By Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
Many think that Westport was only “discovered” by outsiders in the past few years. According to Little Compton resident Nathaniel “Nate” Atwater, the beauty and bounty of our little corner of the earth was discovered by Native Americans as long as 12,000 years ago.
Mr. Atwater sprinkled anthropology, history, and personal recollections into a casual armchair lecture about how indigenous people arrived and used the Westport rivers area over the centuries. His talk, “Westport’s Working River pre 1700” presented to about forty listeners at the Westport Middle School, was the first in a series of programs the WRWA intends to present.
“Westport’s Working River in the 1800s,”“ Westport’s Working River in the 1900s,” and “Westport’s Working River Today,” are planned for future dates.
Mr. Atwater, a retired University of Massachusetts Dartmouth history professor, is enthralled by the past. While he doesn’t claim to have the pedigree of an archaeologist, he’s been fascinated with the subject since he found his first arrowhead when he was four years old.
“Assembling a history of how Indians used the rivers here is like trying to do a puzzle with ninety five percent of the pieces missing,” he says. Being a pre literate culture, they left no written records. Accounts early settlers wrote were usually disdainful and didn’t offer much detail or insight.
Most of the evidence of Indian presence in these parts before 1700 is gained from the artifacts people find in the ground. Mr. Atwater and fellow collector Mr. Jim Pierce loaded up several tables of stone arrowheads. spearheads, drills. awls and cutting tools that have been found in the Westport, Tiverton and Little Compton areas.
“Archeologists have identified a series of periods many of which can be connected to the Westport river system,” Mr. Atwater said. “In my heart I know that all these periods can be connected with Indians in earlier times.” The periods to which he referred range from Paleo Indian period (12.000 years before the present) to the Contact period (400 years ago). SEE SIDEBAR
Over four major periods, Indians who entered this area morphed from tiny groups of very primitive nomadic big game hunters to small, sedentary groups that practiced agriculture. By the beginning of the Woodland period, the bow and arrow had been invented. Some of the arrowheads in Atwater’s collection were used for hunting, some for warfare.
As Indian lifestyle became more sedentary, their tools changed. Atwater says that many of the artifacts were the Indians “Swiss army knife” and used as drills or knives. By the time they developed agriculture, they began to make bowls for mortars or storage. Atwater and his daughter Dora Atwater Milliken have found lots of bowl fragments but not one whole bowl.
Sometimes the story of how an artifact was found is as interesting as the artifact. Jim Pierce of Westport would never have found an intact bowl if he hadn’t been trying to get a bead on a varmint that had several escape holes. As he searched for rocks to plug the extra escape routes, he tugged on a piece of stone and pulled out a terrific example of a soapstone bowl that he added to Atwater’s collection for the crowd to see.
As far back as the Paleo period, the Westport rivers offered “a bonanza” to the Indians. “The magic word here is FISH, with heavy emphasis on shellfish, with wild fowl, small game, deer, fertile soil along the banks, and a waterway that offered transportation for trade, “ Atwater noted.
He believes it was free passage from Sakonnet to Westport amongst the tribes of Wampanoag who inhabited the area. In Mr. Atwater’s opinion, these tribes treated their land with respect and wisdom, believing in stewardship more than ownership. “They were far more advanced than we are,” he said sadly.
Between the abundance of fish, shellfish, game and corn, beans, and squash they could grow in small plots, Atwater believes they lived “high off the hog” during the Woodland period. Mounds of empty shells have been found in several riverbank locations that seem to confirm the assertion. One such heap was found on Cape Bial Lane in the Point section of Westport.
Atwater read a very detailed early 1900s account of an annual Wampanoag clambake written by Gladys Gifford Kirby in which she describes an annual journey made by Wampanoags, including Massasoit, from their winter quarters in Mount Hope Bay area to a place in Westport she names Cape Bial. Atwater wondered where she got the information to be so precise in her description but still, there’s the matter of all those shells that were really found around Cape Bial.
The Contact period spelled doom for the Indians. Displacement, usurpation of land, and warfare were bad enough but epidemics killed more Indians than these did. King Philip’s War 1675-76 marked the end of a period of Indian treatment Atwater said should cause us “to hang our heads in shame.” The most riveting account Atwater has read is “Diary of King Philip’s War” written by Benjamin Church.
The last full-blooded Indian in Little Compton, Sara Howdee, died in 1827. The last full-blooded Indian in the Westport area was Martha Simon who died in 1859, but not before Henry David Thoreau visited and wrote about her. A portrait of Martha painted by Albert Bierstadt rests in the Millicent Library in Fairhaven.
These days, the pickings have become more scarce. “Choice fields I uses to visit are now built up or off limits due to new ownership. I’m retired have all the time in the world and no place to go!” Atwater laments, Nevertheless, Indian encampments dotted the entire Westport River system. “Any time you walk the riverbanks or protected stretches of beach, keep your eyes open,” he encourages today’s would-be collectors.
Atwater may not have the formal training of an archaeologist but he has the love of history in his bones. Ending his talk, his voice lowering to a church like whisper, he concluded, “Standing here tonight looking at these artifacts and holding one in my hand, I feel a sense of mystery, awe, distance, loss and great aesthetic beauty. It turns me on and has since I was four years old.” Then, leavening the moment, “if you can hold something like this, why the hell would you want a [painting of a] soup can by Andy Warhol!”
SIDEBAR
Paleo Indian period
12000 - 9000
Archaic Indian period
9000 - 2700
Woodland period
2700 - 400
Contact period
400 - 150 years ago
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