Five Hundred Years on Five Thousand Acres:
Human Attitudes and Land Use at Nassawango Creek
by Mercedes Quesada-Embid

Introduction
The following selection was taken from my Master's thesis entitled, Five Hundred Years on Five Thousand Acres: Human Attitudes and Land Use at Nassawango Creek. It is the first chapter of the research completed on Nassawango Creek near Snow Hill on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in 2004. In summary, the research project consists of three chapters each telling the history of a different era in the life of Nassawango. This first chapter tells of the "Contact Period" in which the local Native American tribes of the Pocomoke and Assateague were forced on to the Askiminikonson Reservation by the English settlers. The second chapter, "Iron Era," tells how the land served as an iron-making hinterland for the

markets of Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore and the third and final chapter, "Preservation Period," tells how after 100 years of abandonment the land, through different local movements, came to be both a site for an idealized and somewhat fictive historical and ecological preservation. This research was done with the intention of bringing forth a new and accurate history of Nassawango in order for its present-day visitors and scholars to be aware of the previously hidden history of this unique landscape. I hope you enjoy this small piece of a much larger research endeavor.                       ~ Mercedes Quesada-Embid

Contact Period
c. 1607-1788

The Contact Period on the Eastern Shore of Maryland for the English settlers and the Pocomoke and Assateague Natives began in the early seventeenth century. By using the early settlers' and explorers' accounts, some idea of what the Native American environment looked like is ascertained. At the same time the accounts also provide insight into the impending land use transformations that came during this critical period. These early descriptions help to explain why some of the physical changes made to the landscape reflected shifts in perception and attitude. They have come to serve as a basis for this study.

According to the Englishman John Smith, the Natives were "honest and simple" yet the "most strange people" he had ever encountered.[1] He described the eating, foraging and cooking habits of the Natives as fairly sensible. They gardened, roasted their corn and meat and made their breads.[2] Smith went on to describe many animals common to the area: sturgeon, opossum, raccoon, deer, squirrels, muskrats and rabbits. He also specified some of the trees: white poplar, balsam, gum, cedar, sassafras, oak, elm, ash, black walnut, chestnut, mulberry and cypress. Smith mentions these as timber and as "the ground which would soon be amended by good husbandry."[3]

This shows the intent with which these first English came to the Chesapeake region. Smith was already viewing the land differently from how it had probably been perceived for thousands of years prior to his arrival. Smith saw the land as a natural resource; that is, a marketable commodity. He acknowledged the Native knowing of the animals and plants, but he was interested in how the Natives were using the natural landscape so as to extrapolate the "commodities" that could "be had by industrie." He even talks of his interest in iron. He stated that eventually it would dominate much of the landscape.[4]

Father Andrew White, another early Englishman to set foot on Native shores, was quick to take notice of the beaver trade and tobacco culture. The fur trade and large-scale farming were two areas where the traditional ways of living on the land would be changed by English Old World influence. White commented on the abundance of animals and that "all was high woods except where the Natives have cleared for corne."[5] This observation shows a strong difference between the Native utilization of the forest-only clearing small areas for cultivation-and the English method of clearing land-rooted in their own tradition of profit-based agriculture and harvested timber.[6]

The anonymous descriptions of Maryland's Eastern Shore written for Lord Baltimore were more direct. The author wrote of the bounties of the Chesapeake region including several trees not listed by Smith or White such as fir, laurel, cherry, alder pine and hickory. This account bolstered the attitude that this land had the ability to produce money, fame and progress for the English people. The animals also played a role in the profit-making. They were there to "afford pleasure to man...fit for beasts of burden and good to eat." The author stated that the land was full of tin, iron and other "sources of wealth" yet to be discovered. This account discussed the concept of foreign European markets, something that was an entirely new concept for the Native people in this area at this early time. According to the account, animal skins-five to six thousand per season-were to be shipped to Europe. Overall, the author claimed that Lord Baltimore had promised the people "the most prosperous success" on this new land and the settlers naturally pursued this goal.[7]

Although these accounts provide information on the landscape in this early time period, they cannot be assumed to be altogether accurate. Due to the scant existence of Native records, the majority of the information gathered from this era comes from non-Native written records and archaeological investigations. These records were not written exclusively about the Pocomoke and Assateague nor were they written specifically about Nassawango on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. These descriptions of the land cannot be used to show ecological relationships or even the exact ecology of the area because the authors' and/or travelers' skills as naturalists have not been evaluated; all that we have are their writings and normally they simply listed the resources that they saw, not really giving a clear indication of how the land was laid out. Some trees and animals may even be misnamed, but more importantly it is necessary to keep in mind for whom these explorers were writing - they had a specific aim and a designated audience. This greatly influenced how they viewed the land and its resources and consequently how they wrote about it. This also influences how useful these records are for modern-day historical research. It is because of reasons such as these that these early descriptions are limited.[8]

These limited descriptions give us hints about the life of the Native people at Nassawango. The forest, according to these early accounts, was comprised of a majority of hardwood trees. The animals (aerial, terrestrial and aquatic) were abundant enough to be seen all around by these explorers and were a plentiful source of food for the Natives along with nuts, berries, planted roots and seeds.[9] A study done on the nearby Choptank watershed stated that upon colonization only about two percent of the region was cleared by the local Native people. Therefore, initial European colonists likely found a "relatively undisturbed" landscape with "92%-94% forest cover, 1%-2% disturbed," and the remaining 6% were wetlands.[10]

