Personal Contact
I attended St. George’s School for high school, a preparatory boarding school in Aquidneck Island. I grew up a few minutes down the road in Newport. It was difficult for me to conceptualize that two starkly different worlds could coexist only minutes apart. The Newport community I existed in knew little to nothing about the elusive school on the hilltop and vice versa. The elitism of my new school felt foreign compared to my upbringing and leaning into that sense of contradiction became an intentional exercise for me over the years I spent there. This deep feeling of disconnect was not exclusive to me as an individual, but echoed in my environment. Being a Rhode Islander, I have encountered indigenous culture through commodification, in ways subtle and overt. Throughout my work on this project I am reminded of an experience I had at St. George’s that remains symbolic of my experience as a subconscious consumer of Indigenous culture. We played what were called “club games” where the school was divided into two and the winners at the end of the year were granted a free beach day. The names of the clubs were Sachuest and Sakonnet, reflecting our position between the two bodies of water to our East and West and in turn, two distinct indigenous communities. However, using these names for our trivial games where we viciously competed against each other felt uncomfortable and unsettling. To me, it was representative of how easy it is to succumb to binaries, to treat other cultures like some sort of novelty. Eventually, we implemented a land acknowledgement at the beginning of school gatherings in an effort to combat the erasure going on, but the words seemed to ring hollow as a performative act. Linking this experience to my explorations in this project invites a new kind of personal reflection. I now have attended two predominantly white institutions that occupy indigenous ground and are surrounded by contested histories. Sitting with this fact reminds me that it is the work of the community to bridge the gaps between our own overlapping worlds and uncover the truth to be found at where the cultures we interact with in our daily lives converge. Above all, it allows us the realization that we are all living in “interdependent realms” and identities do not form in a vacuum.
The reality is that we are constantly in contact with generations of different identities and we can perceivde this through the land we exist upon.
Characterization of The Land
Mancke refers to the Ohio country as “an eighteenth-century construct,” examining just what this construction means in the context of indigenous and settler interaction elucidates the power plays made. Who has a hand in this construction and what narrative does this construction serve is the driving question of my consideration of settler/indigenous points of contact (abstract and physical).
Contact and interactions between settlers and indigenous peoples are conveyed in the way land and territory are thought about (conceptualized), how the political character of the region is both socially formed and legally assigned, and negotiations of sovereignty that occur within these abstract and physical encounters. Identifying these possible touch points allows access to a third type of narrative that is not inherently one-dimensional. Through speculation, we can interlace the perspective of Native populations and European to uncover a more reciprocal back-and-forth, a kind of narrative quality that reflects the region of Ohio Valley as a point of “Indigenous geopolitical convergence, a transition zone among multiple Indigenous political systems”(Mancke).
European modes of thought intersect/conflict with Indigenous renderings of territory and ownership.
Through examining a newspaper article in the Akron Beacon Journal on the history of Brimfield, Ohio we are able to see firsthand how language shapes conceptualizations of land. It is noticeable that the land itself is sexualized, there are narratives of domination and submission, of corruption and innocence, of penetration and exploitation. Several references are made to the township as existing on “virgin soil” which implies a notion that it is untouched and effectively erases indigenous presence and ownership. Settlers were “chopping out homes for themselves in the mighty forest” assigning a mystical quality to the land and an uncivilized tone through references to forest, wilderness, etc. What exactly was chopped out in this process and what did the forcible reconfiguration of land mean for the people occupying it?
The physical layout and categorization of the land is also a cite of interaction where indigenous people and settlers There is no fluidity allowed, property is assigned to individual owners, parceled out as expressions of masculinity. In many settler-colonialist period maps, male property owners’ names appear on individual boxes. This image is a striking representation of how land is re-defined and rendered an image of patriarchy. This system of one-sided ownership and authority suggests no mutuality. In fact, it is inherently stationary and is difficult to reconcile with indigenous elasticity, the idea that “Mobility was not intrinsically a sign of social, cultural, or political weakness”(Mancke). Rather, mobility was a method of survivance to combat the downsides of an overly localized approach and resist ideological binaries.
Re-Defining Space
Brimfield Ohio was a notable cite of interaction within the Western Reserve that involves key figures in our cast of characters such as Henry Thorndike and John Wyles. In considering the nomenclature of the town and county, we are able to uncover additional meaning and significance. How does the name of a physical place change the identity and framework through which we see territory?
Brimfield was recognized as a Township, an administrative subdivision with corporate powers that is usually self-governing. This opens the door for a sort of elitism power structure where a select few persons reside over the town and use the space as a commercial project. This framework centers economic gain and is vastly different than Indigenous conceptions of ownership that traverse traditional geological boundaries and encompass identities, not necessarily with economic factors in mind as a binding force.
In terms of the region, Brimfield lies in Portage County, named after “Portage Path”, which runs between what would have been the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas rivers. Travelers would portage, or carry their canoes, across the trail. In this way, Portage county was an indigenous point of interaction between different tribal nations and nomadic groups, a trail of migrants. There is an interesting paradox to be uncovered in the Brimfield settlement existing within Portage County. The zone of geopolitical convergence operates against harsh and bifurcated European constructions of land. The two names give us direct insight into that conceptual tension.
Brimfield itself did not always go by that name, rather fittingly it was named after Wyles at one point and Thorndike at another. Notice Portage County represents a practical and unifying purpose; the bridging of topography with human movement. Wyles and Thorndike as territorial stakeholders represent economic domination and an egocentric and patriarchal approach to land categorization. Thorndike bought land and in exchange the town was named after him, a symbolically transactional relationship. Brimfield was the eventual name which acted as a strategic branding move by the trustees against the temperance movement in Boston. Thorndike’s proclamation of freedom and indulgence resonates with the prescribed values of settler-colonialism: “Henry Thorndike would drink booze any time and any place he darned well pleased”(The Akron Beacon Journal). The emphatically materialistic way both men conceptualized the township nullifies a more fluid interpretation of possession utilized by Ohio Indigenous groups that did not ascribe emotionally-charged capitalistic agendas, but operated in flux with geographic and communal needs.
Engaging in indigenous history and reframing settler-colonialism using Indigenous characterizations of land is imperative to understanding the nuances of cross-cultural contact.
Political character of the region
What did the land have at stake ideologically, not just topographically?
Examining the paradox of liberty where:
“Christian missionaries helped open the door to the Ohio Valley of what historian Eric Hinderaker has described as an “empire of liberty” where “American citizens [liberated] from the constraints of the older European imperial systems” imposed their will on the peoples and the landscape of the Ohio Valley”(Frank).
Works Cited
Mancke, Elizabeth. “The Ohio Country and Indigenous Geopolitics in Early Modern North America, circa 1500–1760.” Ohio Valley History 18, no. 1 (2018): 7-26. muse.jhu.edu/article/689416.
Frank, Andrew K. “The Transformation of the Indian Countryside: Toward an Indigenous History of the Eighteenth-Century Ohio Valley.” Ohio Valley History 18, no. 1 (2018): 3-6. muse.jhu.edu/article/689415.
“History of Brimfield, Portage County, Ohio” Newspapers.com. The Akron Beacon Journal, August 10, 1905. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-akron-beacon-journal-history-of-brim/25522902/.
Newspapers.com. The Akron Beacon Journal, November 27, 1981. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-akron-beacon-journal/69196466