Shoshone Wells or Lower Cortez, Upper Cortez, and the settlement of Cortez in Mill Canyon (Fig. 13.4). These camps included log, stone, adobe, dugout, and wooden frame domestic residences; boardinghouses; company store; blacksmith shops; offices; storehouses; machine shops; mills for processing ores from gold and silver mines; livery stables; and school houses. Separated by varying distances and degrees of social interactions, the islands encouraged the evolution of group differences throughout the district in much the same way that genetic drift works in small isolated populations. The evolution of road networks, also quite visible on mining landscapes, often reflect the dynamics of social interaction among such geographically separated settlements. Margaret Purser (1989), for example, uses road networks effectively as a material and visible expression of community to define the changing geographical boundaries of the regional community in Paradise Valley, Nevada. Mining landscapes can be viewed as the cumulative material expression of the history of human-environmental interactions (Crumley 1994; see also Braudel 1940; Little and Shackel 1989). They reflect interconnected events, places, things, and relations formed at different timescales ranging from centuries and millennia to years and days. At one end of the timescale are processes and interactions taking place over very long periods of time. They include, for example, biogeophysical processes such as the geological structures associated with the formation and spatial arrangement of ore bodies. In the middle of the timescale are interactions linking together social and cultural entities, relations, and processes that play a key role in social reproduction and change. They include, for example, social structures

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Fig. 13.2 Map of California and Nevada showing the location of three mining towns: Bodie, Cortez, and Shermantown (Map illustration by Hans Klein-Hewett)

grounded in the ideologies of class, ethnicity, and gender. Interactions created in short-term time links together the actions, social relations, and perceptions of individuals or specific social units such as domestic households or companies. They are, in effect, historical biographies or life histories and may be expressed in mining landscapes as networks or mosaics of microenvironments. Consider, for example, how the microenvironments of the Bodie Mining District in Northeastern California (Fig. 13.2) reflect gender identities and relationships (Hardesty 1998:299–300). The Bodie district began with the discovery of placer gold deposits in 1859. The settlement of Bodie developed inside of a flat open “bowl” at the west edge of a high mineralized ridge that encompassed five landforms marked by mines and mining settlements: Bodie Bluff, Standard Hill or High Peak, Silver Hill, Queen Bee Hill, and Sugarloaf Peak (Fig. 13.5). Bodie was laid out as a townsite about one mile long in a north–south direction on the floor of the

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Fig. 13.3 The Limestone “White Cliffs” of Mount Tenabo in the Cortez Mining District. Photograph by the author

bowl and along the western base of Bodie Bluff (Fig. 13.6). At first, the town consisted of “some 15 or 20 frame and adobe houses [and] a boarding house” (Browne 1865:283). The town grew to a population of about 1,200 by early 1878, with estimates ranging from 110 to 250 structures (Wedertz 1969:7–8). Males dominated this early period; mining journalist J. Ross Browne remarked on the “joys” of domestic life without women in Bodie during his visit in 1864 (Browne 1865:274–284). Nevertheless, there is documentary evidence that at least three families moved to Bodie from the neighboring mining camp of Aurora in 1863. Browne also referred to a “Maiden Lane” in the vicinity of what later became the townsite of Bodie, which implies the existence of a red-light district (Browne 1865:274–284). The discovery of a rich ore body at the Bunker Hill mine on Standard Hill in 1877 stimulated a boom period that lasted until 1882 (Wedertz 1969). During this time, the Bodie district contained nearly 8,000 people. Most lived in the Bodie townsite on the floor of the bowl, but several large outlying or satellite settlements grew up around the major mines and mills on the mineralized ridge to the west of the townsite. The High Peak settlement on Standard Hill, for example, had more than 100 households, mostly all-male residences, boardinghouses, and saloons (Wedertz 1969:16). Documentary data on the town of Bodie suggest that during this period women tended to be clustered in a few neighborhoods. Green Street at the southeast end of the town, for example, which was lined with businesses and residences, was the most common location for women living in middle-class family households. Bonanza Street at the northeast corner of the town was the most common location for women working in brothels and dance halls; Bodie’s Chinese community also lived

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Fig. 13.4 Map of the Cortez Mining District. Drawn by author

nearby on King Street in the same part of the town. Women living in working-class family households lived in other parts of the town. Most of the Bodie mines closed in 1882, bringing about a rapid depopulation of the district (Wedertz 1969). Within 5 years, the number of people living in Bodie had fallen as low as 500. During the period between 1882 and 1895, the Bodie community lost much of its single adult male population to other mining districts, but miners with families tended to stay behind, hoping for better times (Wedertz 1969). Middle-class households continued to be clustered on Green Street; most of the brothels remained on Bonanza Street, but only a few prostitutes stayed behind, one remaining until her death in 1900. In 1895 the then-new cyanide leaching technology was introduced into the Bodie district (Wedertz 1969). The cyanide revival changed gender patterns in the district but did not radically reverse the trend toward abandonment of the district. Most of the population lived in the town of Bodie, but a few people still lived in the surrounding satellite settlements on the mineralized ridge above the town. Almost half of the 202 households listed in the 1910

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Fig. 13.5 Map of the Bodie Mining District. National Park Service

census were families, including women, men, children, and boarders; the others were single adult male households or small coresidential groups of adult males. At least one brothel with seven or eight prostitutes is also listed. Most of the satellite settlements had been abandoned by this time, but archaeological remains indicate all-male households at the Jupiter Mine and both all-male and all-female households at the Bodie and Benton railroad depot.

Gender and Occupational Structure The range of occupations engaged in by women in the mining West was severely limited. Other than the ubiquitous “keeping house,” occupations commonly listed

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Fig. 13.6 The townsite of Bodie, California. Photograph by the author

in the census records for women include dressmaker, laundress, seamstress, domestic servant, cook, schoolteacher, and nurse. The occupational structure of 1870 Shermantown in the White Pine Mining District of Northeastern Nevada provides a specific illustration (Figs. 13.2 and 13.7). In 1867, a silver discovery at Treasure Hill in the White Pine Mountains launched a short-lived mining boom that lasted until the mid-1870s (Jackson 1963). Miners established the mining town of Treasure City at the top of the 9,200 feet high mountain and the commercial and administrative center of Hamilton 1,200 feet below that on the northern side of the mountain. In a steep canyon two miles southwest and at the foot of Treasure Hill, the settlement of Shermantown grew up around several stamp mills and smelters; federal population census records show that after reaching a population of several thousand by 1869 the town died rapidly, declining to less than 1,000 by 1870 and to only 26 by 1880 (Hardesty 1992). Only seven occupations for women at Shermantown are listed in the 1870 census; however, a few others can be identified from newspaper accounts in the White Pine Evening Telegram in 1869 and 1870. In the census records, the majority (68) of adult women are listed as “keeping house.” Other occupations identified in the 1870 census include dressmaker (2), laundress (1), hotelkeeper (2), lodging housekeeper (1), restaurateur (1), and housekeeper (1). The census records, however, are somewhat misleading. Several other occupations could be identified from business advertisements and other newspaper accounts in the White Pine Evening Telegram that suggest women engaged in a much greater variety of occupations. Included are such jobs as seamstress, theater owners and managers, owners or managers of shops such as millinery stores and ice-cream parlors, schoolteachers, and

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Fig. 13.7 1869 Map of the White Pine Mining District. Nevada Historical Society

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nurses. All of these businesses appear to have been in the downtown commercial area of Shermantown. And in the same year, census records indicate that women were employed as a miner and as a physician in the neighboring town of Treasure City two miles away (Hardesty 1994, 1999).

Gender and Class Structure The social context of women on the mining frontier also was affected by the class structure of the community. In general, Victorian Period mining communities in the American West had at least the ideology of a class structure. Even in small settlements, a “middle class” of merchants, professionals, and artisans or skilled craftsmen rapidly emerged in opposition to a larger “working-class” group of miners, millworkers, and unskilled laborers. Women occupied positions in both classes; however, the largest percentage of women was married to merchants, professionals, and skilled craftsmen. In 1870 Shermantown, for example, census records indicate that 44% of the married women had spouses who were professionals or businessmen and another 26% were married to skilled craftsmen or artisans; only 30% were married to working-class men, most of whom were miners (Hardesty 1994, 1999). Both at Shermantown and elsewhere, middle-class women often contributed directly to their economic status by taking in domestic boarders, working alongside their spouses in family businesses such as stores or hotels, or working in separate occupations. Most of the married families lived in the downtown commercial area of the settlement.

Gender and Ethnicity Ethnicity also had a significant impact upon gender roles in mining settlements. Perhaps the most dramatic example is the social context of women in the Overseas Chinese community. At first, the only Chinese women in the American West were wives of merchants and physicians who migrated with their families. Most Chinese immigrants after 1850 were single males or husbands who left their wives in China. The few Chinese women who did enter the American West during this time were prostitutes brought in by the Chinese Companies. As a result, sex ratios in the Overseas Chinese population were heavily weighted in favor of males even by mining frontier standards. In 1875, for example, the Nevada state census identified 87 women and 1,254 men in the Chinese community living on the Comstock (Magnaghi 1981:146). The problem was intensified by the 1883 passage of federal legislation prohibiting Chinese women from entering the United States. Without question, many Overseas Chinese women were prostitutes contractually obligated to the Chinese Six Companies or the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, an umbrella organization that encompassed clans or kinship associations, Tongs or fraternal associations, and huiguan or district associations where merchants or officials from the same locale or dialect group could obtain food, shelter, or assistance

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(Lai 2004). Exactly how many is difficult to determine, because census takers in many settlements tended to identify all Chinese women by this label. Although wealthy merchants and professionals in the community still had access to wives, family households could be established only with great difficulty by the Overseas Chinese working class. Wives literally had to be purchased from the Chinese Six Companies; in the 1870s, the going price on the Comstock was $400 to $800 (Magnaghi 1981:146). And once married, both kidnapping and domestic violence appear to have been a constant threat to wives. Gender structures and strategies affect the location and organization of settlement systems in mining landscapes. Consider, for example, how gender is reflected in Chinese settlements in the Cortez mining district (Fig. 13.4). In the 1900 federal census, 77 people in the district are identified as having Chinese origins. Of these, 45 lived in six households in a settlement at the Garrison Mine on the pediment above the floor of Grass Valley just below the limestone “white cliffs” on Mount Tenabo. All but one of these is an adult male living in one of four households ranging in size from 3 to 20 people. Of these, 38 are classified as “mine laborers.” The one adult female in the settlement lives alone in one household and does not have a listed occupation. Another 32 people with Chinese origins lived in 11 households in the settlements of Cortez and Shoshone Wells on the valley floor (Fig. 13.8) and next to the Tenabo Mill on the pediment below the Garrison Mine. Of these, six are women – two of whom are classified as “laundresses” living in single-person households and two are listed as “seamstresses” living together in the same household; the other two are wives living in nuclear family households. The 26 men in the two valley settlements include a “cook” at the boardinghouse in Cortez, four

Fig. 13.8 1907 Chinese dwelling in the Cortez Mining District. Nevada Historical Society

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men with listed occupations of “barber,” “cook,” and “mill laborers” living in single person households, and the rest, all “mill laborers,” living in two multiple person households similar to those at the Garrison Mine settlement. The placer mining settlements of Island Mountain and Tuscarora in Elko County, Nevada, provide another example. In 1880 the federal population census documents 224 Chinese residents of Tuscarora out of a total population of 1634 (Chung 2008). Of these, most were woodchoppers, cooks, laundrymen, and gamblers. Historian Sue Fawn Chung (2008) found that the 1880 federal population census documents 39 Chinese women in Elko County. Of these, 20 lived in Tuscarora (8 married and living with spouse, 2 married and heads of household, 10 single and living alone), and 1 lived at the settlement of Island Mountain. The 1880 census shows that the one Chinese woman at Island Mountain, who was classified as a prostitute, lived in a single household with three men, listed as a gambler, a “loafer,” and a miner. She found no evidence in the 14 multi-ethnic households identified in the 1880 census that the Chinese residents of Island Mountain lived in a segregated neighborhood.

Women in Mining Households Several patterns of household organization can be identified in mining settlements of the American West during the 19th century. The most common miner’s households include either single persons or small coresidential groups organized around mutual aid, kinship, occupation, and work groups (e.g., boardinghouses and bunkhouses) (Hardesty 1992:186–188). In general, the most common households are single men or coresidential groups of men organized around the principle of mutual aid; kinship appears to have been relatively unimportant as an organizing principle in all but the largest and most permanent 19th-century mining communities in the American West. Men and women, however, appear to have had quite different household “footprints.” Family households were the least common in mining camps, for example, but included most of the women and relatively few of the men. The reason appears to be that most of the women immigrating to the 19th-century mining frontier already were married and came with their spouses and children. Men tended to live either in households of a single person or coresidential all-male groups organized on the principles of mutual aid or occupation, but women rarely did. Many single women or all-women households in mining camps were brothels. Other households in which women rather commonly participated include boarding or lodging houses, sometimes operated by a family or by women alone. Shermantown illustrates the household context of women on the mining frontier (Fig. 13.2). The town was organized around a commercial center platted in a checkerboard grid and surrounded by three settlement nodes clustered around two smelters and a sawmill in a side canyon. The total number of women at Shermantown listed in the 1870 federal population census is 168, of which only 94 are adults. Women, therefore, make up less than 18% of the 961 residents in the community. Of the 297 Shermantown households, 86 or 29% included women

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(Hardesty 1992:190). Nearly half (49%) of the households are kinship groups organized around nuclear families that include a woman, her spouse, and their children. Another 27% of the households are nuclear families with one or more boarders. The third most common household form is the extended family, making up about 12% of the total. Other variants included woman/spouse, woman/spouse with boarders, single mother with child, single mother with child and boarders, single women, multiple women, and households with both men and women who are unrelated. Only four of the 86 households had female heads. One is identified as a hotelkeeper, another as a laundress, and the other two are identified only as “keeping house.” The vast majority of households with women at Shermantown appear to have been situated in the downtown commercial area, but a few are found in the outlying settlement nodes around the smelters and sawmill. What roles did women play in the miner’s household? Certainly the traditional domestic roles of reproduction, childrearing, food preparation, and the like can be identified. Ralph Mann’s (1982) study of the neighboring Gold Rush towns of Nevada City and Grass Valley, California, however, suggests that the role of women in the mining West also included substantial economic support of the household, in the face of the prevalent Victorian attitude that women should have only domestic responsibilities. Census records suggest continuity of the role at least until 1870. Perhaps the most important way in which women provided economic support to the household was taking in boarders. Gender roles in 1870 Shermantown also appear to have been structured by the Gold Rush tradition. Taking in boarders definitely was a common practice. Of the 85 households in which women participated, 19 are boarders with no kinship or work-related connection to the household (Hardesty 1992:192). Another eight households included work-related boarders who appear to be business employees of the household head, but who presumably still paid room and board to the household. All together, women provided direct economic support by taking in boarders in at least 27 or 32% of the Shermantown households. Of these, miners head the largest number of households with boarders – seven; however, boarders also are found in the households of merchants and craftsmen.

Women and Mining World Systems In addition to the household and settlement system, women also participated in mining world systems. The concept of “world system” has been used to refer to the economic, political, and social integration of frontier mining settlements into the larger world community (Wallerstein 1974). One way in which women participated in mining world systems is illustrated by the concept of the “world system household.” The concept refers to a form of social organization in which men and women household members lived in different places. Such was the case, for example, with the so-called “sojourner” household commonly associated with Chinese immigrants into the mining frontiers of the American West (Sui 1952). Houses lived in by groups of adult males were but one geographical locus of crosscutting households

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that included families with spouses and children still living in the “old country.” In this case, reproduction, inheritance, and some economic activities remained in the family household but coresidential, food-related, and other activities resided in the sojourner household. The same kind of world system household has been documented for many other immigrants to the mining frontier. Women also participated in mining world systems as disseminators of cultural ideologies. Consider, for example, the role of women in transmitting the ideology of English Victorian Culture throughout the Mining West, in part by organizing to establish schools and churches that created a cultural center in mining towns (Hardesty 1992). Mann (1982), for example, has argued that the practice of taking in single men as boarders into the family household in the Gold Rush towns of Nevada City and Grass Valley, California, not only served an economic function but also created a social milieu within which the values of Victorianism could be disseminated. Victorian Culture included such values as conspicuous consumption, temperance, and order and rationality (Howe 1982). Whether or not differences in the intensity of these values between middle-class family households and others can be detected in the archaeological record is an intriguing question. The possibility of using the relative abundance of alcoholic beverage containers as an archaeological indicator of temperance in the household, for example, has been suggested in the past (e.g., Teague 1980) and has been used by Spude to identify archaeological signatures of temperate and intemperate households on the Klondike in Alaska. Spude also determined that single miners ate and drank at saloons, since excavations of their sites did not recover any food or beverage consumption artifacts. Another possible archaeological indicator of the Victorian ideology of conspicuous consumption is the relative size and diversity of trash dumps associated with house sites. The reminiscences of Mary McNair Mathews, who lived in Virginia City and neighboring towns on the Comstock in the 1870s, illustrates what may have been a common gender strategy for middle- and working-class women on the Comstock. A widow from Buffalo, New York, Mathews came to the Comstock in 1869 to investigate her brother’s murder and stayed there for nearly 10 years. There she worked as a seamstress, schoolteacher, nurse, laundress, lodging-house operator, and businesswoman and entrepreneur, investing in mining stocks and real estate. She was a proud, independent, and bigoted “survivalist,” who held strong beliefs about temperance and child abuse. The many roles played by Mathews suggest a gender identity with a quite complex material expression that potentially varies greatly from one individual to another. Another example of a mining-related gender strategy is Maggie Johnson, an African-American woman born into slavery in Louisiana in 1842, who owned and worked at least three mines in eastern Nevada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (McElrath 1964; The Eureka Sentinel, Aug. 9, 1924: 1, c. 2). In the late 1860s, she and her husband moved to the Cortez Mining District and established a boarding house in Mill Canyon. The boarding house prospered, and Maggie Johnson soon acquired a reputation for conviviality and generosity. Her fortunes, however, finally declined. After the closure of the boarding house in 1893, at the age of 55, she turned to prospecting and small-scale mining in Mill Canyon. In the 1900 federal

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population census, she is listed as a mine owner living with her sister and a white male partner from Ireland. The 1910 census shows that she is still doing the same thing; her household now includes two different male partners but not her sister. Age soon took its toll, however, and in 1919 she was placed in a county hospital in Eureka, Nevada, where she died in 1924 at the age of 82.

Preserving Mining Landscapes Notwithstanding the abundance and variety of mining landscapes on public land, the key question is why they should be considered as a preservation tool. Why not focus on the preservation of individual landscape components such as large and highly visible archaeological sites, buildings, or structures? Certainly that is the most typical approach to the preservation of mining-related historical remains. Two reasons for shifting to a landscape-based approach to preservation come to mind. The first reason is that the landscape concept focuses upon the processes, patterns, and structures of behavior rather than upon individual sites or features. Landscape models stress the interconnections of sites and places rather than their individuality. The importance of placing individual sites within this larger context is illustrated by Alan Sullivan’s (1996) study of western Anasazi subsistence in the Grand Canyon region of the American Southwest. He found key information in small surface sites that site-focused preservation models would consider “insignificant” or “unimportant.” These small sites suggested a radical reinterpretation of ancient Puebloan subsistence patterns, namely that these people depended mostly upon the gathering and processing of wild plants rather than upon maize agriculture as widely believed. In this case, preservation models focusing upon the significance of individual sites would have written off what turned out to be a critical source of information about past subsistence behavior. The second reason for a landscape-based approach to the preservation of historical mining remains is the multiple, and often conflicting, systems of values and knowledge within which the evaluation of “what matters” takes place. Specific value systems assign to or find inherent importance or significance in individual objects, sites, buildings, or structures that may differ dramatically from other value systems. Landscapes provide a “contested terrain” within which the multiple meanings of individual cultural resources can be interpreted and preserved in the most flexible manner. Archaeological value systems compete with other value systems on this contested terrain. Several years ago Bill Lipe (1984) identified some of the key value systems associated with the physical remains of the past as economic, aesthetic, symbolic, and informational. To date gender has not been considered, although it is important in structuring mining landscapes and hopefully will be considered in the future. More recently, University of York archaeologist Martin Carver (1996) argued that such remains are immersed in three competing value systems (see also Darvill 1995). They include the monetary values of the marketplace, community or interest group values such as the common good and political wellbeing, and global

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human values such as a sense of psychological wellbeing. He considers the most basic archaeological value, an informed interest in the past, to reside in the category of global human values. Within this framework, a variety of interest groups assign conflicting values to the same historical mining remains. In addition to archaeologists, the interest groups may include the mining industry, government land management agencies, environmental advocacy groups (e.g., Sierra Club), off-road vehicle associations, developers, and tribes. Each of these interest groups situates what they consider to be “important” components of historic mining landscapes in different geographical and chronological contexts. Mining landscapes provide a flexible framework within which such competing value and knowledge systems can be accommodated more easily than site-specific models of significance. Politics and conflict resolution thus become a key part of assessing landscape significance. Consider the preservation history of the Bodie mining landscape. The landscape covers about 2,900 acres in a barren high desert environment in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California and encompasses buildings, structures, objects, ruins, sites, and landforms associated with mining activities between 1859 and 1942. Mining shafts, tunnels, mine waste rock dumps, milling sites and tailings, ponds, railroads and roads, townsites and satellite settlements cover the hillsides and the floor of the “bowl” created by the surrounding hillsides. Nearly 150 buildings remain, most in the townsite of Bodie, constructed in vernacular styles from pine trees harvested from and milled in nearby Mono Lake Basin. The J. S. Cain Company played a key role in preserving the Bodie landscape by protecting standing buildings and structures from scavengers and vandals after the demise of mining in the 1940s. In 1960, the State of California began acquiring parcels within the Bodie townsite, which contained 115 standing buildings, and established Bodie State Historic Park in 1962. And the National Park Service designated Bodie as a National Historic Landmark in 1961 as an outstanding example of a mining “ghost town” in the American West. The townsite of Bodie has been maintained in a state of “arrested decay” by the state of California since the creation of the state park, stabilizing surviving buildings in their current condition and leaving collapsed buildings where they once stood. Mine exploration continued to take place during this time outside the townsite of Bodie and the boundaries of the state park. The Bodie Consolidated Mining Company, a subsidiary of the Canadian corporation Galactic Resources, proposed a large open pit mine on the Bluff that overlooks the town in 1988; however, the plan, which was opposed by the Sierra Club and other environmental advocacy organizations, was dropped when the parent company declared bankruptcy a few years later. Shortly afterward, the implementation of the Bodie Protection Act, part of the California Desert Protection Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1994, required the federal government to review all existing mining claims and not issue any new mining permits in the Bodie area. In 1997, the state of California purchased Galactic Resources’ property on Bodie Bluff and incorporated the land into Bodie state park. The Bodie mining landscape still includes some federal and private land outside the boundaries of the state park.

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Conclusion In concluding this paper, I want to turn again to the question of evaluating the importance or significance of mining landscapes. Clearly, what is “important” reflects the application of value and knowledge systems to specific historical mining landscapes and associated buildings, structures, sites, and other physical remains (v. Briuer and Mather 1996; Darvill et al. 1987; Deeben et al. 1999). The value systems of (1) the archaeological profession and (2) government agencies charged with preservation on public lands are the key players in assigning importance or significance to mining landscapes. Within the value and knowledge system of the archaeological profession is the empiricist idea that information with an objective reality is contained within the physical remains of the past. Growing out of the “new archaeology” of the 1960s and 1970s, this archaeological value system leads to the assignment of inherent and fixed significance or importance to archaeological remains. Thus, sites that are old, large, deep, and well-stratified will always be significant in contrast to recent, small, unstratified, and surface sites. The same value system is codified in government laws and policies preserving physical remains on public land, an example of what some have called a “technology of government” (in the sense of Foucault), a system of knowledge and skills used to accomplish specific tasks (v. Rose and Miller 1992:175). In contrast to the “objective reality” of such an empiricist value system is the view that archaeological information is “essentially man-made and . . .depends entirely on contemporary knowledge and political will” (Carver 1996:50). Archaeological value, therefore, is not fixed but dynamic and changes with the development of new research agendas. For this reason, the archaeological significance of historical mining resources and landscapes must be judged within the context of specific research agendas. Mining landscapes evaluated as not significant under a contemporary research agenda may be highly significant under a future research agenda. Conservation and sampling programs are essential from this perspective. Another key problem is how to operationalize value and knowledge systems into the practice of assessing landscape significance. Past attempts to evaluate the significance of archaeological remains have developed a variety of rating schemes using both qualitative and quantitative measures (e.g., Darvill et al. 1987). The measures have included rarity, age, variability, archaeological data potential, preservation, survivability, and documentation. Clearly, we need to develop a rating scheme for mining landscapes. Whatever the approach to assessing the significance of historical mining resources, it is clear that the landscape concept is pivotal to cultural resource management on public lands. It is also clear from this chapter that gendered uses of the landscape need to be considered at multiple scales, not only in mining towns, but in intersecting gender, class, and ethnic patterns between towns in a mining region. This chapter has shown how gender was important in structuring landscapes at a number of scales, from mining towns to regions.

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References Braudel, Fernand 1940 (1980) Preface to La Mediterraneen et le monde Mediterraneen a l’epoque de Phillippe II. Armand Colin, Paris. (Reprinted in On History, Sarah Matthews, translator. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.) Briuer, L. and Clay Mathers 1996 Trends and Patterns in Cultural Resource Significance: An Historical Perspective and Annotated Bibliography. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Alexandria, Virginia. Browne, John Ross 1865 A Trip to Bodie Bluff and the Dead Sea of the West. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 31(131):274–284. Brumfiel, Elizabeth 1992 Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology: Breaking and Entering the Ecosystem – Gender, Class, and Faction Steal the Show. American Anthropologist 94(3):551–568. Carver, Martin 1996 On Archaeological Value. Antiquity 70:45–56. Crumley, Carole 1994 The Ecology of Conquest: Contrasting Agropastoral and Agricultural Societies’ Adaptation to Climatic Change. In Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes, edited by C. L. Crumley, pp. 183–201. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Chung, Sue Fawn 2008 In Pursuit of Gold: Two Chinese American Mining Communities in Northeastern Nevada. Paper presented at the 2008 Conference of the Organization of American Historians, New York City. Darvill, Timothy 1995 Value Systems in Archaeology. In Managing Archaeology, edited by M.A. Copper, A. Firth, J. Carman, and D. Wheatley. Routledge Press, London, UK. Darvill, Timothy, A. Saunders, and B. Startin 1987 A Question of National Importance: Approaches to the Evaluation of Ancient Monuments for the Monuments Protection Programme in England. Antiquity 61:393–408. Deeben, J., B.J. Groenewoudt, D.P. Hallewas, and Willem J.H. Willems 1999 Proposals for a Practical System of Significance Evaluation in Archaeological Heritage Management. European Journal of Archaeology 2(2):177–200. Hardesty, Donald L. 1988 The Archaeology of Mining and Miners: A view from the Silver State. Special Publication Number 6, Society for Historical Archaeology. Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1992 The Miner’s Domestic Household: Perspectives from the American West. In Sozialgeschichte des Bergbau im 19. und 20. Jahrundert, edited by K. Tenfelde, pp. 180–196, Verlag C.H. Beck, Munchen, Germany. 1998 Gender and Archaeology on the Comstock. In Women on the Comstock Lode, edited by E. Raymond and R. James, pp. 283–302, University of Nevada Press, Reno.

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1998 Power and the Industrial Mining Community in the American West.” In Social Approaches to an Industrial Past: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Mining, edited by A. B. Knapp, V. C. Pigott, and E. W. Herbert, pp. 81–96. Routledge Press, London, UK. 1999

Treasure Hill and the Archaeology of Shermantown. CRM 21(7):53–6.