The Native people did not impact this landscape and the animal and plant populations in the same way as the English settlers would. One reason is the Native diet changed with the seasons, so whole families and villages would move several times throughout the year. Another reason may have been because these villages were not concentrated settlements. During this time period only a few thousand people were living in the region, and Native homes were made of local perishable materials. According to archaeological studies of Native dwellings on the western shore, the average house was rectangular in shape with rounded ends with a capacity for about twenty people.[11] When the Natives moved onto a new piece of land, the previous village was left as a small cleared area. Their homes and all material belongings were carried with them to the new site.[12] If these archaeological findings are applied to the Eastern Shore as well, then Nassawango had a chance to experience forest re-growth in the small clearings when the Natives moved their non-permanent settlements.

Natives cleared parts of the forests for food, maneuverability and for protection from enemy tribes or predatory animals. The Natives enhanced and improved access to their forest paths, harvested plants and hunted animals by clearing the areas of underbrush amid the hardwoods. These cleared passageways for hunting and gathering made the presence of any intruder far more visible to the village. An old growth hardwood forest is not one of closely connected trees; rather, the trees are spread many feet apart, meaning the underbrush that is commonly seen in the young forests of today is quite different from the underbrush the Natives cleared from the forests. This difference was due to the canopy cover from the large old-growth hardwood trees. It prevented the sunlight from penetrating deep onto the forest floor, which in turn kept smaller grasses and plants from covering the soil.[13]

Native people cleared this underbrush with fire. It is believed by some ecologists that this practice of selective burning by these first inhabitants favored certain species over others. These evolved to become categorized as fire-tolerant and fire-intolerant species. Red maple, for example, appears to be a useful indicator species of long-term fire history. It seems to have been one of the most negatively-adapted tree species to the Native fires. The Native burning of oak and pine forests (before European settlement) has been cited as a key factor limiting maple domination. The oak is believed to have always been extremely resistant to fire and so its seedlings and saplings grew despite the intense heat conditions and resulting ashy top-layer of the soil. Oaks have vigorous sprouting abilities and increased germination and survival on fire-created seed beds. They also have a deep, extensive rooting system.[14] The lessening and eventual cessation of these fires inhibited the oak species and facilitated red maple domination and black birch invasion in the forests instead. This aided in the reduction of the many varieties of oak trees that once covered the region.[15]

Another way small portions of the forests were cleared was with spontaneous natural fires which usually began in dry, hot conditions and tended to aid in the growth of new trees. They were also safe for the forest as a whole because they extinguished themselves. Every so often the dry, hot weather conditions would lead to a burn, but since the underbrush was not thick, the fires did not generally become large scale wildfires. [16] The Native way of clearing within the forest seemed to emulate a more natural system of forest upkeep and was in strong contrast to the methods of and motivations for forest clearing by the English settlers who succeeded them on the land.[17]

Upon arrival it appeared to the Natives that the English settlers were not much of a threat at all, but throughout the Contact Period, as the relationship between these two cultures evolved, a major land-use shift took place. An increase in contact and exchange led to a rise in animosity among the groups. This inability of the English and Natives to cohabit Nassawango without conflict paralleled the transformation of the land. As Native populations decreased, the percentage of land modified by English settlers and English ideas increased, thus allowing the Old World methods of land use to impact the landscape. These cultural conflicts can be seen in several examples: the fur trade, the establishment of farming settlements, notions of wealth and private property, land designation by English law and indentured servitude. All played a part in Nassawango's first land-use shift.[18]

The English wanted to develop a fur trade with the Natives in order to make a profit on the hides of the animals on the shore. The colonists hoped to create a market for the furs both in the colonies and in England. The Natives were quick to pick up on the economic goals of the English, but failed to see the downfall to their own culture in working with the English to help get trade of natural resources established on the Eastern Shore. As the Natives began hunting for furs for the settlers, they were allowing a cultural shift to take place. These Natives had not hunted for profit quite in this way in the past, and although the idea was only somewhat familiar to them, they welcomed it and participated fully in killing fur animals for English and Native profit. This produced a nearly symbiotic relationship between the Natives and the English and started altering the Native perception of and therefore their relationship to the land.[19]

The fur trade flourished for a time, but soon with the decline of certain animal populations and the rise in numbers of English settlers on the Eastern Shore the fur trade began to be less and less successful.[20] Colonists who never mastered successful fur trading turned their interests to permanent farming settlements, another Old World land-use regime. Farming practices did not blend well with fur trading. The colonists interested in farming eventually cleared entire forests and planted crops. According to a study done on the historical land-cover conversion of this region, forest area decreased steadily from the time of the first settlement. Their study shows that the elimination of the primary forest was not constant, but grew exponentially through time until essentially all available land was converted to agricultural land.[21] The clearing of the forests had a variety of consequences: It seriously affected the habitats of animals in the area, which in turn directly affected the way the Natives were able to participate in the fur trade, but it also accelerated the disappearance of their traditional way of life.[22] The fragile and newly established balance of cultures between the English and the Natives began to diminish rapidly as large-scale farming plantations spread across the landscape.[23] The clearing of the forest was also tied to tobacco culture. It was a "respectable form of agriculture and conveyed a source of meaningful social identity, as well as means to a high standard of living." English planters believed that deforestation was necessary for economic development.[24] As the English moved into and cleared the once-forested lands, conflicts began to arise. The colonists believed the land was theirs for the taking. After all, according to the Crown of England, Maryland was primarily a land venture.[25] The New World seemed to offer what England lacked in commodities in infinite amounts. English society was the product of constant population growth and rapid resource consumption. It was difficult to convince planters to develop "responsible" attitudes toward the land when land itself seemed an unlimited and cheap commodity.[26] English settlers were accustomed to restrictions due to land scarcity in England, thus their arrival on Maryland's abundant shore helped to erase the need for such limitations. The settlers were surrounded by land, seemingly unoccupied and full of plenty.

