Violence and the Culture of Fortification near Long Island Sound, 1645-1664.
The years from 1645 to 1664 were a fraught moment for the Indian, Dutch, and English people who lived near Long Island Sound. In the decade preceding, Europeans provoked two punitive wars against Native peoples: the Anglo-Indian “Pequot War,” (1636-1638) and the Dutch-Indian “Kieft’s War” (1643-1645). At the same time, escalating Anglo-Dutch naval conflicts made a confrontation between their outposts in North America seemed imminent.
Given the specter of violence that loomed over all, it is hardly surprising that Indians and Europeans alike built new fortifications in this period. This paper will analyze three such structures: Fort Corchaug on Long Island’s North Fork (built c. 1640), Fort Massapeag near Hempstead (built c. 1656), and the stockade wall that surrounded Nieuw Amsterdam on Manhattan (built c. 1653). In these three sites, two obscure and one so famous that lives on within the ubiquitous metonym “Wall Street,” we can find compelling evidence of the role of violence in Early American history.
The most simplistic reading of these three structures would be that these new walls were merely reactions to the threat of violence and that their sharpened wooden palisades were symbolic of the hardening of political boundaries in this shifting region that was alternately claimed by Indian, Dutch, and English powers.
However, colonial records and the findings of historical archeologists reveal that even in this moment of heightened fear, these forts were sites of cultural engagement and exchange. Yet there was no sunny “middle ground” of peaceful, open negotiation on Long Island Sound; rather, these three sites demonstrate how intercultural violence could, somewhat counter-intuitively, foster cross-cultural communication. And they offer further clues as to how Indians navigated the stormy and fluid world between New England and New Netherland.
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