Howe, Daniel 1982 Victorian Culture. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Jackson, W. Turrentine 1963 Treasure Hill: Portrait of a Silver Mining Camp. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Lai, Him Mark 2004 Becoming Chinese American: A History of Communities and Institutions. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California. Lipman-Blumen, J. 1994 The Existential Basis of Power Relationships: The Gender Role Case. In Power/Gender: Social Relations in Theory and Practice, edited by H.L. Radtke and H.J. Stam, pp. 108–135. Sage, London, UK. Lipe, William D. 1984 Value and Meaning in Cultural Resources. In Approaches to the Archaeological Heritage, edited by H. Cleere, pp. 1–11. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Little, Barbara J. and Paul Shackel 1989 Scales of Historical Anthropology: An Archaeology of Colonial Anglo-America. Antiquity 63(240):495–509. Magnaghi, Russell M. 1981 Virginia City’s Chinese Community, 1860–1880. Nevada Historical Society Quarterly XXIV(2):130–157. Mann, Michael 1986 The Sources of Social Power. Volume I: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK Mann, Ralph 1982 After the Gold Rush. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California. McElrath, Jean 1964 Aged in Sage. Privately Published. McGuire, Randall and Robert Paynter (eds.) 1991 The Archaeology of Inequality. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, UK. Purser, Margaret 1989 Roads Lead to Winnemucca: Local Road Systems and Community Material Culture in Nineteenth-Century Nevada. In Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, III, edited by T. Carter and B. Herman, pp. 120–134. University of Missouri Press, Columbia. Rose, N. and Miller, P. 1992 Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government. British Journal of Sociology 43:173–205. Sui, Paul C. 1952 The Sojourner. The American Journal of Sociology 58:34–44.

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Sullivan, Alan P. 1996 Risk, Anthropogenic Environments, and Western Anasazi Subsistence. In Evolving Complexity and Environmental Risk in the Prehistoric Southwest, edited by J. A. Tainter and B. B. Tainter, pp. 145–167. Santa Fe Institute, Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Proceedings, Volume 24. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Pennsylvania. Teague, George 1980 The Reward Mine and Associated Sites. Western Archeological Center, National Park Service, Publications in Anthropology Number 11. Tucson, Arizona. Wallerstein, Immanuel 1974 The Modern World System I. Academic Press, New York. Wedertz, Frank S. 1969 Bodie, 1859–1900. Chalfant Press, Bishop, California.

Chapter 14

Engendering the Corporate Landscape: A View from the Miners’ Doublehouse Karen Metheny

America’s mining landscapes are instinctively viewed as male-dominated spaces – landscapes that have been cut out, created, shaped, operated, altered, and often abandoned through the actions of men. Helvetia Mine, a bituminous coal mine in western Pennsylvania, is no exception. Its history encompasses the stories of hundreds of miners and their sons – stories often spanning several generations. Yet the cultural landscape of the company town of Helvetia was not a maledominated space but rather expressed a wide spectrum of social and economic relationships among the miners, their families, and the coal company; further, these relationships varied on the basis of age, gender, religion, ethnicity, and economic status. A closer look at this landscape shows that family and community relationships provided much of the supporting structure for work and daily life in this coal company town, despite the company’s paternalistic practices.

The Mining Landscape as Gendered Space The focus of this study is Helvetia Mine, located approximately six miles south of DuBois, Pennsylvania, in the state’s main bituminous field.1 The mine was established in ca. 1891 by Adrian Iselin, a New York investment banker and major stockholder of the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company, later the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company; the R&P, one of the area’s largest producers of bituminous coal, became the sole owner of Helvetia in 1896 and continued to

K. Metheny (B) Department of Archaeology, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA e-mail: [email protected] 1 The research upon which this study is based was funded by a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (#5941). The grant was used to fund a six-week field investigation in 1995, as well as several weeks of archival research and oral history interviews. See Metheny (2002, 2007) for a full description of this work.

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operate the mine until its closing in 1954.2 Under the management of Iselin and the R&P, Helvetia became one of the most productive mines in the region. Mining in Pennsylvania in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a male profession. The work of mining involved intense physical labor under dangerous conditions; given the hazards of work on the surface and within the mine, age and gender restrictions were established in the state to prevent companies from exploiting young children and women.3 The mine at Helvetia, the industrial plant, and the tools of mining, then, are all clearly elements of a male-dominated landscape. Two artifacts recovered from the backlot of a miners’ dwelling at Helvetia – a United Mine Worker’s pin and a coal check – are clearly related to mining activities and belonged to adult males (Fig. 14.1).4 Behind these men, however, stands an entire community. A company town was established in 1891, concurrent with the opening of the mine, to house Iselin’s workforce. During its heyday, the town of Helvetia was home to some 800 residents.5 The presence of families in the company town created a complex set of social and economic relationships based on age, gender, religion, ethnicity, and economic status. Despite the masculine nature of the work that formed the basis for the town’s construction, then, this company town should be viewed as a fully gendered landscape. Gender was, in fact, a key organizing principle in this mining community and was as significant as economic and social factors or ethnicity in the formation of the community, the various networks that operated within the town, and the many relationships enacted on a daily basis among the miners, the company, and the mining families. The impact of gender relations is visible in the alteration of the landscape that occurred with the construction of the site, in the daily use of each houselot, and in the movement of people across the town landscape.

2 For a general history of the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company, see Cooper (1982). The extensive correspondence, ledgers, and files of both Adrian Iselin and the R&P may be viewed in the Special Collections and Archives, Stapleton Library, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. For a discussion of the establishment of Helvetia Mine, its acquisition, and operation by the R&P, and its closure, see Metheny (2007). 3 For an overview of the industry, see DiCiccio (1996), Dix (1988), and Miller and Sharpless (1985). In 1885 Pennsylvania established a minimum age requirement of 12 years for work above ground, 14 years for work below ground; these minimum age requirements were raised by 2 years in 1903 (Miller and Sharpless 1985:124; see also DiCiccio 1996:109,125). Women and girls were excluded from employment in the mines through legislation (Bonsall 1914:104) and by custom (Arnesen 2007). 4 A coal check is a metal tag that was hung on a coal car to identify the miner who had loaded the car and the type of coal contained within. 5 This estimate was established using the 1900–1920 census schedules, average household size for those years, and the number of housing units in the company town (Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company [R&PCC] 1947; U.S. Bureau of the Census [USBC 1900, 1910, 1920]). See Metheny (2007:77–78) for a discussion.

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Fig. 14.1 Artifacts associated with the mining profession: A United Mine Worker’s pin and a coal check stamped with the number “5” and “RPCC.” Both items were recovered during excavations of the backlot behind no. 296, a miners’ doublehouse in Helvetia. Photograph by Michael Hamilton

Building a Company Town: Gender as a Force upon the Landscape Western Pennsylvania in the last quarter of the 19th century was an area with vast natural resources, but only recently had the means to transport goods to outside markets been established (America’s Industrial Heritage Project [AIHP] 1992; DiCiccio 1996:32–38,63; Mulrooney 1989). Coal and coke would become particularly significant commodities for this region. But coal deposits were found in isolated, often mountainous regions, in areas where transportation was difficult and few services were available. As efforts to expand the mining industry accelerated after the Second Geological Survey of 1874–1884, companies that hoped to develop coal deposits in this region were compelled to build housing for employees at the site of each mine (AIHP 1992; DiCiccio 1996:61,89; Metheny 2007:26,35–37; Mulrooney 1989:9–14). Adrian Iselin’s decision to open Helvetia Mine had significant impacts on the above-ground landscape. Caldwell’s Atlas, published in 1878, shows this portion of Brady Township in Clearfield County to have been a patchwork of cultivated fields and wooded parcels (1878:128–129). The opening of the mine site meant the construction of a town (as well as the industrial plant) from the ground up – in

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this instance, the transformation of largely wooded or agricultural landscapes into something quite different. Also, the mine site was relatively isolated from other communities. This region is characterized by hilly terrain, with narrow, often steep-sided valleys. While a network of roads existed in the township, access to outside communities was difficult for many years until the advent of the automobile (Metheny 2007:44–46). For Iselin, then, the opening of the mine necessitated the creation of both housing and services for the mine workers. The company town was laid out in a valley beneath the entrance to Helvetia Mine (Fig. 14.2). Two existing roadways were used as the main axes of a gridded town plan (Fig. 14.3). The road connecting Stanley and Luthersburg became Helvetia’s main thoroughfare; named Second Street, the road provided access between the eastern and western ends of the company town. Two new roads, First and Third Streets, were built parallel to Second Street and, mirroring the topography of the valley, created both a bottom row of houses and a higher, longer street that followed the hillside. A connecting road to Troutville, named Fourth Street, was extended to provide access to the upper row of houses as well as to the school house on the top of the hill where it overlooked the town site; after passing the lower rows of houses and

Fig. 14.2 Early photographs of Helvetia. The western or downtown section of the company town is visible in the left two-thirds of the top photograph, which dates from the 1920s. A portion of the eastern half of town is seen to the far right. Bethel Union Church appears on the left. The baseball field is also visible on the far left. The lower photograph provides a closer view of the first and second rows of housing in the downtown, as well as the Protestant church (far left), in the mid-1930s. Photographs courtesy of Thomas Crop and Lloyd Gray

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Fig. 14.3 The landscape of the company town. A plat of Helvetia, drawn for the sale of the town to the Kovalchick Salvage Company in 1947, shows the physical layout of buildings and streets in town. Homes for management were located downtown (left). Eastern European families lived predominantly in the doublehouses constructed in an area known as the uptown (right). The mine entrance would have been located near the bottom center of the plat; the first and second company stores would have been located near Stump Creek towards the bottom of the plat. The school houses on the top of the hill would have been accessed from Fourth Street at the top of the plat. The topography that shaped the layout of the town is shown in the inset. 1947 Kovalchick Plan of Lots, courtesy of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Special Collections and Archives. Photograph by Michael Hamilton. United States Geological Survey, DuBois Quadrangle, Pennsylvania. 7.5 Minute Series, 1966. Photo-revised, 1986

the sites of the first and second company stores, the road crossed Stump Creek and a railroad spur that connected the mine to the main BR&P line at Stanley, then led past the mine entrance before continuing south over the hill to Troutville. Because of the contours of valley and hillside, approximately two-thirds of the town site, and the bulk of worker housing, were constructed to the east of the intersection of Second and Fourth Streets. The town was also shaped by factors unrelated to the physical conditions of the site. Corporations that operated mines such as Helvetia in the late 19th and early 20th century preferred to hire married men who were considered more stable and, thus, more desirable employees. Housing was used to attract men with families and to foster contentment among workers (DiCiccio 1996; Metheny 2007:38–39). Companies that controlled the housing supply commonly used tenancy as a mechanism of control over labor (Mulrooney 1989:9). Adrian Iselin built only family-style housing for his new company town of Helvetia, and both he and the Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company actively recruited men with families. Census records for 1900–1920 indicate that 60% of Helvetia’s resident miners were married or widowed; of the remaining 40%, half were single men under the age of 20 living at home with their families. Only 20% of Helvetia’s resident miners, then, were single

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adult males (U.S. Bureau of the Census [USBC], 1900, 1910, 1920; for a discussion, see Metheny 2007:90–93).6

Gender as an Organizing Principle of the Community This preference for hiring married men would affect not only the physical layout of the company town and its architecture, but also the paternalistic programs established by Iselin and the R&P for their employees.7 The importance of gender as an organizing principle in the formation of this community is evident in the replication of key institutions on the town landscape that were meant to attract and hold families: churches, schools, the company store, recreational facilities, sidewalks.8 Adrian Iselin’s correspondence shows that from the outset, his plans for Helvetia Mine included a company town and family housing. Construction of the doublehouses and a company store commenced immediately. Early newspaper accounts describe the completion of the first school (1892) and a Protestant church (ca. 1896 or 1898), both financed and built by Iselin or the R&P on company-owned land. A Catholic church also was built for residents (ca. 1899–1902) on company land with the financial assistance of the R&P.9 Correspondence between Lucius W. Robinson, president of the R&P from 1899– 1919, and Adrian Iselin, Jr., business manager for A. Iselin and Co. and himself a major stockholder in the R&P, indicates the continued centrality of family to the R&P’s policy makers. Letters from Robinson to Iselin, Jr., explicitly outlined a corporate ideology to “do all possible for their workers” and their families to the extent that it was affordable (Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company [R&PCC] 1916a–c).10 The R&P cast itself in the role of a paternalistic father looking after its 6 The 1930 census has only recently become available and has not yet been incorporated into this analysis. 7 Scranton (1984) has defined paternalism as a management style associated with industrial capitalism, in which a patriarchal authority and/or an ideology of mutual obligation are used to create a framework for social relations between employer and employee. By its very definition, paternalism involves some level of dependency; in the setting described within this article, miners not only relied upon the owner for employment, but also for housing and basic services because the company was both employer and landowner. Forms of paternalism varied within industries and were affected over time by a number of factors, including location, conditions in the workplace, the nature of the labor supply, and external social and economic currents. For an overview, see Metheny (2007). 8 A list of improvements was compiled using the tax records of Brady Township, local newspapers such as the DuBois Express, and the company archives. For a detailed discussion of those improvements, see Metheny (2002:136–148, 2007:47–49). 9 Regarding construction of housing, see R&PCC 1890–1893, Brady Township 1891:39–40, Reel 178; see also DuBois Express, Sept. 2, 1892, p.8 regarding construction of the first school; see DuBois Express, Reynoldsville edition, May 15, 1896, p.7, Sept. 9, 1898, p.8, Feb. 22, 1899, p.6, DuBois Courier-Express, Aug. 21, 1981 for evidence regarding the construction dates for both churches. It is unclear whether the R&P sponsored construction of both churches after purchasing the mine and company town in 1896, or whether Iselin may have contributed land for the Protestant church prior to the transfer of ownership. 10 These letters are reprinted in Metheny (2007:243–248).

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children. Its corporate programs undoubtedly improved the quality of life for many mining families. And, unquestionably, its programs were beneficial to the company. Such efforts helped to attract “the most desirable workers,” to ensure a stable workforce and steady, if not increased, production in the mine, and to keep the union out of the mine. Yet the paternalistic programs offered by the R&P – schools and churches, store, leisure-time activities that were organized at the town’s park, at the bandstand, or at the ballpark – also reflect the company’s recognition of the importance of creating and promoting the development of a community, as well as the family’s power to influence the miner’s productivity and stability as a company employee. This corporate policy had a significant impact not only upon the town landscape, but also upon the movement of people across the landscape, as will be discussed below.

Spatial Imprints The basic housing form constructed by Adrian Iselin was the miners’ doublehouse (Fig. 14.4), a regional style of semi-detached housing that created two identical family units in a single building. The presence of the doublehouse in many other Pennsylvania coal company towns is an indication of the importance of community formation to the mining industry in this period and in this region (Mulrooney 1989). Helvetia’s housing stock consisted entirely of 134 units of family-style housing, with 62 doublehouses for miners and laborers and 10 single houses for management.11 Boarding houses were located outside of town. Single men who wished to live within the company town were of necessity coresident kinsmen or boarders with one of Helvetia’s mining families. Owners of company towns are known to have replicated the corporate hierarchy on the ground in order to separate and divide their workforces (Allen 1966; Crawford 1995:26,86,129,139–142; DiCiccio 1996:92; Mulrooney 1989:26; Wood 2002; see also Wright 1991). By emphasizing their differences – whether those differences stemmed from ethnicity, cultural practice, language, religion, race, or class – companies hoped to prevent workers from discovering their common interests in disputes between management and labor. In like fashion, spatial relationships within the company town of Helvetia reflected Iselin’s and, later, the R&P‘s corporate ideology. A town plat shows the imprint of the corporate hierarchy upon the physical layout of the community. Management – those deemed of superior social and economic status by the company – received the best quality housing (detached single family homes) in areas most convenient to the mine entrance and to the company store (see Fig. 14.3).12

11 Brady

Township 1891:39–40, Reel 178; 1892:50–52, Reel 178; 1893:39–41, Reel 178; 1895: 46–47, Reel 178; 1896:42–43, Reel 178; R&PCC 1890–1893:8; 1895. 12 The mine superintendent lived on the hillside above the town (R&PCC 1892).

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This end of town later became known as “downtown” among residents. Workers living in the eastern or “uptown” section of Helvetia had to walk the farthest to reach the mine or to shop at the company store; their children had the longest journey to the schoolhouses. The Protestant church was also built at the western end of the town, nearest to management, and the Catholic church at the eastern end, furthest from its center (see Fig. 14.3). This suggests a deliberate effort by Iselin and the R&P to create, maintain, and highlight the separation between the largely western European, Protestant, English-speaking managers in the downtown region and a predominantly Eastern European, Catholic workforce living in the uptown. Company correspondence and census records confirm these hiring preferences (e.g., R&PCC 1902a–d; see also Cooper 1982; Metheny 2007:79–86). The R&P actively recruited nonEnglish-speaking Eastern Europeans as a way to prevent labor difficulties and to counter attempts at unionization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Census records show that the bulk of Helvetia’s immigrant laborers came from the empires of Austria, Hungary, and Russia during this period (USBC 1900, 1910, 1920); where the records are sufficiently detailed, it is evident that many of these individuals and families considered themselves to be Poles, Slovaks, Slovenes, Lithuanians, Galicians, and Magyar. Their lack of mining knowledge and mining experience, their cultural and language differences, and their religious practices set them apart from Helvetia’s managers and those miners of western European origin. That the company’s actions met with some success in emphasizing these differences is indicated by oral informants who described their perception of a divide within the community, a cultural and economic separation that led them to think of spaces within the town in terms of “uptown” and “downtown.”13 Though the company intended for the town to reflect its corporate hierarchy and to emphasize the divides between Helvetia’s residents, over the long term these differences became less important or other factors replaced them in importance. An analysis of census data from this period shows increased mixing by ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic status within the community (USBC 1900, 1910, 1920; Metheny 2007:100–102). Oral accounts suggest that the R&P implemented a lottery system for housing assignments in the 1890s (Kriner 1994), and the mixing that 

Fig. 14.4 (continued) Conjectural footprint and architectural rendering of doublehouse no. 294/296, ca. 1940, based on archaeological and photographic evidence and the recollections of previous occupants. Excavation units from 1995 are shown in relation to the doublehouse and the lot lines. Brick and cement walks are indicated in black and by cross-hatching, respectively. Because of significant disturbance to the rear of the doublehouse during demolition and site clearance, the brick sidewalk behind no. 296 provided important information regarding the size of an addition to no. 296. Elevations of the doublehouse are not to scale

13 Oral

histories also indicate that, at times, gender-based activities and networks worked to maintain the perceived separation between uptown and downtown, but in other instances helped to overcome such divisions (Metheny 2007:139–142).

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is evident between 1900 and 1920 also suggests a certain amount of pragmatism on the company’s part in filling its housing units. But by 1920, some two-thirds of Helvetia’s miners were of Eastern European origin. Families of diverse backgrounds could be found living throughout Helvetia. While the use of the better-built single houses was retained for management, the result of such mixing within the rest of the town was to obscure many of the separations that had previously existed. Ultimately, the distribution of families came to reflect the predominance of Eastern European families and their descendants in the workforce. A pattern of tenancy emerged within the town landscape that encompassed a microcosm of interests related to gender, ethnicity, class, and religion; the daily intersection of these variables was complex and dynamic. Racial diversity, however, was deliberately omitted from the equation. Company correspondence indicates that the Rochester & Pittsburgh Company exhibited many prejudices of the period (e.g., R&PCC 1902a, e). The company did not hire blacks, a policy confirmed by census records showing that residents of the company town were exclusively white through at least 1920. The census records also document the absence of Irishmen and the presence of only a few Italians. Within Helvetia, then, the company’s definitions of “otherness” were constructed daily from differences in ethnic background, religion, and native language, rather than race.

Beyond the Visual: The Cultural Landscape of a Mining Community To fully understand the multiple relationships that were enacted within this community, it is essential that we analyze the mining landscape as gendered space. We also need to look “beyond the visual” to consider the importance of the cultural landscape in shaping the lives of the town’s residents. In “The Visible, the Visual, and the Vicarious: Questions about Vision, Landscape, and Experience” (1997), Robert Riley notes that “vision is our major source of information about our environment” and the primary basis for landscape interpretation. But what is meant by “vision”? And, Riley asks, “how far will it take us in understanding how and why our surroundings look as they do, or in understanding how and why people react to those surroundings as they do?” (1997:200). Riley argues that students of the landscape, whatever their disciplinary affiliation, should look beyond “vision” or the observable, to the “visual” – what he defines as landscape experience – and the “vicarious” or the “internally experienced landscape” to open up the lenses of human experience and meaning that shape our perceptions and interpretations of landscapes (1997:207). What are the roles of perception, cognition, and landscape experience? Meaning and memory? That landscapes express multilocality – that “place” is socially constructed at many levels and “a single place may be experienced quite differently” by different individuals – and that landscapes may be polysemic – that is, they may carry multiple meanings for “different users” (Rodman 1992:647) – are ideas with strong currency in anthropology today. Following Riley’s directive to look “beyond

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the visual,” I would argue that archaeological studies of the historical landscape can benefit from the application of these concepts. We need to recognize that the nonvisual or cultural landscape – that is, past human experience of the landscape – is as essential to our reconstructions and interpretations of historical landscapes as the observables we extract from the archaeological record. Riley’s discussion of landscape experience parallels an earlier paper by Dena Dincauze in which she urged archaeologists to look beyond “physical, climatological, and biological variables” in reconstructing landscape, and to consider environment as the “context within which lives are lived” (1997:1). Both writers, one a landscape architect and the other an anthropological archaeologist, remind us in different ways of the importance of looking beyond what is immediately observable and visible to our eyes. The difficulties of such a proposition are often insurmountable for archaeologists, dependent as we are upon the survival of physical evidence in our search for meaning in the material remains of a site. It is fortunate, then, that in addition to the archaeological and historical records, historical archaeologists may have access to the landscape experiences and perceptions of many individuals, past and present, through collected oral narratives. A clue to individual landscape experiences may be found, for example, in the visual imagery that so frequently accompanies oral narratives. Houses and landscape features often act as mnemonic devices (Rodman 1992; Yentsch 1988, 1996). Descriptions of visual landmarks or the physical appearance of a place often reveal strong emotional associations that open to us the landscape experiences of different individuals. Given the rich potential of oral narratives, the author’s research in Helvetia included an oral history component (Metheny 2002, 2007).14 Their use stems from a conviction that the recollections and perceptions of former town residents are a critical source of information, revealing multiple meanings within the corporate landscape. In fact, different landscape experiences and multiple perceptions of space and place within the company town – for example, the company store, the ballfield, or the miners’ doublehouse – are evident in the collected narratives. Together with archaeological and historical sources, oral narratives help to reveal the complexities of the cultural landscape of Helvetia – a landscape that included not only the built environment but also the experiences of individuals or groups in a company town. The inclusion of the nonvisual allows us to better understand the many complex relationships that existed among the miners, their families, and the corporation; it

14 The oral history component of this project included a series of taped interviews with six primary

informants, all former residents of Helvetia, former employees of the R&P Coal Company, or both. Transcriptions are found in Metheny (2002). In addition, the author participated in dozens of informal conversations with former residents; notes of these conversations were recorded as part of this project. Finally, other forms of orally communicated data were collected, from existing narratives and personal recollections published in the local paper, to reminiscences and anecdotes found in local histories, family histories, and Helvetia reunion materials. For a discussion of project methodology, interview techniques and the practice of oral history, see Metheny (2007:xx–xxi, 249–257).

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also allows us to recognize the existence of multiple interests within the community and daily attempts to negotiate those interests. The dynamic and significance of gender in the power relations in this community are evident, for example, when we consider the constant negotiation of the industrial regimen that took place daily. The archaeological, oral, and historical data from Helvetia show a constant dialogue between landlord and tenants, between paternal father and corporate family, and between landowner and a landless class. The evidence of this negotiation is visible in the physical and cultural landscape of Helvetia. Negotiation spanned a range of landscape-altering activities and behaviors for Helvetia’s families. The assertion of land use rights and challenges to those claims are evident in a dialogue over the grazing and penning of livestock. Helvetia’s earliest families allowed their animals – cows, pigs, chickens, geese – to roam the town freely, leaving waste in the streets and forcing residents with gardens to erect protective fencing. Company responses were largely ineffective until the 1930s when the R&P required tenants to pasture their animals on designated company land and to keep their livestock confined at night. A fee was collected from residents for the use of the pasturage; violators were fined. Families also exercised their claim of use rights by cutting grass and timber on company land, often without permission; they also planted garden beds and agricultural fields on company land, though usually with the assent of the company. Negotiations between landlord and tenant also extended to the placement and removal of fences; the disposal of trash and the maintenance of yard space; improved access to water; and the gathering of coal that spilled from the cars or the tipple for personal use.15 The doublehouse was the locus of much of this activity and is the place where gender relations are most obvious in the material record of the site (Fig. 14.4). The two-story structure provided each unit with four rooms in the main block; the rear ell, also divided, was alternately used as a kitchen or pantry. Oral histories, contemporary photographs, and archaeological evidence show that families freely and frequently altered interior spaces to suit their needs. Male residents undertook alterations to cut new doors, build additions, enclose porches and stairways, and build pantries, while all household members, particularly the women, defined or altered the use patterns within those spaces. Residents of the doublehouse furnished their dwellings according to their personal tastes and economic means; oral histories suggest this was frequently a decision shared by male and female members of the household. The effect of their combined actions was to reorder, reshape, and in many cases increase the amount of living space for each family or household, according to its individual needs.16

15 These

acts of negotiation are revealed in oral narratives from Helvetia, (e.g., Lloyd Gray, Sept. 11, 1995; Thomas Crop, July 29, 1994). See Metheny (2007:132–134,199–202,206–218) for a discussion. 16 Thomas Crop, July 29, 1994; Lloyd Gray, Sept. 11, 1995; Betty Haddow Hamilton, July 14, 1995.

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The houselot was similarly reconfigured by constructing new, gendered landscapes. Utilitarian spaces created in the backlot by the company were altered or relocated or their function changed by members of each household. Families determined whether to build a washhouse for the miner, whether an outdoor bake oven or summer kitchen was appropriate for their needs, where the garden would be planted, how much land would go under cultivation, where animals would be kept, and where other household activities would take place. Though company-built privies and coal sheds lined the alleys at the rear of each lot, residents frequently built new sheds or altered the function of older structures. In response to the complaints of women who had to hang their laundry outdoors to dry in all seasons, clotheslines placed inconveniently at the rear of the lot by the company were often supplemented or replaced with a clothesline nearer to the house. Male residents of doublehouse no. 294/296 eased the burden of hauling water from an outdoor pump or hydrant by installing a connection to the company waterline and running it up into the two units; they also installed pipes to carry wastewater away.17 There is ample archaeological evidence from no. 294–296 that Helvetia’s mining families built new walkways to serve these redefined spaces, and that older walkways were often resurfaced (Metheny 2007:211–216) (Fig. 14.5). Walkways connected the front entryways to the company sidewalk out front and curved around the side of each unit to reach the back doors; other walks were laid to access outbuildings behind the doublehouse. A wooden plank walk and a later brick walk behind no. 296 connected the back of the house to the privy. Tenants used a variety of materials to construct these walkways, including brick, stone, wood, and cement. Materials such as brick were often recycled and reused. Older surfaces were refinished with cement. The alteration of both house and landscape physically and functionally indicates the importance of household activities in shaping these spaces, and it also shows the active role of the family in the creation of a living environment. In so doing, mining families imposed their own tastes and preferences upon the corporate landscape; such gendered choices often varied on the basis of ethnicity and socioeconomic background. The next section will offer readers a closer look at the miner’s household in order to explore some of the complex networks and relationships within the town. The household was the basic unit of social organization in the town. It was also a microcosm of all the variables at work throughout the community: socioeconomic status, sex and gender, ethnicity, age, and religion. While the many social networks existing outside the home were equally complex and equally important to the town’s residents, the household provides an ideal lens because the activities of the household were central to the creation of a living environment and to the well-being of

17 The

inconvenience of the company clothesline and the outdoor hydrants is described by Marlin Deitch (Aug. 14, 1995). Household improvements, such as tapping into the town water supply and running drain pipes, are described in interviews with William Crop (July 25, 1995), Thomas Crop (July 29, 1994) and Betty Hamilton (July 14, 1995). See Metheny (2007) for a full discussion of oral sources and archaeological evidence.