According to David M. Potter, author of People of Plenty, the abundance of natural resources is what shaped the character of the new inhabitants in the New World. In his book he examines the individualistic incentives and institutional conditions and systems that tended to favor different kinds of economic growth.[27] In Nassawango economic and social growth was dependent on all of the possibilities the land made available to the settlers. It is this focus on the individual that fostered such rapid expansion and rapid dominion over the forests. Personal gain and status in the New World were very real elements in the English society, and the settlers aimed to achieve high individual standing. Using first Native fur trappers, then Native land, the English achieved these aims.[28] The changing relationship between the English and the Natives paralleled the changes to the landscape.

The colonists did not consider the Natives to be traditional landowners and so did not resist encroaching on what the Natives considered their territory. Private property became the main issue of conflict on Nassawango. It was one of the driving forces causing this first land use shift. The English inhabitants had taken up land at such a rapid rate that the Natives were moved off of their own land and pushed on to a portion of Nassawango known as Askiminkonson, which is an Algonquian name that describes a flora suggesting strawberries and probably means, "stony place where they pick early berries."[29] The English called this area the "Indian Town."

In 1663, 500 acres known as "Northfield" were surveyed and claimed by Jenkins Price who said that the land was "to be seated by Indians in Acquinmacton Indian Town."[30] In June 1664, William Smith surveyed and allowed the Indians to possess 300 acres within "Askimmoton Town."[31] William White, Laurence Ryley, William Masters and John Watts also owned a section of Nassawango that consisted of 2,000 acres called "Partners Choice." Their land was surveyed by William Stevens in 1665 and documented as located in "the Indian Town Asquiminicomton" but belonging to the aforementioned men, not the Indians.[32] In that same year, Stevens surveyed 500 acres claimed by Samuel Layfield and listed the land "in Asquimacton Indian Town and possessed by the Indians."[33] The descriptions of the properties as "seated by" and "possessed by" do not indicate true possession or ownership. The person to whom the land "belongs" is the actual English owner. These tracts of land show how for a time some Englishmen allowed the Pocomoke and Assateague to live on their land even though its ownership was never in question and it did not "belong" to the Natives. Even if the Natives were allowed to temporarily live on the land, English law could remove them at any time. By 1678, Maryland's Lord Proprietor had decided to unofficially designate this land as Native territory. The Natives were given permission to continue "hunting, crabbing, fowling, and fishing" at this site. This was done due to the conflict that had arisen among the English and Natives regarding this "Indian Town." The English cows, horses and pigs proved to be a substantial part of the Native to English land use shift because only some of these animals were fenced in. The fences were made from the hardwood trees perceived only as timber. Acres of fencing meant acres of cut-down forest. Acres of fencing also meant acres of land in which the animals were contained. The land for the cattle was cleared of trees and converted to pasture. The land that was not for cattle grazing was farmland. This land was also fenced in to keep the uncontained animals out, but more importantly the fences served to reinforce the boundaries of an individual's private property. The English considered these changes to be "improvements" to the landscape.[34]

Court records also highlight the confusion that existed between the Natives and the colonists with regard to the permitted hunting and fowling clause. Settlers living in the vicinity of the Askiminikonson "Indian town" complained about the Natives' hunting practices and claimed that "your petitioners...some very near and some farther from the Indian town...are very much damnified by the Indians our hogs and horses and other cattle being daily killed and destroyed by them, not only in their own town but likewise out of it." The court petition went on to cite that the colonists' hogs came home "with arrows in their sides" as proof that the Natives were damaging the colonists' belongings. It is possible that the Natives misinterpreted the concept of land and cattle as private property, but it could also have been an example of Native resistance to the changes.

In his book, A New Face on the Countryside, Timothy Silver argues that Natives understood "something of private property," stating that personal goods, crops, and game became possessions of villages and individuals who invested the necessary labor to acquire or make them. So, perhaps land did not fall into their perception of property, but cattle and hogs may have.[35] The clause which allowed the Natives to continue hunting in the lands around the "Indian town" was the same clause that protected the colonists' property. For the stakeholders in the agreement to know their respective limits each party needed to understand the cultural differences that made the agreement necessary. The Natives may not have fully understood that roaming cattle were private property, but at the same time the colonists did not consider that the Natives needed their foraging rights to be able to live according to their tradition.[36] Consequently, the Pocomoke and Assateague Natives were eventually relocated by treaty and by English law to a more specified portion of Nassawango Creek just along the Pocomoke River.[37] Relocation of the Natives meant a land use shift for the land.

