Minute Man National Historical Park at Concord, Massachusetts

“Lay down your arms, ye damned rebels, lay down your arms!” With that terse warning from Major Pitcairn of the British Army, his guard of 150 soldiers confronted the 77 assembled Minute Men on the town green at Lexington, Massachusetts. The militia on the Lexington Green on April 19, 1775 had responded to the alarms spread by Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott. At the time, no one cried “the British are Coming!” Most colonials still considered themselves British. The cry that did ring out through the New England countryside that night was “The Regulars are Coming!”

Lexington Green (Photo by Hunner)

At the Lexington Green, a shot rang out, and the militia scattered, some run down by the Regulars who charged with bayonets, killing eight and wounding ten. The Regulars suffered no casualties. Pitcairn marshaled his jubilant troops back to command and rushed his men to Concord to capture a stockpile of rebel arms and ammunition.

 Reenactors portraying British Regulars at Concord (From exhibit at Minute Man NHP) 

The fighting at Lexington and Concord that April in 1775 sparked the American Revolutionary War and changed the world. The road to rebellion was slow boil for the colonists in British America that dated back to the French and Indian War. Administering the American colonies burdened the growing British world empire, and Parliament thought payment was due. Beginning in 1733 with the Molasses Act, taxes on essential colonial products raised the ire of the Americans. First Lord of the Treasury, George Grenville, justified the taxes saying that they would go “toward defraying the necessary expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the said colonies and plantations.” From our early days, taxes have vexed Americans. A particularly odious tax on the colonies was the Stamp Act of 1765, covered in last week’s blog. Local Sons of Liberty began to organize against the rising “tyranny” of the British over colonial matters.

Ben Franklin's call for unity during the protest against King George III and Parliament.
(From Franklin House exhibit at Independence NHP)

Revolutions need many elements to succeed. They need a perceived threat to motivate people to rebel. They need talented leaders to take charge and figure out how to rebel. They require a network of communication to spread the word. And they need luck.

Talented writers fanned the flames of rebellion and justified the challenge to the British and King George III. Virginians Patrick Henry and John Dickinson, Pennsylvanian Benjamin Franklin, and Bostonian Samuel Adams stoked popular resentment with pamphlets, broadsheets, and articles decrying British tyranny and rallying the public with slogans such as “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” and “Give me Liberty or give me Death.” From leaflets to popular songs sung in taverns, the rebels organized against England. The patriots were lucky with such talented publicists.

Building on the growing discontent, rebels started boycotting British imports. Sassafras tea replaced British tea as the protestors’ drink of choice. Women made garments out of homespun cloth, merging fashion with defiance. Patriots organized militia to resist England. In Massachusetts, almost all men between sixteen and sixty served in their town’s militia, with the younger men serving as a rapid response force, nicknamed the Minute Men. All knew that once open rebellion started, they would face the best military in the world.

Political cartoon showing the English forcing tea down an American
(From exhibit at Minute Man NHP)

What did the rebels want? They fought for independence from an oppressive regime; for equality (for white males with property); and for representation in government. Newly arrived from England, Thomas Paine published the influential Common Sense in January 1776. In it, he wrote:

It is not in the power of Britain to do this continent justice: … for if they cannot conquer us, they cannot govern us.… Independency means no more, than, whether we shall make our own laws, or, whether the king, the greatest enemy this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us, "there shall be no laws but such as I like.”

Cries for rebellion like Payne’s unified the disparate colonies into a continent, into a whole land. Granted, the thin line of English settlement along the eastern seaboard ignored the rest of North America continent; nonetheless, colonials started seeing themselves as part of a larger country fighting against a corrupt government.

In my tour of Independence Hall in Philadelphia led by Ranger Greg, he mentioned militia Captain Preston’s reason about why they took up arms against the King. Was it taxes? No. Was it the Boston Massacre? No. Preston said they fought because those people in England felt that we Americans could no longer take care of our own business, we could no longer govern ourselves. That is why he and his fellow soldiers rebelled.

The First Continental Congress met at the Carpenters’ Hall from September 5 to October 10, 1774 to respond to the Punitive Acts (aka the Intolerable Acts) that Britain enacted due to the Tea Party. General Gage placed Boston under martial law. The Congress, with representatives from all the colonies but Georgia, petitioned King George III to remove these acts and soldiers from the colonies. They then adjourned with the understanding that they would meet again if the King rejected their petition. The King was not amused.

Revolt ignited that April morning north of Boston. After the British attacked the militia at Lexington Green, they continued to Concord. Nearby Minute Men swarmed to the sounds of gunfire as the Redcoats searched for arms and ammunition. When the militia saw smoke coming from Concord, they feared that the British had started to torch the town. They charged the North Bridge occupied by the Redcoats and exchanged fire which killed two Minute Men and eleven English soldiers. British Colonel Francis Smith ordered his men to retreat to Boston.