Fig. 14.5 Plan views of walkways associated with the rear entries and backlots of no. 294/296. Left: Location of several walks and a drainage pipe installed by tenants behind no. 296. The location of the back wall of no. 296 is conjectural. Middle: Brick walk and soil stains left by an earlier plank walk leading to the privy behind no. 296. Right: Features behind no. 294, including a brick walk, a brick walk resurfaced with cement, planting holes, a drain pipe, and a cement footer for a clothesline installed by tenants in no. 294

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the family. It is in this context that nonvisual or landscape experiences are shown to be as significant as physical alterations to the landscape itself.

The Families Within the Miners’ Doublehouse Behind virtually every coal miner living in town was a woman who baked the bread that he carried with him in his pail as he entered the mine each day. Behind every miner was a woman who did her best to wash the coal dust from the work clothes of her husband or son. The miner’s wife was seemingly tireless and was a source of strength for her family. Her contributions, however, were augmented by those of the entire household. The coal miner’s family often lived a marginal existence. Stoppages, shortages, strikes, and poor wages meant that many miners struggled to earn a living wage. A number of strategies were exercised by Helvetia’s households that were critical to the survival of those households and to the community as a whole. Many actions were developed in response to corporate decisions about housing, access to resources, wage rates, rental fees, and other policies, but they were also a response to the conditions and hazards of work in an industrial setting. Others developed out of the formation and maintenance of a variety of networks in the community and through the maintenance of traditional cultural practice. It is clear that the household served as a vital institution in the family’s entry into and continued presence in the industrial workplace. Its stability was key to a family’s well-being. Through a variety of economic and social strategies, including adaptability in the composition of its members and the organization of its functions, the household enabled families to mediate between the industrial, corporate regimen, and traditional lifeways, to mitigate the hardships of daily life and to improve the chances of individual and family survival under harsh living and working conditions. We will look briefly at these strategies and their impact upon the physical and cultural landscape in the next section.

Household Strategies Household composition varied considerably in Helvetia, often on the basis of ethnicity, age, and gender. The doublehouse was a fully gendered space, and the composition of its members affected the types of strategies for economic and social survival in which household members engaged. Census records indicate five different types of households in Helvetia between 1900–1920 (USBC 1900, 1910, 1920; see Metheny 2007:94–96). Nuclear families accounted for 66% of households. Another 10% incorporated members of the extended family, often in response to changes within a household following the death of a husband or father. Nearly 13% of households incorporated boarders as a way of sharing resources and increasing

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income. Another 3% incorporated members of another family who shared the interior space in one half of a doublehouse but still maintained some level of autonomy in their household structure. The remainder, approximately 8%, incorporated some combination of extended family members, boarders, and domestic servants within the household. The variation in size, composition, and organization – from simple to complex – is a direct reflection of the strategies used by Helvetia’s residents to adapt to living and working conditions in the industrial landscape. Interestingly, each strategy reflects the continued importance of gender to the range of behaviors and experiences of Helvetia’s residents, and the importance of a fully gendered community to the survival and well-being of its members. Shared labor: In addition to boarders, Helvetia’s families absorbed widows, widowers, parents and in-laws, nieces and nephews, stepchildren, grandchildren, and adult siblings into their households. The incorporation of extended family members or other individuals into Helvetia’s households meant additional hands to share in domestic chores. Oral and documentary sources indicate that daily chores were often divided among household members on the basis of age and gender. There is overwhelming evidence of gardening and animal husbandry to supplement the household’s income. Gardening, in particular, has been identified as an important activity for Helvetia’s families as well as for other mining communities (AIHP 1992; Brestensky, Hovanec, and Skomra 1991:42,60; DiCiccio 1996:91,97; Metheny 2007:216–219; Miller and Sharpless 1985). This activity was encouraged by the company for its recreational value, and the R&P regularly sponsored competitions for best garden (e.g., R&PCC 1916b, c). Recreational gardening was a favorite activity of men, women, and children, and flower gardens and fruit trees were planted for a variety of purposes by household members.18 But gardening was also seen as a necessity by mining families. Garden produce and food preservation were deemed essential to the household economy and were needed to tide the family over through the winter and through periods when work in the mine slowed or stopped. Oral accounts suggest that the tasks of tilling the garden bed, sowing, weeding, harvesting, and food preservation were carried out by different members of the household, including children. Gardening was generally a shared responsibility, from the selection of plants to sowing, weeding, and harvesting. The heavier tasks of clearing or plowing a field were associated with male household members. The latter activity sometimes took men across the company landscape to uncultivated spaces beyond the backlot, often on the peripheries of the company town; these spaces were highly valued by miners who hoped to increase their yearly output by cultivating additional land. Canning, baking, and cooking were tasks undertaken by women. Many of Helvetia’s families kept animals in town, and children were expected to help with their care, whether tending the animals, taking them to pasture, feeding them, or fetching them back for the night. Haying (for animal fodder and bedding) and the cutting of timber also brought men,

18 Thomas

Crop, July 29, 1994; Lloyd Gray, Sept. 11, 1995; Sara Haag Crop, Sept. 11, 1995; Veronica McKee, July 30, 1994. See also R&PCC 1916b, c.

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women, and children to company spaces where they might claim these valuable materials. Some daily chores might easily be shared among the entire household. Fetching water, weeding, tending animals, fishing and hunting, and collecting coal that spilled from the rail cars or the tipple were tasks that could be performed by children. The physical labor of housework, though it fell largely on the miner’s wife, could be distributed among family members as well. Laundry, cooking, and cleaning were all key activities that consumed significant amounts of time and labor. Many households shopped daily at the company store as well. A division of these tasks within the household would have many benefits. Sharing the responsibility for childcare may have been most important, since individuals could be freed for wage labor. Shared resources: Ethnicity was a powerful force within this community. As noted, the majority of Helvetia’s labor force was recruited from Eastern Europe. As a result, Helvetia’s community was affected by the general movement of people, and by social and economic currents outside the community. The chain migration of families, kin, and members of the same ethnic group across the industrial landscape has been documented in many communities (e.g., Bodnar 1977:25–28, 1985) and clearly affected family and social networks within Helvetia. Census records document a steady inflow of unmarried relatives, as well as immigrants newly arrived from the same homeland if not the same native village. The records also indicate that boarders were often coresident with other members of the same ethnic group. One effect of chain migration was to strengthen the traditions and practices of Helvetia’s ethnic groups. We see this in the movement of residents across the landscape – families going to church, for example, or miners departing early from work or refusing to go at all – for the observance of religious and ethnic holidays (e.g., R&PCC 1913, 1916d) over several decades. We can also glimpse the ethnic background of residents from recollections of their selection of plants and fruit trees – cabbages, plums, and grapes, for example – and from the ways they prepared the foods that they grew (Metheny 2007:218–219).19 Industrial society was a challenge to many, and Helvetia’s families benefited from an exchange of information about the town, the mine, and the company. For those newly arrived, there were social and economic benefits to knowing others already living in Helvetia – from procuring a job in the mine and acquiring knowledge of the miner’s trade, to finding housing. Kinship networks also provided a link to the familiar – from the retention of cultural practices to the maintenance of family networks in a new setting. A shared knowledge also was integral to the creation and maintenance of a sense of identity and place within the community. An immigrant’s experience might then become one of community and familiar practices, rather than one of alienation.

19 Other

behaviors documented in this study confirm that ethnic traditions were strengthened among residents of this town, despite their entry into the industrial workplace. See Metheny (2002, 2007).

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Additional income: Multiple strategies to improve the economic well-being of the family are evident at the level of the household. Some 13% of Helvetia’s families augmented their income by taking in boarders (Metheny 2007:96). One quarter of Helvetia’s households also contained multiple wage earners (Metheny 2007:97–98). Most of these were families with a second or third male family member working in the mine. A few younger males also hired out as tailors, servants, and clerks. Job opportunities for women with the R&P were limited to a few positions in the office and the company store. Most unmarried women looking for wage work sought positions in Helvetia or in area communities as teachers, waitresses, seamstresses, laundresses, and domestic servants.

A Support Network in the Home In defining the essential role of the household, the role of women should be noted in particular. Women invested much of their time and effort in constructing a support network for their husbands and families. They managed to eke out the miner’s wages after purchases at the company store, rent, or fees for the doctor or for tools and equipment were subtracted from the miner’s pay. They supplemented their family’s daily subsistence by managing the household economy, perhaps through budgeting, through careful allocation of resources, by supplementing the family’s income, or by pooling their resources. They managed the household while the men worked their shift, ensuring that essential tasks were completed. The miner’s wife also provided emotional support and stability to the family. These contributions were important to the family’s welfare on a daily basis, but they were essential during periods of slowdowns, stoppages, and strikes. It was the miner’s wife who kept the family from slipping into poverty. In so many instances, women seemed to provide the cement that held families together.

The Importance of Household and Community Economic stress is a common theme in Helvetia and in other mining communities. The miners’ union is one agency whose presence we might expect to have been important during the strikes and disruptions in production that so frequently characterized the mining industry during this period but, by and large, the unions were not able to help on a day-to-day basis (Lloyd Gray, Sept. 11, 1995; Sara Haag Crop, Sept. 11, 1995; see also Metheny 2007:129–130). It was, instead, the community that filled this role, providing aid and support to those in need. Extended family and community networks provided mutual assistance in times of crisis. Food sharing and the pooling of labor and resources were a part of this. But community and kin networks were also a critical resource for dealing with the emotional stress and anxieties associated with a hazardous industry, especially for the women and children who found themselves without husband and father one day. With the core group

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broken apart, these networks provided a safety net for those who might otherwise face privation and marginalization without assistance. Networks within the community were characterized by a number of interests and interacted at a number of levels. Certain organizations, networks, and aid societies coalesced around religious affiliation and/or gender. The Protestant and Catholic churches, located at polar ends of the community, both sponsored activities and formed aid societies in support of the community. Tangential references to the Ladies’ Auxiliary at Bethel Union Church and to the Sisters of the Greek Catholic Union, No. 183 of Helvetia (DuBois Daily Express, May 5, 1914), offer few details about these organizations beyond their names, but we can infer that membership in these groups was based on gender and religious affiliation. It is unclear how they operated within the community, however. It is likely that most activities were directed toward specific members of the Helvetia community, but others crossed ethnic boundaries – the Ladies’ Auxiliary fed the Helvetia baseball team on game nights, for example (William Brown, Nov. 16, 1991).20 Formal male networks and associations are also likely to have existed but are difficult to pin down with precision. Early newspaper accounts document the meetings of a miners’ union in Helvetia, for example (e.g., DuBois Express, Reynoldsville edition, June 29, 1894:8; April 5, 1895:6); there were likely fraternal organizations in the community as well, as was common in other mining communities (AIHP 1992:54; R&PCC 1901). More informal networks and alliances also coalesced on the basis of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, and gender (Thomas Crop, July 29, 1994; Lloyd Gray, Sept. 11, 1995; Metheny 2007:129–130,219,238–240). Each of these variables might serve to divide people or, in a different context, bring them together for the purpose of providing some form of mutual aid to others in the community (Fig. 14.6). The groups had different, often informal, meeting places – the doctor’s office, the steps of the company store, someone’s front porch – that might express the divide between uptown and downtown, but Helvetia’s various groups and networks also used the same spaces on occasion. Those places might instead carry multiple, different meanings and associations for various community members, or might create a different sense of place, depending on the individual or group in question. The band hall or election hall, the company store, and especially the ball field were spaces that Helvetia’s residents might experience differently; these were also sites where groups could interact, regardless of ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, or other differences. This brief look at Helvetia’s community reminds us that mining landscapes, often seen as male spheres of activity, may actually reflect diverse and complex social and economic relationships. In Helvetia on a given afternoon, you could find a range of community members at the company store or at the ball field, and they might interact with one another through any number of networks or in varying contexts based on the intersection of these different factors. Though the recovery of a coal tag or

20 Members

were chosen for their playing abilities, and the team was multi-ethnic in composition (Metheny 2007:143–148).

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Fig. 14.6 Fragment of a stoneware pipe bowl with the letters “PING” and an open, extended hand. The design suggests the offer of a helping hand and is emblematic of the importance of community networks in the town of Helvetia. The pipe, as yet unidentified, may have been made for an organized group such as a miners’ union but possibly also a fraternal society or religious organization. Photograph by Michael Hamilton

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a UMW pin identifies the centrality of this male profession to the town’s existence, we should remember that there is much more to understand and explain than the activity of a single individual or the work of an industry. In fact, a community is revealed. Further, the complexities of these relationships are best revealed when we look beyond the visual to consider the varied experiences of community members and the many perceptions and meanings found within the cultural landscape. The negotiation of power among multiple interests occurred daily; the miner, his wife, a child, an elderly parent – if not equally powerful players, then their combined interests constituted a powerful force in negotiating place and identity in the company town.

The Preservation of Neglected Industrial Landscapes The preservation of America’s mining landscapes is problematic. There are environmental and ecological issues to recovering and restoring landscapes that have often been ravaged by the work of mining. Preservationists also must face economic issues: the value of coal has not changed, but the methods and costs of its removal have, so that strip mining and mountaintop removal are an active threat to the sites of abandoned mining communities.21 The impact of such mining can be devastating to above-ground structures and to archaeological remains as well as to the environment. Other economic issues have affected the survival of towns like Helvetia. Since company towns like Helvetia were owned by corporations and were considered private property, tenants also depended upon those corporations for an opportunity to transition to home ownership when the work of mining ended. That opportunity was not forthcoming for many communities, including Helvetia. The loss of what was a symbiotic relationship between owner and tenant, and the loss of use rights, meant that most of these town sites underwent a period of neglect, abandonment, and, finally, decay. Once vibrant, these communities have virtually disappeared from the landscape. Negative stereotypes of mining towns are also problematic. They are often viewed as low-investment sites that were built to temporarily house tenants who were not interested in the upkeep of the buildings. Such sites are often written off as unworthy of preservation and stewardship (Metheny 2007:202–204). These

21 Though

the landscape of the company town was a fully gendered space, the mining landscape was not, and it is worth noting that men still dominate mining and the destruction of the landscape that ensues with strip mining and mountaintop removal. Recent events show the dangers from the lack of regulation of sludge ponds and the hazards of ash spills (New York Times, Dec. 26, 2008, “Tennessee Ash Flood Larger than Initial Estimate,” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27sludge.html/). Recent calls for a review of federal policy regarding mountaintop removal are also relevant (“Mountaintop Mining to Get More Scrutiny,” Washington Post, June 11, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/10/AR2009061003984.html/).

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stereotypes are contradicted in every way by the present study (2007:179–229) and must be countered if we are to preserve these important sites. Helvetia’s story is no different. With the industry in decline, the R&P sold off its company towns to an area salvage company in 1947 (Cooper 1982:100); the salvage company acted as landlord for Helvetia’s families until the mine closed in 1954. Though the salvage company continued to lease out the town’s housing, its continued relationship with the R&P had, for many, an unforeseen effect on the town’s future. Coal is still accorded greater value than the land – or the people – above it. While the salvage company owned the town site and its many structures, the R&P retained its rights to the minerals beneath Helvetia (Metheny 2007: 42–44, 157). When it was economically and technologically feasible to remove the remaining coal deposits in this location through strip mining, the salvage company leased the above-ground land back to the coal company. In preparation for the strip mining operation, the town’s remaining tenants were evicted in 1989. Their homes, along with those previously abandoned, were leveled and burned; many foundations were bulldozed (DuBois Courier-Express, March 28, 1989, May 26, 1989; Indiana Gazette, June 15, 1989; Sykesville Post-Dispatch, Feb. 14, 1990; a video made by Ray Yusnukis (1989–1993) recorded much of this process). Only four structures – one doublehouse, two single houses, and the former company store – remain today; these four buildings were privately owned at the time of the strip mining operation and thus were saved from demolition.22 Below the ground, the loss of archaeological resources was devastating. Between 1990 and 1993, the ground was excavated to a depth of 20–25 feet in the uptown, eradicating all traces of the town site in this area (Andy Kovalchick, telephone conversation, March 9, 1994). The presence of a protected wetland has meant the survival of below-ground remains in Helvetia’s downtown or western section, however (DuBois Courier-Express, June 21, 1990). The results of the investigation only briefly described here clearly show the potential for future archaeological research in this vicinity. Today, the western end of Helvetia is overgrown; trees and brush obscure the foundations that were not sheared off at ground level (Fig. 14.7). The isolation of the site contributes to its obscurity. But there is significant interest among area residents, as well as among the former residents of Helvetia, now dispersed, in ensuring the survival of the town’s history through annual reunions, newspaper features, art exhibits, and postings on the internet. This interest extended to site visits and oral history interviews during my own research. It continues today in the form of emails and letters from former residents or descendants of former residents who have read about this project and are interested in sharing their own or a family member’s recollections. I believe we must tap into and develop this type of support if we are to 22 As

rent manager for the Kovalchick Salvage Company from 1947–1976, Veronica McKee purchased one of the single houses on Second Street. A doublehouse was also sold to Ray Yusnukis, an agent for the salvage company. The company store was sold to a private individual with ties to the area. The fourth extant structure, a single house, was used by the R&P Coal Company as a field office during the strip-mining operation. It has since fallen into disrepair.

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ensure the preservation of sites like Helvetia. Engendering a corporate landscape not only means repopulating the historical landscape but broadening contemporary interest in recording and preserving it.

Fig. 14.7 An abandoned landscape. Right: The area around the former mine entrance and Helvetia’s uptown (foreground) have been strip mined. Below : The engineer’s house, one of two remaining single houses in Helvetia, and the former company store are among the few visible reminders of the former company town. Photographs were taken by the author in 1994

For Helvetia, few structures remain to draw attention to the past. But oral history preserves many of the community’s stories and, together with archaeology, is the key to this site’s preservation and reconstitution. As Robert Riley wrote, the visual is only part of the picture. Archaeologists tend to privilege objects they can see and hold, historians the documents they can read. Oral history by its very nature involves the community in the preservation process. Using the remembered past to recover the community’s history may encourage the preservation of sites such as Helvetia before they are lost to us completely. All of these sites – whether neglected, overgrown, bulldozed, erased, or rebuilt – are an important part of our industrial past and are worthy of preservation.

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References Oral Sources All interviews were conducted by the author and were recorded on tape unless otherwise noted. For a complete list of interviews and oral sources, see Metheny (2007). Brown, William 1991 Videotaped oral interview, Nov. 16. DuBois, Pennsylvania. Crop, Thomas 1994 Oral interview, July 29. Luthersburg, Pennsylvania. Crop, William and Sara Haag Crop 1995 Oral interview, Sept. 11. Luthersburg, Pennsylvania. Deitch, Marlin 1995 Informal conversations, July 21, 24, Aug. 4, 14. Helvetia, Pennsylvania. Handwritten notes. Gray, Lloyd 1995 Oral interview, Sept. 11. Luthersburg, Pennsylvania. Hamilton, Betty Haddow 1995 Informal conversation, July 14. Helvetia, Pennsylvania. Handwritten notes. Kriner, Raymond 1994 Informal Conversation, March 10. Brady Township, Pennsylvania. Handwritten notes. McKee, Veronica 1994 Oral interview, July 30. Helvetia, Pennsylvania. Yusnukis, Ray 1989–1993 Videotaped narrative and walkover survey of Helvetia, Pennsylvania.

Unpublished Sources Brady Township Tax Assessment Records, Assessment Office, Clearfield County Courthouse Annex, Clearfield, Pennsylvania. 1891–1902, Microfilm Reel 178. Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company (R&PCC) Special Collections and Archives, Stapleton Library, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana. 1890–1893 Box 140B.

Ledger 135, Journal 1, 1890. Helvetia Mines, 1890–1893. Collection 51, Series VI,

1892 Adrian Iselin Jr. to John McLeavy, Superintendent, Helvetia, Aug. Ledger copybook, Adrian Iselin, Coal Properties, Helvetia Mines, 1890–1896, pp. 142–148. Collection 51, Series 1, Box 1, Early Correspondence. 1895 Adrian Iselin Jr. to John McLeavy, Superintendent, Helvetia, June 25. Ledger copybook, Adrian Iselin, Coal Properties, Helvetia Mines, 1890–1896, p. 382. Collection 51, Series 1, Box 1, Early Correspondence.

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1901 Lucius W. Robinson to Jacob L. Fisher, Esq. of Punxsutawney, June 12. Copy ledger, Lucius W. Robinson, General Correspondence, Apr. 18-June 26, 1901, p. 769. Collection 51, Series 1, Box 1, Executive Correspondence, R&P C&I Co., 1896–1918. 1902a Letter from Lucius W. Robinson, President, to A. J. Davis, July 11, 1902. General Correspondence Ledger, L. W. Robinson, July 2-Sept. 13, 1902, pp. 137–139. Collection 51, Series 1, Box 1, Executive Correspondence, R&P C&I Co., 1896–1918. 1902b Letter from Lucius W. Robinson, President, to all Superintendents, July 23, 1902. General Correspondence Ledger, L. W. Robinson, July 2-Sept. 13, 1902, p. 280. Collection 51, Series 1, Box 1, Executive Correspondence, R&P C&I Co., 1896–1918. 1902c Letter from Lucius W. Robinson, President, to Mr. Jas. Craig, August 2, 1902. General Correspondence Ledger, L. W. Robinson, July 2-Sept. 13, 1902, pp. 405. Collection 51, Series 1, Box 1, Executive Correspondence, R&P C&I Co., 1896–1918. 1902d Letter from Lucius W. Robinson, President, to Mr. John J. Davis, Aug. 30, 1902. General Correspondence Ledger, L. W. Robinson, July 2-Sept. 13, 1902, pp. 793–794. Collection 51, Series 1, Box 1, Executive Correspondence, R&P C&I Co., 1896–1918. 1902e Letter from A. W. Calloway, Florence Superintendent, to Lucius W. Robinson, President, July 7, 1902. General Correspondence Ledger, L. W. Robinson, July 2-Sept. 13, 1902, p. 109. Collection 51, Series 1, Box 1, Executive Correspondence, R&P C&I Co., 1896–1918. 1913 L. W. Robinson to Messrs. A. Iselin & Co., July 3. Executive Correspondence, L. W. Robinson, June 2-July 31, 1913. Collection 51, Series 1, Box 3, Early Correspondence. Executive Correspondence, R&P C&I Co., 1913–1923. 1916a Letter from Lucius W. Robinson, President, to Adrian Iselin Jr., Aug. 14, 1916. Executive Correspondence, L. W. Robinson, July-Aug. 1916. Collection 51, Series 1, Box 3, Item 23, Early Correspondence. Executive Correspondence, R&P C&I Co., 1913–1923. 1916b Letter from Lucius W. Robinson, President, to Adrian Iselin Jr., Aug. 24, 1916. Executive Correspondence, L. W. Robinson, July-Aug. 1916. Collection 51, Series 1, Box 3, Item 23, Early Correspondence. Executive Correspondence, R&P C&I Co., 1913–1923. 1916c Letter from Lucius W. Robinson, President, to F. H. Fritchman, General Manager; J. Craig, Superintendent; I. J. Harvey, Division Superintendent; F. Pardee, Assistant General Manager; and L. W. Robinson, Jr., General Manager, Sept. 7, 1916. Executive Correspondence, Adrian Iselin Jr., 1916. Collection 51, Series 1, Box 3, Item 20, Early Correspondence. Executive Correspondence, R&P C&I Co., 1913–1923. 1916d L. J. Harvey, Division Superintendent, Helvetia, to Lucius W. Robinson, Aug. 24, Executive Correspondence, L. W. Robinson, May-Aug. 1916. Collection 51, Box 3, Item 23, Early Correspondence. Executive Correspondence, R&P C&I Co., 1913–1923. 1947 Kovalchick Plan of Lots, Helvetia, Brady Township, Clearfield County. Drawn by Thos. Pealer, Indiana, Pennsylvania, for Kovalchick Salvage Co., Nov. 1947. Map drawer 49.

Newspapers DuBois Courier-Express DuBois Daily Express DuBois Express (Reynoldsville Edition) Indiana Gazette New York Times

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Sykesville Post-Dispatch Washington Post

Published Sources Allen, James B. 1966 The Company Town in the American West. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. America’s Industrial Heritage Project (AIHP) 1992 Coal and Coke Resource Analysis: Western Pennsylvania, Northern West Virginia. United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Denver Service Center, Colorado. Arnesen, Eric 2007 Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working Class History. Routledge, New York. Bodnar, John 1977 Steelton: Immigration and Industrialization, 1870–1940. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 1985 The European Origins of American Immigrants. In Essays from the Lowell Conference on Industrial History 1982 and 1983, edited by R. Weible, pp. 259–275. Museum of American Textile History, North Andover, Massachusetts. Bonsall, Ward (ed.) 1914 Hand Book of Social Laws of Pennsylvania. Associated Charities of Pittsburgh and the Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity. Printed by George S. Ferguson Co., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Brestensky, Dennis F., Evelyn A. Hovanec, and Albert N. Skomra 1991 Patch/Work Voices: The Culture and Lore of a Mining People. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Caldwell, J. A. 1878 Caldwell’s Illustrated Historical Combination Atlas of Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. From actual surveys by & under the directions of J. H. Newton, C. E. J. A. Caldwell, Condit, Ohio. Cooper, Eileen Mountjoy 1982 The Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company: The First One Hundred Years. Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company, Indiana, Pennsylvania. Crawford, Margaret 1995 Building the Workingman s Paradise: The Design of American Company Towns. Verso, London, England. DiCiccio, Carmen 1996 Coal and Coke in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Dincauze, Dena 1997 Creating and Interpreting New England’s Environments. Conference on New England Archaeology Newsletter 16:1–5. Dix, Keith 1988 What’s a Coal Miner to Do? The Mechanization of Coal Mining. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Metheny, Karen Bescherer 2002 The Landscape of Industry and the Negotiation of Place: An Archaeological Study of Worker Agency in a Pennsylvania Coal Company Town, 1891–1947. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Archaeology, Boston University. 2007 From the Miners’ Doublehouse: Archaeology and Landscape in a Pennsylvania Coal Company Town. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Miller, Donald L. and Richard E. Sharpless 1985 The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Mulrooney, Margaret M. 1989 A Legacy of Coal: The Coal Company Towns of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record. America’s Industrial Heritage Project. National Park Service, U.S. Department of Interior, Washington, D.C. Riley, Robert B. 1997 The Visible, the Visual, and the Vicarious: Questions about Vision, Landscape, and Experience. In Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, edited by P. Groth and T. W. Bressi, pp. 200–209. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut. Rodman, Margaret C. 1992 Empowering Place: Multilocality and Multivocality. American Anthropologist 94(3): 640–656. Scranton, Philip 1984 Varieties of Paternalism: Industrial Structures and the Social Relations of Production in American Textiles. American Quarterly 36(2):235–257. United States Bureau of the Census (USBC) 1900 Twelfth Census of the United States, Schedule No. 1-Population. Luthersburg Precinct of Brady Township, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. Supervisor s District 10, Enumeration District 54. June 21, 1900. Sheets 150A–154A. Document on microfilm, National Archives, Waltham, Massachusetts. 1910 Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910 Population. Helvetia (Mining Town), Troutville Precinct, Brady Township, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. Supervisor’s District 17, Enumeration District 54. April 25–30, 1910. Sheets 4A–13A. Document on microfilm, National Archives, Waltham, Massachusetts. 1920 Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920 Population. Helvetia Precinct, Brady Township, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. Supervisor s District 15, Enumeration District 110. Jan. 6–22, 1920. Sheets 1A–11B. Document on microfilm, National Archives, Waltham, Massachusetts. Wood, Margaret C. 2002 “Fighting for our Home”: Archaeology and the Transformation of Women’s Domestic Labor in a Working-Class, Coal Mining Community in Colorado, 1900–1930. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Syracuse University, New York. Wright, Gwendolyn 1981 Welfare Capitalism and the Company Town. In Building the A Social History of Housing in America, pp. 177–192. Pantheon Books, New York.