According to the Pocomoke chief in early 1686, it was because of "the encroachments of the English" that the Natives were moved there. He continued by stating "that by the Incroachments of the English they had already been driven from Pocomoke, to Aquintica, from thence to Askiminokonson, and from thence they feare they shall be forced to some other place and soe never be fixed without some care be taken to prevent and putt a stopp to the Incroachments of the English...[taking] up land within their bounds." He also complained of "great damage done them in their Corne Fields and other their labours and improvements by [English] Cattle and horses." An Assateague king brought forward a very similar case, making it known that they too had been driven from place to place by the colonists until they finally settled with the other tribe at Askiminikonson.[38] These Native complaints demonstrated their inability to retain their traditional culture, especially as tied to their perception of land utilization. This mirrored the land use transformations of the Nassawango landscape as the relationship shifted between the English and the Pocomoke and Assateague Natives.

Maintaining the rights to the land they once had became a daily challenge for the Natives at Nassawango. Their cultural traditions, including their previous land-use regimes were encroached upon by the English perceptions of "proper" land use. The king of the Assateagues complained to the proprietary officials that "severall of the Inglish...were come and seated among them in the very Towne where they live."[39] The Native ruler begged the government to insist that "some certain provision may be made for their quiett and peaceble cohabitation, and that a convenient portion of land...may be set out to them, the place where they now live being all swampy and barren sandy ground and that noe Incroachments may be made upon them."[40] The Natives were not happy with the shift in land use perceptions because it made their traditional way of life no longer possible. They could not even decide where they wanted to live because English law made the decision for them.

In contrast, authors Rountree and Davidson claim that swampland or low wooded land was the favored ecological zone that Native Americans found good for foraging, while Europeans tended to avoid it because it could not be farmed extensively without the labor of draining it.[41] This is debatable; although the Natives may have been skilled in finding food on such land they did not necessarily prefer it, as can be seen by the Assateague king's previous complaint. Also, the condition of the soil did not keep the English from eventually taking this section of the Native's land, just as they had taken the drier open woods and mixed deciduous forests.

This swampland provided an environment for bald cypress trees and emergent plant species that, with enough sunlight, could grow in the standing water.[42] In all of Maryland, Nassawango is one of two locations where these trees are found.[43] Other plants such as smooth alder bushes grow in the overly moist areas of non-standing water and have an inner bark that is edible. It is unknown if the bark's possible medicinal properties were used by the Natives. Higher places in the swamp supported various nut-bearing trees, berries, shoots and roots. These plants attracted raccoons, deer, foxes, opossums, squirrels and the black bears, which are now locally extinct. Otters, beaver, turkeys, and even two-foot long snapping turtles used to live in the swamps pools as well.[44]

Despite the problematic Maryland Proprietor designation of this area to the Natives, their request for "a convenient portion of land" was only partly taken into account, as the English were not made to leave their settlements in Nassawango, even though it was supposedly an "Indian Town."[45] Colonel William Stevens, along with a committee of five other men, was ordered by law on May 11, 1686, to decide where to put the Natives.

This was when the Native relocation site became an official reservation site, the Askiminikonson Reservation. The proprietor's recognition of "Indian" land in 1678 had not been enough to keep the English and Natives satisfied, so Stevens and his team decided to keep the Natives on Nassawango since it is where they had come to be. They decided this portion of Nassawango "shall seeme meete and convenient, least injurious to the English, and most satisfactory to the Indians, the said land soe to be ascertained, to be layd out and marked and bounded where it shall be necessary. To the end that as well the Indians as also the English themselves may know each others bounds, and not incroach upon, annoy, or disturb one the other."[46]

The Natives, once informed of the land they were being given, were still not happy. They were not satisfied because they argued that they were continually given land that was "barren and good for nothing" and "desired to have some Land over the Creek which this Board told them they could in noe wayes grant by reason that Land is already taken up by other persons, at which the Indians seemed much dissatisfied."[47] They had requested land more to the west of Nassawango Creek, but they were denied because English colonists had already taken it as theirs.[48] This newly designated land became the largest reservation on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Although the government officially placed this land aside for the Pocomoke and the Assateague Natives, the proprietors did not ever survey the boundaries of the Askiminikonson reservation, so the land did not technically "belong" to the Natives. The English kept the land in the hands of the settlers. The description of the metes and bounds for the land was written as follows:

...English ordered that the land on the North west side of Pocomoke River in a neck called Askinemeconson bounded on another side by a creek called Nassiongo Creek and from the mouth of the said creek up the creek 2 miles above the Horse Bridge[]49 and up the said River one mile above Edward Hamon's house, and from a marked tree there by a line drawn Northwest twelve hundred and eighty perches, then by a line to a marked tree two miles above the Horse bridge on Nassiongo Creek ordered alsoe John Kelmne forthwith make four swinging gates att the two Bridges well and substantially to shutt of themselves and open both wayes.

The entry went on to detail and explain the work of the surveyors. Then there was a page and a half left blank followed by an addendum written on November 3, 1686, stating that "the space below in this folio and that on the other side in fo: 71 was left to enter the Plot of the Indians Land laid out for them in Askiminikonson Neck, but the said Plot being delivered to the Clerk of the Assembly for their perusal could never afterwards be obtained by." In other words, this additional ending added six months after the land was decided on claimed that the land was never surveyed at all for the Natives. If boundaries were unclear, then confusion could erupt and the court would have no ability to lawfully dispute the Englishmen encroaching on Native reservation land. This kept English Old World culture, as per English law, as the main factor determining the Native loss of land and thus their loss of tradition, leading the shift in cultural land-use regimes at Nassawango.

