(This is the first in a series of columns from Defending Democracy in Marblehead exploring our town’s past and present as it has echoed and often rejected national politics, trends and values.)
Nestled along the rocky North Shore of Massachusetts, our town possesses a character that has always been shaped by its people’s deep attachment to autonomy, self-governance and resistance to overweening authority. In terms of social justice, from colonial times through today, it has also engendered deep patterns of exclusion and complicity, as well as resistance and change.
Tension from the get go
The European settlers did not initially displace or make war on the indigenous Naumkeag tribe. They gained the land indirectly, as a smallpox outbreak, 1615-1619, devastated the Naumkeags, while many of the settlers already had a resistance to the disease.
A second wave of the contagion, in 1633, wiped out about 90% of the original inhabitants. When King Philip’s War (1675-1678) echoed into their world, these settlers were moved to action. Metacom, also known as King Philip, was a sachem of the Wampanoag people and the second son of the sachem Massasoit. The war was triggered by the execution of three of Metacom’s warriors by the Plymouth Colony in June 1675. It was grounded in a fight over land, resources and cultural survival.
This is not unlike today, as nations imperialize others for their resources. Just think about this administration’s desire to rule Greenland for its minerals or Venezuela for its oil, and China’s nurturing of roads and infrastructure in Africa for greater influence there. Russia wants domination over the region’s breadbasket, Ukraine. The leaders of all three want what is within the protected domain of smaller nations. In our case, the British transplants wanted land.
One technique the indigenous populations used against the settlers was to appropriate their fishing boats, thus denying them a living. In 1677, two native men were captured and brought back to our shores. The fishwives of our fair town “grabbed the Indian men by the hair” and beat them until their heads and flesh were gone, according to the Journal of Women’s History. Even after the Natives had died, the women continued to attack and mutilate their lifeless bodies.”
When people refer to “kinder, gentler times,” they might be simply imaginary.
Marblehead, unlike the many towns that surrounded it, was not grounded in Puritan values, faith and lifestyle. For those unfamiliar with Puritanism, this restrictive religion preached that we are born in sin, dig a plot of land all your life, then die and go to hell.
To the Puritans, Marbleheaders appeared as first-rate sinners. As hardened fisherfolk from Jersey, Guernsey and Lancashire, they possessed a desire to fish outside of the taxation exerted by the British crown. With their unique use of language, rough ways and a-religious practices, they were so reviled by their Puritan neighbors to the north (Salem, Danvers, etc) that they oft said that “the first Marbleheaders arrived from Salem in whiskey barrels and made their squaws walk.” This frames the unique nature of our past.
We could learn a lesson from how our townsfolk were perceived back then. Contemporarily, we might consider how quickly we demonize the “other” because they believe or because they do things differently from ourselves. We see this not only internally — “What? You voted for the 3A! I can’t believe it” — but also nationally. The citizens of this nation burnt Catholic churches to the ground in the 1860s and mosques in the 2010s. My father-in-law used to say, “There are two kinds of people: us and them.” They simply continue to reconnoiter themselves.
In 1773, when smallpox struck the region, efforts to inoculate the population and manage the epidemic revealed deep local tensions about authority and public health. Does this sound familiar? A smallpox inoculation hospital on Cat Island (now Children’s Island), intended to protect the community, was burned down by anxious townspeople opposed to the project — an early, if troubling, example of locals asserting control over decisions they saw as imposed by outside interests. The science of infectious diseases supported the Cat Island isolations. Our townspeople’s fears overwhelmed the knowledge.
As you can see, issues of justice and expression have never been one-sided or obvious. Our next installment on democracy will explore our town’s high profile in the Revolutionary War and how that echoes into today’s concerns.
Judith Black has been an actress with a national touring company, a religious educator, a touring educational artist and an award winning professional storyteller for over 50 years. She is also one of the founders of Sustainable Marblehead, ran Bridging Lives for 16 years, is the mother of the Lady Liberty Flash Mob, creator of the initiative TRANSITION YOUR LAWN: PLANT HOPE, a member of Marblehead’s League of Women Voters and Defending Democracy in Marblehead, a fanatic regenerative gardener and the mother of Solomon.
