A Look At The Precolonial Culture Of The Chesapeake

The story goes that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Puritan pilgrims at Plymouth after a long but successful agricultural season, in which these settlers in the New World had been assisted by the Wampanoag tribe, who taught them to grow corn and other crops.

So how about the colonists who later came to the Chesapeake Bay region and settled along the shores of the Severn or Magothy rivers? What native cultures did they meet, and did their interaction include a celebratory harvest feast so often described in tradition?

Archeological finds in Anne Arundel County indicate that human life has existed in the Chesapeake Bay region as long ago as 12,000 years, when Homo sapiens crossed over to North America from Asia via the Bering land bridge between the two continents. Within a couple of hundreds of years, they spread quickly throughout the New World.

According to Stephanie Sperling, director of archeological research for Anne Arundel County, the first people to arrive in the region that would eventually be known as the Chesapeake Bay would have found an environment similar to tundra — cold and dry.

But that climate was changing. “By the time you get to about 8,000 years ago, the forests were developing and people were becoming forest specialists,” Sperling said. “They were hunting and gathering, but they were making seasonal rounds, going from place to place getting resources, be it from waterways or from the mountains or wherever.”

Generation to generation, the people developed their way of living. Artifacts found along the Broadneck Peninsula dating back 7,000 to 5,000 years ago include grooved axes, spearthrower weights, projectile points and shards of soapstone (steatite) vessels.

But the most significant indicator of ancient people’s way of life was pottery. “By 3,000 years ago, people started to make pottery, and this is a big signal to archeologists … that they’re slowly settling down into village life,” Sperling said. “Pottery shows that you can cook your food better than you could before, so now you can feed your old people and you can feed your young people and your population is growing and it’s harder to move your whole population around anyway. So by the time John Smith arrived here, he’s encountering a really complex society with chiefdoms and lots of interconnectedness all over the Chesapeake Bay area.”

The bay and its tributaries would have been a vital resource for the American Indians, the predominant tribe in the area being the Piscataway. However, the Broadneck and Pasadena peninsulas were also used by Susquehannocks and Algonquin tribes for hunting and fishing. “It’s difficult whenever you’re talking about the bay side of Anne Arundel County because right before European contact, the western shore of the bay, at least in this area, was a bit of a no-man’s land,” Sperling indicated.

Wars with Susquehannocks and Seneca tribes eventually pushed the Piscataway into Western Maryland as early as the 14th century, and research has uncovered many details about their way of life. Alice L.L. Ferguson and Henry Ferguson chronicled some of these findings in “The Piscataway Indians of Southern Maryland.”

The Piscataway lived in villages located close to rivers and streams that were navigable by canoes, bordered by cultivated fields and sometimes protected by stockades. The proximity to the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries allowed the Indians to bolster their food supply with bounties of oysters, sturgeons and fresh water clams. Proficient agriculturists, they also grew corn, beans, melons, pumpkins, squash and tobacco.

After the corn was harvested and ensuing ceremonies were held, hunting season began. “Everything that moved, even skunk to buzzard, went into the pot,” the Fergusons noted in their historical account.

Not surprisingly, while the domestic duties of grinding corn and cooking were assigned to women, hunting was the responsibility of men, who were groomed in this role from childhood. “A young boy was not allowed his breakfast until he could hit a piece of moss thrown into the air by his mother,” the Fergusons wrote.

Along with spears, bows and arrows became the chief instruments for hunting, with the bowstrings made from twisted strips of deer gut, deer hide or cords of vegetable fiber. Animal parts were not only used in the creation of weapons but also for clothing. Adults donned deerskin mantles or capes over the shoulders and girdles or aprons of deerskin around the waist. They also festooned themselves with other items: eagle talons and wings, scalps of slain enemies, heads of bear and wolf, and necklaces of shell beads that could also be used as currency. Children went naked.

For all of these customs, Piscataway “towns” were governed by chiefs called tayacs, which were referred to as “kings” by the English settlers. An overlord or emperor reigned above the tayac. Upon the death of an emperor, the next eldest brother or the son of a sister would lead. At the village level, the tayac was assisted by a council of elders and a war captain commanded the fighting men.

The tayacs also presided over ceremonies. Almost no village event went unrecognized by a ceremonious dance. This included hunting parties, marriages (the Piscataway practiced polygamy), the corn harvest and the occasional torture of captives. The Indians continued this way of life beyond the arrival of settlers.

European contact came in 1649. According to “Maryland Scenic Rivers,” published by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the first Europeans to this area were Puritans from Nansemond, Virginia, who left for Maryland because they were unwilling to submit to Governor William Berkeley’s demands for allegiance to the Church of England. They arrived seeking freedom of religion in Maryland, then under Cecil, Lord Baltimore, who was Catholic but tolerant of other religions.

On the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, they settled on a peninsula at the mouth of the Severn River. They called the settlement Providence — what would later become Annapolis.

Sperling supposes that the early interactions between the American Indian tribes and European settlers was likely very friendly. But it didn’t last. “Very quickly, the Europeans took the mentality of manifest destiny: ‘This land should be settled by us and we deserve it,’” Sperling said.

In some cases, the early friendly interactions might not have been as unconditionally welcoming as much as they were mutually beneficial. Some tribes might have traded with the colonists just as they traded with other tribes. In some cases, such as the Wicomico — south in what today is St. Mary’s County — the Indians would have looked to the Europeans, with their guns, as being able to protect them from warring tribes. Other colonists attempted to manipulate the native people through treaties, offering peace if the tribes would submit to the Englishmen’s control.

Ultimately, in Sperling’s words, European contact was “devastating” for the American Indians. And although some settlers might have received agricultural guidance from nearby tribes — and might have survived only because of it — there’s no indication that the two cultures would have joined together for a Thanksgiving meal. “I think the notion we have of the pilgrim’s first harvest is somewhat romanticized,” she said.

Whether the Thanksgiving story is true or nothing more than tradition, Sperling believes people living in the modern era can benefit from looking at the history of people who came before them, even if those predecessors aren’t their direct ancestors. “It’s important to remember that there was a whole culture of people who were here for 10,000 years,” she said. The United States’ history of the Chesapeake Bay area might go back only 400 years, but there’s human history that stretches beyond that. “It’s easy to forget there were people who lived here for thousands of years and for thousands of generations."