It was not until December 2003 that I requested that this land be surveyed. Jason Bell, Survey Engineer of Parker and Associates, located in Salisbury, MD, estimated the Askiminikonson reservation land at Nassawango to be 40,844 acres, based on the boundaries given in the original entry. He wrote, "beginning at the apex of Nassawango Creek and the Pocomoke River; northeast along the eastern shore of Nassawango Creek, extending east to the western shore of the Pocomoke River; the northern boundary was determined by the mount of Horsebridge Creek on the Nassawango due east to the Pocomoke River." This does not include a three-mile buffer zone that was put in place to keep the English and Natives from interacting. In theory, this buffer zone was to keep the English from getting too close to the Natives' reservation land, but it was not enforced.[50]

Without being properly surveyed, the boundaries themselves could not be enforced either. This allowed for the Native land to continue to be swapped and bartered amongst the settlers, changing once again the way in which the land was perceived and used henceforth. For example, an area of land within the bounds of Askiminikonson that was later surveyed for an Englishman was recorded as "Assigned to William Stevens on the northside of the Pocomoke River, Belongs to William White but is in possession of the Indians of Askiminkansen Town."[51] Establishment of the reservation seemed to be more of a tactic of the Maryland authorities to appease the Natives rather than to allow them to retain their culture, meaning their traditional land-use regime. The reservation also failed to discourage the settlers from taking the reservation land.

These surveyed lands helped to solidify the questionable ownership of the reservation while maintaining unquestionable English control over the property. The land ownership laws obviously favored the English more than the Natives, even though it was made to seem as if the Natives were given rights to own and use the land.

Although the land the Natives were given was the land the colonists did not find desirable, many settlers, primarily former indentured servants, entered the Natives' reservation anyway with the intention of making a permanent settlement there. This land was attractive to these men because to them it was considered free land. Taking land from the Natives was a way for these former indentured servants to obtain land without paying for it. These indentured servants had few options: They could go out and search for free land outside the governed area or hire themselves out and work for wages. The former was risky, and the search for land within the governed area was unappealing since most had very little money with which to buy land. The servants were freed from servitude with nothing and so this was an apparent way for them to obtain status (land) in society. Their masters gained status and power with property and so, too, did they aspire to improve their lot in society.

The Natives, on the other hand, did not connect land ownership to wealth in the same way, nor did they improve land according to English standards. According to the English, if the Natives truly owned the land they would have cleared forested areas to put up permanent home structures with fences laying out the boundaries and have a fairly substantial farm area, a plantation. As history has shown, the Natives did not live that way. Permanent structures, which were so much a part of English culture, were not an aspect of local Native culture. [52] Thus, the Natives were not allowed to actually own land and were forced to live on Nassawango without true rights to the property, meaning they could not use the land as they traditionally had. They were not entitled to the benefits of landowners, including an active and helpful response from the court when trespassers came onto the land. These former English servants took advantage of the Natives' place in society for their own personal advancement. The English made it common practice to threaten the Indians and put pressure on their Native lifestyle, ultimately forcing them to leave their reservation and Nassawango altogether.

These differences show the contrasting perceptions and land use tactics of each culture. The differences could be seen on the land. As the positive aspects of the English and Native relationship lessened, so did the traditional manner in which the Natives shaped Nassawango. English perceptions and their Old World land-use regimes came to dominate and shape the land. This occurrence was irreversible. The new transformations made the previous way of life on Nassawango no longer possible.

In the early 1690s, the ruler of the Assateagues, Robin, made several complaints on behalf of his people in response to the threatening acts of the colonists. He said that the colonists had threatened "to beat them and break their guns" and "to make the Indians more afraid, beat one of the young men with a hickory stick." Another member of the Askiminikonson reservation stated that he had been attacked. He argued that he was approached in the forest by John Howard who saw him with "three green skins" on his back and "seized his [gun] and brake it, broke his head, knocked him down with it, and left him for dead, and that he lay ill of the wound for three days."[53]

These complaints also help to illustrate the differences between the two cultures and made the motivations driving the opposing attitudes in land use much clearer. The English were willing to reach their land acquisition goal at any cost. Society provided very limited avenues for upward movement in the English class system, so these former servants who had nothing were left to obtain their land and, therefore, their wealth, in any way they could. Taking land from the Natives proved to be one way of accomplishing this goal.

The Natives' attempts at petitioning and pleading with the Maryland Eastern Shore authorities were ineffective. Even arguments made by Robin that he and his tribesmen were "ancient inhabitants" of this country, "a quiet peaceable people towards the English nation," but who had "suffered of late years by being disturbed and expulsed from their several settlements in town [and] are now settled in a town but are continually threatened to be driven from thence likewise." The Natives' complaints, although made according to English law, went unheeded, and as time progressed the land was more and more economically appealing to the settlers. After all, the settlers had been drawn to the Eastern Shore in the 1660s by the promise of cheap and readily available unpatented land, but by 1700 there was little such land left in areas deemed livable by the English in this early time-except in a few places such as the Nassawango reservation area. The Eastern Shore planters and former indentured servants, or soon to be planters, could expand their landholdings cheaply and easily by taking land from the Natives. At this point, local Englishmen saw the Pocomoke and the Assateague as the main impeding factor keeping the colonists from social improvement in this colony.[54]

Throughout the eighteenth century, complaints were continually made by the Pocomoke and Assateague Natives "that these English live on their land without their consent, and say they will do so whether they will or no, and that particularly John Parker did so and that there were seven others who lived in the same manner on their land." These same Natives protested because the colonists "have entered their [the Natives'] towns against their will, and have made plantations so near [that the Natives] shall quit their said towns unless they [the colonists] be removed."[55] The reservation had become so small that the Natives were not only unable to live in their traditional manner, but they were unable to live there at all. The shift had taken place and land use would not return to what it had been before the Contact Period.