North Bridge at Concord where the shot heard 'round the world occurred (Photo by Hunner)

The  Minute Man statue at North Bridge (Photo by Hunner)

A mile east of Concord at Meriam’s Corner, a narrow bridge across a creek created a bottleneck for the British, and the gathering militia, hiding behind fences, walls, and trees, started picking off the enemy. More militia joined the fray and forced the English to run a gauntlet of deadly gunfire as they retreated to Boston. Near Lexington, the British column faced the men they had attacked that morning who exacted retribution from the Regulars. A British officer wrote about their retreat:

The Rebels kept the road always lined and a very hot fire on us without intermission; we at first kept our order and returned their fire… but when we arrived a mile from Lexington, our ammunition began to fail … so that we began to run rather than retreat in order.[1]

Inconceivably, the ragtag group of colonial militia had forced the Redcoats to flee in disorder. The Regulars ran into reinforcements at Lexington sent from Boston or their retreat would have been worse.

The retreat from Concord (From Minute Man NHP exhibit)

The engagement shocked the British —almost three hundred men killed, wounded or missing, and their forces now under siege in Boston. The Minute Men suffered ninety-three killed or wounded. As an irregular unit, the militia inflicted serious damage to the best army in the world by using guerrilla tactics learned from fighting Native Americans in the woods. This would be a different kind of war.

After the first skirmishes near Boston, conflicts erupted at Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point in New York. Then, on June 17, militia from the Boston area defended the strategic heights above Charlestown from a Redcoat assault. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, a first wave of 2,200 Regulars struggled uphill over fences and hastily constructed bulwarks. Volleys of bullets rained down from above and forced the Redcoats to retreat. They charged again, and again the militia fought them back. The third charge proved successful for the Redcoats as the Patriots started to run out of ammunition. The British suffered 1,054 casualties including 232 dead while the Americans had only 400 dead, wounded, or missing. British General Clinton complained: “A dear bought victory—another such would have ruined us.”

The vicious battle for Bunker Hill (From Bunker Hill exhibit at Independence NHP)

Several consequences came out of these first armed clashes. First, with cold weather approaching and surrounded by a hostile force, the British abandoned Boston and retreated by boat to Halifax, Canada where they wintered. Second, the British generals became more cautious in engaging the home grown militia whose atypical combat style proved effective. Third, the British decided to counter this rebellion with a show of force and sent their largest contingent of soldiers up to that time anywhere for next summer’s campaign. Finally, the Continental Congress called for all able bodied men to join the militia.

Not all Americans joined the rebellion. Perhaps a third of the colonials wanted rebellion and freedom from England while another third remained loyal to the king. The rest stayed neutral, but this was as much a civil war as a unified struggle against the British. Finally, these Boston battles sparked the years of combat and destruction as armies chased across the colonies, killing one another, and often destroying whatever lay in their paths.

In 1775, the Second Continental Congress convened in May and in response to the fighting in Boston, declared the colonies independent. They also organized the defense of the colonies as combat rang out in Boston and elected George Washington to lead the nascent Continental Army. At the City Tavern, at Quaker meetinghouses, in Carpenter’s Hall, debates rang out about whether to rebel and if so, what to put in Parliament’s place.

Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia (Photo by Hunner)

City Tavern in Philadelphia (Photo by Hunner)

The American Revolution, begun in April 1775 in Concord, lasted until the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia in October 1781. We will explore the history of the war and the creation of our democracy in future postings.

The Minute Man National Historical Park was created on September 21, 1959 when President Eisenhower signed its enabling act. The sites connected to the Revolution in downtown Philadelphia was designated as Independence National Historic Site in 1934 and added as Independence National Historical Park in 1938.

---

[1] Stevens, America’s National Battlefield Parks, 25.

Notes from the Road, August 29, 2016

I went to a birthday party on August 25^th and fell in love with a French woman. I have seen her several times over the years, but this time we clicked. Maybe it was the celebration, maybe it was all the people flocking to her, whatever the chemistry, I was smitten. I admired her like millions of others past and present, for her call for freedom and liberty. Of course, I am talking about the Statue of Liberty. More about her later.

The Statue of Liberty from the ferry (Photo by Hunner)

Before the NPS birthday party at the Statue of Liberty, I went to the New Bedford Whaling NHP. As a desert dweller, I am fascinated by the sea and those who sail it. It is a foreign world to me. From there, I drove to another shipping museum at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut where I boarded the Edward Morgan, the last surviving tall ship from the American whaling fleet. A passing comment by a volunteer in the information booth sent me to the U.S. Submarine museum in Groton where I crammed myself into the passages of the USS Nautilus, the first Navy vessel to use nuclear propulsion.

A painting of the whaling ships at New Bedford with barrels of whale oil. (From the exhibit at the visitors' center) 

I then landed at an RV park across the Hudson River from Manhattan, and even more importantly, near the New Jersey ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I went to Liberty first to help celebrate the 100^th birthday of the National Park Service. I asked if there were any celebratory activities and found out that a Girl Scout troop was singing “This Land is Your Land” at the base of the Lady. Park rangers held up cue cards with the lyrics, and many of us sang along. When asked why the park chose that song, Chief Ranger Melissa turned to me and said, “The parks belong to all of us, they’re all our land.” Lady Liberty is a majestic and endearing symbol of our yearning for a better life. I am in awe of this green elegant woman.