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Yentsch, Anne 1988 Legends, Houses, Families, and Myths: Relationships between Material Culture and American Ideology. In Documentary Archaeology in the New World, edited by M. C. Beaudry, pp. 5–19. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 1996 Close Attention to Place: Landscape Studies by Historical Archaeologists. In Landscape Archaeology: Studies in Reading and Interpreting the American Historical Landscape, edited by R. Yamin and K. B. Metheny, pp. xxiii–xliii. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.

Part VI

Commentary

Chapter 15

Commentary: A Feminist Framework for Analyzing Complex Gendered Power Dynamics Altering Cultural Landscapes from the Past into the Present Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood

The purpose of this chapter is to provide new insights by using a feminist framework to analyze gendered power dynamics that were explicitly or implicitly discussed in the previous chapters in this book. Most chapters found some evidence of gender power dynamics, whether discussed under that term, or more frequently using more specific words for particular power dynamics in gender relations, ranging from authority, competition, resistance, struggles, and battles, to influence, negotiations, equality, complementarity, cooperation, interdependence, partnership, or the creation of community. Both historical archaeologists and philosophers have argued that power is expressed through human constructions of “space” (Orser 1988:320; Rabinow 1984:252). Gender power dynamics are fundamental in creating what I call “powered landscapes,” defined as landscapes that express social power dynamics spatially on landscapes, such as gender segregation or integration. This commentary uses a feminist framework of a diversity of interrelated powers to gain new insights about the gender power dynamics that are explicitly or implicitly discussed in each book chapter. The “F” word (feminist) in this chapter’s title indicates a focus on gender power dynamics, which is the concern of feminist theories. All feminist research is concerned with gender, but not all gender research is feminist. Nonfeminist gender research is not concerned with power dynamics. For instance, Deetz’s (1963) pioneering gender research at the Spanish La Purisima mission in California did not address power dynamics, although Spanish male domination was implied in his use of the model of gender differences in Indian assimilation of the dominant material culture in the Spanish-controlled missions. Foucault (1978:93) has pointed out that human social relationships always involve power. I would add that all social relationships involve gender power dynamics because gender is a fundamental social identity for everyone, affecting all social relations among men and children as well as women (Spencer-Wood S.M. Spencer-Wood (B) Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Oakland University, Rochester Hills, MI 48309, USA; Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA e-mail: [email protected], [email protected] S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_15,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

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1992:99). In contrast to research on class and racial power dynamics, which have focused on domination and resistance, gender power dynamics can include both domination and resistance and cooperative powers that empower others, such as love. This fact has led me to develop a feminist inclusive framework to encompass the diversity, complexity, and fluidity of power dynamics in gendered relationships, which include all relationships. This framework is used for my comments on this edited volume and developed from my research and theorizing on powers expressed at the intersections between gender, class, race, ethnicity, religion, life cycle, sexual orientation, and other social dimensions (Spencer-Wood 1994, 1995, 1996, 1999a, 2002, 2003, 2009). My framework builds on and broadens previous definitions and categorizations of types of power.

Previous Definitions of Power Most archaeologists have used philosophers’ definitions of power that focus on domination, usually in a Marxist dialectical relationship to resistance. A prime example is Weber’s (1947:152–153) definition: “Power is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance.” Some feminists have elaborated this definition of power as social domination. For instance, Lipmann-Blumen (1994:110) defines social power as “the capacity (of one party) to impose its will on another by its potential to contribute or to withhold critical resources and rewards or by threatening or inflicting punishment.” (quoted in Chapter 13 by Hardesty, this volume). Foucault (1978:11–12,18,23–24,33–34,44–48,108,148,151, 1980:119, 1995:10,24,163,180– 181,194,219–220,303) expands this definition with statements that controlling power (i.e., domination) can exclude, prevent, prohibit, repress, conceal, censor, inhibit, regulate, regiment, discipline, reform, observe, classify, distribute, educate, incite, induce, or produce actions, including discourse, which is essential for the exercise of power. Foucault (1988:18) states that relations of power are the “means by which individuals try to conduct, to determine the behavior of others.” This quote shows that Foucault is similar to Weber in defining power as attempted or accomplished domination. Foucault’s (1978:95) statement that power always generates resistance also reveals that he defines power as domination, since that is the kind of power that generates resistance. Foucault’s creation of a dichotomy between power and resistance reveals that he does not consider resistance as a form of power, which explains why he under-theorized resistance. In a recent review of landscape research in historical archaeology Pauls (2006:69) also uses the phrase “power and resistance.” In contrast to the focus of philosophers and social scientists on individual dialectical powers of domination and resistance, dictionary definitions include both individual and group powers that are methods of social agency. Social agency is the ability of an individual or group to create change, whether physical and/or sociocultural, through independent action. Dictionary definitions of power range from individual abilities or the capacity to act or perform effectively, including strength,

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force, or might; to relational powers of authority, control, or influence exerted over other people by an individual, group, or nation (Morris 1969:1027). The primary definitions identify power as individual capacities to act independently of others, albeit usually with support of an empowering social network of family and friends. Domination through authority and control of others only emerges in the fourth and fifth definitions of power. The many definitions of power in the dictionary make it clear that independent individual social agency to act on material culture and landscapes is as important a form of power as power exerted in social relationships. Taking an inclusive feminist theoretical approach reveals how the multiple complex interacting powers in the social web include both individual and group social agency.

A Feminist Inclusive Heterarchical Model of Plural and Changing Power Dynamics As a result of feminist research on powers used by reform women and men I have been developing a feminist inclusive model of power dynamics. This framework is feminist in considering gender power dynamics as fundamental to all power dynamics in social relationships, due to the foundational nature of gender and sexual identities. Eschewing binary either/or thinking in opposed dichotomies, I created a feminist inclusive both/and approach to understanding the multiplicity and interrelatedness of powers in the social web (Spencer-Wood 1995:131). My feminist inclusive framework of power includes both hierarchical forms of power such as domination and resistance and Crumley’s (1995:30–31) concept of heterarchical kinds of power, which are nonhierarchical, unranked, or ranked in a variety of ways depending on conditions. Crumley borrowed McCullough’s (1945) concepts of heterarchy and network in brain structure and translated them into her concept of heterarchical powers in social networks. My inclusive model of a network of interrelated, multiple, and situationally negotiated powers is feminist in focusing on the diversity, complexity, and flexibility in power dynamics at the intersections of gender with class, race, ethnicity, religion, life cycle, sexuality, and other social dimensions of identity. My model of powers incorporates Miller and Tilley’s (1984:5–6) use of Benton’s (1981) term “power over” for domination, and “power to” for the social agency involved in creating sociocultural change. Miller and Tilley (1984:6) argued that everyone has the potential of “power to” create cultural change, whether through resistance or domination. My feminist inclusive model of power dynamics includes dominating “powers over” others, my parallel term of “powers under” for resistance and rebellion, and egalitarian cooperative “powers with” other people, which are all different kinds of “powers to” create change. My inclusive framework recognizes the multiplicity of powers by using the plural form of the “p” word. Egalitarian “powers with” others include love, affiliation, assistance, facilitation, empowerment, cooperation, collaboration, sharing, alliance, inspiration, persuasion, dialogue, negotiation, compromise, and the organization of

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group action (Spencer-Wood 1999b:179). Democratic group processes are “powers with” each other, including electing a leader who serves the group, leading democratic group processes such as voting, and representing the group to others. “Powers over” others range from physical force and coercion through psychological manipulation and control, to surveillance and rules such as laws. “Powers under” others range from flattery, pleas and compliance, to resistant accommodation, covert resistance, individual malingering, overt resistance, and rebellions involving organized group actions that require cooperative “powers with” each other. All these powers can also be social agency “powers to” create cultural change or to support the status quo. These different powers in relationships among people are all interrelated in a complex network of fluid and constantly negotiated social power dynamics. For instance, in different situations “powers with” others can be used to cooperatively organize actions expressing “powers over” others, or “powers under” others. “Powers over,” “powers under,” and “powers with” others can also each be social agency “powers to” change society and culture. All these forms of power can be combined in complex ways and are also relational forms of social agency that can be used by groups or individuals in social relationships. While different powers can be distinguished they also shade into each other, forming a continuous spectrum or continuum of powers, a framework used by Kent (1999). For instance the word “influence” includes powers ranging from psychological manipulation, to enabling parental “powers with” their children that empower them to achieve. “Powers to” create change include both individual and group social agency. Individuals may use their independent social agency to achieve their goals for their own lives. I call individual accomplishments and achievements of personal goals “independent social agency” because of the focus on the individual attempting to improve his or her own life or human life in general, in contrast to the other powers which focus on attempts to change the behavior of other people by exerting power in social relationships. The term “independent social agency” emphasizes individual autonomy in social agency – the possibility for individual innovations that bring change or something new to cultural structuration, consciously changing habitus or the cultural context. “Powers with” include the possibility of gaining support and assistance from one’s social network, to empower one’s “powers to” create and pursue projects for improving life. Of course unwilling change in an individual’s behavior is usually accomplished by another person using dominating “powers over” that individual. Thus, point of view and motivation are important in analyzing power dynamics. For instance, resources made available by a dominant group, such as the National Science Foundation, can be viewed both as “powers over” possible research agendas of others, and also as “powers with” others in assisting researchers pursuing certain kinds of projects. All categories of power include both group and individual forms of social agency. Individual social agency is defined as the individual capacity for action, whether by relating to others or to oneself. Importantly for this edited volume, individual social agency includes personal alterations of landscapes by moving soil and rocks, which

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can be done somewhat by an individual alone, or by using “powers with” others. Individual powers of social agency include personal capacities, ranging from powers of thought, concentration, creativity, speaking, writing, or singing, to physical strength, force or might, and athletic abilities. These abilities are interrelated, since mental abilities are based on or include physical abilities. In this volume Whitney Battle-Baptiste has asked whether power is influence, control, authority, or something earned from others. My both/and response is that these are all different powers. Control and authority are “powers over,” while power given by others or earned are examples of “powers with” others, such as influence and elected leadership. Further, my framework considers powers not only in relationships with others but in one’s relationship with oneself. In general I define power(s) as mental and physical capacities used to purposely direct one’s own actions toward goals of maintaining or changing one’s self or external conditions (possibly including attitudes or behavior of others) in some way(s). Powers can involve “powers with” of assisting, helping, and facilitating, or “powers over” of hindering, preventing, or prohibiting others from undertaking certain actions to achieve their goals. Powers are processes with variable purposes that are essential to all social and cultural change. My feminist inclusive framework of diversity of powers can provide new insights into gender power dynamics in the past as well as the present, as exemplified by my analyses of gender power dynamics in the other chapters of the book. The rest of this chapter first discusses mining landscapes because Hardesty’s chapter draws on Crumley’s concept of heterarchy, while Metheny’s chapter demonstrates the complexities of hierarchical domination by a mining company in Pennsylvania. Next, the discussion turns to the diversity of “powers under,” including “powers with” used by slaves and subordinate African-Americans, followed by the complementary gender roles and egalitarian “powers with” each other of the Iroquois. The gender power dynamics at religious sites are discussed, followed by male-dominated sites that demonstrate different cultural masculinities. The conclusion summarizes how my analyses of power dynamics in the chapters of this book provide new insights into the diversity, complexity, fluidity, and interactions of powers in social relations.

Hierarchical and Heterarchical Power Dynamics on Mining Landscapes Donald Hardesty’s chapter points out that mining landscapes include both hierarchically organized company towns and, more frequently, heterarchical “power networks in which interactions among individuals and groups are situational, changing, flexible and constantly being negotiated.” Individuals and groups negotiated who would control resources as they staked and worked claims, while more capital and labor were required for large mines, usually undertaken by hierarchical companies. Hardesty used Crumley’s framework to analyze regional mining site

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networks as expressions of “social networks,” “situational and changing power relations, including mobility and informal mining systems, . . . associated with heterarchical power structures.” Hardesty cited Margaret Purser’s research on the ways that women travelled across Paradise Valley to visit each other, forming human links connecting mining camps. Hardesty found that individual miners, including an African-American woman and white men, used what I call “powers with” each other in social networks and partnerships for pooling resources needed for small-scale mining. Analysis with my feminist framework shows how Hardesty’s chapter exemplifies heterarchical interrelationships among different kinds of powers. Hardesty also analyzed how the organization of settlement landscapes within mining regions, camps, and towns reflected “interactions between gender and ethnicity, class and occupation.” In mining towns nearly two-thirds of the women were wives of middle-class merchants and artisans. However, most of these wives did not conform to the elite stereotype of subordinate idle domestic womanhood. They often took in single male boarders who they could instill with Victorian values. Despite their legal status as chattel of their husbands, these wives also had the freedom and “power to” own and run their own businesses or to work in family businesses. Compared to women in eastern towns, women in mining towns were more frequently “independent social agents” who operated a greater variety of businesses. Women in the West had more opportunities for individual social agency to achieve economic independence, a major goal of reform women and many suffragists. Further, these middle-class wives exerted their “powers with” of moral suasion to persuade political leaders to establish churches and schools. The middle-class houses clustered in areas that were segregated from brothels and the Chinese miners’ communities at the other end of the town, as well as from central commercial areas. It can be inferred that the wealthier town residents had social agency “powers to” segregate themselves from less desirable areas of town. They probably also had “powers over” the location of the red light district, the Chinese community and commercial areas, through “powers with” town political leaders. Hardesty also discussed the documentary evidence of the subordinate status of Chinese women, who were often sold by their families to Chinese prostitution companies that brought the women to America to be sold as domestic servants or wives. Hardesty points out that the more frequent heterarchical organization of mining settlements contrasted with hierarchical company towns where company “powers over” exploitation of workers often led to strikes that sometimes left landscape features, such as miners’ rock fortifications on a hillside above Cripple Creek, Colorado. Wood’s (2004) research in the company town of Berwind, Colorado, found that the company sought to prevent strikes by providing housing that separated ethnic groups. However, housewives speaking different languages developed cross-ethnic household social networks that permitted the miners to unify in a strike in 1914. The mining company brought in the military, which massacred women and children living in the workers’ tents, despite the miners’ excavation of shallow pits in landscapes under their tents for protection.

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Karen Metheny has researched a coal mining company in Pennsylvania that used its “powers over” its workers as “powers to” construct a town landscape that spatially segregated residences of mine managers from those of married workers and of single workers, who lived in boardinghouses built outside of town, unless they could board with a family in town. Only 20% of workers were single men. The paternalistic company attracted stable workers with families by using its resources to construct churches, schools, sidewalks, and recreational facilities. The company exerted its racist power to not hire blacks, Irish, or Italians and preferentially hired married non-English-speaking Eastern European men as a method of preventing unionization and labor problems. While the company exerted its “powers over” its workers in constructing its townscape, it also softened its domination by using “powers with” workers’ families, permitting them to alter the interior of their houses and their yard landscapes. The company viewed itself as a paternalistic father who took care of its children – the workers and their families. However, low wages and work stoppages meant that the miners’ “powers with” their wives, daughters, young sons, and other relatives who could not work in the mines were essential to raise foodstuffs in gardens and animals pens, to produce food, to preserve foods through canning, as well as generate income from boarders. Metheny’s chapter demonstrates how a company used “powers over” in conjunction with “powers with” workers in a strategy combining autocratic control with provision of resources that enhanced the quality of life of families and permitted their social agency and the development of community social networks to sustain the families of workers who were underpaid. Today mining remains a heavily male-dominated occupation and culture of machismo in physically dangerous landscape situations, despite the development of machinery that makes it physically possible for women to be miners. Hardesty discussed the infrequency of preservation of mining towns in their landscape context rather than just mines. Mines are an aspect of our industrial heritage that has scarred landscapes and has little or no constituency for their preservation. Mine owners don’t want to make a monument to their exploitation of workers, although some workers are interested in the preservation of remnants of their previous communities. The early 20th-century mining town excavated by Metheny was destroyed later in the century by men’s large-scale surface mining, which destroys whole landscapes by leveling mountains and filling in valleys. So men have continuously altered and destroyed that landscape from the 19th century into the 20th century.

Gender Power Dynamics Intersecting Race Women’s and men’s powers across gender and racial lines are discussed in the book section on gendering African-American landscapes. First, Battle-Baptiste discusses “powers with” others across gender lines in slave communities. She focuses on slave women’s practice of sweeping yards as expressing cooperative “powers with” their community as well as social agency “powers to” symbolically and

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spiritually sweep away evil spirits, a form of “powers under” resisting domination by male white slave owners while appearing to be harmlessly cleaning a yard. “Sweepin’ Spirits” reveals the importance of subordinate interpretations of actions as “powers under” to subvert and spiritually counteract intersecting sexism and racism experienced by slave women. Battle-Baptiste’s chapter reveals the multivalent meanings and power implications of an everyday task imbued with spiritual symbolism. Also fascinating is Battle-Baptiste’s account of her “powers with” the white Ladies Hermitage Association (LHA), who she persuaded to interpret the slave community’s use of outdoor space, including yard sweeping and a cooking pit on cabin landscapes. Battle-Baptiste created connections between the Hermitage and the African-American community and formed an effective alliance with the LHA of “powers to” change interpretation of slave cabin landscapes. Battle-Baptiste has had a lasting impact on the inclusion of the social agency of slaves in the interpretation of the Hermitage. What Battle-Baptiste calls her power to influence and alter how the past is presented to the public is not a dominating influence, but rather a sharing of her knowledge, inspiring and empowering the LHA by reaching across racial lines to exert collaborative “powers with” them. Interestingly, Lu Ann De Cunzo (2004) found that yard sweeping was not performed by all postbellum African-American tenant farmers in northern Delaware. This should not be surprising because African-American culture was no more monolithic than its African roots, but instead carried diversity from African cultures into African-American cultures. More surprising was De Cunzo’s finding that yard sweeping was an aspect of white agrarian reform. Did white reformers adopt yard sweeping from African-Americans or was it also a tradition imported to America by some white Europeans? Stephen McBride’s chapter on Kentucky’s Camp Nelson Civil War Park exemplifies how cross-gender and cross-race “powers with” others resulted in cooperative “powers under” actions that overcame the dominance of white commanders at the top of the camp hierarchy. These commanders repeatedly sought to remove from the camp the squatting families of slave men, who enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight for their emancipation. A quote from the camp commander about the African-American families annoying “everybody” revealed that to the commander “everybody” only included the white male officer hierarchy, since the African-Americans and some white soldiers were not annoyed and even appreciated the presence of the families for services they provided, such as cooking, washing laundry, mending clothes, and tending the sick. No doubt the commander considered these people inconsequential “nobodies.” White men’s media stories of the deaths of African-American women and children as a result of their removal from the camp led to political protests by abolitionists that resulted in a reversal of policy and the military construction of a refugee camp for the slave families. The escaped slave families demonstrated social agency in their “powers to” escape their enslavement and create a settlement at Camp Nelson, where their domestic tasks developed “powers with” soldiers and became subversive “powers under” the camp commander, resulting in a change in the dominant military policy. The military also went beyond the law in granting

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freedom to slave families of men serving in the army. The camps of families of African-American soldiers at Camp Nelson had been lost to history until they were excavated and researched, resulting in new signage bringing to light this important landscape-based and gendered power dynamic in the history of African-American emancipation. James Delle and Mary Ann Levine’s chapter analyzes the independent social agency of a free, possibly ex-slave, African-American woman, Lydia Hamilton Smith, who was a conductor on the Underground Railroad and became the first woman of color to buy and own property in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the 1850s. As the housekeeper of famous abolitionist and egalitarian congressman Thaddeus Stevens, Lydia exerted cooperative “powers with” her employer in a number of ways. As a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Smith enlisted her employer to use an underground cistern to hide escaped slaves by opening up the top of the cistern for ventilation and light and by digging a tunnel from the opened side of the cistern into the basement of the saloon that was owned by Stevens and adjoined his house. Smith also demonstrated independent social agency in using her salary to buy property that she rented for more income. Stevens must have paid Smith a generous salary as his housekeeper for her to be able to afford to buy property and even construct a house that she rented. When Stevens died in 1868, his will provided Smith with $5,000, a small fortune at the time. Stevens’ will demonstrated “powers with” Smith, who he empowered in achieving her goal of economic independence and even wealth. Smith used this inheritance to buy more property not only in Lancaster, but in Philadelphia and Washington, DC. Smith demonstrated “powers with” other working-class widows and families, predominantly white recent European immigrants, by renting her houses to them, including the Stevens house, which changed from an elite residence to a working-class boarding house. As a landlord Smith had not only obligations, but also some “powers over” her renters, inverting the normal racial power hierarchy. Delle and Levine briefly discuss the “powers with” others that they exerted to inspire and empower the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County to negotiate with the Lancaster County Convention Authority and the mall developers to get the cistern and facades of buildings preserved as a museum with a “quest for freedom” narrative theme. The partial preservation of this historic area and the destruction of most of the inner courtyards and back wings of the buildings (even the one Stevens had built on his preexisting house) show how the “powers with” of persuasion and negotiation work in real-life relationships. The dominant legal powers of the mall landowners meant that the Historic Preservation Trust had to accept the compromise of partial preservation of a set of historically important structures and their landscapes. In order to gain even partial preservation the subordinate Historic Preservation Trust had to argue not only for the historic value of the cistern and buildings, but also in the dominant language of capitalism for their utility as marketing devices for the convention center to attract more customers. This case study shows how the “powers with” of persuasion and negotiation involve compromise between conflicting goals of historic preservation and commercial development.

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Egalitarian Complementary Gender Roles Among the Iroquois Women’s and men’s “powers with” each other are evident in Robert Venables’ discussion of the complementary gender roles and egalitarian power dynamics among the Iroquois. In The Clearings the village and farmland were the domain of the women while The Woods, including streams, rivers, and lakes, were the domain of the men. However, as Venables points out, even within these domains men and women worked cooperatively. The complementarity and interdependence of Iroquois women’s and men’s roles can also be seen in Kathleen Allen’s detailed analysis of archaeological evidence for the predominance of artifacts used by women within village longhouses for food preparation and pottery manufacture. Allen’s research also shows that men’s stone tool manufacture for hunting in the woods was often carried on outside the houses and sometimes in distinct areas within houses. Analyzing Venables’ and Allen’s chapters together reveals how Iroquois gender ideology of complementary and equally important roles was expressed in a predominance of gender segregation in artifacts associated with men’s flintknapping versus women’s tasks in the houses in The Clearings. Venables’ discussion of Iroquois gender ideology shows that “powers with” gender equality is possible with different gender roles, in contrast to the Euro-American society, in which men historically dominated and controlled women in the domestic sphere. In the 19th century, reform women increased their powers by successfully arguing that they should control their domestic sphere, which in urban settings had become increasingly segregated from men’s public occupations. Venables’ research reveals that gender segregation in tasks need not result in gender power asymmetry, an assumption that permeates feminist theory, which focuses on patriarchy. The case of the Iroquois reveals that gender segregation in a matrilineal society can result in greater equality in gender power dynamics. The powers of Iroquois women in public as well as domestic life were a major “powers with” inspiration for a number of 19th-century Euro-American feminist and abolitionist leaders, including Lydia Maria Child, who, as early as 1835, wrote about Iroquois women’s matriarchal decision-making powers, followed by writings on the subject by Matilda Jocelyn Gage starting in 1871 and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the 1890s (Landsman 1992:259–260). These first-wave feminist leaders realized by observing women’s superior matrilineal powers among the Iroquois that there were alternative gender ideologies and cultures to the oppression of women under Euro-American patriarchy. Iroquoian matrilocal control of the longhouse by women was an inspiration to suffragists and reform women who argued that EuroAmerican women should control their homes, rather than their husbands. Reform women successfully gained control over their homes and children by arguing for the sanctity of women and their domestic sphere as ideologically segregated from men’s sinful capitalist sphere, since capitalism permitted the Biblical sins of usury and exploitation of labor (Spencer-Wood 2003). The increasing interest in preserving and interpreting Iroquois sites and history to the public is again bringing to the fore their egalitarian gender power dynamics as an alternative model of gender relations compared to American patriarchy.

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Religion and Gender Power Dynamics Intersecting Class and Ethnicity Three chapters address connections between religion and gender systems, including the two chapters on the Shakers and my chapter on the spread of diverse Jewish communities on Boston’s landscape. The chapters on the Shakers discuss landscape implementations of their “powers with” egalitarian gender ideology, which was a utopian alternative to Euro-American patriarchy. The leader of the utopian communities, Ann Lee, claimed to be the second coming of Christ legitimating women as well as men as Shaker leaders. David Starbuck and Paula Dennis analyze the degree of actual gender segregation on the landscape of the Canterbury, New Hampshire, Shaker village in contrast to Shaker gender ideology, revealing that women were involved in cleaning even at mills and other sites designated as male. In excavations of the abandoned Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, Shaker community, Kim McBride found that men built the machinery in the women’s washhouse. Even more interesting was the archaeological evidence that behind the washhouse Shaker women took tea on transfer-printed plates, despite the Shaker ideal of simplicity associated with plain white plates and the ideal regimentation of meals. Shaker women were clearly social agents on the landscape of their community. Kim points out that Shaker women as well as men were renowned for labor-saving inventions. Shakers were predecessors of third-wave feminists in supporting racial as well as gender equality in their communities. Starbuck and Dennis note that Shaker gender roles were complementary and interdependent, concluding that Shaker men and women “needed” each other. The Shaker gender system, similar to the Iroquois, had a high level of gender segregation with equitable gender power dynamics, in contrast to the male dominance in American patriarchy, which also had a high level of gender segregation in the 19th century. Shaker gender roles were different and largely spatially segregated, but complementary. Each gender was considered equally important in contributing to Shaker lifeways. Shaker women and men worked separately, using egalitarian “powers with” each other in creating a distinctive lifeway. It would be useful for feminists to theorize how gender segregation can exist in an egalitarian gender system, as well as in the more familiar patriarchal gender system analyzed by feminist theory. Interestingly, the preservation of Shaker communities has been a gendered process. By the 1930s, or earlier in some cases, only women were left in Shaker communities. Starbuck and Dennis discuss how Shaker women refused to take on men’s mill and farm work and continued to support their ideology of gender segregation into different tasks. Savulis (2003) researched Shaker girls’ idealistic visions of domesticity that they embroidered in unusual artifacts for the Shakers, given their religious injunction against making any graven images. Initially Shaker women hired men from outside the community to conduct men’s work, and in the end they abandoned men’s work entirely. Shaker women had mills and farm buildings previously involved in Shaker men’s work torn down and sold the land to maintain shrinking all-female Shaker communities. Shaker women focused on their production and sale of traditional crafts for income.