During this period the settlers and the Natives demonstrated how land ownership could be a very powerful means with which to dominate aspects of society and other people. It showed how English culture regarding property and class status contributed to the land use shift that occurred at Nassawango. It showed how this change in land tenure ultimately began a chain of events that would change the composition of the Nassawango Creek land forever. According to Marc Abram in his ecological study of eastern forests, he stated that the settlers dramatically altered the composition and structure of these forests over a short period of time, and that many of these changes were probably irreversible.[56] In addition, William Cronon in his book, Changes in the Land argued that, in New England, the overall changes the English made to the land made the Native way of life no longer possible.[57] The same can be said for Nassawango. The applied pressure to the Pocomoke and the Assateague reflected the way the English perceived the land and the Native people. The Natives finally realized that in order to retain any semblance of their traditional culture and land use they had to leave Nassawango.[58]

After 1729 there was no further reference to the Askiminikonson Natives or the Askiminikonson Reservation in Somerset County. The next mention of "the Indians of Askiminoconson Town" was in 1740, when reference was made to a small group of about 50 Natives that was living on a small remnant of what had been the reservation in the newly created Worcester County. After 1750, one final mention was made in the Maryland provincial records, but it is not clear if at that point any Natives were still actually living there.[59] The previous land-use regime disappeared from Nassawango along with many of the Natives as the land continued to be transformed and shaped according to new perceptions and attitudes about land use.

The clearing of the forests resulted in three major ecological consequences: important shifts in the species composition of forest cover, a period of sustained soil erosion and feedback interactions between land cover and population density. The previous land-use regime caused little impact on soil properties, but conversion of primary and secondary forests to cropland increased sedimentation and rapid clearing.[60]

Toward the end of the Contact Period in 1773, pre-industrial activity also began to shape Nassawango. Thomas Martin and his family deeded a tract of land called "Defiance Enlarged" to James Martin consisting of 1,147 acres.[61] Martin constructed a grist and sawmill along Nassawango Creek. Other mills were also created by another owner, Joshua Morris, and his land became known as "Morris' Mill Supply" and Second Addition to Morris' Mill Supply.[62] An artificial pond was constructed to power the mills.[63] A dam was also built along the creek in order to create the pond. The dam acted as a creek impoundment and altered the natural hydrology of the area, industrially modifying the existing swamp wetland. Dams alter streamflow, sedimentation, temperature and dissolved oxygen concentrations, impairing the ability of the creek to support native fauna.[64]

According to the Mill Act of 1756, all dams were required to be twelve feet wide in order to serve as roadbeds and people had the "Liberty of falling any Timber...for building the said Mill."[65] This millpond primarily provided power for grinding grain and sawing timber. In order to create this pond much of the land was dug and drained. These activities affected the acidity of the soil by changing the pH and modifying the existing balance of microorganisms within the soil composition. According to a study done on the Mid-Atlantic states, increases in activities such as these also brought reduced vegetation cover, habitat loss and resulting declines in species diversity.[66]

Through the descriptions given in the annual valuations of land in the Orphan Court records, one can get an idea of what the plantations surrounding these industrial areas were like in Worcester County. Within these records the "View and Estimate" reports provided in numbered detail the layout of the land, the trees, and the out buildings. One plantation in particular was dressed with "forty some small apple Trees and Eleven peach trees and One Cherry Tree, we also find Sixteen hundred and forty fore pannels of fenceing that will Average nine logs each."[67]

These plantations served as suppliers for the development of more modern commerce and trade. Trade increased in sophistication as the Natives and the English bartered goods on the Eastern Shore with other Native and European groups. Both the Natives and the English began to extend their commercial reaches to the greater Chesapeake area with the increase in New World markets of crops, fruit and timber.

Apple trees were especially necessary because these were times of cider, not water drinking. Even one of the main currencies used, which was pounds of tobacco, was obtained and grown from the land. Tobacco, as a crop, is particularly exhausting to the soil and requires a set turnaround time so that the soil is able to replenish itself with the earth's cycle of flowing nutrients. Although this procedure was generally not practiced by the newly settled inhabitants on a regular basis, some knowledge did exist on resourceful treatment of the land. Court orders in the late eighteenth century encouraged plantation owners not to plant tobacco more than once every two years so as not to leave the earth expunged of nutrients.[68] Court orders also requested that a limit be placed on the trees being cut down on certain plantations. The people were advised not to cut down standing trees in the forest, but instead to use the already fallen trees for firewood, fence repair and other needs.[69] Official laws were passed-but were not necessarily enforced-on timber acquisition in general. It is not known to what extent these laws were obeyed. As a quote from William Cronon's Changes in the Land states, "Pastoralism for commercial ends...cannot continue without progressive deterioration of the habitat."[70]

To illustrate this, the remaining Natives, English and descendents of both were living with a new relationship to the land and altered Nassawango's bald cypress swamp, the drier highland areas, the water flows of the Nassawango Creek and Pocomoke River, and created a new landscape that was more susceptible to overgrowth and eventual weed species infestation. Pine invaded fields left fallow from exhaustive harvests that had once consisted of oak and other hardwoods. In general, pine does little to reconstruct the forest floor humus.[71] The people were fostering an area ideal for thickets by creating these open-woods areas-some denser than others-of scattered boundary trees surrounded by large and small cleared areas.

