Hidden in Plain Sight
Reverend Parsons
July 21, 2019
It’s tourist season, and when we’re driving around town we see those nice little banners that proclaim Gloucester to be “America’s Oldest Seaport”, and that it was settled in 1623. And certainly this is something to be very proud of – this long history of endurance – a harsh climate, and hard ways of earning a living: extracting food from the sea and the rocky soil, and extracting granite from the land. We have every reason to be proud, as we approach the 400th anniversary of what is often referred to as the ‘settlement’ of Gloucester.
But of course, the area was not settled in 1623. It was settled long before, by other people, by indigenous people. Those people, the Pawtucket, settled this area hundreds and even thousands of years before the first European-Americans waded ashore. The Pawtucket were farmers, primarily. Their permanent settlement was in the area of Lowell, then called Wamesit. They would originally come east to the coast in the summer to tend cornfields and to fish, and eventually had permanent communities here.1
The Pawtucket had a seasonal fishing camp at what we call Stage Fort Park, which has been commemorated as the original site of the European settlement. I wonder what the indigenous people called it.
Apparently Tablet Rock in Stage Fort Park was a sacred site to the Pawtucket. I wonder what their name for it was.
Wherever we go here on Cape Ann, and elsewhere in the United States, we are on someone else’s ancestral lands. We know this by the place names: Massachusetts, for starters. Annisquam. Then there’s the names of local animals: moose. Skunk. Or the food we learned to grow, such as squash. Clearly there were people here before the Europeans; the evidence is all around us. And yet, for most of my life, until fairly recently, I just never thought much about why the Europeans came and took over, and where the indigenous people went.
I love history. But despite all the history courses I’ve taken in my life, I never heard or read any discussion of how European settlers assumed that they could simply come ashore and begin to take control of the land. Clearly there were people already here.
So much of the history of our country is buried under layers of change and development, of settlement patterns. But at the same time, much of our history is hidden in plain sight, if we only are willing to notice. And the history of indigenous people in what is now the United States is just such a hidden story, hidden just below the surface. I have preached about it before, but because it recedes so easily out of view, I like to talk about it again and again.
It turns out that back in the 15th century popes began to issue decrees known as Papal Bulls, to give European explorers permission to take possession and settle lands on other continents. I read excerpts from two of the decrees a few minutes ago. There were two intentions behind the papal decrees: first, to spread the reach of Christianity, and second: to regulate the territorial expansion of Spain and Portugal. Since these Papal Bulls regulated international exploration and commerce, they came to have the force of international law. Together the bulls became known as the Doctrine of Discovery. There were 10 elements to the Discovery Doctrine, but the most important element was that “The first European country to discover lands unknown to other Europeans gained property and sovereign rights over the lands and native peoples.” 2.
Once a European, Christian power had ‘discovered’ land, they had to take possession by inhabiting it or creating a presence such as a fort, a trading post, or even the planting of a flag. Once they had taken possession, the European power had the sole right to purchase land from the native population. So this was a way of managing the property rights of European countries. However, it also placed limitations on the rights of native landholders as well, and without them even realizing it; they were no longer allowed to sell land to individuals or to other nations except for the one that had ‘discovered’ them. Consequently they no longer had full control of their land. They had the right to occupy it until they sold it, or until they were conquered, but they no longer had full sovereignty.
As I mentioned a moment ago, these Papal decrees had the force of international law. But let’s ask this, why would this still be relevant in the United States in the 21st century? The short answer is that this doctrine was the legal authority under which the American colonies were explored and settled. When the Revolutionary War concluded, England’s property and the English right of discovery were granted to the new United States government. As a result, the Doctrine of Discovery became the basis for federal management of indigenous lands and indigenous affairs. As America spread westward, the rights conferred by the Doctrine of Discovery went with us. For example, President Thomas Jefferson was quick to point out that in the Louisiana Purchase we did not actually buy outright that huge tract of land from France; in fact, we were buying France’s discovery rights to acquire the land from the Native Americans. He instructed explorer Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis and Clark fame, to inform the indigenous people he encountered that they would now be dealing with us. Jefferson wrote, “It will now be proper you should inform those through whose country you will pass… that their late fathers the Spaniards have agreed to withdraw…that (the Spaniards) have surrendered to us all their subjects…that henceforward we become their fathers and friends.” 3
And then in 1823, the Discovery Doctrine became part of United States’ case law. The case of Johnson vs. M’Intosh was a land dispute; two people had each bought the same parcel of land. Which party could rightfully claim ownership: the person who had purchased it directly from a Native American tribe, or the person who had purchased it from the United States government? The case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. In his opinion, Chief Justice John Marshall used the Discovery Doctrine to decide that the legitimate owner was McIntosh, who had purchased the land from the U.S. government. Marshall found that Discovery limited tribal sovereignty; they had lost full-fledged ownership of their lands, and they could not sell land to whomever they wish, nor develop it as they wish. Marshall called the tribes ‘domestic dependent nations’. (source: GA workshop notes) And with this Supreme Court decision, the Discovery Doctrine became part of U.S. case law, and has been carried down in court cases dealing with Native American land disputes ever since.