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After the death of the last Shaker sister at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, the buildings were sold in 1923 to local people who were interested in preserving the community, which was not threatened by development. They organized “powers with” the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the U.S. Department of Commerce ARA program to fund excavations, restoration, and the construction of museum exhibits as part of a convention center that reused parts of the original Shaker buildings. Selective reuse of the buildings has been undertaken to generate funds for preserving parts of the buildings. The convention center also provides people staying there with a unique experience of actually living in direct contact with an historic, beautiful, orderly Shaker village, albeit with many buildings destroyed. This is an interesting, useful, and instructive compromise negotiated by preservationists using “powers with” capitalism. At Canterbury Shaker village in New Hampshire modern patriarchy in the form of motor noises from a nearby speedway intrudes on the rural, peaceful, gendersegregated Shaker landscape. This preservation problem shows that landscapes involve hearing, smell, and all the senses, and the visual aspects cannot be separately analyzed, as has been done in landscape archaeology. The experience of landscapes, including preserved historic cultural landscapes, involves all the senses in gendered ways, as demonstrated by the penetration of remnant feminine Shaker spaces by the macho roar from men’s racecars on the speedway. Although a few women now drive racecars, speedways were developed by men racing cars and are still a very male dominated macho domain. In contrast to the uniform egalitarian gender ideology and practices of the Shakers, Jews who migrated to the Boston area developed diversity in their gender systems, religious sects, ethnicity, and class. These aspects of Jewish identity intersected. The poorer “Russian” Jews retained Orthodox Jewish patriarchy, while “German” liberal Jews had more egalitarian gender power dynamics. A feminist approach reveals how Jewish gender ideologies, identities, and power dynamics changed as many Jewish sects incorporated material aspects of gendered Protestant practices. As the diaspora of Jewish communities spread across Boston’s landscape, a variety of gender power dynamics were expressed in synagogue and institutional landscapes. Although the earliest charitable organizations were organized by men in synagogues, women soon gained the “powers with” each other of creating and running their own organizations and institutions, legitimated by the dominant American gender ideology. When “German” Jewesses organized an Industrial School for “Russian” girls, their parents were not passive recipients of charity, but instead used “powers with” the philanthropists to negotiate for useful programs. Poor “Russian” Jewish women used “powers with” each other, with their men’s organizations, and with “German” men’s organizations to raise funds for institutions such as hospitals, orphanages, and gender-segregated old-age homes that served the entire Jewish community. On Beacon Hill, Eastern European Jews cooperatively organized “powers with” each other to build the orthodox gender-segregated Vilna Shul, which spatially expressed an unusual degree of gender equality by arranging the men’s and women’s sections on the same floor. Orthodox Jewish women organized an auxiliary to raise

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funds for the synagogue, parallel to women’s auxiliaries at Protestant churches. Further, Jewish women demonstrated social agency “powers with” each other in creating an organization called the “sisterhood” to connect women’s auxiliaries of all sects, reaching across denominational divisions in a powerful move to unite the entire Jewish community in Boston. The fight to preserve the Vilna Shul divided Jews and Anglo-Americans into two camps: preservation versus the sale of the synagogue to pay its debts and reuse of its religious furnishings in other synagogues. The building and its small yard landscape were saved by virtue of the synagogue’s status as a nonprofit institution, which prevented commercial sale of the property. In addition, its position in a historic district imposed development restrictions on any buyer. The synagogue is now Boston’s Center of Jewish Culture, and is hosting a revival of community in the Beacon Hill area of downtown Boston.

Constructions of Masculinity Intersecting Class and Race or Ethnicity Three chapters in this volume are particularly interesting in addressing aspects of masculinity, providing case studies of diversity in men’s relationships, which are gendered as much as women’s relationships with men or with each other. This section will first discuss the chapter by Roberta Greenwood on the nearly all-male community of Chinese immigrants on the coast of central California, followed by the chapter by Sherene Baugher on the community of male inmates at Sailors’ Snug Harbor on Staten Island, and ending with the chapter by Jun Sunseri on the machismo ideals and actual behaviors of Spanish colonial men in New Mexico and the importance of their relationships with women. American gender stereotypes did not apply at the late 19th-century Chinese men’s seaweed-harvesting community at Cambria, California. In contrast with Anglo-American masculine ideals, the Chinese men’s census occupations included cooks and laundrymen. Chinese men commonly operated laundries, while laundry was considered too demeaning labor by Anglo-American men, who required women for this task. Of the one to three Chinese women in the camp, one was listed in the census as a fisherwoman, usually a male occupation, while another was known for her more traditional motherly role in taking care of the Chinese teenaged boys. The Chinese men’s community was governed by a balance between capitalist hierarchical competitive powers as each man staked out a territory for seaweed gathering, and countervailing cooperative “powers with” each other when they gathered in Cambria for company and festivals which centered on a Chinese temple that they built by 1895. Chinese temples, including this one, were also the meeting place for the traditional Chinese fraternal mutual assistance organization that also served as the community governmental body and sponsored festivals. Greenwood’s chapter shows how competition and cooperation are not an oppositional dichotomy, but can operate together for the greatest business success, as only

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recently recognized in the business model called co-opetition (Brandenburger and Nalebuff 1996). Greenwood’s study provides a detailed example of the utility of cooperative “powers with” each other in supporting the competitive financial success of each individual. The preservation of the temple exemplifies the “powers with” of cooperation between local volunteers and The Cambria Land Trust, which bought the property in 1999 and obtained a small grant from The National Trust for Historic Preservation in order to restore the temple and move it to its original location near a landscape where the Chinese community had planted a tree of heaven and 20-foot-tall Chinese dahlias. Sailors’ Snug Harbor is another completely different kind of all-male institutional community of predominantly white and some black impoverished disabled sailors and ship captains, who were charitably housed in large buildings with Greek temple facades and landscaped lawns in front, making an impressive public display. Cleaning, laundry, and meals were provided by Irish and German immigrant women who lived in a separate matron’s cottage behind the almshouse buildings, without landscaped yards. The governor used his “powers over” the staff to replace a matron and steward who were married and resisted the governor’s authority and tried to operate independently. The subsequent single matron successfully used “powers with” the paternalism of the institution’s governor in asking him to fund more food for the working women, who were also provided with a sewing machine by 1868, and a water closet at the early date of 1866. Baugher applies my feminist inclusive framework of plural power dynamics to analyze how the inmates of Sailors’ Snug Harbor organized cooperative “powers with” each other to protest their unpaid labor in maintaining an elaborate garden, orchard, and fish pond around the mansion of the institution’s governor, who was also a former sea captain. The experience of ship captains in cooperatively organizing their ship’s crew probably gave them important skills in organizing “powers with” other inmates to mount a successful letter-writing media campaign with “powers under” the governor that resulted in wages being paid for inmates’ yard work. This study shows how the inmates’ “powers with” each other became “powers under” that triumphed over dominating “powers over” them of the institution’s governor, although he expelled leaders of the movement. Archaeological evidence showed that some inmates successfully resisted the institution’s temperance rules by drinking alcoholic beverages and hiding the bottles in alcoves between dormitory buildings that provided protection from administrative surveillance. Their vocal resistance constituted successful “powers under” the governor and trustees, who eventually permitted some consumption of alcohol in the institution on special occasions. Finally, Baugher analyzes the competition between modern organizations over the reuses of the Sailors’ Snug Harbor buildings and landscape, ranging from museums in the buildings to a Chinese garden that all ignore the history of the site. In contrast to the cooperative masculinity learned at sea by the male Snug Harbor inmates, and the co-opetition of the Chinese fishermen, Sunseri’s chapter details the tensions between the dominating machismo ideology of Spanish men and the cooperative gender ideology of the Tewa Indians. He also reveals the social agency of wives of Spanish men in planning settlements and maintaining them while

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the men were off on military engagements. Interestingly, the cooperative “powers with” of Tewa Indian men and women who had no shame in relying on the help of kin, were expressed in their “powers with” the landscape in constructing Tewa-style irrigation systems that also appeared to conform to the irrigation system mandated for construction by dominant Spanish men. This study shows how subordinate groups’ “powers with” each other can create group action that simultaneously involves “powers under” to resist dominant group orders, while using “powers to” alter landscapes in ways that physically mask resistant constructions as dominant constructions. Sunseri also provides examples of women’s bravery as independent social agents in breaking ethnic/racial and gender stereotypes of women’s subordination in the home. Finally, Sunseri discusses the continuing machismo of Hispanic descendants who organize cooperative “powers with” each other in a communication network to fiercely protect their ancestral site of Casa Viejas with guns wielded from horses and trucks, evoking the persistence of the image of male Spanish machismo.

Conclusion Analyses using my feminist inclusive framework of multiple interacting powers increases our understanding of the studies in this volume and of the diversity, fluidity, and complexity among different kinds of interrelated powers. Chinese men provide one example of the interrelatedness of competition and “powers with” cooperative organization important for the success of this subordinated group in American society. In contrast, slaves on the Hermitage Plantation used “powers with” each other to develop “powers under” of independent social agency and community in giving resistant meanings to yard sweeping within the liminal interstitial spaces between cabins, where surveillance by overseers was not possible. Chapters on Camp Nelson and Sailors’ Snug Harbor provide historic examples of ways that subordinated gendered groups created “powers under” the dominant men in the hierarchy by organizing “powers with” each other and sometimes also with members of the dominant group. These studies show that subordinated groups’ “powers with” each other can become powerful enough to change oppressive behaviors of the dominating group. In contrast, Jewish women exemplified the common strategy of women gaining status in patriarchy through their social agency in performing well in their supporting roles, using “powers with” men to raise funds for synagogues and community institutions run by men, such as hospitals. However, Jewish women further used “powers with” each other, available in gender-segregated patriarchy, as “powers to” create and lead their own charitable organizations and institutions run by and for Jewish women. Thus Jewish women moved the gender-segregated patriarchal landscapes in their culture toward greater equality, expressed in single mixed-gender entrances to synagogues and institutions.

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The chapters on the Iroquois and the Shakers provide examples of egalitarian gender-segregated cultures in which women and men used “powers with” each other in interdependent complementary roles. These case studies suggest a new avenue for feminist theorizing and research beyond the feminist theory that gender segregation leads to the inequalities in patriarchy. Metheny’s research shows how the male hierarchy of a mining company successfully dominated its workers and prevented labor conflicts by using “powers with” workers to provide community resources and permitting some individual social agency, while autocratically selecting workers from certain cultural and religious groups and distributing them on the landscape to inhibit their communication and organization into unions. In contrast Hardesty found that individual small-scale male and female miners organized “powers with” each other to work their claims and organize communities on mountainous western landscapes. Women were particularly important in networking “powers with” each other to connect camps, as well as organizing institutions that created community in larger mining towns. Middle-class wives in larger communities participated in class and ethnic segregation on these landscapes. Cooperative “powers with” can be seen in the various successful examples of the preservation of these gendered landscapes. In sum, this volume provides examples of diversity in heterarchical strategies of groups and individuals for exercising different interrelated powers, including “powers over,” “powers under,” “powers with,” and “powers to.”

References Benton, M. 1981 “Objective” interests and the sociology of power. Sociology 15(2):161–184. Brandenburger, Adam M. and Barry J. Nalebuff 1996 Co-opetition. Doubleday, New York. Crumley, Carole L. 1995 Building an historical ecology of Gaulish polities. In Celtic Chiefdom, Celtic State, edited by M. Geselowitz and B. Arnold, pp. 26–33. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. De Cunzo, Lu Ann 2004 A Historical Archaeology of Delaware: People, Contexts and the Cultures of Agriculture. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Deetz, James F. 1963 Archaeological Investigations at La Purisima Mission. UCLA Archaeological Survey Annual Report 1962–1963, pp. 163–208. Foucault, Michel 1978 The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction. Pantheon Books, New York. 1980 Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, edited by C. Gordon, Pantheon Books, New York.

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1988 The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom. In the Final Foucault, edited by J. Bernauer and D. Rasmussen. MIT Press, Cambridge. 1995

Discipline and Punish. Vintage Books, Random House, New York.

Kent, Susan 1999 Egalitarianism, equality, and equitable power. In Manifesting Power: Gender and the Interpretation of Power in Archaeology, edited by T.L. Sweely, pp. 17–29. Routledge, London, UK. Landsman, Gail H. 1992 The “Other” as Political Symbol: Images of Indians in the Woman Suffrage Movement,” Ethnohistory 39(3):247–284. Lipmann-Blumen, Jean 1994 The Existential Basis of Power Relationships: The Gender Role Case. In Power/Gender: Social Relations in Theory and Practice, edited by H.L. Radtke and H.J. Stam, pp. 108–135. Sage, London, UK. McCullouch, Warren S. 1945 A Heterarchy of Values Determined by the Topology of Neural Nets. Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 7:89–93. Miller, David and Christopher Tilley, editors 1984 Ideology, Power, and Prehistory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Morris, William (ed.) 1969 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. American Heritage Publishing Co., New York. Orser, Charles E., Jr. 1988 Toward a Theory of Power for Historical Archaeology: Plantations and Space. In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States, edited by M.P. Leone and P.B. Potter, pp. 313–44. Smithsonian Institutions Press, Washington, D.C. Pauls, Elizabeth P. 2006 The Place of Space: Architecture, Landscape and Social Life. In Historical Archaeology, edited by M. Hall and S.W. Silliman, pp. 65–84. Blackwell, Malden, Massachusetts. Rabinow, Paul 1984 The Foucault Reader. Pantheon, New York. Savulis, Ellen Rose 2003 Zion’s Zeal: Negotiating Identity in Shaker Communities. In Shared Spaces and Divided Places: Material Dimensions of Gender Relations and the American Historical Landscape, edited by D. L. Rotman and E.-R. Savulis, pp. 160–190. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. 1992 A Feminist Program for Non-Sexist Archaeology. In Quandaries and Quests: Visions of Archaeology’s Future, edited by L. Wandsnider, pp. 98–114. S. Illinois University Press, Carbondale. 1994 Diversity and Nineteenth Century Domestic Reform: Relationships Among Classes and Ethnic Groups. In Those of Little Note: Gender, Race and Class in Historical Archaeology, edited by E. M. Scott, pp. 175–208. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 1995 Toward the Further Development of Feminist Historical Archaeology. World Archaeological Bulletin, 7:118–136.

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1996 Feminist Historical Archaeology and the Transformation of American Culture by Domestic Reform Movements, 1840–1925. In Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, edited by L.A. De Cunzo and B.L. Herman, pp. 397–446. Winterthur Museum and University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. 1999a The Formation of Ethnic-American Identities: Jewish Communities in Boston. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge, edited by P.P.A. Funari, M. Hall and S. Jones, pp. 284–307. One World Archaeology Series, P.J. Ucko, editor. Routledge, London, UK. 1999b Gendering Power. In Manifesting Power: Gender and the Interpretation of Power in Archaeology, edited by T. L. Sweely, pp. 175–83. Routledge, London, UK. 2002 Feminist Theory. In Encyclopedia of Historical Archaeology, edited by C. E. Orser, Jr, pp. 205–209. Routledge, London, UK. 2003 Gendering the Creation of Green Urban landscapes in America at the Turn of the Century. In Shared Spaces and Divided Places. Material Dimensions of Gender Relations and the American Historical Landscape, edited by D.L. Rotman and E. Savulis, pp. 24–61. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. 2009 Feminist Theory and the Historical Archaeology of Institutions. In The Historical Archaeology of Institutional Life, edited by A. Biesaw and J. Gibb, pp. 33–49. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Weber, Max 1947 The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by Talcott Parsons. Free Press, New York. Wood, Margaret C. 2004 Working-Class Households as Sites of Social Change In Household Chores and Household Choices: Theorizing the Domestic Sphere in Historical Archaeology, edited by K. S. Barile and J. C. Brandon, pp. 210–35. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

Index

Note: The letters ‘f’ and ‘t’ following the locators refer to figures and tables respectively

A Abalone camp, 274 and seaweed trade, 277 Abandoned towns and abandoned fields, 31–32 Abiquiu, 152 alcalde mayor, 152 exorcism, 152 idols identified, 152 Acequia, 145, 150 agriculture background, engineered landscape, 150–151 Adath Israel Congregation, 192, 194f, 196–198 Adler, C., 219, 221, 223–224 African-Americans Black cultural production, 81, 87, 89 family, 87 captive Africans, 83–84, 86–89, 92 women, 89 Civil War Camps, 9, 96–99 See also Camp Nelson, Kentucky community, 92, 350 emancipation/freedom, 9, 42, 87, 95–109, 124, 131, 133, 179, 239, 348, 350–351 Home for Colored Refugees, see Camp Nelson, Kentucky plantations, 9, 83, 90, 92, 357 See also Hermitage plantation, Tennessee resistance, see Power Sister Edith Green, 233 social space, 90 spiritual connection with the earth, 88 sweeping, 7, 66, 70, 81–93, 262, 349–350, 357 See also Underground Railroad

African-American women, 95–110 archaeology of refugee encampment, 99–106 See also Refugee encampment, archaeology of Camp Nelson in Civil War, 96–99 Black/White Kentuckians, 96–97 Camp Nelson, map of, 97f Clark, Andrew (Colonel), 97 Convalescent Camp, 98 ejection order, 98 Emancipation Proclamation, 96 Federal Government, 99 “First Battle of Camp Nelson,” 97 Fry, Speed (commander Brigadier General), 98 “government employ,” 99 Kentucky river, 96 National Anti-Slavery Standard, 98 refugee encampment, 97–98 Thomas (General), 98 union state and slave state, 96 ejection and “Home for Colored Refugees,” 107–108 destruction at refugee encampment, 107 “Home for Colored Refugees,” 107 Miller, Joseph, 106 New York Tribune, 107 “Second Battle of Camp Nelson,” 107 preservation and interpretation, 108–109 archaeology, 108 Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park, 108 Camp Nelson Civil War soldiers, 108 Camp Nelson highway marker, 109 Camp Nelson historic highway marker, 109f Camp Nelson National Cemetery, 108

S. Baugher, S.M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6,  C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

361

362 African-American women (cont.) Camp Nelson Restoration and Preservation Foundation, 108 Camp Nelson story, 108 “Fourth Battle of Camp Nelson,” 108 KHC, 108 AIHP, see America’s Industrial Heritage Project (AIHP) Alabama plantation, 84 Alanen, A. R, 3, 81 Alexander, 238 Alien Land Law of 1920, 275 Allen, J. B., 319 Allen, K. M. S., 57–73 Almshouse studies, 165 American Civil War, 114 American Indians, see Native Americans American Protestant culture, 198 American Reform movement, 192 American Revolution, 29, 41, 43–44, 48 America’s Industrial Heritage Project (AIHP), 315–318 Andrews, E. D., 234–235, 238 Angel Island Immigration Station, 275 Anschuetz, K. F., 151–152, 156, 158 Anthropology, laboratory of, 158 Anti-Chinese sentiment, 275 Antin, M., 204 Anti-Semitism, 192 ARA, see Area Redevelopment Administration (ARA) Arabic hydraulic engineering, 150 Archaeological excavations, 7, 9–10, 176, 180 evidence of illegal activities, 180 Archaeological historic sites Bodie, California, 296–300, 308 Camp Nelson, Kentucky, 9, 95–109, 350–351, 357 Canterbury Shaker Village, New Hampshire, 233, 235–247, 262, 354 Casitas Viejas, New Mexico, 10, 141–142, 144–145, 147, 149–151, 154–159 Chinese temple, 273–287, 355 The Hermitage plantation, Tennessee, 9, 83, 88, 90, 92, 357 mining towns, 3, 7, 296f, 300, 306, 309, 333, 348–349, 358 Parker Farm, New York, 7, 57–61, 67–68, 72 Sailors’ Snug Harbor, New York, 10, 165–184, 355–357

Index Thaddeus Stevens’ House site, Pennsylvania, 9, 113, 115f, 117–121, 127–128, 131, 351 Archaeological zones, First Hermitage Zone I (Kitchen Courtyard), 86 Zone II (Kitchen Quarter backyard), 86 Zone III (outdoor hearth and cooking area), 86 Zone IV (Central Courtyard), 86 Zone V (Farmhouse West), 86 Area Redevelopment Administration (ARA), 265 Ark of the Covenant cabinet, 196, 212 Arnesen, E., 314 Asian immigrants, 275 Asmussen, H., 59 Associations Chinese, 11, 275, 281, 297, 302, 348, 356 Jewish, 10–11, 189–224, 353–355 Atlas (Caldwell), 315 B Bagger, L., 170, 177–179 Bakker, P., 21 Balance, 26–28 of clearings and woods, 28–35 abandoned towns and abandoned fields, 31–32 “casteels,” 28 “Clearings,” 28 Corn Woman, one of the Three Sisters, 31f “Indian Hill,” 30 lacrosse games, 35 men’s roles as hunters and warriors, 35 Mohawk town, description, 29 “Mother Earth,” 33 “Pine Tree Chiefs,” 35 religious ceremonies and government councils, 35 “The Three Sisters,” 30 trade goods, 33 woman creating clay pot, 34f “women’s art,” 33 “pagans” by most non-Indians, 27 Baragli, J., 169, 174, 176 Barde, R., 276 Barker, Mildred (Sister), 233–234 Barnavi, E., 201 Barred Zone Act, 275 Barry, G. J., 167–170, 177–181 Barth, F., 143 Bartram, J., 23, 27, 31, 37–39

Index Basso, K., 152–153 Bathe, B.W., 173 Battle-Baptiste, W., 5, 7, 81–93, 347 Battle, W., 84 Baugher, S., 1–13, 73, 165–184, 355–356 Beacon Hill Civic Association, 214 Beauchamp, W. M., 26, 37 Beaudry, M. C., 1, 113 Beekman, C. S., 150 Bennett, A., 88 Benningfield, W. R., 252 Benoth Israel sheltering home, 202f, 203 Bentley, G. C., 143 Benton, M., 347 Berlin, 97 Berry, B. J., 267 Beth Israel hospital, 201 Bilharz, J., 46 Black cultural production, 87 Blinn, H., 238, 261, 262 Bobonis, G., 276 Bodie Consolidated Mining Company, 308 Bodie Mining District, California Bodie State Historic Park, 308 cyanide leaching technology, 298 depopulation of, 298–299 description, 297–298 High Peak settlement, 296–297 map of, 299f townsite of, 300f Bodie Protection Act, part of the California Desert Protection Act, 308 Bodie State Historic Park in 1962, 308 Bodnar, J., 329 Boice, M., 256 Boies, J. J., 173 Bond, R. P., 23 Bonsall, W., 314 Boott Mills, Lowell, 175 Borderlands, see Spanish Colonial Borges, R. C., 233, 236 Boston Jewish congregation (first), 192 Boston Landmarks Commission, 214 Boston Preservation Alliance, 214 Boston’s (Greater) landscape, 189 diverse Jewish sects and gender systems, development of, 192–198 Adath Israel Congregation, 194f, 196 American Reform movement, 192 anti-Semitism, 192 Conservative movement, 192 first Boston Jewish congregation, 192 Haitian church, 194f, 197

363 interior Jewish features, 196 major sites and communities, 195f Ohabei Shalom Congregation, 192, 194f Jewish communities, 189 interior features, 196 major sites and communities, 195f mikveh, 196 movement of, 193f–194f symbols, 197 Boston University, 240 Bourdieu, P., 61, 143 Brandenburger, A. M., 356 Braude, A., 191 Braudel, F., 295 Braverman, W. A., 190, 201, 207–208 Bressi, T. W., 3 Brestensky, D. F., 328 Brewer, P. J., 255 Briuer, L., 309 Bromley, G. W., 219–224 Bronner, E., 214 Brooks, J., 142–144, 146, 149, 153 Browne, J. R., 297 Brown Foreman Foundation, 263 Brown, J. K., 26, 32 Brown, W., 331 Brumfiel, E., 293 Bryan, H., 143 Buddhist temples, 281 Buffer settlement, 144, 156 Building company town, gender as force, 315–318 AIHP, 315–318 Burlingame-Seward Treaty, 275 Burnside, Pvt. J., 103, 105 Bushee, F. A., 197 C Caldwell family, 129–130 Mrs. Caldwells’ landscapes, 130–131 establishment, 130 Lancaster’s textile industry, 130 Thomas Winpenny, 130 Caldwell, J. A., 315 California Chinese immigration, 273–276 abalone camp, 274 Alien Land Law of 1920, 275 Angel Island Immigration Station, 275 anti-Chinese sentiment, 275 Asian immigrants, 275 Barred Zone Act, 275

364 California (cont.) Board of Health, 275 Burlingame-Seward Treaty, 275 California Gold Rush, 275 Chinese Mary, 275 Exclusion Act of 1882, 275 Exclusion Laws, 275 Federal Census of 1900, 275 fishing camps, 273 Geary Act of 1892, 275 Immigration Quota Act, 275 labor market, 274 location of Cambria and Vicinity, 274f Los Angeles News, 275 National Origins Act, 275 Page Law of 1875, 275 role of fishermen, 274 Scott Act of 1888, 275 transcontinental railroad, 275 World War II, 275 Chinese temple after separation from Warren house, 280f Buddhist temples, 281 Cambria temple, 282 Center Street/Main Street, 283 Chee Kong Tong, 281 Chinese Masonic Hall, 282 comparative study, 281 1910 Federal Census, 282 Guandi, 281 Hawaii’s sugar plantations, 282 Jai, in lunar year, 282 Joss house or temple, 279 Ling Ying Association House, 281–282 Manchu government, 281 Mendocino temple, 281 Ng Shing Gung Temple, 282 at rededication, 280f Red House, 283 Sanborn map, 283 San Francisco, 282 Santa Rosa Creek, 282 Warren structure, 281 Gold Rush, 275 preservation, 283–286 area, entrances, 285f–286f Cambria Land Trust, 283, 285 Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, 285 County of San Luis Obispo, 283 Creek side Reserve, 283 dahlia, 283

Index Dedication Day, 284 East Meets West drew, 285 Green space, 284 National Park Service, 284 National Register of Historic Places, 284 National Trust for Historic Preservation, 284 Red House, 283 Redwood fencing, 284 restoration plan, 284 Santa Rosa Creek, 283 Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, 284 Tree of Heaven, 283 “Called to Order,” 234 Cambria, 277–279 abalone and seaweed trade, 277 Bridge Street, 279 Centre Street, 279 “Chine Cabins,” 279 Chinese fishermen, 277 Chinese immigrants, 273 “Chinese Joss Ho” (temple), 279 Chinese laundry, 279 geographic and cultural isolation, 278 Land Trust, 283, 285 Lunar New Year holidays, 279 optimum harvest season, 277 1875 Page Law, 279 recycled building materials, 278 Sanborn maps, 279 second largest town, 273 Slab town, 273 temple, 282 Wong How biography, 277 home of, 278f Campion, N. R., 234 Camp Nelson, Kentucky, 95–109 Battle of Camp Nelson First, 97 Second, 107 Fourth, 108 Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park, 108 Camp Nelson Civil War soldiers, 108 Camp Nelson highway marker, 109 Camp Nelson National Cemetery, 108 Camp Nelson Restoration and Preservation Foundation, 108 Camp Nelson story, 108 Emancipation Proclamation, 96

Index Fee, John G., 98–99, 107 Fry, Speed S., 98–99, 106 Hall, Theron E., 98–99, 103 Home for Colored Refugees, 9, 106–108 KHC, 108 refugee(s) encampment, 99–108 laundry and cooking, occupations, 107 occupations, laundry/cooking, 9, 12, 86, 105–106, 122, 166, 168, 176, 205, 260, 274, 304, 329, 350, 355–356 survey of Camp Nelson, 99 U.S.C.T., 107 See also African-Americans; AfricanAmerican women Canterbury Church Family, 242f dumps, 241 Shaker landscape, New Hampshire, 233–246 Canterbury Shaker archaeology, 240–242 Canterbury Shaker artifacts, 243–245 preservation of Canterbury landscape, 245–246 Shaker gendered architecture and landscape, 238–240 Shaker ideology, duality, and gender issues, 234–238 See also Shaker, Canterbury Cantor, 191, 196, 212 Cantor, N., 42 Carrillo, C. M., 147–148, 154 Carson National Forest, 141, 158 Carver, M., 307, 309 Casella, E. C, 2, 165 Casitas Red-on-Brown Pottery, 144 Casitas Viejas (little old houses), 141, 155f adobe walls, 159f pi˜nonjuniper llano, 141 recorded names, 141 Cassell, M. S., 2 Castas, 144 “Casteels,” 28 Cayuga Indians Cayuga Sites, 7, 67 Carman Site, 58f, 72 Parker Farm, 7, 57–61, 67–68, 72 daily practice, 61 domestic household organization, 61 floral remains, 59 hearth, 61–62, 64–67, 69–71, 86, 106