Park rangers holding up the lyrics to "This Land is Your Land" (Photo by Hunner)

I hopped on the Statue Cruises ferry and went to Ellis Island where millions arrived to actualize that dream. It was humbling to see the stories of why people fled their ancestral homes to come to the United States. It was also inspiring to see how they pursued a dream of a better life for them and their families in the U.S.

Immigrants fled from poverty and war (From the Ellis Island exhibit)

The New York neighborhood that immigrants arrived at (From Ellis Island exhibit) 

The next morning, I toured the September 11 Memorial at the site of the World Trade Center. The fountains that cascade down over the foot print of the two towers and then into square chambers further underground is a moving image for all the lives lost. Walking around the subterranean museum with its crushed fire helmets and relics of the collapsed skyscrapers and with the video and photos of the carnage of that tragic day was at times too much for me. In truth, I rushed through parts of the exhibits since the emotion was still too raw. It is an incredible museum which I will write about in a future blog in combination with the Flight 93 National Monument.

One of the two fountains at the September 11 Memorial (Photo by Hunner)

The remnants of the foundation of one of the Twin Towers with the last steel girder that was removed
(From September 11 Memorial exhibit)

Leaving the New York area later that morning, I took a wrong turn on an interstate in New Jersey. Fortunately, I found myself at the Morristown NHP where George Washington and his Continental Army wintered in 1779-1780. Here, the winter was worse than Valley Forge, but the Patriots lost less men because of the lessons learned about hygiene and camp living.

General George Washington's office at Morristown where he wintered with the Continental Army 1779-1780
(From the Ford House exhibit at the  Morristown NHP) 

I then spent a couple of days in the Philadelphia area, first with tours of Independence Hall, City Tavern, Declaration House, Franklin House, and Carpenter Hall. And then I biked around Valley Forge and surprisingly, met Jennifer Bourque, a former public history student from New Mexico State University. I went on her tour of the camp and was happy that she is doing well as a park ranger.

Former NMSU Public History student Jennifer Bourque leading a tour at Valley Forge (Photo by Hunner)

At an RV campsite, I parked next to Sheldon, a Civil War re-enactor who showed me his uniform as a Yankee Signal Corps sergeant. As I was getting ready to leave for Gettysburg, he briefed me on the first day of battle there.

As I went from Valley Forge to Gettysburg, I have to admit that I ground some gears as I shifted from the American Revolution to the Civil War. And I realized that I have been immersed in our war parks for the better part of last week with another week of battlefields on the schedule.

Like last week, I visited more parks than I have time to blog about. Eventually I will write about all of these parks when I am not driving so much. In the meantime, while I travel to the next historic site, I find rejuvenation as I think about that French lady, about Lady Liberty.

The face of Liberty (From exhibit at the Statue of Liberty National Monument)

Happy Birthday National Park Service!

I went to a birthday party yesterday at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Yes, the NPS turned 100. Lady Liberty continues to draw people to her island and to our shores, and Ellis Island bears witness to the diverse strength of our people. More about this in a future posting.

Rangers at the base of the Statue of Liberty holding the lyrics to "This Land is Your Land"
(Photo by Hunner)

For now, a highlight was a group of Girl Scouts at the base of the Statue of Liberty signing “This Land is Your Land” with rangers holding up cue cards with the lyrics so we could sing along. Check out their Facebook page for a clip of it. It touched me in a surprising way, since I got chocked up. When I asked Supervisory Park Ranger Melissa Magnuson-Cannady about the choice of the song, she had a simple answer: “These parks are your land.” So happy birthday NPS. Congratulatory messages are coming in across the board, from President Obama to Nicolas Kristoff. Here’s mine.

Driven by History has celebrated our parks and historic sites since February with weekly blogs. Some parks are the jewels in the crown, like the Grand Canyon which still takes my breath away, Yosemite with its magnificent wilderness, and the majestic Statue of Liberty. Others are pinky-toe parks with small visitation and scant staff that require determination to get to and imagination to envision. Since I already honor the parks with my weekly blogs, this posting celebrates the creation of the National Park Service and the people, past and present, who made it happen and keep it going.

Many people find spiritual renewal in our parks. Their spirits soar with the landscapes, their senses come alive to the sounds and smells, their souls revitalized with tall trees, glaciers, grizzlies, and waterfalls. I too am nourished by wilderness, but I also get rejuvenated at our historical parks. The past grabs me in hardy embraces, and I am fascinated by our predecessors who created our country and then changed it again and again. Our national parks preserve this history and narrate what we have achieved and how we continue to work towards our best idea—the Declaration of Independence.

