Living with Whales: Documents and Oral Histories of Native New England Whaling History

231 Pages·2014·9.518 MB·English

by  Nancy Shoemaker

A volume in the series
Native Americans of the Northeast
Edited by
Colin Calloway
Jean M. O’Brien
Barry O’Connell
Documents
and
Oral Histories
of
Native New England
Whaling History
Edited by
nancy shoeMaKer
University of MassachUsetts Press
Amherst and Boston
Copyright © 2014 by University of Massachusetts Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-62534-081-8 (paper); 080-1 (cloth)
Designed by Sally Nichols
Set in ITC New Baskerville
Printed and bound by Sheridan Books, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Living with whales : documents and oral histories of Native New England whaling history /
edited by Nancy Shoemaker.
pages cm — (Native Americans of the Northeast)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-62534-081-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-62534-080-1 (hardcover
: alk. paper) 1. Whaling—New England—History. 2. Whaling—Social aspects—New
England—History. 3. Indians of North America —New England—History. 4. Indians of
North America—Fishing—New England. I. Shoemaker, Nancy, 1958–, editor. II. Title:
Documents and oral histories of Native New England whaling history.
SH383.2.L595 2014
639.2'80974--dc23
2013047802
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
contents
Introduction
1
1. A World of Whales
11
2. Whaling from the Shore to the Deep Sea
37
3. Around the World in the Nineteenth Century
65
4. Whaling Legacies
96
5. A Whaling Family in New England and New Zealand
120
6. Wampanoag Oral Histories
141
7. Shinnecock Oral Histories
169
Afterword
Researching Native Whaling History
199
Appendix
Native Whalemen’s Logbooks and Journals
203
Notes
205
Index
213
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Native communities and major whaling ports in southern New England in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. Map by Bill Keegan, Heritage Consultants.
introduction
M
ention Native American whaling and most people
will think first of the Makah in the Pacific Northwest, who
made international headlines in 1999 when they reas-
serted their aboriginal and treaty rights to hunt whales,
or the Inuit in Alaska, who have been hunting whales for thousands
of years. The coastal Algonquian peoples of southern New England
have also had an enduring relationship with whales dating back thou-
sands of years. In many ways, the impact of whales and whaling on
Native New Englanders’ cultures and economies has been even more
profound and complex than among the Makah or the Inuit, for New
England Native whaling history is not just about indigenous claims to
the sea but also about complicated labor systems that developed under
colonialism. English settlers saw economic opportunity in southern
New England’s abundance of whales, and as the New England whaling
industry expanded to become the largest in the world, at each step of
the way colonists turned to Native peoples to provide knowledge and
labor.
Living with Whales may seem an inappropriate or contradictory title
for a book that contains many descriptions of killing whales, but it
refers to the long, holistic history between whales and Native Amer-
icans in southern New England that extends even to the present day.
From long before European contact to the time when Bartholomew
x
1
Figure 1. These whale- and fish-shaped pendants
were probably used as sinkers for fishing. From
Charles C. Willoughby, Antiquities of the New England
Indians, with Notes on the Ancient Cultures of the Adjacent
Territory (Cambridge: Peabody Museum of American
Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University,
1935), 50.
Gosnold named Martha’s Vineyard, Dutch and English fishermen and
explorers traded for furs and wampum beads off of Long Island and
Cape Cod, and the so-called Pilgrims took up residence at Plymouth,
the relationship between Native peoples and whales was a holistic one.
They harvested marine mammals along with clams, oysters, fish, and
deer for their subsistence, and whales played a part in their creation
stories, spiritual beliefs, and political practices (figs. 1–3). In contrast,
Native participation in the industrial whaling that began in the mid-
seventeenth century and ended, for southern New England, in the
X
2
INTRODUCTION