365 longhouse, 7, 21–23, 25–26, 28–29, 32–33, 35, 47–48, 57, 59, 60f, 62, 64–67, 71–72, 352 compartments, 67, 71 microscale, 7, 61–62, 72, 154 palisade, 28–30, 38, 60, 62, 64t routine activities, 57–73 site formation, 66 spatial patterning, 62–64 subsistence, 61–62, 64–65, 148, 307, 330 temporal patterning, 64–65 village, 7, 57, 59, 61–67, 72 Centre family, 253 Dwelling House circa 2010, 266 Chance, J. K., 142 Chang, K. C., 275, 276 Chang, Y., 277 Charitable institution (Randall’s), 167 Charities Benoth Israel Sheltering Home, 202–203, 208, 220 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, 200, 221–222 Hebrew Ladies’ Benevolent Societies, 199 Hebrew Ladies Helping Hand Association, 222 Hebrew Ladies Home for the Aged, 219 Helping Hand Temporary Home for Destitute Jewish children, 219 Home for Jewish Children, 219 Ladies Aid Association, 221, 223 Ladies Bikur Cholim Society, 203 Ladies Sewing Circle, 205 Ladies Sewing Society, 201, 205, 222, 224 Leopold Morse Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews and Orphanage, 201, 218 North End Jewish dispensary for Women and Children, 203 North End Ladies Aid Association, 221 Roxbury Ladies Aid and Fuel Society, 219 United Hebrew Benevolent Association, 190, 200, 203, 222 See also Dispensaries Charles “Bud” Thompson, 240 Charles River Park Synagogue, 214 Chatham Shaker Museum, 262 Chavez, F. A., 144, 146 Chee Kong Tong, 281 Child, Lydia Maria, 352 Children’s House, 243 “Chine Cabins,” 279

366 Chinese architecture, see Chinese temple in California fishermen, 274, 276–277, 282, 356 Historical Society of Southern California, 285 immigrants, 273 immigration, 3, 11, 273–276, 279, 281, 283, 287, 302, 305, 355 Joss House (Temple), 279–283 laundry, 279 Mary, 275 Masonic Hall, 282 miners, 348 settlements, 276, 282–283, 303 temple in California, 273–286 Chinese immigration to California, 273–276 preservation, 283–286 seaweed trade, 276–277 temple, 279–283 See also California, Cambria Wong How, 277–278, 282 Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, 302 1907 Chinese dwelling in the Cortez Mining District, 303f “Chinese Joss Ho” (temple), 279 Chinese Six Companies, 302 Chinese temple in California, 273–287, 355 Cambria, 277–279 See also Cambria Chinese immigration to California, 273–276 preservation, 283–286 seaweed trade, 276–277 temple, 279–283 See also California Chow, E. A., 275 Chung, S. F., 276, 279, 304 Church Family Brethren’s Shop, 243 City Archaeology Program, 169 Civic Service House, 202 Civil War, 125 emancipation of African-American families (soldier’s), 350 soldiers, 9, 96, 108, 351 See also Camp Nelson, Kentucky Clark, T. D., 252–254, 258 Class structure lower–class, 2, 9, 324

Index middle-class, 2, 10, 114, 166, 173, 178, 190, 201, 208–209, 275, 297–298, 302, 306, 348, 358 upper-class, 174 working-class, 2, 117, 119, 130, 174–176, 201, 207–208, 216, 298, 302–303, 306, 324, 351 Clearings and woods today, preservation and continuity “box lacrosse,” 48 “field lacrosse,” 48 Genesis Pyramid, 46 Internal Revenue Service and Social Security, 46 town sites, 47 transformations in, 41–45 American Revolution, 43 beaver trade, 43 “Gai wiio” or “The Good Word,” 44 Haudenosaunee Reformation, 44 smallpox, impact of, 42–43 syphilis, 42 traditional matrilineal kinship system, 45 Clubs Elysium Club (Jewish men), 192, 205, 223 Excelsior Club (Jewish men), 208 fraternal organization, 331 Cockerell Hall, 202 See also Jewish immigrants Cole, W. I., 220–223 Collins, L., 256 Colonial buffer village landscape preservation/archaeology of, 153–156 civilian conservation corps crew chiefs, 153 people at Great Depression, 153–154 Comer, D. C., 148, 152 Comisionados, 145, 156 Commager, H. S., 43 Communal ownership, 252 Communist Peasants Association in Hunan, 276–277 Community’s two-mile-long mill system, 241 “Complex household,” 88 Comstock Mining District, Nevada, 302–303, 306 Confederacy’s five founding nations, 22f Conservative and orthodox communities, movement of, 197 Conservative movement, 192 national Women’s League, 200 Contextual archaeology, 113–114

Index Convention Center Authority, 131 Cooper, E. M., 314, 321, 334 Cooper, J. F., 256 Cornplanter, E., 45 Corn Woman, one of the Three Sisters, 31f Cortez Mining District, Nevada, 295, 297f–298f, 303, 306 Cortez, 295–298, 303, 306 Garrison Mine, 303–304 Mill Canyon, 295, 306 Mount Tenabo, 295, 297, 303 Shoshone Wells, 295, 303 Cotter, J. L., 115 Cotz, Jo. A. E., 169, 180 County of San Luis Obispo, 283 Crawford, M., 218, 319 Creamery production, 243 Cripple Creek, Colorado, 295, 348 Crop, S. H., 328, 330 Crop, T., 316f, 324–325, 328, 331 Crop, W., 325 Crumley, Carole, 294–295, 345, 347 Crumley, C. L., 294–295, 345, 347 Cultural landscapes, 2–11, 42, 81, 87, 89, 143, 145, 151–152, 159, 166, 169, 182, 192, 200, 210, 246, 255, 313, 316, 322–327, 333, 343–358 D Dahlia, 283 Daily Journals (Melville’s), 174 Daniels, A. G., 220 Darvill, T., 307, 309 Davidson, J. M., 100 Davis, A., 87 Davis, M. R., 182 Davis, Philip, 208 De Bougainville, L. A., 35 De Cunzo, Lu Ann, 2, 105, 113, 165, 207, 350 Dedication Day, 284 Deeben, J., 309 Deetz, J. F., 343 Deganawidah, messages of, 22 Deiss, R., 259 Deitch, M., 325 Delle, J. A., 2, 4–5, 9, 113–134, 351 Dennis, M., 31–32 DiCiccio, C., 314–315, 317, 319, 328 Dick, H., 144, 154 Dickson, Capt. J. B., 98 Dincauze, D., 323 Diseases, see Epidemics

367 Dispensaries Baron de Hirsch Dispensary for Men, 203, 220 North End Jewish Dispensary for Women and children, 220 Dix, K., 314 Dobyns, H. F., 42 Domestic servants, 121, 124–127, 300, 328, 330, 348 Dom´ınguez, F. F. A., 149 Do˜na Mar´ıa de la Cabeza, wife of San Isidro, 153 Doris, M. C., 82–83 Dry farming techniques, 156 Dual identity of woods and spheres of responsibility, 36–39 approaching humans, 37 “communal” ethics, 41 trade with musket-bearing Europeans, 38 Dwelling House, 235, 236f Dyer, F. H. A., 97 E East family, 253 East Meets West drew, 285 Ebert, S., 190–191, 199–201, 203, 205, 207, 218–220, 222 Ebright, M., 146, 149, 151–153 Edwards, Y. D., 87 Effinger, Catherine biography, 124 Effinger family Annie, 124 Catherine Amelia Effinger, 124 Catherine Galster, 124 Henry, 124 Jacob, 124 Joseph Hardinger, 124 Kleiss Saloon, 124 Frederick Saman, 124 Mrs. Effinger’s landscapes, 125 economic depression, 125 Effinger household/occupation, 125 Panic of 1873, 125 Egalitarian complementary gender roles among Iroquois artifacts, archaeological evidence (Kathleen Allen), 352 Iroquoian matrilocal control of longhouse, 352 Iroquois gender ideology (Venables), 352 powers of Iroquois women, 352 Ehling, W. P., 58

368 Ehrenfried, A., 196, 199, 202, 204 Eldress Bertha Lindsay, 239 Eliav-Feldon, M., 201 Elizabeth Peabody House (EPH), 208 El Rito community, 158 Emlen, R. P., 238, 255–257 Endreny, T. A., 31 Engelbrecht, W. E., 27, 29–31, 33, 39–40, 62, 66 Engendering corporate landscape, miner’s doublehouse view building company town, gender as force, 315–318 AIHP, 315–318 cultural landscape of mining community, 322–327 discussion of landscape experience (Riley), 323 family behaviors, 324 houselot/utilitarian spaces, 325 landscape-altering activities, 324 recycled and reuse, materials, 325 Riley’s vision, 322–323 significance of gender, 324 “The Visible, the Visual, and the Vicarious: Questions about Vision, Landscape, and Experience” (Robert Riley), 322 walkways, rear entries and backlots, 326f families within miners’ doublehouse, 327 role of miner’s wife, 327 gender as organizing principle of community, 318–319 hiring married men, 317–318 household and community, importance of, 330–333 economic stress, 330 extended family and community networks, 330 fragment of a stoneware pipe bowl, 331f informal networks and alliances, 331 male profession, centrality of, 331–333 networks within the community, 331 Protestant and Catholic churches, 331 household strategies, 327–330 additional income, 330 animals and haying, 328–329 daily chores, 329 different types of households in Helvetia (1900-1920), 327 gardening, recreational, 328

Index industrial society, 329 migration, 329 shared labor, 328–329 shared resources, 329 mining landscape as gendered space, 313–315 artifacts associated with mining profession, 315f company town, 314–318 Helvetia Mine, 313, 316f landscape of company town, 317f, 320f mining in Pennsylvania, 314 Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company (R&PCC), 318–319 R&P, paternalistic programs, 318–319 preservation of neglected industrial landscapes, 333–335 abandoned landscape, 335f economic issues, 333 four structures, 334 negative stereotypes of mining towns, 333–334 the salvage company (Helvetia), 334 western end of Helvetia, 334–335 spatial imprints (Helvetia), 319–322 corporate hierarchy, 321–322 “downtown”/“uptown,” 319, 320f, 321 immigrant laborers, 321 miners’ doublehouse (Adrian Iselin), 319 Pennsylvania coal company towns, 319 Protestant church, 321 R&P‘s corporate ideology, 319 tenancy, pattern of, 322 support network in home, role of women, 330 Engineered landscape, acequia agriculture, 150–151 Acequia irrigation committee, 150 Arabic hydraulic engineering, 150 land use traditions, 150 ordenanzas, 150 Reconquista, 150 colonial pressures/opportunities, 150 indigenous knowledge systems, 151 Leyes de las Indies, 151 proper villages development, 150 EPH, see Elizabeth Peabody House (EPH) Epidemics, 36, 41–42 bubonic plague (black death), 42 influenza, 42 measles, 42 smallpox, 28, 30, 42

Index Epperson, T. W., 84 Ernstein, J., 113 Espacio sagrado exploration, ritual landscape, 151–153 Eston, R., 23 Ethel Hudson, 236 Ethnicity Anglo-American, 191, 199, 216, 355 Eastern European, 198, 317, 321–322, 349, 354 English, 21, 23, 26, 30, 43, 174, 177, 208, 306 German, 3, 124, 174, 177, 190, 192, 194f, 196–197, 199–201, 203–205, 207–208, 210, 216–219, 252, 255, 354, 356 Irish, 174, 177, 322, 349, 356 Russian, 190, 192, 197, 199–205, 207–208, 216–217, 219, 222, 354 See also Cayuga Indians; Chinese; Colonial buffer village landscape; Iroquois (Haudenosaunee); Jewish; Mohawk Indians; Onondaga Indians; Seneca Indians; Tewa Ethnicity and gender, mining landscapes, 302–304 Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, 302 1907 Chinese dwelling in the Cortez Mining District, 303f Chinese Six Companies, 302 Garrison Mine settlement, 304 gender structures and strategies, impact of, 302 placer mining settlements, Island Mountain and Tuscarora in Elko County, 304 Euro-Americans, 277 Exclusion Act of 1882, 275 Exclusion Laws, 275 Exorcism, 152 F Faber, H., 47 Fadden, J. K., 24f, 29f, 31f–32f, 34f, 37f Families within miners’ doublehouse, 327 role of miner’s wife, 327 Federal Census of 1900/1910, 275, 282 Federation of Jewish Charities, 201 Fee, Rev. J. G., 98–99, 107 Fein, I. M., 190, 200, 205 Feister, L., 165 Feldman, F. L., 275

369 Feminist inclusive approach, 189, 344–347, 356–357 19th century, 7, 45 theories, 11, 189, 343, 345, 352–353, 358 See also Child, Lydia Maria; Gage, Matilda Joslyn; Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Feminist framework for analyzing complex gendered power dynamics altering cultural landscapes Feminist inclusive model, 189 Feminist research on powers control and authority, 347 egalitarian “powers with,” 345–346 group and individual forms of social agency, 346–347 heterarchical kinds of power, Crumley’s concept, 345 “influence,” 346 “power over”/“power to”/“powers under”/“powers with” (Benton’s), 345–346 Feminist theory, 189 Fenton, W. N., 25, 31, 34–36, 39, 61–62, 66 Ferguson, L., 100 Fesler, G. R., 2 Fingard, J., 167 Finger Lakes (Central New York State), 30, 58 First Hermitage community, 89 First Hermitage site, 83–86 Alabama plantation, 84 archaeological periods/zones, 85–86 crop fields and cotton gin, 84 excavations, 84f field quarters, 85 Jackson’s humble beginnings, 83 location, 83 map of archaeological sites/quarter neighborhoods, 85f new brick structure, 83–84 site, description, 83 site with Alfred posing, 83f Tennessee standards, modest by, 83 time I, Middle Quarter period, 86 First Nations, 24 See also Native Americans Fishing camps, 273 Fiske, J.-A., 46 Fogt, L., 62 Forest Service, 156–157 Foster, J. M., 284 Foucault, M., 309, 343–344 on power, 343–344 Fowles, S. M., 152

370 Franklin, B., 21, 35 Franklin, M., 88 Fred Augustus Depeyster, second governor (1842), 179 Fry, Brig. Gen. S. S., 98–99, 106 Funk, R. E., 63 G Gage, Matilda Jocelyn, 7, 45, 352 Gal, A., 205 Gamm, G. H., 190, 192, 197–198, 207, 217–221, 223 Ganosote, 29 Garman, J. C., 5, 165 Garratt, J. G., 23 Garrison Mine settlement, 304 Geary Act of 1892, 275 Geismar, J. H., 175 Gender and African-Americans, see AfricanAmericans Anglo-American, 191, 199, 216, 355 and Cayuga, see Cayuga Indians and Chinese, see Chinese and institutions, see Institutions and Iroquois, see Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) and Jewish, see Jewish and landscape and mining, see Mining and Native Americans, see Native Americans and power, see Power and Shakers, see Shaker(s) and Spanish, see Spanish Colonial and Tewa Indians, see Tewa See also Masculinity; Patriarchy; Women Gender and power landscape, Sailor’s Snug Harbor, 165–184 See also Sailor’s Snug Harbor, Staten Island, New York Gender dynamics/activities/place in Haudenosaunee territory data discussion, 67–70 features in northern and southern areas, 67 lithic and pottery, comparison, 69f unburned and burned faunal material, 69, 70f gender dynamics and routine practice, 61 domestic activities, 61 tasks, food preparation, 61 interpretations, 70–72 gender relationships, 72

Index longhouse, characteristics, 71–72 variability in activities, 70–71 landscape and site preservation issues, 72–73 landowners, role of, 72–73 Native visitors, 73 landscape of Central New York State, 57–61 deer-hunting territory, 59 floodplain below Parker Farm, 59f floral remains at Parker Farm, 59 historic markers, 59, 60f largest Finger Lakes, 58 rural location of Parker Farm, 59, 60f Taughannock Valley, 58f village sites in Cayuga region (Parker Farm and Carman), 57 Parker Farm structure showing compartments and features, map of, 68 sites and context of material examined, 67 social practice (Haudenosaunee) archaeological patterning, 65–67 spatial patterning, 62–64 temporal patterning, 64–65 Gendered landscapes ambitious males, 146 of Boston, see Boston’s (Greater) landscape Of Camp Nelson, 9, 95–109, 350–351, 357 of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Clearings and Woods, see Haudenosaunee Jewish, see Gendered power dynamics; Jewish in mining towns, 3, 7, 296f, 300, 306, 309, 333, 348–349, 358 participation of women, 146 Pueblo society, 146 ritual scheduling, 146 rules existed, 145 acequias, 145 lower casta people, 145 mayodomos/comisionados, 145 at Sailors’ Snug Harbor, see Sailors’ Snug Harbor, Staten Island, New York in Shaker villages, see Shaker, Canterbury; Shaker(s) in slave quarters, 3, 7 in Spanish colonial towns, 141–160, 355 of synagogues, see Synagogues See also Gendered space Gendered power dynamics among religious sects/ethnic groups/classes, 189–224

Index gendering Jewish charities, 200–203 Jewish immigrant gender power dynamics, exploration of, 201–210 preservation of Vilna Shul, 213–215 on Boston’s landscape Jewish sects and gender systems, development of, 192–198 orthodox Vilna Shul on Beacon hill, in Boston’s West End, 210–213 on Boston’s landscape, Jewish immigrants, 190–192 highest status of men, 191 Gendered space in Chinese communities, 12, 275, 281 in Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) communities, 33 in Jewish communities, 10–11, 189–216, 353–355 in mining communities, 2, 12, 294, 302, 304, 314, 322–328, 330–331, 333 retired sailors, 177–179 main dormitory buildings, 178f requirements, 177 in Shaker villages, 233–247, 251–268, 353–354 in slave quarters, 3, 7 in Spanish colonial towns, 141–160, 355 in Synagogues, see Synagogues working-class women, 174–176 excavation, 176 Matron’s Cottage, 174 Steward’s Residence, 174 Gendering Jewish charities, 198–201 Anglo-American charities, 198 Beth Israel hospital, 201 Conservative movement’s national Women’s League, 200 directory of charities, 199 Hebrew Sunday School movement, 199 International Council of Women, 200 Leopold Morse Home, 201 National Council of Jewish Women, 200 National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, 200 Gendering mining landscapes Bodie district cyanide leaching technology, 298 depopulation of, 298–299 description, 297–298 map of, 299f townsite of, 300f Cortez Mining District, map of, 298 gender and class structure, 302

371 “middle class”/“working-class,” 302 gender and ethnicity, 302–304 Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, 302 1907 Chinese dwelling in the Cortez Mining District, 303f Chinese Six Companies, 302 Garrison Mine settlement, 304 gender structures and strategies, impact of, 302 placer mining settlements, Island Mountain and Tuscarora in Elko County, 304 gender and occupational structure, 299–302 occupations identified in 1870 census, 300–302 silver discovery at Treasure Hill, 300 White Pine Evening Telegram, 300 White Pine Mining District of Northeastern Nevada, 301f “heterarchies,” 294 Limestone “White Cliffs” of Mount Tenabo, 297 “Maiden Lane,” 297 Malakoff Diggings State Park, California, a hydraulic mining landscape, 294f microenvironments, 296 mining town location, map of California and Nevada, 296f preserving mining landscapes, 307–308 preservation history of the Bodie mining landscape, 307–308 shifting to landscape-based approach to preservation, reasons, 307–308 and social interaction networks, 295–299 “controlling labor,” 295 women and mining world systems, 305–307 See also Women and mining women in mining households, 304–305 family households, 304 Gold Rush tradition, 305 role of, 305 Shermantown, nuclear families, 304–305 Gender power dynamics intersecting race, 349–351 Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County, 351 independent social agency (James Delle and Mary Ann Levine), 351 Kentucky’s Camp Nelson Civil War Park (Stephen McBride), 350–351

372 Gender power dynamics (cont.) LHA, 350 Underground Railroad (Lydia Hamilton Smith), 351 White agrarian reform (De Cunzo), 350 Gen´ızaros, 10, 144, 146, 150, 153 Georgia O’Keefe, 141 Ghost Ranch, 141 German Jews, 190 reform sect, 190 Gibson, D., 32, 35–36, 38, 40–41 Gibson, J. A., 169, 174 Gilje, P. A., 179 Gilman, W. H., 182 GIS analysis, 154 Gladstone, W., 97 Glater, D., 214 GLO, see Government Land Office (GLO) Golde Bamber, 210 Goulston, T. H., 200 Government Land Office (GLO), 154 Governor’s orchard, 182 Governors Quarterly Reports, 169 Graphic Information Systems (GIS), 151, 154 Gray, L., 316f, 324, 328, 330–331 Gray-White, D., 86 Greek revival building, 168 revival Church, 196 revival dormitories, 168f, 171f, 181–182 Greenberg, S., 200 Greenhalgh, W., 30 Greenspace, 283–285 Greenwood, R. S., 5, 12, 273–287, 355 Grimmer, A. E., 284 Grossman, B. S., 192, 198, 204, 213, 217–223 Groth, P., 81 Guandi, 281 Guti´errez, R. A., 144 H Habicht-Mauche, J., 146 Haitian church, 194, 197 Hale, H., 27 Halstead, P., 67 Ham, F. G., 252–254, 256, 258 Hamilton, B. H., 324–325 Hamilton, G, 276–277 Hamilton plan, 115, 116f Hampshire Route 106, 246 Hanaford, Lt. G. A., 95, 98, 100, 102 Hansen, B., 73 Hardesty, D. L., 2, 5, 12, 293–309, 344, 347–349

Index Hardin, M. A., 165 Harrington, J. P., 141, 146, 152 Harrodsburg (Mercer County), 265 Haudenosaunee domestic activities, 61 landscape, 21–23 Confederacy’s five founding nations, 22f longhouses, 23 Mohawks (Keepers of the Eastern Door), 23 original confederacy, 23 “People of the Longhouse” (Haudenosaunee), 21, 23 Tuscaroras as the sixth nation of the Confederacy, 22 social practice, 24–25 “Iotsitsisen” (“Mature Flower”), 24, 24f Sky Woman, 24f “Taronhiawakon” (“Holder of the Heavens”), 24–25 tasks, food preparation, 61 See also Iroquois (Haudenosaunee); Social practice, Haudenosaunee Haudenosaunee Reformation, 44 Hauptman, L. M., 46 Havurah, 215 Hawaii’s sugar plantations, 282 Hayden, D., 3, 113, 235 HBI, see Historic Boston Incorporated (HBI) Heath, B., 88 Hebrew Industrial School (HIS), 207 offerings, 207 Hebrew Ladies Sewing Society (HLSS), 205 Hebrew Sunday School movement, 199 Heidenreich, C. E., 62 Helvetia Mine, 313–318, 316f Helvetia, Pennsylvania, 313–319, 321–325, 327–335 community networks, 330, 332f fraternal, 281–282, 302, 331, 332f, 355 gender-based, 321 religious, 3, 7, 10–11, 35, 192, 254 company town, 12, 293–294, 313–319, 322–323, 328, 333–335, 347–348 ethnicity of residents, 329 town plan, creation of, 120, 316 household strategies, 327–330 gardening and animal husbandry, 328 household composition, 327 land use rights, assertion of, 324 multiple wage earners, 330 pooling labor and resources, 330, 348

Index Iselin, Adrian, 313–319, 321 miners’ doublehouse, 313–335 alterations to footprint, 304, 321 alterations to houselot, 120, 314, 325 alterations to interior, 324, 328, 349 miners’ union, 330–332 oral narratives, 323–324 landscape experiences, 322–323, 327 link to preservation, 329 Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company, 313–314, 317–318, 322 hiring practices, 318, 321 ownership of mine, 318, 333 paternalistic practices, 313 Helvetia, spatial imprints, 319–322 corporate hierarchy, 321–322 “downtown”/“uptown,” 319, 320f, 321 immigrant laborers, 321 miners’ doublehouse (Adrian Iselin), 319 Pennsylvania coal company towns, 319 Protestant church, 321 R&P‘s corporate ideology, 319 tenancy, pattern of, 322 Hendon, J. A., 61 Hendricks, R., 146, 149, 151–153 Henry, 204, 221 Herman Melville, 168, 172f Hermitage museum, 87 Hermitage Plantation, Tennessee Courtyard at the First Hermitage site, 87 First Hermitage exhibit, 91 First Hermitage site, 82–91 Hermitage museum, 87 Ladies’ Hermitage Association, 82, 83 slave cabins, 350 slave women’s roles, 106, 349–350 yard sweeping, 350, 357 See also Jackson, Andrew Hertzberg, H. W., 32 “Heterarchies,” 294 Hewitt, J. N. B., 21, 25–26 “Hewn plank,” 29 Hicks, D., 113 Hierarchical and heterarchical power dynamics on mining landscapes heterarchical interrelationships among different kinds of powers, 348 research on coal mining company in Pennsylvania (Karen Metheny), 349 Victorian values, 348 Higgins, Pvt. J., 103, 105 Hillway, T., 172 HIS, see Hebrew Industrial School (HIS)

373 Hispanic, 10, 144, 160, 357 Historic Boston Incorporated (HBI), 214 Historic museums Kleiss Saloon building, 131 Lydia Hamilton Smith Houses, 131 Thaddeus Stevens House, 131 Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County (HPTLC), 131 Historic sites open to public Bodie State Historic Park, 308 Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture at the Vilna Shul, 214–216 Camp Nelson (Kentucky), 9, 95–109, 350–351, 357 Canterbury Shaker Village (New Hampshire), 233, 235–241, 245–246, 354 Chinese Temple (California), 273–287, 355 Ganondagan (New York State Native American Historic Site), 47 Hermitage (Tennessee), 2, 7, 81–92, 350, 357 Pleasant Hill Shaker Village (Kentucky), 251–268 Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith Museum (Pennsylvania), 115f, 121, 131 HLSS, see Hebrew Ladies Sewing Society (HLSS) Holy Mother Wisdom, 234, 252, 254 Holy Sinai’s Plain, 266, 267f “Home for Colored Refugees,” 9, 106–108 Hooks, b., 90 Horvath, S. M., 151 Hospitals Beth Israel Hospital, 201, 203, 218 Memorial Hospital, 203, 218 Household, minor’s and community, importance of, 330–333 economic stress, 330 extended family and community networks, 330 fragment of a stoneware pipe bowl, 331f informal networks and alliances, 331 male profession, centrality of, 331–333 networks within community, 331 Protestant and Catholic churches, 331 strategies, 327–330 additional income, 330 animals and haying, 328–329 daily chores, 329