A century ago however, most Americans did not find communion with sublime nature, but saw the seemingly boundless resources in our continent solely as sources for profit. Others did grow concerned about the vanishing wilderness. One of the most influential was John Muir who I wrote about in a previous blog. In his ten books and over 100 articles, he helped launch the preservation movement with calls like this: “The forests are not inexhaustible, quick measures must be taken if ruin is to be avoided.”

Others joined him. In 1908, Republican President Teddy Roosevelt acknowledged: “We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources, but the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.”

Roosevelt worked to pass the Antiquities Act of 1906 which gave presidents the authority to designate public lands as national monuments. Within ten years, presidents had designated twenty-one national monuments across the country, but no bureau to manage them or the parks. Consequently, some parks lost valuable resources. For example, part of Yosemite National Park was lost to San Francisco in 1913 when Hetch Hetchy Valley was dammed to provide water to the Bay Area. This loss motivated the preservationists to work for the creation of the NPS in 1916.

The idea that public lands needed protection from those who wanted to extract resources from them dates back to after the Civil War when a movement to preserve Yellowstone gained momentum. It resulted in our first official national park in 1872. Setting aside the groves of giant sequoias in California and the waterfalls in Yosemite established the next parks in the 1890s. More followed. By 1916, the U.S. had fourteen National Parks.

A wealthy Chicago businessman, Stephen Mather, loved the existing parks. He complained to the Interior Secretary Franklin Lane about the deterioration of the parks who invited Mather to come to Washington to straighten things out. Mather realized that the parks needed their own agency. Some resource extraction companies fought against protecting these public lands. Additionally, some federal agencies did not want to share their lands with a national parks bureau, especially the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service. By emphasizing the economic benefits of parks as a tourist draw, Mather won over Congressmen to his cause, and President Wilson signed the enabling legislation for the National Park Service on August 25, 1916.

As with any new agency in government, creating the NPS was a political act. In fact, creating every park has been a political act since our elected officials do it. Vested interests often fight new park proposals. A convoluted example of this concerns the Grand Canyon. Ralph Cameron arrived at the Grand Canyon as a miner in 1890. In the coming years, he filed dubious mining claims so that he could charge people to hike on the Bright Angel Trail. In 1919, the Grand Canyon became a National Park but Cameron continued to act as if he owned the trail from the South Rim. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against him, the NPS tried to dislodge him, but after he got elected as a Senator for Arizona, he used his office to defund operational funding for the Grand Canyon so he could continue to profit from tourists hiking on the Bright Angel Trail. In 1926, Cameron lost his reelection bid, exposed for using his office to help him profit at the Canyon. The Bright Angel Trail became part of the NPS in 1928.

Congressional opposition to the parks continues today. The Center for American Progress has found that over the last three years, conservative members of Congress have introduced forty-four bills or amendments to strip away protection for national parks. Some in Congress want to devolve units of the NPS to state ownership. And the Republican Party’s 2016 official platform states: “Congress should reconsider whether parts of the federal government’s enormous landholdings and control of water in the west could be better used for ranching, mining or forestry through private ownership.”[1] Our public lands, especially those protected by the NPS, continue to be targeted by a dedicated group in Congress. 

In fact, funding for the NPS has declined 15% over the past fifteen years despite the addition of twenty-two new units in just the last eight years. The NPS estimates that it has a backlog of deferred maintenance of $1.2 billion. In the historic preservation field, we call this “demolition by neglect.”

Nonetheless, our parks enjoy robust public support. Over 300,000,000 people will visit the parks this centennial year. To take care of that many visitors to the 413 units of the NPS, three key groups of people make the parks work. First, permanent NPS staff manage many of the aspects of park operations, from interpretation to preservation to administration to maintenance to search and rescue (yes, places like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite have a team of rangers to help those visitors who are lost or injured while hiking and camping).

The second group are seasonal park employees who work during the peak summer months. They are college students doing an internship, recent graduates, retirees, and people who are dedicated to the parks. A total of about 22,000 people—permanent, temporary, and seasonals—work for the NPS.

The third group of people are volunteers. The parks would not be able to operate at the level they do without volunteers who sit at the reception desks, who give tours, and who help with maintenance and preservation. Over 200,000 volunteers make the parks happen. Here are some of the park people that I have met recently.

Retired elementary school teacher Tom Wilson at Ft. Clatsop in Oregon role played being a sergeant with the Corps of Discovery. Blacksmiths Dennis Torresdahl and John Prutus at Fort Vancouver in Washington demonstrated working hot iron at their fur trading site. Maria Wynn and Kay Morrison at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front park in California are true Rosies who welded the Liberty ships that helped win the war. All the above are volunteers who enriched my experiences at the parks.

Ranger Alisa Lynch showed her commitment to telling the story of Japanese American internment camps during the war at Manzanar in California. Ranger Robert Petersen at Huffman Prairie Field explained the dramatic events at the place where the Wright Brothers perfected their flying machines. Rangers Joe Ratterman and Kate at Hopewell Heritage in Ohio argued with me and each other about the theories of the people who lived there 2,000 years ago. Rangers Joel Shockley and Richard Zahm at Washita spent a good part of a morning discussing with me the events of Custer and Black Kettle at their site. Ranger James and volunteer Paul shared with me their deep knowledge about the French and Indian War at Fort Necessity in Pennsylvania.

