We Have Stolen Bodies

We Have Stolen Bodies

Tatiana Fox, Feb 2021

I went to the history museum for the exhibit on the era of colonial and Native American conflict during the settlement and expansion into the Mid-Atlantic. It was supposed to focus on first-hand accounts of the time period of kidnappings and micro-treatises between small settlements of both European settlers and the local tribal villages, including peoples like the Shawnee and the Delaware. As an archaeologist who works in the Mid-Atlantic region, this period we call the Proto-Historic, or Contact Period, is one that has always fascinated me. White people got to write the history, so there is a very two-dimensional account of how this went down: savages came and stole white women, white babies, white children, who were taken to a dark place or scalped, never to be seen again. This narrative, of course, is what one may read in school textbooks and people who specialize in US “history.” It is pervasive in modern American culture. But this narrative is simply untrue. I was so excited to see the advert for this exhibit on my last visit to the museum- this exhibit of first-hand accounts from colonials who had been kidnapped, and relevant artifacts from the conflicts, and the Contact Period itself, was something I needed to see.

I pondered the subject and its context on my walk down to the river, where the original fortification for the city, now a historical museum, sat overlooking the waters and the surrounding valleys. Exhibits like these are new, and that’s sad. It’s sad that we had to wait almost 500 years to hear a more well-rounded version of our first years on this continent. It’s sad this “well-rounded” version is still comprised primarily of first-hand accounts from the settlers themselves. Because of what we have done, because of the centuries-long genocide, the people original to this land are forever silenced. We can’t get those points of view back. As I walked, I felt a little hopeless about the possibility of a different type of paradigm ever existing. So, I wasn’t exactly surprised when, upon entering the museum lobby, I came upon a scene of two dozen or so people, most of them clearly of Native American heritage, sat as a group in front of the ticket counter. Silent. Ropes around their necks, dirty scarves over their mouths. I felt almost wrong walking around them to purchase my ticket and proceed to the room where the exhibition was held. 

Upon entering the exhibit, you walk down several stairs into a dimly lit, sunken room and are immediately surrounded by 7-foot tall display boards introducing you to the topic. This sort of tunnel of information leads you to a group of found artifacts from relevant villages and settlements- petticoats, moccasins, beaded jewelry, and scalping knives, which are really just European kitchen knives the settlers often traded with the native peoples. These glass cases lead you to another hallway of display boards- this time they are covered with stories of the people who had been taken during conflicts with the tribes. They were mostly first-hand accounts from women’s diaries, but they were also stories from witnesses who sympathized with the native point of view of these kidnapping rituals. 

The hallway of diary entries told the story of an intricate ritual of replacing the dead. Natives raided European settlements the way they raided each others’: to find women that keep the gene pool diverse, and to find children to replace ones they had lost. Once a white person was taken, they were named the name of the lost person and adopted into the family and into the tribe as if they had always been there. They were family, and they were treated as such. White women bore native children. White children learned native tongues and grew up to be integral pieces of the cooperative whole that was a Mid-Atlantic Native American village. It was the white men who were expendable. True, those men who chose not to cooperate and integrate were scalped or left alone in the forest to find their way back home. But the overwhelming majority of these stories were about completing families that had lost pieces of themselves. 

Some accounts from women who had been taken included happy memories of a husband and children who felt safe and loving. Often, the accounts of these women included opportunities to return to their colonies, where they had refused the option to go “home.” They knew their mixed children would never be accepted, and they knew the fact that they had lain with a “savage” would make them untouchables in the settlement they had once called home. Why would they go back? They would be foreigners in their own homes. Further, several accounts included anecdotes of children who were taken and then for some reason, usually due to an agreement between the natives and the settlers, were returned to their original settlement. On many occasions, other settlers had to post up at the children’s houses during the night to ensure they didn’t try to run away, back to what they viewed as their true families back at the villages.

I’m not going to lie; I absolutely loved the exhibit. And I hoped it would shine a light for people who weren’t knowledgeable about the people we pushed out of here. Maybe they would rethink their own place here. Maybe they would rethink the narrative of the “violent savages” the first colonials encountered here. But part of me knew the exhibit was just another pittance- a mere reflection of something we snuffed out a long time ago. Cultures and languages, songs and games, literal people who had complex lives just like we do. They became foreigners in their own land. They still are… what’s left of them. This exhibit was just another white apologia for what we had done to them- to their population, to their image. It made complete sense to me why people were sitting in at the museum entrance.

I’m never one to participate in public statements of protest. I do my best in my job to recover small pieces of the story of the people native to the Mid-Atlantic, to recover whatever physical evidence they left behind and try to piece together what they did there. But something that always bothers me is that there is no way to ever recover who they were- as families, as people, as communities. As I neared the exit of the museum and passed the small group sitting in the lobby, I felt reticent. To be honest, I had one hand on the door; I nearly left. But instead, I turned back, went to the back of the group and sat down with them. I asked someone if they had a sharpie with them and was quickly handed one. I took off my blouse, set it on the floor and scrawled COLONIZER across it in large block letters. And I put the shirt back on and sat with them, knowing I was just a villain trying to be a friend.