374 Household, minor’s (cont.) different types of households in Helvetia (1900–1920), 327 gardening, recreational, 328 industrial society, 329 migration, 329 shared labor, 328–329 shared resources, 329 Howe, D., 306 HPTLC, see Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County (HPTLC) Hsu, M. Y., 276, 279 Huataniemi, S. I., 2 Hubley, A., 29 Hudgins, C. L., 1 Huey, L. M., 46, 165 Hunter, T. W., 106 Hunt, G. T., 43 Hyman, P. E., 191, 200–201, 204 I Immigrants Chinese, 3, 11, 273–276, 279, 302, 305, 355 Eastern Europeans, 198, 317f, 321–322, 349, 354 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, 200, 221–222 See also Jewish immigrants United Hebrew Benevolent Association, 190, 200, 222 Immigration Quota Act, 275 Indigenous knowledge systems, 151 Indo-Hispano gendered landscape on Rito Colorado frontier of Spanish colonial New Mexico, 141–160 colonial buffer village landscape, preservation and archaeology of, 153–156 engineered landscape, acequia agriculture background, 150–151 gendered landscape, 145–146 northern frontier identities, 142–145 Casitas Red-on-Brown Pottery, 144 gen´ızaro communities, 144 non-Iberian-born people, 144 in Northern New Mexico, 142–143 Nuevomexicano story of Eufemia, 143 pueblo/placita, 144 sistema de castas, 142 preservation efforts, 156–159 stabilization/archaeological testing, 157 survey/inspection/fencing, 156

Index Rito Colorado valley previous settlement, palimpsests, 146–147 ritual landscape, exploring espacio sagrado, 151–153 tactical landscape, frontlines of la Tierra de Guerra, 147–150 Industrial landscapes (neglected), preservation of, 333–335 abandoned landscape, 335f economic issues, 333 four structures, 334 negative stereotypes of mining towns, 333–334 the salvage company (Helvetia), 334 western end of Helvetia, 334–335 Institutions charitable almshouse, 10, 165–167, 177–178, 190, 356 asylum, 2, 207 orphanage, 201, 218, 354 educational, see Schools medical, see Hospitals religious, see Religion See also Social settlements Intemperance landscapes, 179–180 drunken sailors, 179 illegal’ activities, 180 iron fence, 180f temperance policy, 180 Interdependent landscapes of confederacy/nation/clan, 35–36 International Council of Women, 200 International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, 190 Interpretation for the public abolitionist sites, 9, 98, 113, 123, 233, 350–352 Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture, 214–216 Chinese temple, 273–287, 355 Civil War camps, 9, 96–99 mining towns, 3, 7, 296f, 300, 306, 309, 333, 348–349, 358 Native American sites, 2–3, 6–7, 10, 73, 233 Shaker laundry, 260, 262–263 Shaker village, 233–247, 251–268, 353–354 slave cabins, 350 Underground Railroad site, 9, 123, 131, 133, 351 “intimate household,” 88

Index “Iotsitsisen” (“Mature Flower”), 24, 24f Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) balance, 26–28, 30, 34–35, 37f, 45–46 “pagans” by most non-Indians, 27 worldview, 27 balance of clearings and woods, 28–35 abandoned towns and abandoned fields, 31–32 “casteels,” 28 “the Clearings,” 28 Corn Woman, one of the Three Sisters, 31f “Indian Hill,” 30 lacrosse games, 35 men’s roles as hunters and warriors, 35 Mohawk town, description, 29 “Mother Earth,” 33 “Pine Tree Chiefs,” 35 religious ceremonies and government councils, 35 “The Three Sisters,” 30 trade goods, 33 woman creating clay pot, 34f “women’s art,” 33 Beaver trade, 41, 43 chiefs, 27, 30, 34–35, 38, 40, 45, 48, 98, 153, 235, 240 clan mothers, 34–35, 39, 45, 48 Clearings (Haudenosaunee/Iroquois concept), 21–48 condolence ceremonies, 27 Confederacy, Iroquois, 23, 27, 30–31, 33–36, 38, 40, 42, 46–47 Deganawidah (also known as “The Peacemaker”), 23, 40 different trees in different forest, clearings and woods, 40 “communal” ethics., 40–41 dual identity of woods and spheres of responsibility, 36–39 approaching humans, 37 “communal” ethics, 41 trade with musket-bearing Europeans, 38 Edge of the Woods (Haudenosaunee ceremony), 37–38 Gai wiio (The Good Word), 44 Ganosote (short longhouse), 29 gendered origin account of world, 24–25 “Iotsitsisen” (“Mature Flower”), 24, 24f Sky Woman, 24f “Taronhiawakon” (“Holder of the Heavens”), 24–25

375 Grand Council (of Haudenosaunee), 23, 34 interdependent landscapes of confederacy/ nation/clan, 35–36 epidemic disease, 36 Jigonhsasee (Haudenosaunee woman leader), 23, 47 Lacrosse, 35, 48 landscape, 21–23 Confederacy’s five founding nations, 22f longhouses, 23 Mohawks (Keepers of the Eastern Door), 23 original confederacy, 23 “People of the Longhouse” (Haudenosaunee), 21, 23 Tuscaroras as the sixth nation of the Confederacy, 22 longhouse, 25–26 “clans,” 25 matriarchy, signs of, 26 murder of woman, 26 new husband, 25 people of, 21, 23, 25 principle of balance, 34 One Bowl (Haudenosaunee concept), 40 preservation and continuity, clearings and the woods today “box lacrosse,” 48 “field lacrosse,” 48 Genesis Pyramid, 46 Internal Revenue Service and Social Security, 46 town sites, 47 Seventh Generation (Haudenosaunee concept), 41 Six Nations Confederacy (Iroquois Confederacy), 7, 23, 36 Tadadaho (Haudenosaunee leader), 23, 27 Thanksgiving Address, 38–40 Three Sisters (Corn, Beans, and Squash), 30, 31f, 33, 47 transformations in clearings and woods, 41–45 American Revolution, 43 beaver trade, 43 “Gai wiio” or “The Good Word,” 44 Haudenosaunee Reformation, 44 smallpox, impact of, 42–43 Syphilis, 42 traditional matrilineal kinship system, 45 Turtle Clan, 37f

376 Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) (cont.) typical longhouses within a palisade, 29f Woods, “One Bowl,” 40 Woods, the, 7, 21–48 Irving Greenwood, 243 Irvin, H. D., 262 Isenberg, James (preservationist), 265 J Jackson, Andrew family of Andrew Jackson, 86, 89, 126 Rachel, 2 See also Hermitage Plantation, Tennessee Jackson, J. B., 3–4 Jackson, W. T., 300 James, P. E., 3 Janzen, D. E., 256, 266 Jenkins, Lt. J., 29 Jennings, F., 27 Jewish Bamber, Golde, 207, 210, 222 Bloomfield, Meyer, 208 Boston Council of Jewish Women, 200, 223 Brandeis, Louis, 213 burial ground, 153, 222 charities, gendering, 198–201 communities, feminist approach on, 189 culture, 189 doctors, 201, 203 “German,” 190, 192, 196, 199–201, 204–205, 207, 216, 354 Hebrew Ladies Sewing Society, 201, 205, 222, 224 Hecht House, 207, 216, 222 Hecht, Jacob, 205, 224 Hecht, Lina, 205, 207, 210, 222, 224 immigrants, see Jewish immigrants interior, features, 196 Ark of the Covenant cabinet, 196 Bima, 196 Jewish-American identities, 11, 189, 192, 196–198, 215–216 Ladies Aid Association, 221, 223 Morse, Leopold, 107, 201, 217–219, 234 Mutual Benefit Associations, 199, 212, 219, 222–223 National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, 200 reform women Golde Bamber and Lina Hecht, 210 “Russian,” 190, 197, 199–201, 203–204, 207–208, 354 schools, 207–208, 354

Index symbols Stars of David, 197 Synagogue Centers, 194f, 197–198, 216–218, 223 Women’s League of the United Synagogue, 200 women’s organizations, 191 Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 203, 206f, 213, 217–218, 223 See also Charities; Clubs; Dispensaries; Hospitals; Synagogues Jewish Elysium Club, 205 Jewish immigrants to America and Boston, gender systems of, 190–192 Elysium Club, 192 German Jews, 190 God’s Torah, 191 highest status of men, 191 Jewish ethnicity, 191 roles of men and women, 191 Russian Jews, 190 Talmud Rabbinic writings, 191 gender power dynamics, exploration of, 201–210 Benoth Israel sheltering home, 202f breakdown of relation, 208 civic service house, 202f Cockerell Hall, 202f Elizabeth Peabody House (EPH), 206f HIS offering, 207 Jewish reform women, 210 mixed-gender Hebrew schools, 204 North Bennet street industrial school, 202f Phillips school, 206f Talmud Tora Free Hebrew School, 204 Vilner congregation, 206f YMHA, 206f Jewish charities, gendering, 198–201 Jick, L. A., 199 Jimenez, P. F., 144 John, E. A. H., 146, 149 Johnson, Maggie, 306–307 See also Women and mining Johnson, P. E., 179 Johnson, W., 28, 42 Jones, O. L., 144 Jones, R., 84 Jordan, E. G., 106 Joss house or temple, 279 Joyner, B. D., 275, 276, 287 Judaism, 191

Index K Kapches, M., 63, 65–66, 71 Kaplan, B., 210, 212–213 Kappler, C. J., 44 Kaufman, D., 192, 196–198, 201, 203–204, 210, 213, 217–221, 223 Kelso, G. K., 1 Kelso, W. M., 4 Kemp, P., 173 Kennedy, A. J., 208 Kent, S., 346 Kentucky Governor Burt Combs, 265 Kentucky Heritage Council (KHC), 108 Kessel, J. L., 144, 147 Ketz, A. K., 4 Keva, B., 214 Khaw-Posthuma, B., 276 KHC, see Kentucky Heritage Council (KHC) Kidder, T. R., 152 King, W., 98 Kirk, J. T., 255 Kleiss family, 117, 119t Kleiss Saloon building, 131 Knapp, T. D., 62 Kriner, R., 321 Kuhn, R. D., 63 Kuzmack, L. G., 216 L Labor unions, 295 Lacrosse games, 35 Ladies Bikur Cholim Society, 203 Ladies Hermitage Association (LHA), 82, 350 Lai, H. M., 303 Lake Winnisquam, 241 Lamadrid, E., R., 144 Lancaster, C., 252, 257 Lancaster County Convention Center, 114 Lancaster County Deed Book C (LCDBC), 127 Lancaster County Deed Book E (LCDBE), 117 Lancaster County Deed Book O (LCDBO), 127 Lancaster County Deed Book X (LCDBX), 127 Lancaster County Sheriff’s Deed Book (LCSDB), 117 Lancaster County Will Book G (LCWBG), 117 Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 113–133 establishment of, 117 families, Lot 134 Caldwell, Sarah, 129–131 Effinger, Annie, 128 Effinger, Catherine Amelia, 124–128

377 Effinger, Charles, 124 Effinger, Henry, 124, 126, 129–130 Effinger, Jacob, 124 Kleiss Saloon, 118, 122–124, 128, 131 industrialization in, 114 initial settlement of, 114 Lancaster County Convention Center, 114, 115f, 118, 131, 133f, 134, 351 Lancaster’s dynamic landscape, 114–115 Lot 134 Cistern and Underground Railroad, 9, 123, 133 description of, see Lot 134 excavation of, 115f, 117 panic of 1873, 125 preservation efforts, landscapes of 21st century, 131–133 Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith Museum, see Historic Museums; Smith, Lydia Hamilton; Stevens, Thaddeus women of Vine street, 119–131 Catherine Amelia Effinger Lebkicker, 125–128 Catherine Effinger, 124 Lydia Hamilton Smith, 120–121 Sarahs Caldwell and Lizze Speilman, 129–130 See also Lancaster’s dynamic landscape Lancaster’s dynamic landscape, 114–115 development of urban landscape, 115–117 architecture, 115 Hamilton plan, 115 houselots configured by Hamilton plan, 116f industrial development, 117 location, 115 pageantry/courtyards, 117 Philadelphia, 115 establishment of, 114 industrialization, 114 Lancaster County Convention Center/Marriott Hotel, 114 location of Stevens and Smith site, 115f suburban developments, 114 Land grant communities, 156 Landscape Cayuga, see Cayuga Indians Church, 7, 92–93, 166, 168–169, 181, 196–197, 206, 210, 212, 216, 254, 306, 318–319, 321, 329, 331, 348–349, 355 See also Canterbury; Church family

378 Landscape (cont.) Civil War Camp, 9, 96–99 Contested terrain, 307 experience (Riley), discussion, 323 hierarchy, 170 institutional, 2, 11, 169, 354 of Intemperance, 179–180 intemperance, landscapes of, 179–180 Iroquois, see Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) landscape interpretation, 322 landscapes of Balance, 21–48 mining town, 3, 7, 296f, 300, 306, 309, 333, 348–349, 358 plantation, 9, 83, 88, 90, 92, 357 of Power, 165–184 Shaker, see Shaker(s) shaping of, 86–89 act of sweeping, 89 black communities, 87 black cultural production, 87 captive Africans, 88 captive/complex household, 88 confining dimensions, 87 cultural landscape, 87 “custodian of a house of resistance,” 87 domestic duties, 86 “double duty,” 86 Hermitage museum, 87 household, definition, 87 “intimate household,” 88 “living room,” 87 modicum of freedom, 87 place of solace and recovery, 88 plantation/agricultural landscape, 86–87 “plantation household,” 88 resistance, act of, 88 role of captive women, 86 second generation apartment dweller, 87 sweeping, 88 Sweepin’ Spirits, 88 and site preservation, Haudenosaunee territory, 72–73 landowners, role of, 72–73 Native visitors, 73 Spanish colonial, 141–160, 355 Synagogue, see Synagogues transformations, 81–93 urban, 2, 10, 113–134, 287 See also Cultural landscapes Landsman, G. H., 352 Land use traditions, 150

Index Lawrence, R., 157, 158 LCDBC, see Lancaster County Deed Book C (LCDBC) LCDBE, see Lancaster County Deed Book E (LCDBE) LCDBO, see Lancaster County Deed Book O (LCDBO) LCDBX, see Lancaster County Deed Book X (LCDBX) LCSDB, see Lancaster County Sheriff’s Deed Book (LCSDB) LCWBG, see Lancaster County Will Book G (LCWBG) Leal, R., 262 Lebkicker, Catherine Amelia Effinger, 125–128 Civil War, 126 East Vine Street, 127 Lancaster properties, 127 Lebkicker family, 125–126 Mrs. Lebkicker’s landscapes, 128–129 Christian Street, 128 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Lancaser, 128 Southern Market Hotel, 129 Stevens courtyards, 128 old Kleiss Saloon, 128 veteran’s schedule, 127 West Chestnut Street household, 127 Lenik, E. J., 169 Leone, M. P., 1, 4, 267–268 Leopold Morse Home, 201 Lerner, E., 216 Levine, F., 144 Levine, M. A., 5, 9, 113–134, 144, 351 Lewandowski, S., 30 Lexington (Fayette County), 265 Leyes de las Indies, 151 LHA, see Ladies Hermitage Association (LHA) Lightfoot, K. G., 61, 151 Limestone bedrock, 261 White Cliffs of Mount Tenabo, 297 Lina Hecht, 210 Ling Ying Association House, 281–282 Lipe, W. D., 307 Lipman-Blumen, J., 294, 344 Lithic and pottery (Haudenosaunee territory), comparison, 69f Little, B. J., 295 Longhouses, 25–26 “clans,” 25

Index matriarchy, signs of, 26 murder of woman, 26 new husband, 25 within a palisade, 29f principle of balance, 34 Loose, J. W. W., 114 Los Angeles News, 275 Lot 134 families, see Effinger, Catherine urban landscape, 117–118 East Vine Street, 118 Effinger family, 118 excavations, 117 Kleiss family, 117 Lancaster County Convention Center complex, 118 occupation, 117 postbellum era, 118 primary landscape features, 118f Queen Street/Christian Street, 117 Smith, Lydia Hamilton, 117 in 19th/20th century, 119 Lounsbury, F. G., 23 Low-casta people, see Gen´ızaros Lucas, M. B., 96 Luccketti, N., 1 Lunar New Year holidays, 279 Lydon, S., 277 Lyons, O., 27, 30 Lyons, W., 279 M Maclean, A., 43 Magdalen Society for Fallen Women, Philadelphia, 165 Magnaghi, R. M., 144, 302–303 “Maiden Lane,” 297 Malakoff Diggings State Park (California), hydraulic mining landscape, 294f Male Elysium Club, 192 Manchu government, 281 Manhattan land, 168 Maniery, M. L., 279 Mann, B. A., 45 Mann, J., 287 Mann, M., 294 Mann, R., 306 Mansion Backyard Quarters, 89 Marcus, J. R., 191, 199–200, 220 Marine Society, 167 goals of, 167 Marriott Hotel, 114 Marshall, Chief Justice John, 43

379 Martin, G., 3 Mary McNair Mathews, reminiscences of, 306 See also Women and mining Masculinity Chinese, 11, 274, 276–277, 279, 287, 355, 357 intersecting class and race or ethnicity, constructions of American gender stereotypes, 355 Chinese men, 355–356 cooperative “powers with” of Tewa Indian men/women, 357 co-opetition (business model), 356 “powers with”, inmates of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, 356 Iroquois, see Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) and sailors, see Sailors’ Snug Harbor, Staten Island, New York Shakers, see Shaker(s) Spanish machismo, 357 Tewa Indian, see Tewa Massachusetts Council of Rabbis, 214 Massachusetts Historical Commission, 214 Matrilineal kinship system, traditional, 45 Matron and Melville, 176–177 Captain/Mrs Nicklason, 177 Miss Gleason, 177 Matron’s Cottage, 166, 170, 175f Maxwell, T., 146–147 Mayeer, A. J., 42 Mayne, A., 2, 5 Mayodomos, 145, 156 McBride, K. A., 11, 251–268, 353 McBride, W. S., 5, 9, 95–110, 350 McCarthy, J. P., 113 McDannold, T. A., 276 McElrath, J., 306 McGuire, R. H., 5, 295 McKee, L., 2, 84, 85f, McKee, V., 328, 334 McNeill, W. H., 42 Meacham, Joseph (Father), 234 Meeting House, 236, 237f, 254 Melnick, R. Z., 3, 81 Melville and sailors, power battles, 181 Melville, Herman, 168, 170, 172, 182 Melville, Thomas (Governor), 168–169, 170–174 family Allan Melville, father, 170 Herman Melville, brother, 172f

380 Melville, Thomas (Governor) (cont.) Maria Gansevoort Melville, mother, 172 Governors Quarterly Reports, 169 landscape design, 168–169 three-story mansion, 173f Shepherd, B. 169 Men associations, see Associations Blacksmiths, 38, 115, 117, 122, 166, 243–244, 257, 273, 295 captains, 10, 167, 177–178, 188, 356 chiefs, 27, 34–35, 38, 48, 153 fishermen, 274, 276, 282, 356 hunters, 27, 35, 39, 47, 141, 158 and laundry, 9, 12, 86, 105–106, 122, 166, 168, 176, 205, 243, 260, 262, 274, 279, 282, 304, 325, 329, 350, 355–356 miners, 295–298, 300, 302, 304–306, 314–319, 321–323, 325, 327–334, 348–349 sailors, see Sailors’ Snug Harbor, Staten Island, New York soldiers, 96, 103, 105–108, 350–351 See also Charities; Clubs; Masculinity; Patriarchy Mendocino temple, 281 Men’s Mutual Benefit Associations Boston Young Business Men’s Association, 220 Brothership of Birsen, 222 Fraternal organization, 331 Hebrew Association of Janauschek, 223 Hebrew Young Men’s Star Association, 222 King David Association, 221 Men of Shepatofka, 219 West End Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 213, 223 Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 203, 206f, 213, 217–218, 223 Young Men’s Hebrew Union, 221 Metheny, K. B., 1–2, 4–5, 12, 313–337, 349, 358 Michaud Stutzman, T. S., 59, 62, 67 Microenvironments, 296 Middle Quarter Period (1821-1850), 85 transforming, 89–90 brutal system of slavery, 89 Central Courtyard Area, 89 First Hermitage community, 89 First Hermitage quarter, 89

Index Mansion Backyard Quarters, 89 plantation, 90 swept yard, 90 Mikveh (deep pool), 196 Mildred Wells, 239 Millennial Laws, 234 1821 Millennial Laws, 255 Miller, A. B., 97f, 100f Miller, D., 345 Miller, D. L., 314, 328 Miller, P., 309 Miller, S. C., 275 Mills and blacksmith shops, 243 Miners’ doublehouse, families within, 327 Mining community, cultural landscape, 322–327 discussion of landscape experience (Riley), 323 family behaviors, 324 houselot/utilitarian spaces, 325 landscape-altering activities, 324 recycled and reuse, materials, 325 Riley’s vision, 322–323 significance of gender, 324 walkways associated with rear entries and backlots, plan views, 326f Company, 308, 347–349, 358 districts, see Comstock Mining District, Nevada; Cortez Mining District, Nevada; White Pine Mining District, Nevada household, 293–294, 304–305 Mining landscape, 12, 293–309, 313–315, 322, 331, 333, 347–349 as gendered space, 313–315 artifacts associated with mining profession, 315f company town, 314–318 Helvetia Mine, 313, 316f landscape of company town, 317f, 320f mining in Pennsylvania, 314 Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company (R&PCC), 318–319 R&P, paternalistic programs, 318–319 preserving, 307–308 preservation history of the Bodie mining landscape, 307–308 shifting to landscape-based approach to preservation, reasons, 307–308 and social interaction networks, 295–299 “controlling labor,” 295 Mining towns, 3, 7, 296f, 300, 306, 309, 333, 348–349, 358

Index Bodie, California, see Bodie Mining District, California company town, 12, 293–294, 314–319, 322–323, 333–335, 347–348 Gold rush towns, 275, 287, 305–305 Helvetia, Pennsylvania, 313–319, 321–325, 327–335 location, map of California and Nevada, 296f Nevada City, California, 305–306 Shermantown, Nevada, 296, 300, 302, 304–305 Minor’s household, see Household, minor’s Miroff, L. E., 62 Mitchell, M., 35, 48 Mitchell, W. J. T., 5 Mixed-gender Hebrew schools, 204 Mixed-gender organizations, 192 Mohawk Indians Eastern Door, Keepers of, 23 Fadden, John Kahionhes, 24f, 29f, 31f–32f, 34f, 37f Kanatsiohareke (Mohawk town), 48 Onekahoncka (Mohawk town), 29 Porter, Chief Tom, 48 Tenotoge (Mohawk town), 30 Mohawk River Valley, 23 Mohawks (Keepers of the Eastern Door), 23 Mohawk town, description, 29 Moore, W. D., 265–266, 268 Morgan, K., 176 Morgan, L. H., 23, 25–26, 31, 63 Morris, W., 3, 345 Morse, F., 234 “Mother” Ann Lee, 234 “Mother Earth,” 33 “Mother’s topmost Bough,” 252 Mount Pleasant, Kentucky, see Pleasant hill Moyer, B., 122 Mrozowski, S. A., 1, 5, 113–114, 175–176 Mt. Sinai Hospital Association dispensary, 203 Mullins, P. R., 105 Mulrooney, M. M., 315, 317, 319 Murphy, J., 260 Murray, T., 2, 5 Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, 158 Museums, see Historic museums; Historic sites open to public N Nabokov, P., 23 Nalebuff, B. J., 356 Nash, R. A., 276

381 National Council of Jewish Women, 200 National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, 200 National Origins Act, 275 National Park Service, 284, 299f, 308 National Register of Historic Places, 6, 284 National Trust for Historic Preservation, 265, 284, 354, 356 Native Americans Akwesasne (Mohawk reservation), 47–48 Algonquian Indian Nations, 21 Cayuga Indian Nation, see Cayuga Indians Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, 47 First Nations, 24 Haudenosaunee, see Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Mohawk Indian Nation, see Mohawk Indians Onondaga Indian Nation, see Onondaga Indians Pueblos, see Tewa Sister Winifer Denbo, 233 Six Nations Confederacy, see Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Tuscarora Indian Nation, 7, 23, 30, 36, 304 NBSIS, see North Bennet Street Industrial School for Girls (NBSIS) Needham, S., 66 Nelson, M., 66 Netting, R. M., 65 New Hampshire State Historic Preservation Office (NHSHPO), 240 Newman, C., 233–234, 247 New Mexican field systems, 156 New York State (Central), landscape of (Haudenosaunee territory), 57–61 deer-hunting territory, 59 floodplain below Parker Farm, 59f floral remains at Parker Farm, 59 historic markers, 59, 60f largest Finger Lakes, 58 rural location of Parker Farm, 59, 60f Taughannock Valley, 58f village sites in Cayuga region (Parker Farm and Carman), 57 Ng Shing Gung Temple, 282 NHSHPO, see New Hampshire State Historic Preservation Office (NHSHPO) Nicklason (Captain), 177 Nickless, K. K., 252 Noble, A. G., 3 Non-acequia techniques, 156, 157f

382 Non- Shakers, 255–256 Cooper, James Fenimore, 256 Lossing, Benson John, 255–256 rural farm sites, 256 North Bennet Street Industrial School for Girls (NBSIS), 202, 204 Northern frontier identities, 142–145 Casitas Red-on-Brown Pottery, 144 gen´ızaro communities, 144 non-Iberian-born people, 144 in Northern New Mexico, 142–143 Nuevomexicano story of Eufemia, 143 pueblo/placita, 144 sistema de castas, 142 North Lot family, 253 Nuclear family organization, 257 Nuevomexicano masculinity, 156 verg¨uenza, 156 religious tradition, 153 story of Eufemia, 143 Nuttall, Z., 145, 150 O Occupational structure, mining landscapes, 299–302 occupations identified in 1870 census, 300–302 silver discovery at Treasure Hill, 300 White Pine Evening Telegram, 300 White Pine Mining District of Northeastern Nevada, 301f Ohabei Shalom Congregation, 192, 194f, 196 Olitzky, K. M., 200 Onondaga Indians Canasatego, Onondaga Spokesman, 27 Capital of the Confederacy (Onondaga), 38 Hayonhwatha, 23, 38 Lyons, Oren, 27, 30 Powless, Chief Irving, Jr., 21, 30 Shenandoah, Chief Leon, 25, 27, 41 Ordenanzas, ordinances 35/39, 150 Orders, (organizational structures), 254 Holy Mother Wisdom, 254 Novitiate or Gathering Order, 254 regularity and control, sense of, 255 Orser, C. E., Jr., 4, 10, 343 Orthodox families, Boston, 190 Ortiz, A., 146, 152 P Page Law of 1875, 275 Pappas, E. I., 4 Parker, 283

Index Parker, A. C., 25, 28, 30, 36, 38, 40, 44 Parker Farm structure showing compartments and features, map of, 68 Parker, H., 173 Parrish, T., 265–266 Parsons, E., 152 Patriarchy, 26, 191, 352–354, 357–358 patriarchs, 26, 149, 191, 196–197, 202, 318, 352–354, 357–358 and women, see Women Pauls, E. P., 344 Paynter, R., 5, 295 Pennsylvania’s gradual abolition law, 120 “People of the Longhouse” (Haudenosaunee), 21, 23 Perdue, T., 46 Picazo, M., 61 Pickering, T., 33 Piddock, S., 2, 165 “Pine Tree Chiefs,” 35 Placitas, 158 Plantation, see Hermitage Plantation, Tennessee “Plantation household,” 88 Pleasant Hill community, 253 economy, 253 excavations, 258–263 archaeological survey, 258 arches, bases of furnaces, 260 architectural features, 259 Chatham Shaker Museum, 262 cisterns, 262–263 clay smoking pipes at Pleasant hill, 260f commercial washing machine, 262 industrial and commercial activities, 260 interior of west lot washhouse after excavation, 259f labor-saving innovations, 262 laundry improvements, 262 limestone bedrock/foundation, 260–261 Shaker structures, 258 side yard of West Lot washhouse, 261f South Union washing arrangement, 262 steam system, 262 West Lot washhouse, 260 journals, 259 preservation issues, 263–264 Brown Foreman Foundation, 263 collections of mid-century Shaker ceramics, 263