Volunteer Roxanne Sullivan, who lives near where Flight 93 crashed on September 11, 2001, shared with me her experience as she first grappled with this horrid tragedy and then healed through taking care of the items left at the site by visitors. These are just a few of the many people who I met and engaged with on a wide variety of topics. I am a better historian hearing about our pasts from them, and I am a better citizen knowing that we have such dedicated, caring, and lively people preserving and interpreting our past.

So happy birthday National Park Service. We are a better country having you around. Our parks nourish us, enlighten us, and explain us. And they are fun to visit. For me, celebrating this birthday at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island was a blast.

---

[1] Oliver Milman, “The Political Crusades Targeting National Parks for Drilling and Exploitation,” The Guardian, 8/23/2016. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/23/national-parks-100th-birthday-political-threats?cmp=oth_b-aplnews_d-1.

Road notes for August 22, 2016

Last week, after I left the Women's Rights NHP at Seneca Falls, I drove east looking for the Erie Canal. I crisscrossed it several times and ended up at Syracuse where I stopped at the Erie Canal Museum. Housed in the Weight Lock House where barges were weighed as they plied the waterway, the museum offers an engaging account of this important economic and transportation avenue to the west.

Erie Canal between Rochester and Syracuse (Photo by Hunner)

I then went to Fort Stanwix National Monument in the middle of Rome, New York where a decisive battle of the Revolutionary War took place in 1777. Feeling inspired by this visit, I launched a series of stops over the rest of the week at other American Revolution sites—Saratoga Battlefield NHP, Fort Ticonderoga, Boston NHP, and the Minute Man NHP.

Cannon demonstration at Fort Stanwix (Photo by Hunner)

One if by sea, two if by land (Photo by Hunner)

The North Bridge at Concord where the Patriots exchanged gunfire with British Regulars and started the American Revolution (Photo by Hunner)

I also snuck in a couple of 19^th century sites, the first at Lowell NHP where the beginning of America’s industrial age began.

The Weave Room at Lowell NHP (Photo by Hunner)

Then I went north to Salem Maritime NHS which spurred the growth of the new Republic between the Revolution and the War of 1812 as its tall ships sailed around the world seeking commerce and trade. Interestingly enough, the ships brought back a lot of luxury items, especially spices and silk from Asia. Wasn’t that what Columbus sought?

The Customs House at Salem Maritime NHP where duties were collected on imported goods which financed most of the early Republic's government.(Photo by Hunner)

I ended the week with a visit to Adams NHP south of Boston where the Adams presidents resided and influenced the birth and early history of the United States. Finally, I went to another living history park at Plimouth Planation. More about these visits as I have time to write them up.

The Adams Home in Quincy, Massachusetts (Photo by Hunner)

This week on August 25, the National Park Service turns 100. Please celebrate it by going to a park, remembering some of your past park trips, and letting your family, friends, and elected representatives know what our parks mean to you. I will post a blog about the NPS on Thursday to help celebrate the anniversary. In the meantime, party with your parks!

Gov. Bradford and Julianne Morton at the Plimouth Plantation in 1626 (Photo by Hunner)

Fort Necessity National Battlefield, Farmington, Pennsylvania and Boston National Historical Park, Boston, Massachusetts

Like many of us, George Washington fumbled his early attempt at leadership. In fact, he botched it so bad that he launched a world war. We call it the French and Indian War, the Europeans call it the Seven Years War. To understand the American Revolution, we first need to visit Fort Necessity where Washington surrendered to the French in 1754. This war, while ultimately won by the British, led directly to the American Revolution. So Washington’s mistakes set in motion two wars that transformed the world and helped create these United States. The next several weeks’ postings in Driven by History will cover the lead up to and then the American Revolution. We start with Fort Necessity, the only NPS site that preserves and interprets the French and Indian War.

George Washington as an older man (From exhibit at Ft. Necessity's visitor center)

In 1754, Lt. Col. Washington went west with a military force to contest the French’s presence in the Ohio River Valley. When I arrived at Fort Necessity’s visitors center, Ranger James took me to the mock-up of the battle encased behind Plexiglas. He explained that Britain and France had competing claims on North America which centered on the Ohio River Valley. Virginia claimed it as an extension westward of its colony’s boundaries. France had been in the region for years as its fur traders plied the waterways of the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers. These rivers also provided a vital link between New France up north and Louisiana in the west. In a time of rough roads and slow wagons, rivers served as the quickest way to travel long distances.

Map of the contested lands between England and France south of the Great Lakes
(From exhibit at visitors center)

James also offered some insight into George Washington. He was twenty-three years old at Fort Necessity, with little formal nor military education, but instead worked as a surveyor. He did have ambition, leadership ability, and a capacity to learn from his mistakes. Fort Necessity was where Washington began his military career.