These open areas also invited a change in animal species populations as well. For example, deer might have been very attracted to the edge-effect perimeter zones of the wooded landscapes lying beside the open spaces of the plantations. These antlered animals might have thrived on large agricultural lands and might have increased in number since the larger predatory animals would have slowly dwindled down as a consequence of deforestation and bounty hunting. According to travelers in the late eighteenth century, the populations of these predators were reduced for reasons of sport and reasons of fear as well. At one point "bears were so plentiful in the great cypress swamp that one had little trouble killing 30 in a day"; wolves and cougars were also reported to have been present in abundance.[72]

The final inhabitants of the Contact Period altered the land in many other ways as well. Land, whether cleared, drained, ditched, tilled, overharvested or all of the aforementioned, had a large impact on the natural processes of Nassawango. "Humans have dramatically and most likely permanently altered the face of the eastern forests in ways that natural processes never could."[73] Over time these impacts grew from sporadic and non-intensive with the Natives to seemingly permanent with these final inhabitants. They not only shipped Nassawango's marketable nature to very distant lands, but also linked the forests, the fields and the furs to these far-off hinterlands of commodity exchange. The equation of land plus exploitation (of people and resources) equals wealth continued to be the driving force motivating the colonists on how to utilize the land on into the late eighteenth century.[74]

Summary

By contrasting English culture and Native culture, comprehension of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century attitudes toward the land and its use can be better understood. These two distinct perceptions of nature are what led to the different ways its inhabitants used it. The Contact Period shows the first shift in attitudes toward the land that shaped the way Nassawango Creek was utilized.

Old World ideas about land, wealth and status affected the way the English chose to use the land. They were initially driven by the idea that Nassawango had unlimited forest resources, but as they cleared the land of trees, animal populations diminished and nutrients were washed out of the soils. This created problems for fur trading with the Natives-no forests meant no profit. As the forests turned into plantations, the space necessary for both cultures to live without conflict became smaller as well. The relationship between the English and the Pocomoke and Assateague tribes worsened.

Increase in personal gain and status was a big motivator for the English as they enforced their private property boundaries with acres of trees as fencing, encroached upon Native villages and designated the metes and bounds of where they thought the Natives should be placed. These were ways the English could maintain control over the land and its "improvements" in order to benefit the most from it. Meanwhile the Natives' influence in this shift lessened with each petition they made in the English courtroom. Their complaints demonstrated that this shift in regimes was not to their liking. They were relocated against their will, encroached upon and eventually most were convinced that they were better served leaving the area altogether. They experienced a change in cultural traditions and a transformation in the way they had once lived on the land. After this land-use shift occurred there was no return to the previous regime of land-use. It had been altered henceforth. The impacts this transformation left on the land would only augment as trade and industrialization increased. Soil pH changed, pine dominated and the habitat for the animals and the people of the previous era decreased. Nassawango became a money-making resource. A shift in the human perception of nature encouraged a shift in land-use to occur, and there was no turning back as long as private property continued to dominate the area.

Footnotes:

1 The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580-1631): The Description of Virginia by Captaine Smith. 1612. Transcribed by Philip Barbour. 1986. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 88.

2 Ibid p. 92-97.

3 Ibid p. 90.

4 Ibid p. 97, 103. All quotations throughout this body of work remain in their original form. No grammatical, spelling or capitalization changes were made by the author.

5 Andrew White. "A Briefe Relation of the Voyage Unto Maryland, 1633." Found in Narratives of Early Maryland, 1633-1684. Transcribed by Clayton Collman Hall. 1910. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 10, 13, 24.

6 The term "agriculture" includes cropland, grassland and pasture, unused land left fallow, and secondary forest on formerly cleared agricultural sites. This definition was taken from Jorge A. Benitez and Thomas R. Fisher. "Historical Land-Cover Conversion (1665-1820) in the Choptank Watershed, Eastern United States." Ecosystems. 2004. Vol. 7. p. 219-232.

7 "An Account of the Colony of the Lord Baron of Baltamore, 1633." Author Unknown. Found in Narratives of Early Maryland, 1633-1684. Transcribed by Clayton Collman Hall. 1910. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 5-10.

8 According to William Cronon in Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England. 1983. New York: Hill And Wang, the tendency of these explorers was to view the land and its resources as "extractable units...for the interest of future undertakings."

9 See Helen C. Rountree and Thomas E. Davidson. The Eastern Shore Indians of Maryland and Virginia. 1997. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. See this source for more information on where in Maryland the Native people were able to eat particular foods due to the sandy conditions of the soil or the freshwater and saline conditions of the marshes and waterways. According to Rountree and Davidson, they incorporated potatoes, oysters and blue fish into their diet, to name a few.

