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About the old corn hills. On Nov. 7 and 13, 1857, Thoreau walked with Emerson along the Bateman's Pond cart road and wrote:
"To Bateman's Pond with R. W. E. [Emerson]....I observed...between the site of Paul Adams's and Bateman's Pond, in quite open land, some very prominent Indian corn-hills. I should say that they were higher above the intermediate surface than when they were first made. It was a pasture, and they were thickly covered with grass and lichens. Perhaps the grass had grown better on the hillocks, and so they had grown while the intermediate spaces had been more trodden by the cows. These very regular round grassy hillocks, extending in straight rows over the swells and valleys, had a singular effect, like the burial-ground of some creatures."
A lost opportunity for scholarship:
A critique of a JHA article written by Middlesex School's consultants and others (J.C. Garman, P.A. Russo, S.A. Mrozowski, and M.A. Volmar), which debunked Thoreau's archaeology.
By Stephen Ells
Corn hills were mounds that native people or colonial farmers made in their fields, in which they planted corn and other vegetables. At a public hearing for the nearby Middlesex School project, citizens asked that the archaeology studies (required by federal law) search for these lost mounds. Remarkably, the archaeologists did rediscover these corn hills -- hundreds of them. Unnoticed for more than a hundred years, hundreds of these gentle mounds can be seen on the forest floor atop a rocky promontory above Bateman's Pond and on both sides of the Bateman's Pond cart road. In an afternoon light, they are mysterious.
Caption: Concord citizen at the site of the agricultural hilled field. The
"corn hills" can be distinguished by gentle mounding and often by
moss.
In 1997, an article written in part by the archaeological consultants of the development project's proponent (the Middlesex School) was published in the Journal of Historical Archaeology: (Garman, J.C. [Public Archaeology Lab], P.A. Russo, S.A. Mrozowski, and M.A. Volmar [Fruitlands Museum], "'The Great Wild Tract': Henry David Thoreau, Native Americans, and the Archaeology of Estabrook Woods," J.H.A. 31 [1997]: 59-80). Despite sophisticated techniques, the report's authors could not verify that this hilled agricultural field was of native American origin. Instead, the report concluded the field was probably made by farmer Thomas Estabrook in the middle of the 18th century. (The existence of an earlier native American field could not be precluded, however.) Thus, the corn hills are about 250 years old. The Mass. Historical Commission said it was a unique find and declared it eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.
I cannot comment on the technical portion of the article by Garman et al., but two aspects of it concern me. The first is the article's gratuitous and unwarranted eagerness to debunk Henry Thoreau's supposed attitudes about the landscape of Concord as an untamed wilderness. About this, I will simply say that the authors' premise was false and thus their conclusions were faulty. The second aspect, which I will discuss here for a moment, is the article's incomplete citation of Thoreau's notes about hilled fields. Because the citations were incomplete, the article misrepresented Thoreau's observations and thus missed a significant opportunity, using an documented example, to provide a balanced critique of Thoreau's archaeology.
As it was a single entry in Thoreau's journal that preserved the memory of this hilled field and led to its rediscovery, it should have been quoted in full and in context. Thoreau wrote,
"I observed on [Nov. 7, 1857, on a walk with Ralph Waldo Emerson] between the site of Paul Adams's and Bateman's Pond, in quite open land, some very prominent Indian corn-hills. I should say that they were higher above the intermediate surface than when they were first made. It was a pasture, and they were thickly covered with grass and lichens. Perhaps the grass had grown better on the hillocks, and so they had grown while the intermediate spaces had been more trodden by the cows. These very regular round grassy hillocks, extending in straight rows over the swells and valleys, has a singular effect, like the burial-ground of some creatures" (Nov. 13, 1857).
It is unfortunate that the JHA article omitted not only the sentence that I italicized above but also made no reference to Thoreau's other writings (nine, at least) about corn hills. These entries, which I had provided to the article's principal author, demonstrate that as of November, 1857, Thoreau was continuing to record observations about a phenomenon--the size of the corn hills as related to their origin--that had interested him at other hilled fields he had observed. Thus, the note about the corn hills at Paul Adams' was part of a series of observations, not an isolated example.
Thoreau's hilled field entries include the following: an undated entry in 2 Journals (Princeton) 39 (1842-44) and dated entries of about April 19, 1850; during May 1850; after Jan. 8 1851; Sept. 12 1851; Dec. 4 1856; Aug. 24 and Nov. 13, 1857; and Oct. 20 1860. There were also references to corn hills in Thoreau's Faith in a Seed (Washington: Island Press, 1993) p. 156; and in his essay Walking. Some of these entries demonstrate that a maturing Thoreau (who had compiled voluminous notebooks about native life) was trying to decide which characteristics indicated a hilled field of native American origin and which indicated one of European origin. He discussed the hilled fields' alignment, regularity, soil conditions, and size, and he speculated about the tools used in their construction. Indeed, his reference to the prominence of the corn hills in Estabrook Country (the omitted language I have quoted above), taken in context, may have been a cautionary note to himself (these were raw journal entries, remember) that these hills might not be of native origin.
Thus, these entries reveal that Thoreau was a much more discriminating observer than the JHA authors suggested. It would have been a significant contribution (and indeed essential prior to their criticizing Thoreau's attitude about Native Peoples) had the JHA authors, with their skills, discussed Thoreau's notes on this hilled field in light of all relevant entries, rather than incompletely quoting only one of them. Such a discussion, however, might have inconveniently contradicted the authors' simplistic, supercilious thesis that Thoreau had an archaeological "agenda of wistfulness and nostalgia" about both Estabrook Country and Native Peoples. If one is going to critique a important figure responsibly, one should quote him accurately and in context. The article was an opportunity lost to add to scholarship.
Citation for this critique: this essay appears in note 104 in The Seasons in Estabrook Country: An Anthology about the Cycle of the Year and this Landscape, by Stephen Ells, Lincoln MA:1999 112pp.
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Later, citizens were surprised to notice that the mounds were visible on their aerial photographs. I'm told it's unique to find them on aerials. See discussion in history section of this site. In this view, the sun is coming from upper right and casts diagonal shadows. |