To assert itself, the French established several forts in the region, including driving the Virginians out of their small stronghold at the forks of the Ohio River where Pittsburg now stand. The French expanded and renamed it Fort Duquesne. In April, Lt. Col. Washington went to the region to request that the French leave. They did not. The English then set up camp in a marshy area called the Great Meadows which Washington thought was “a charming field for an encounter.”

Replica of Ft. Necessity in the Great Meadow (Photo by Hunner)

Scouts brought news that French group of soldiers were nearby. At dawn on May 28 at Jumonville Glen, Washington with forty soldiers and some Seneca allies attacked the French. Commanded by Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville, the French fought back but were quickly defeated, with ten dead and twenty-one captured. De Sieur was killed, perhaps scalped by the Seneca chief Tanaghrisson, aka the Half King. Washington lost one man and had two wounded. Paul Haney, a volunteer that led my tour down to the replica of Fort Necessity, speculated that the Half King wanted the British and French to fight each other so he goaded the English into this attack. This brutal attack on a French party led to the American Revolution.

Suspecting that the French would quickly respond, the English prepared for a counter attack by building a circular palisaded fort in five days at the Great Meadows. Several days after the encounter, the commander of the British forces, Colonel Fry, was thrown from his horse and died. Washington became the commander in the field. Washington had about 300 men under his command, which was reinforced later with 100 British regulars from South Carolina led by Captain James Mackay. But perhaps a quarter of his men were unfit for duty.

The view of Ft. Necessity from where the French stood (Photo by Hunner)

On the morning of July 3, 600 French and 100 Indian allies attacked Fort Necessity. They were led by Captain Louis Coulan de Villiers, the slain Joseph’s brother. The French first killed all the cows and horses in the fields outside of the small fort to prevent the English from leaving. Stiff action lasted the whole day with casualties on both sides, and as rain came down harder and harder, the English, pressured by the French and Indians, grew more desperate in their fort. Around thirty of their soldiers had died.

Hut within Ft. Necessity where Washington signed the surrender document (Photo by Hunner)

Then, Captain de Villiers offered peace terms and after a long evening of negotiations, Washington surrendered. The British retained their baggage and weapons and retreated to Virginia. The French burned Fort Necessity. Lost in the translation of the surrender document from the French, Washington accepted personal responsibility for assassinating Joseph de Villiers. Within a couple of months, the French had the signed document back in Europe, illustrating that the English were proud of being assassins.

The day long battle at Fort Necessity sparked the war between England and France for the control of the North American continent. It also initiated a wider war between these two colonial powers in Asia and on the high seas. The Seven Years War ended in 1763 with the French expelled from Canada and India.

Consequences, both intended and unintended, came from this victory. An intended consequence was that the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains opened up to settlement by the English colonists. For Britain’s Indian allies, this was poor recompense. Treaties arose that moved them off of their ancestral lands and created reservations for them, which were invariably broken as settlers pushed ever westward.

War wampum belt (From exhibit at visitors center)

An unintended consequence was that some of the key colonial military leaders of the Revolution earned their stripes in this conflict. A more significant unintended consequence was the changed relationship between England and her colonies. Looking for ways to pay off both the war debt and the expenses of running their expanded empire, King George III and Parliament turned to the prosperous American colonies. The English argued: Didn’t the war begin in the colonies? Didn’t the colonies need the continued protection of the British military? Surely, the colonists grasped that they should pay their fair share. So they placed more taxes on their American colonies.  

While all the colonies were subject to taxes, the people in Massachusetts proved particularly troublesome to the King’s wishes. So let’s shift from Fort Necessity to Boston. I stopped by Faneuil Hall on a hot August day and stood in line with several hundred people. I asked the man in front of me if this was the right line for the visitor’s center and he shook his head: “No I’m taking the oath.” On Thursdays, naturalization ceremonies occurred at the Great Hall of Faneuil Hall.  I congratulated him and slipped into the ground floor and the NPS welcome center.

I got on a tour of part of the Freedom Trail led by Ranger Bill Casey. He said that Faneuil Hall has protected the rights of Englishman since 1742. These rights—to vote, to assemble, and to debate—were threatened by the new efforts of the Crown. Bill asked us to complete James Otis’s declaration in Faneuil Hall, “Taxation without representation is … tyranny.” The colonists had no representatives in Parliament since the Lords did not want to share their power with the provincials.

A particularly odious tax on the colonies was the Stamp Act of 1765. It required revenue stamps on newspapers and most printed material, even playing cards. Thus, the Stamp Act angered the influential people who shaped public opinion—the newspaper editors, lawyers, and tavern owners. As a result, open acts of rebellion flared, including the sacking of the Bostonian homes of the Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and his brother-in-law Andrew Oliver, a stamp act commissioner. In response in 1768, the British sent troops to Boston to quell the growing rebellion, which the Bostonians had to house.

The stamp required for all printed materials from the act of 1765.