Index Pleasant Hill staff, 263 Shaker fireplace and furnace, 263 stone drain at West Lot washhouse, 264f task of laundry, 263 washhouse ceramics, 264 West Lot family residence kitchen, 264 whiteware and porcelain, 263 research library, 261 Shaker village, landscape, 251–268 excavations, 258–263 landscape of Pleasant hill, 253f preservation issues, 263–264 restoration efforts/landscape/ archaeology/interpretation issues, 265–267 Shaker landscape, 254–258 Pogue, D. J., 1 Poling-Kempes, L., 146, 148–149, 151 Poor House, Falmouth, 165 Porter, T. S., 48 Power accommodation, 5, 130, 262, 268, 346 cooperation, 5, 11–12, 200, 205, 241, 246, 343–345, 355–356 co-opetition, 355–356 definitions of dichotomy between power and resistance (Foucault), 344 dictionary definitions, 344–345 Lipmann-Blumen on social power, 344 “power and resistance” (Pauls), 344 on relations of power (Foucault), 344 Weber’s, 344 domination, 5, 13, 294–295, 343–345, 347, 349–350 empower, 189, 199–200, 205, 208, 344–346, 350–351 equality, 352 inspire, 204, 207, 351 “powers over,” 189, 202–203, 205, 208, 345–349, 351, 356, 358 “powers to,” 189, 192, 198–199, 343, 346, 348–350, 357 “powers under,” 189, 207, 345–347, 350, 356–358 “powers with,” 189, 191, 198–205, 207–210, 212–216, 345–358 resistance, 344–345, 356 social agency, 189, 192, 198–199, 205, 208, 215, 344–351, 355–358 social interaction network, 294–299 social power, 189, 293–294, 343–344, 346

383 Power landscapes, 181–182 documentary evidence, 182 fired captains Captain Curtis, 181 Captain Nickolas, 181 governor’s orchard, 182 Greek revival dormitories, 181 Tom’s paradise, 182 “Powers over,” 189, 202–203, 205, 208, 345–349, 351, 356, 358 “Powers to,” 189, 192, 198–199, 343, 346, 348–350, 357 “Powers under,” 189, 207, 345–347, 350, 356–358 “Powers with,” 189, 191, 198–205, 207–210, 212–216, 345–358 Pre-Museum period (1850-1888), 85–86 Preservation challenges, 4, 10, 142, 167, 182–184, 251 cooperation, 11 historic markers, 59–60 historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County, 131, 133–134, 351 and involvement of community members, 158 issues destruction of archaeological sites, 107 problems preserving mining landscapes, 12, 294, 307–308 museums, see Historic museums preservation of archaeological features, 254 public presentations, see Interpretation for the public state historic sites, 47, 60f, 108, 240, 308 Preservation efforts of Canterbury landscape, 245–246 Canterbury Shaker Village, Inc., 245 21st-century encroachments, 246 Church Family at Canterbury Shaker Village, 246f dams and ponds, 245 NASCAR, 246 New Hampshire Route 106, 246 Shaker legacy, 245 historic museum, 131 Kleiss Saloon building, 131 Lydia Hamilton Smith Houses, 131 Thaddeus Stevens House, 131 of landscapes of 21st century, 131–133 Convention Center Authority, 131 demolition, 131 HPTLC, 131

384 Preservation efforts (cont.) Lancaster County Convention Center, 114, 118, 131, 133f Lydia Hamilton Smith Houses, 132f “Quest for Freedom,” 132–133 Underground Railroad, 133 Preservation of the Hermitage, 82 Prezzano, S. C., 62, 66 Protestant practices, 192, 196 Protestant Women’s Club, 200 Pueblo, 146 of Abiquiu, 151 agriculture analysis, 156 ideology, 146 ruin of Sapawe, 146, 147f, 152 sites, 46 Taos, 149 Pueblo/ placita, 144 Pulis, B., 46 Purser, M., 295, 348 Q Qanat, 150 Quintana, F. L., 144, 148–149, 154 R Rabbi, 191, 196–197, 199, 214 Rael-G`alvez, E., 149 Ramenofsky, A. F., 42 Ramsden, P. G., 62 Ranchos, 149–150 Randall, Robert, 167 Manhattan land, 168 Marine Society, 167 goals of, 167 Minard Lafever, 168 Randall’s charitable institution, 167 Sailors’ Snug Harbor, see Sailors’ Snug Harbor, Staten Island, New York Raphael, M. L., 200 Rawick, G. P., 100 Reconquista, 150 Recopilacion de Leyes de las Indies, 146 Red House, 283 Redwood fencing, 284 Reform congregation (1950), 197 Reform synagogues, 192 Refugee encampment, archaeology of, 99–106 artifact(s) architectural distribution, 103 Civil War era, 99 distributions, 104f personal, 101f from refugee huts, 104t

Index sewing, 105 ‘X’ marked circular, 100 building materials, 105 Burnside, John (Private), 105 button with inscribed X from, 102f “cabins and huts,” 103 within Camp Nelson, 100f characteristic features, 103 Hall, Theron E., 99 Higgins, John (Private), 103 Hunter, Tera, 106 lack of rations, 105 laundry/cooking, communal activity, 106 “lewd” women order, 100 Northern Delaware house sites, 105 Scofield, Abisha (Reverend), 102–103 “shanties,” type of housing, 103 site map, 101f social variability, 103–104 survey of Camp Nelson, 99 Relic hunters, 141, 158 Religion Buddhist, 281, 285 Catholic, 35, 42, 46, 146, 200, 318, 321, 331 and gender power dynamics intersecting class and ethnicity, 352 Eastern European Jews (Beacon Hill), 354–355 modern patriarchy, Canterbury Shaker village, 354 “Russian”/“German” Jews, 354 Shaker gender roles, preservation of communities, 353–354 Vilna Shul preservation, impact of, 355 Jewish, 198–199 Longhouse (religion), see Longhouses Protestant, 11, 46, 191–192, 196–201, 203–209, 215–216, 318, 321, 331, 354–355 United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing (Shaker), 247, 251 Religious services Friday-night service, 197 Saturday morning service, 197 Resteaux, Capt. E. B. W., 103 Restoration efforts/landscape/archaeology/ interpretation issues, 265–267 ARA, 265 Centre Family Dwelling House circa 2010, 266 Harrodsburg (Mercer County), 265

Index Holy Sinai’s Plain, 266, 267f fence at, 266 Isenberg, James (preservationist), 265 Kentucky Governor (Burt Combs), 265 Lexington (Fayette County), 265 National Trust for Historic Preservation, 265 post and rope barriers, 266 preservation workshop, 265 Shaker Museum at Old Chatham, 266 West Family washhouse, 266 Rhorer, M. A., 252 Riley, R. B., 322–323, 335 Rio Chama, 152, 156 Rito Colorado valley community youths, 158 North Central New Mexico, 143f previous settlement, palimpsests, 146–147 Catholic theology, 146 Great Indian Revolt (1680), 146 Tewa cosmology, 146 16th-century entradas, 146 tactical landscape, aspects, 147–150 See also Tactical landscape, la Tierra de Guerra Ritual landscape, 151–153 Bent’s Old Fort, 152 “dry farming” techniques, 156 GIS analysis, 154 idols identified, 152 mayodomos/comisionados, 156 Mesoamerican Nahua idea of napantla, 152 non-acequia techniques, 156, 157f Rivera, J. A., 150–151 Robin, C., 152 Robinson, Lucius W. (president of R&P), 318 Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal Company (R&PCC), 318–319 Rodman, M. C., 322–323 Rodr´ıguez, S., 145–146, 150–153, 156 Rogow, F., 200 Rose, N., 309 Rosenberg, C., 218 Rossen, J., 73 Rothschild, N., 113 Rothschild, N. A., 142, 152 Rotman, D. L., 2, 5 Rottner, B., 121 Rush, L., 122 “Russian” Jewish congregations, 10, 197 Russian Jews, 190, 199–201, 204, 354 Russo, P. A., 165

385 S Sabbathday Lake, Maine, 247 Safe snug harbor, 182 Sailors, drunken, 179 Sailors’ Snug Harbor, Staten Island, New York, 165–184 in 1898, 168f archaeological research at, 169–170 City Archaeology Program, 169 CRM firm, 169 Board of Trustees, 173 built environment of, 170 decline of, 169 ethnic background of sailors, 322, 329 features, 165–166 gendered space for retired sailors, 177–179 working-class women, 174–176 Greek Revival Architecture, 168, 171f, 181–183, 196 historical background on institution, 167–169, 252 intemperance landscapes, 179–180 landscape hierarchy, 170 map, 166f 1907 map, 171f Matron, 166, 169–171, 174–177, 181 Matron and Melville, 176–177 Melville, Thomas (1867-1884), 168, 170–174, 176, 180 power battles between Melville and sailors, 181 power landscapes, 181–182 Randall, Robert (founder of), 167, 169, 183f surroundings, 166 transformation, 167 Sammarco, A. M., 218 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Lancaser, 128 Sanborn map, 283 Sandmeyer, E. C., 275 Sandweiss, E., 1 San Francisco, 282 Santa Cruz, 148 Santa Fe, 141 Santa Rosa Creek, 282–283 Sapawe Pueblo, 146, 147f, 156 Sarna, J. D., 197, 198 Savulis, E. -R., 5, 243, 353 Schachner, G., 66 Schiffer, M. B., 66 Schoolcraft, H. R., 26

386 Schools Baldwin Place Hebrew Free School, 220 Hebrew, 191, 198, 204, 220, 222–223 Hebrew Industrial School, 204, 207, 210, 221–222 industrial, 202f, 204, 207–208, 210, 221–222, 354 kindergartens, 207, 209 North Bennet Street Industrial School, 202f, 204, 207–208, 221 North End Hebrew Free School, 204, 221 Russian Industrial School for Girls, 222 vocational, 204, 208, 221 West End Hebrew Free School, 221 Schuyler, D., 114 Scofield, Rev. A., 99, 102–103, 105, 107 Scondras, D., 214 Scott Act of 1888, 275 Sea lettuce or green laver, 277 Sears, R., 96–98, 107 Seaweed trade, 276–277 Communist Peasants Association in Hunan, 276–277 Euro-Americans, 277 Peking (Beijing), 276 sea lettuce or green laver, 277 Tang period, 276 Second Coming of Christ, 234 Second Family Blacksmith Shop, 244 Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, 284 Self-improvement societies, 192 Seligman, T. J., 213–214 Seneca Indians Handsome Lake (Ganio dai io), 28, 44–45 Keepers of the Western Door, 23 Parker, Arthur C., 28, 30 Seventh generation, 41 Shackel, P. A., 5, 295 Shafer, A. E., 25 Shaker, Canterbury, 233 archaeology, 240–242 archaeologists, 241 Canterbury Church Family, 242f Canterbury dumps, 241 community’s two-mile-long mill system, 241 Lake Winnisquam, 241 lifestyle and faith, 241 Packard and Pierce-Arrow automobiles, 241 systematic excavations, 241

Index artifacts, 243–245 Children’s House, 243 Church Family Brethren’s Shop, 243 Creamery production, 243 Eldresses, 244 historical record and photographs, 243 Laundry, and School, 243 maintenance and housekeeping, 243 male activities, 243 mills and blacksmith shops, 243 rules, 243 Second Family Blacksmith Shop, 244 Sisters’ Shop, 243 “smoking meeting,” 245 syrup shop/spin shop, 243 tobacco pipe “wasters”, 244f tourist areas, 244 World’s People, 244 -banned substances, 241 buffs, 241 -built environment, 241 community, 236, 238 craft manufactures, 233 Sister Mildred Barker, 233–234 devotion to God, 235 Eldresses, 237f, 244 families, 238, 241 gendered architecture and landscape, 238–240 activities in fields and mills, 240 Board of Trustees, 240 Boston University, 240 Canterbury Shaker Village, 240 Charles “Bud” Thompson, 240 Church/North Families at Canterbury Shaker Village, 239f Lindsay, Bertha (Eldress), 239 maps and watercolors, 238 Mildred Wells, 239 NHSHPO, 240 Shaker family, 241 syrup shop, 240 Youngs, Isaac (Brother), 238 governing principles, 235 ideology, duality and gender issues, 234–238 “Called to Order,” 234 20th century, 235 duality of Shaker spaces, 235 dwelling house, 235, 236f “families,” 238 Hudson, Ethel (Sister), 236 governing principles, 235

Index “Holy Mother Wisdom,” 234 industry/economy/gender equality, 235 Meacham, Joseph (Father), 234 meeting house, 236, 237f “Mother” Ann Lee, 234 Second Coming of Christ, 234 Shaker community, 236, 238 Shaker Eldresses, 237f Swank, 238 worship, 236 legacy, 245 lifestyle and faith, 241 rules, 243 scholarship, 234 Shakerism, 233 Shaker, Pleasant Hill belief system, 251 Evans, Frederick, (Elder), 253 landscape, Pleasant Hill, 254–258 barns or stables, 257 clock-work, 256 “clothes yard,” 257 east/centre family areas, special structures, 256–257 “economy of scale”, 257 family dwelling houses, 254 features, layout/architectural, 256 fences, proliferation of, 257 location, 254 main buildings layout at west/centre/east families, 255f meeting house or church, 254 role of leaders, 255 mills cylinder mills, 262 large wash mills, 262 Parker wash mill, 262 Young, Isaac (Elder), 257 Wright, Lucy (Eldress), 252 Shaker(s) archaeology, 240–242 ceramics, 263 clay smoking pipe production at Pleasant Hill Shaker village, 260f clothes washing innovations at Shaker villages, 12, 261 interpretation of archaeological features, 256, 264 laundry design of, 260, 262–263 organization of, 257 Millennial laws, 234, 255

387 Mills, 240, 243, 262, 353 order in landscape design, 254–258 roles men, 246, 252, 268 women, 252, 268 sidewalks and fences as elements of ordered landscape, 254, 257–258, 266 simplicity interpretation at Shaker sites, 256, 263–267 washhouse design at Pleasant Hill Shaker site, 251, 257–264, 353 Shaker structures, 258 dwelling house, 258 shaker barn, 258 washhouse, 258 Shakertown Baptist Church, 254 See also Meeting House Sharpless, R. E., 314, 328 Shenandoah, J., 25, 27, 41 Shepherd, B., 167–169, 173, 177, 179–182 Shoemaker, N., 46 Shofar, 196 Short tributary to Taughannock Creek (Carman), 58 Simmons, M., 144, 146, 149, 151 Singmaster, E., 120 Sisters’ and Brothers’ workshops, 256 Sisters’ Shop, 243 Siu, P. C., 275 Skinner, S. A., 147 Sky Woman, 24f Slabtown, 273 Slaughter, T. P., 120 Slavery, brutal system of, 89 Slawson, D. N., 277–278, 284 Smallpox, impact of, 42–43 Smith, E., 192, 194, 198, 204, 215 Smith Houses (Lydia Hamilton), 118, 131 Smith, J. D., 96 Smith, Lydia Hamilton, 120–121 early life, 120 East Vine Street, 120 establishment, 120 Lot 134, 113, 123–125 Mrs. Effinger’s landscapes, 125 Mrs. Smith’s landscape, 121–124 cistern/artifacts, 122–123 cistern beneath courtyard between 47/49 Queen St., 123f colonial period, 121 cottage industries, 122 Daisz Grocery, 122

388 Smith, Lydia Hamilton (cont.) household management, 122 private activities, 122 property development, 121 racial bigotry, 121 “separate spheres” hypothesis, 121 small-scale craft production, 122 Underground Railroad, 123 Pennsylvania’s gradual abolition law, 120 Thaddeus Stevens, 120 “Christiana Riot,” 120 law office and residence, 120 new Republican Party, 121 occupation, 120 Sheriff’s Auction, lot at, 120 Smith, S. M., 240 “Smoking meeting,” 245 Snow, D. H., 144, 148–149, 154 Snow, D. R., 36, 42, 62, 64, 66, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, 182 Social practice, Haudenosaunee archaeological patterning, 65–67 manufacturing activities, 66 materials, recovered, 67 storage pits, 67 hearths, 64 seasonality/spatial components of activities for women and men, 63t spatial patterning, 62–64 hearths, 64 village, structure of, 62–63 temporal patterning, 64–65 cycle of activities for women/men in vicinity of village, 64 food-related tasks, 64–65, 65t Social settlements Civic Service House, 202f, 208, 221 Elizabeth Peabody House, 206f, 208, 222 Hecht House, 207, 216, 222 Louisa May Alcott Club, 208, 223 North Bennet Street Industrial School, 202f, 204, 207–208, 221 West End House, 208, 222 Solomon, M. H., 207 Sorensen, M. L. S., 61 Southern Market Hotel, 129 South Union washing arrangement, 262 Spanish Colonial Acequias, 145, 153, 156 administration, 144 archaeology, 154 Casitas, 141–142, 144–145, 147, 149–151, 154–159

Index Castas, 142, 144 Genizaro, 144, 146, 150–151, 153–154 New Mexico borderlands, 159 Women, 144–146, 149, 153, 160, 355 Speck, F. G., 36 Spector, J. D., 61 Speilman family, 130 Spence, R., 256 Spencer-Wood, S. M., 1–13, 121, 134, 165, 189–224, 239, 252, 343–358 Spence, T., 66, 256 Spicer, E. H., 147 Spin Shop, 243 Spiritual connection with the earth, see Underground Railroad Spude, C. H., 4, 306 Stanhope place, 211 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 204, 221, 352 Stanton, L., 204, 221 Starbuck, D. R., 5, 11, 233–247, 252, 260, 264, 353 Stars of David, 197 Startin, B., 192, 197, 204 Staten Island community, 166 Steam system, 262 Steinitz, M., 214 Stein, S. J., 245, 251–253, 255–256, 260 Stevens, Thaddeus, 9, 113, 115, 117–121, 127–128, 131, 351 and Lot 134, 113–114, 117–131, 133f, 134 political career, 121 Steward’s residence, 174 See also Matron’s Cottage Stewart, B. K., 108 Stilgoe, J. R., 3 Stone Lions of Bandelier National Monument, 152 Stone walkways, 258 Storrow, James J., 208 Sui, P. C., 305 Sullivan, A. P., 307 Sunseri, J. U., 5, 10, 141–160, 355–357 Swadesh, F. L., 144, 148, 151 Swamp, J., 38–39 Swank, 238 Swank, S. T., 235, 238, 240–241, 243–244 Sweeping, 88 Sweepin’ Spirits, power/transformation on plantation landscape, 81–93 first hermitage, 83–86 Alabama plantation, 84 archaeological periods/zones, 85–86

Index crop fields and cotton gin, 84 excavations, 84f field quarters, 85 Jackson’s humble beginnings, 83 location, 83 map of archaeological sites/quarter neighborhoods, 85f new brick structure, 83–84 site, description, 83 site with Alfred posing, 83f Tennessee standards, modest by, 83 time I, Middle Quarter period, 86 Hermitage, engraving, 82f preservation, 90–92 African-American community, 92 captive community, 91 conservation efforts, 90 Executive Board of LHA, 91 farmhouse exhibit, 91f hermitage reconstruction, first, 90f Middle Quarter period, 91 re-creating, swept yard, 92 shaping of landscape, 86–89 Black women sweeping a yard in Belton, South Carolina, 89f See also Landscape transforming middle quarter, 89–90 brutal system of slavery, 89 central courtyard area, 89 First Hermitage community/quarter, 89 Mansion Backyard Quarters, 89 plantation, 90 swept yard, 90 Symonds, J., 5 Synagogues Adath Israel, 192, 194f, 196–198, 200, 205, 220 Adath Jeshurun, 197–198, 217–218 Anshe Libawitz, 217, 220 architecture, 192, 197, 204, 210 Baldwin Place Shul, 217 conservative, 192, 197–198, 200, 216–219 Emerald Street Shul, 223 Mishkan Tefila, 197–198, 217–220 Ohabei Shalom, 192, 194f, 196–200, 203, 218 orthodox, 11, 190–192, 196–201, 203, 210, 214, 216, 218, 354 reform, 190, 192, 196–200, 210, 216 Vilna Shul, 210, 213–217, 354–355 Wall Street Shul, 218, 221 Syphilis, impact, 42

389 T Tactical landscape, la Tierra de Guerra, 147–150 Comanche campaigns, 148 four aspects agricultural potential area, 148 areas within viewshed, 148 fortified defense locations, 148 trade and raiding routes, 148 land grants, 148–149 ranchos, 149 Santa Cruz, 148 slave raiding and counter-raiding, 149 trading groups, 148 Talmud Rabbinic, 191 writings, 191 Tang period, 276 Tanyard family, 253 “Taronhiawakon” (“Holder of the Heavens”), 24 Taughannock Creek (Parker Farm), 58 Taylor, W. B., 142 Temperance policy, 180 See also Intemperance landscapes Tewa basin, 151 cosmology, 146 Indians Genizaros, 146, 150 Women’s roles, 191, 216 Thaddeus Stevens House, 131 “The Three Sisters,” 30 “The Visible, the Visual, and the Vicarious: Questions about Vision, Landscape, and Experience” (Robert Riley), 322 Third-wave feminist theory, see Feminist theory Thomas, Brig. Gen. L., 98 Thomas, J. C., 252, 257–258 Thomas, S. W., 252, 257–258 Tilley, C., 345 Tobacco pipe “wasters,” 244f Tom’s paradise, 182 Tooker, E., 25, 32, 35 Torah of God, 191 Tourist areas, 244 Transcontinental railroad, 275 Trask, Gustavus (Governor), 169 Tree of Heaven, 283 Trees in different forest, clearings and woods, 40 “communal” ethics., 40–41

390 Trefousse, H., 120–121 Tsai, Shih-shan. H., 275–276 Tuck, J. A., 23, 30, 62 Tuck, James A. (archaeologist), 29 Turtle Clan, 37f Tuscaroras as the sixth nation of the Confederacy, 23 U Ubelaker, D. H., 42 Ueda, R., 208, 222 Unburned and burned faunal material, 70f bone, relative frequency of, 69 Underground Railroad, 9, 123, 131, 133, 351 United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, 233, 251 United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.), 107 United States map showing locations of the case studies, 7f Urban renewal, 114, 206, 221 U.S.C.T., see United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.) V Valdez, F., 156 VanBueren, T., 2 Van den Bogaert, M. H., 25, 28–30, 33–34, 38 Van der Donck, A. C., 42 Van Diver, B. B., 58 Van Wormer, H. M., 2 VCJH, see Vilna Center for Jewish Heritage (VCJH) Vecsey, C., 42, 46 Venables, R. W., 4–5, 7–9, 21–48, 62, 352 Vennum, T. Jr., 35 Verano, J. W., 42 Verg¨uenza, 156 Veteran’s schedule, 127 Vetter, J., 107 Victorian ideology of conspicuous consumption, 306 See also Women and mining Vilna Center for Jewish Heritage (VCJH), 214 Vilna Shul, 212 on Beacon hill, in Boston’s West End, 210–213 interior first floor, 213f interior sanctuary landscape, 211f preservation of, 213–215 movements, 214 Vilner Congregation, 206, 210, 212–214 Vilner Congregation, 206, 210, 212–214 Vimont, B., 27 Vine street women, 119–131

Index Catherine Amelia Effinger Lebkicker, 125–128 Mrs. Lebkicker’s landscapes, 128–129 See also Lebkicker, Catherine Amelia Effinger Catherine Effinger, 124 Mrs. Effinger’s landscapes, 125 Lydia Hamilton Smith, 120–121 Mrs. Smith’s landscape, 121–124 See also Smith, Lydia Hamilton Sarahs Caldwell and Lizze Speilman, 129–130 Mrs. Caldwells’ landscapes, 130–131 Voss, B. L., 4 W Wagner, S. R., 7, 45 Wallace, A. F. C., 44–45 Wallace, P., 23, 38, 41 Wall, D. D., 118, 121, 175 Washhouse ceramics, 264 Washing machine, commercial, 262 Weber, C. A., 1 Weber, M., 344 Wedertz, F. S., 297–298 Weeks, K. D., 284 Weissbach, L. S., 199 WEIU, see Women’s Educational and Industrial Union (WEIU) Wendorf, F., 152 Wergland, G. R., 238 West Chestnut Street household, 127 West End Young Men’s Hebrew Association (WEYMHA), 213 West Lot family fulling mill/grist mill/sawmill, 253 washhouse, 260 WEYMHA, see West End Young Men’s Hebrew Association (WEYMHA) Wey, N., 274 Whitehill, W. M., 196, 217, 220 White Pine Mining District, Nevada, 300, 301f Shermantown, 300, 302 Treasure City, 300, 302 Treasure Hill, 300 Whitney Battle-Baptiste, 347 Wilkie, L. A., 100 Wilk, R. R., 65 Williams, C. A. S., 281 Williams, J. E., 127 Williams, M. A., 204, 221 Williams-Shuker, K., 62

Index Winpenny, T. R., 114, 130 Wittenstein, K., 235 Women African-American, 9, 95–109, 113, 120–121, 306, 348, 350–351 and associations, 82–83, 205, 219, 221, 223, 350 Bamber, Golde, 207, 210, 222 Benoth Israel Sheltering Home, 202–203, 208, 220 Boston Council of Jewish Women, 200, 223 Cayuga, see Cayuga Indians Child, Lydia Maria, 352 Chinese, 12, 276, 302–304, 348, 355 and clubs, 200 See also Clubs domestic servants, 124–129, 330, 348 and fund raising, 199, 201 Gage, Matilda Jocelyn, 7, 45, 352 Genizaro, 144, 151, 153–154 Hecht, Lina, 205, 207, 210, 216 Iroquois, see Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Jewish, see Jewish Ladies Hermitage Association, 82, 83f, 350 and laundry, 12, 106, 260, 325, 329, 356 Miner’s wife, 327, 329–330 and mining, see Women and mining National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, 200 Native American, 2–3, 7, 10, 73, 233 North End Jewish Dispensary for Women and Children, 203 Onondaga, 7, 23, 26 Protestant, 200 and Sailors’ Snug Harbor Seneca, 7, 23, 28, 35–36, 38–40, 42 Shaw, Pauline Agassiz, 204, 221 and slavery, 306 and societies, 199–200 Spanish, see Spanish Colonial Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 204, 221, 352 In synagogues, see Synagogues Tewa, see Tewa and Underground Railroad, see Underground Railroad Women’s auxiliaries, 199–200, 355 Women’s League of the United Synagogue, 200 Women’s lodges, 199 YWCA, 204, 223

391 See also Charities; Dispensaries; Hospitals; Jewish Women and mining in mining households, 304–305 family households, 304 Gold Rush tradition, 305 Shermantown, nuclear families, 304–305 Victorian attitude (domestic responsibilities), 305 women, role of, 305 world systems disseminators of cultural ideologies, 306 Johnson, Maggie, 306–307 reminiscences of Mary McNair Mathews, 306 Victorian ideology of conspicuous consumption, 306 “World system household” (“sojourner” household), 304–305 “Women’s art,” 33 Women’s Educational and Industrial Union (WEIU), 205 Women’s role at home as support network, 330 Woodbury, H., 37 Wood, J. H., 114 Wood, M. C., 319, 348 Woods, “One Bowl,” 40 Woods, R. A., 208, 223 World’s People, 233, 244 World Systems, 293–294, 305–307 World War II, 275 Wraxall, P., 38 Wright, G., 319 Wurst, L. A., 121 Wylie, A., 267 Y Yamin, R., 1, 4, 115 Yentsch, A., 323 Yip, C. L., 113 YMHA, see Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) Young, A., 2, 4, 9, 100 Young, D. K., 277 Young Hebrew Charities Club, 209 Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA), 203–204 Youngs, Isaac (Brother), 238 Young Women’s Hebrew Charitable Association (YWCA), 204

392 Yu, C. Y., 281–282 Yusnukis, R., 334 YWCA, see Young Women’s Hebrew Charitable Association (YWCA)

Index Z Zesch, S., 275 Zierden, M. A., 1 Zucker, D. J., 191