So far this has sounded more like a history paper or a legal lecture than a sermon. But this is a religious issue, because of the justification for the Discovery Doctrine that Christianity needed to be introduced to the barbarians, and that God wanted Christians to dominate.
Poet Joy Harjo put it this way “The enemy immigrated to a land he claimed for his God. He named himself as the arbitrator of deity in any form. He beat his Indian children. The law of the gods I claim state: When entering another country do not claim ownership. It’s important to address the souls there kindly, with respect. And ask permission…” (Joy Harjo, from “Returning from the Enemy.”)
The history of European settlement of this country begins in places such as Cape Ann. But as we well know, European settlers continued to pour into the territory of the United States, and put relentless pressure on indigenous people to sell or vacate their land. Native people were often considered to be a nuisance at best, a hindrance. Native populations dropped precipitously following first contact due to disease. John Winthrop wrote in 1629: “God hathe consumed the natives with a miraculous plague, whereby a great part of the country is left voyde of inhabitants.” 4 And so it was easy to maintain a story that the land was vacant and available to the new settlers, and that God wanted it that way. And if God was on our side, we didn’t need to think about the moral and ethical issues involved in settling this country.
Ultimately, of course, European settlers spread across the continent. We called it our destiny: Manifest Destiny. We drove the indigenous people before us, making treaties with them, giving them rights to smaller and smaller portions of land, and then breaking those treaties as the relentless demand for more land drove us further westward. Ultimately we herded survivors onto reservations. We know that battles over Native American rights continue to be fought in courts that have Johnson vs. M’Intosh as an established precedent. We see how this system plays out today. For example, Native American tribes sometimes seek to develop gambling casinos on their lands as a lucrative source of tribal income. In order to do so, they have to gain federal permission.
I never wondered why the federal government would be involved in determining how the Native Americans could use their land. It never occurred to me to ask. But of course, there, hidden in plain sight, is the answer that the United States still retains ultimate control even of land awarded to Native Americans through treaties.
Where did the indigenous people of this area go? Well, they did not all miraculously die off as John Winthrop suggested. Some moved and settled among other tribes in different parts of the state, or migrated north to Canada. Some were forced to migrate to Wisconsin as a result of President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830.5 Local historian Mary Ellen Lepionka notes that sometimes in the summer we see a number of cars with Wisconsin license plates. According to Mary Ellen, those might be descendants of native people who were originally from this area. Here again, blending in, hidden in plain sight.
Joy Harjo again: “I have lost my country. I have handed my power over to my enemies. My shoulders bear each act of forgetfulness. I have abandoned my children to the laws of dictators who called themselves priests, preachers, and the purveyors of law. My feet are scarred from the steps taken in the direction of freedom. I have forgotten the reason, forgive me. I have forgotten my name in the language I was born to, forgive me.”
Knowing this history, how do we respond? It is painful for us to confront a part of our history as we have here this morning, to know that so much of our nation’s past and present has involved injustice toward and oppression of others. Where do we begin to try to right the wrongs suffered by so many? Once our eyes are opened, we cannot pretend that we don’t see what has been hidden for so long.
As I said earlier, this is fundamentally a religious issue. As Unitarian Universalists, we need look no further than our seven principles to guide our thinking on human rights. Our first principle states that we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Then, too, our seventh principle calls for our involvement in this human rights issue as well: We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
This religious belief causes us to work to be in relationship with other humans and other living things rather than to seek to dominate them. Perhaps that is the worst aspect of the legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery. It gave permission to a government and a legal system to be more concerned with acquisition of land, and with domination and conquest than with creating relationships among people and living in harmony and equality. Those of us who are descended from the dominant European culture got to decide who was created equal. We chose who deserved liberty and justice.
But our seventh principle calls us to create a world that offers freedom from oppression for all. Let us begin by seeing what is hidden, and resolving to keep shining a light on it.
“And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that make one circle, wide as daylight and starlight,
And in the center grew one mighty flowering tree
To shelter all the children of one mother and one father.
And I saw that it was holy.” — Black Elk, in Singing the Living Tradition, #614.
May it be so. Blessed be and amen.
Notes:
1http://onlineexhibitions.capeannmuseum.org/s/unfoldinghistories/page/nativeamericanhistory
2 Robert J. Miller, Primer on the Doctrine of Discovery, p. 9
3 Robert J. Miller, Native America: Discovered and Conquered, p. 104
4 Mary Ellen Lepionka, https://enduringgloucester.com/2017/08/28/the-wanaskwiwam-villagers-where-did-they-go/
5 Ibid.
For further reading:
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Beacon Press, 2014.