On March 5, 1770, a lone British sentry marched between his barracks and the customs’ house across the street. He cried out as a group of youths pelted him with snowballs and rocks. Soldiers poured out of the nearby barracks and tussled with the gathering crowd. A British solder fired, then more shots rang out, killing five and wounding another eight. Ironically, one of the first persons killed in the fight for freedom was Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave who worked on the ships in the harbor. Future president John Adams defended the British soldiers charged with murder since he felt that without a fair trial, rule by mob threatened justice. Of the ten British soldiers, two were convicted of manslaughter, the rest were absolved. Nonetheless, the Boston Massacre escalated the conflict.

Ranger Bill ended our walking tour in front of the Old South Meeting House, the biggest building in North America in the 18^th century. It could hold 4,000 to 5,000 people. At this Congregationalist Church, on December 16, 1773, Samuel Adams launched the Boston Tea Party. A group of men disguised as Mohawk Indians stormed three ships in the Boston harbor and dumped 342 chests of tea into the frigid waters to protest the taxes.  Parliament punished Boston with the Coercive Acts, aka the Intolerable Acts, which closed the port until the equivalent of over $1,000,000 in today’s dollars was paid for the tea. Only the governor, Gen. Thomas Gage, could approve public assemblies. The British military now ruled Massachusetts. Discontent grew in Boston and other cities in the colonies.

In next week’s blog, we will return to Boston and the shot heard ‘round the world and then follow the war at other NPS and historic sites. Also on August 25, the National Park Service turns 100. Please celebrate it by going to a park, remembering past park trips, and letting your family, friends, and elected representatives know what our parks mean to you. Party with your parks!

Fort Necessity was designated a National Battlefield Site on March 4, 1931 and a National Battlefield in 1961. Boston National Historical Park was created on October 1, 1974.

Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, Chillicothe, Ohio

The mound at Seip earthworks (Photo by Hunner)

After visiting the Wright Brothers and their inventions in the 20^th century, I dropped down to southern Ohio to the 2,000-year-old Hopewell Culture site. Here earthen mounds dot the landscape, enduring evidence that a civilization existed that was a capitol of the eastern part of our eastern continent.

Here's a recap from earlier blogs about the peoples in North America before contact with Europeans. Once people arrived in the Western Hemisphere, they spread over the landscape like water through a burst dam.  They roamed the countryside, hunting and gathering their way from the frozen tundra near the Bering Sea to the equally frigid tip of South America, from the steamy jungles in the tropics to dense woodlands in the hinterlands, from mountains to beaches to swamps to deserts. Whatever way humans immigrated to the Americas, once here they moved over the countryside, and like migrants today, they looked for the perfect place to live and thrive.

Obsidian spear point (From exhibit at Mound City visitor's center)

These humans built complex buildings and communities solely with stone tools. They hunted large mammals like mammoths and bison with spears and bows and arrows, and butchered their kills with sharp stone knives. They carved and painted art on rock walls and made religious and ornamental objects out of shells, turquoise, bones, and even the landscape itself. These humans also studied the heavens and developed a complex understanding of the movement of the sun, the moon, and the planets. They flourished for hundreds of generations and lived in all corners of what would be become the United States.

Painting of shaman performing a ceremony (From exhibit at Mound City Visitors' Center)

As early as 3,500 years ago, people in southern Ohio began burying their dead with goods that showcased the skills and artistry of their craftspeople. Ranger Joe Ratterman pointed to archeological evidence that Mound City (where the visitors’ center is) was perhaps a crematorium as well as a burial site. Sometimes, the dead were cremated and then the building was burned and a mound built over it. At other sites, a cremation fire pit was used multiple times with the ashes buried elsewhere in the compound. At some point, they covered the first fire pit with a mound, and then put a new fire pit above the exact spot of the first fire pit. Since archeologists have different theories about the Hopewell, he asked me to add qualifiers to my account. Perhaps I will.

Above, a collection of artifacts from the mounds. Below, an Great Blue Heron effigy pipe
(From Mound City Visitors' Center)

The burial mounds hold numerous artifacts. Archeologists have discovered copper earspools, headdresses, breastplates, lithic chips from making stone tools, and effigy pipes. A bag in one grave held 200 broken effigy pipes carved out of stone depicting animals such as a beaver, a great blue heron, a frog, a peregrine falcon, a turtle, a squirrel, an otter, a rabbit, a raven, and an owl. Hammered copper also looked like various animals, humans, and other objects. All of these illustrate the exquisite workmanship and wealth of the Hopewell people. In one burial, thousands of pearls surrounded six skeletons. In other mounds, archeologists found a delicate profile of a hand and a bird claw, both made out of fragile mica. Archeologists have discovered 180,000 artifacts in the mounds.

Bird claw made out of mica found in a mound (From exhibit on walking tour at Mound City)

These funeral objects also hint at a deeper motivation – a spirituality that pervades the 500 nations in the Americas. From origin beliefs to migration stories, Native Americans imbued their world with a rich spirituality. From such stories, Alvin Josephy in 500 Nations, his history of Native Americans, concluded: “The Creator, the Master of Life, the Great Spirit, Wakan Tanka—whatever terms the various Native American groups used – breathed life into humans and bound their spirits to those of all else in their universe.” [1] For many Native Americans, both animate and inanimate things possessed a spirit that enlivened all that surrounded them.

Hammered copper mountain goat horns (From exhibit at Mound City Visitors' Center)

The objects found in the burial mounds give us a glimpse of the Hopewell way of life. Sea shells from the Gulf of Mexico, mica from the mountains in North Carolina, fossil shark teeth from the Chesapeake Bay, copper and silver from the Great Lakes region, and obsidian from the Yellowstone area point to a vast trading network that covered almost two thirds of the country – from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic. Ranger Kate at the visitors’ center talked about how these goods came to the Mound Builders. She said that perhaps the Hopewellians mounted trading expeditions themselves, went to the above places, and returned with the goods. The evidence is that there is little distribution of such items between say the Rocky Mountains and Hopewell. That is, traders would have bartered and left a trail of these goods along the way, and there is no evidence of that. However these items got to Hopewell from around the continent, the artists there turned them into exquisite pieces of beauty.

Map of materials that the Hopewellians used (From Mound City walking tour exhibit panel)

The Mound Builders grew squash, sunflowers, marsh elder, and knotweed while continuing to hunt and forage far and wide for food and material. Ranger Joe disagreed with me about when corn made an entrance. I thought it was early enough that it helped create the Hopewell culture since it came to New Mexico 3,000 years ago and then would have spread across the continent. He said there is no evidence of corn until towards the end of this culture.

Archaeologists speculate that maybe  this culture developed strict hierarchical lines with an elite body of priests and managers directing the efforts of many people to dig the earth, carry basketfuls of the dirt to the mounds, and build the massive earthen architecture that rose high over the land. Whether this was free or slave labor is unknown. From the simple early burial sites of 3,000 years ago, the mounds evolved into elaborate platforms for ceremonies and even served as residences of the elite. Large ceremonial complexes grew around the mounds so much that archaeologists estimate that the city at Cahokia (1,000 years after Hopewell but still mound builders) had 10,000 to 20,000 people there – more than London at the time.

Monk's Mound at Cahokia east of St. Louis (Photo by Hunner)

Some experts also speculate that the mounds housed astronomical observatories that tracked the seasons. Perhaps the mounds served as landscape calendars like at Chaco Canyon and were aligned to mark summer and winter solstices and equinoxes. In an agricultural society without written calendars, having a way to tell when to plant and when to harvest, proves vital to the success of the community. Perhaps the city planners situated Mound City where it was because two peaks on the eastern horizon line up with the north and south limits of the 18.6-year cycle of where the moon rises.

Another fascinating congruence is that at least three of the five sites preserved in the Hopewell Culture NHP follow a common pattern. Each have walls that mark a square, a large circle, and a small circle. Each square is the same size, twenty-seven acres. And each square fits onto the large circle. This pattern repeats itself, even at sites that are sixty miles distant from each other.

The geometry of the Seip complex where the square fits into the large circle
(From exhibit at Mound City visitors' center)

Mounds in a variety of sizes and shapes pervaded this region. Just in the Ohio River Valley alone, ten thousand mounds dotted the landscape. In addition to the traditional circles, squares, and elliptical shapes of the mounds, some illustrated intriguing shapes. These “effigy mounds” depicted birds, serpents, panthers, bears, and even humans. Built between 1,300 and 700 years ago, these fascinating shapes occurred mainly in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. This was a vibrant and interconnected culture.

The Mound Builders started to decline even before contact with European explorers in the middle 1500s. Whatever the cause, they might be the ancestral peoples for many of the tribes that have lived in the region, even to this day. DNA matching from the human remains in the mounds with today’s tribes is pending. It is possible that the tribes of the Apalachee, Caddo, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Houma, Kansa, Missouri, Mobilian, Natchez, Osage Nation, Quapaw, Seminole, Yamasee, Yuchi, and others are descendants of the Mississippian mound builders.

Side of the square at Mound City (Photo by Hunner)

The people who lived in the central part of the United States 2,000 years ago had a sophisticated understanding of the world. Agriculturally based, they positioned their mounds to mark the passing of the seasons, they had a vast network of trade and commerce, and they probably had a stratified social structure that included priests and rulers supported by craftsmen, farmers, and possibly slaves.

The Mound City Group National Monument was established by President Warren G. Harding in 1923 to preserve prehistoric mounds of "great historic and scientific interest." Hopewell Culture National Historical Park was established in 1992 by combining the Mound City Group National Monument with Hopeton Earthworks, High Bank Works, Hopewell Mound Group, and Seip Earthworks.

Driven by History now turns down the road to the American Revolution. This week on August 25, the National Park Service turns 100. Please celebrate it by going to a park, thinking about past park trips, and letting your family, friends, and elected representatives know what our parks mean to you. Party with your parks!

My Centennial gig rig next to a mound at the parking lot of the Mound City visitor's center

---

[1] Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., 500 Nations: An Illustrated History of North American Indians (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).