10 Benitez et al. "Historical Land-Cover Conversion (1665-1820) in the Choptank Watershed, Eastern United States."

11 Helen C. Rountree. The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture. 1989. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

12 Rountree and Davidson. 1997.

13 Timothy Silver. A New Face On the Countryside: Indians, Colonists and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800. 1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and see also Lincoln Taiz and Eduardo Zeiger. Plant Physiology. 1998. Sunderland: Sinauer Associates, Inc.

14 J.L. Kuwan and H.H. Shurgart. "Vegetation and Two Indices of Fire on the Delmarva Peninsula." Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society. 2000. Vol. 127(1) p. 44-50. The results to their study were obtained through an analysis of soil charcoal index.

15 These conclusions were drawn in a study of an area in Western Maryland, but can also be applied to the Eastern Shore oak forests. Marc D. Abrams, "Where has all the White Oak Gone?" BioScience. 2003. Vol. 53(10). p. 927-941.

16 Ibid. Abrams, dendroecology records show that fires occurred about every eight years during the pre-settlement and the post-settlement years.

17 Maryland was established in 1634 with about 150 settlers. By 1700 the population grew to 34,000; by 1740 there were 100,000 and by the end of the colonial period there were 300,000. Henry M. Miller. "Transforming a 'Splendid and Delightsome Land:' Colonists and Ecological Change in the Chesapeake 1607-1820." Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences. 1986. Vol. 76(3). p. 173-187.

18 Although disease and religious fervor played a large role in many of the European and Native Contact Periods, across various regions in the Americas, those issues will not be explicitly discussed in this study.

19 An understanding of this relationship can be seen by examining the Natives' relationship to the animals themselves. This relationship began to be broken down after the colonists came to the Eastern Shore and began hunting based on profit and not necessity. For a more controversial viewpoint, not discussed here, among the Indians and the animals, see Calvin Martin's Keepers of the Game: Indian-Animal Relationships and the Fur Trade. 1980. Berkeley: University of California Press. Martin argues that the Natives participated in the fur trade because they were fighting a spiritual war with the animals.

20 No more than a few colonists were ever able to make the fur trade a profitable enterprise because only a very small number acquired even a basic knowledge of Native language and/or culture. This knowledge was the key to successful trading with the Natives. Henry Norwood, a successful interpreter and "friend" to the Natives, was considered to be a key player in fur dealings between the Pocomokes and the settlers. "A Voyage to Virginia by Colonel Norwood." 1650. In Force's Collection of Historical Tracts. Vol.III.No. 10. Transcribed by Peter Force. 1836. Washington D.C: Peter Force. See also Sharon Himes. Cavalier's Adventure: The Story of Henry Norwood. 2000. Princess Anne: Arcadia Productions.

21 Benitez et al. "Historical Land-Cover Conversion (1665-1820) in the Choptank Watershed, Eastern United States."

22 English fur traders, such as Mr. John Nutall a prime trader in the Chesapeake region including Accomack County, were at times even accused of being more loyal to the Indians than to the English. The Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1661-1675, reference several cases of these English encouraging the Indians to oppose the English penetration on their territory. This demonstrated the strong interest the fur traders had in maintaining the land for the Indians for the good of the fur trade. Nutall's interest in securing the land for the Indians can be seen in the aforementioned proceedings Liber H.H., folio 140. Dated April 9, 1662.

23 The English were accustomed to the property boundaries of other colonists only if they had bought the land with a legal patent. Being aware of this cultural aspect of the English, several prominent fur traders bought land, with the intent to let the Natives live on it under their English patent - to try and keep the fur trade alive. As long as the Indians could freely hunt, then the furs would continue to be profitable for the English as well. The lands they patented tended to be lands within Native villages. The problem with this entire system was that the Natives required the use of the area surrounding the village to hunt, not only their small villages. Although this plan slightly disrupted land-hungry planters from entering the Pocomoke and Assateague territory, it could not keep the fur trade alive and so did not keep the English land owners satisfied. Eventually, this land which had been patented specifically for the Natives by the fur traders - to keep the market alive-was sold to colonists interested in farmland and the Natives were pushed off of the land. One area patented by John Edmondson in 1665 did not fail as quickly as the others. The hinterland surrounding Edmondson's land became the Choptank reservation so those Natives were able to continue the fur trade and live as they chose for a while longer. Edmundson and John Pitts were "grant Lycence and Commission to trade & trafficque wth any Indians wthin the Province for Beavor and Roanoke or other Commodities." Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1661-1675. Liber H.H., folio 271. Dated September 7, 1666.

24 John R. Wennersten. "Soil Miners Redux: The Chesapeake Environment, 1680-1810." Maryland Historical Magazine. 1996. Vol. 91. p. 157-179.

25 George Calvert's intention for Maryland was for it to be a haven for Catholics and King Charles I of England granted this land to Calvert hoping for it to be the first proprietary colony in the New World.

26 Wennersten in "Soil Miners Redux."

27 David M.Potter. People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character. 1954.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Although this book focuses on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, its ideas can be applied to earlier history. This can also be seen in Timothy Silver's A New Face On the Countryside: Indians, Colonists and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800.

28 This is not meant to imply that Native individuals did not seek personal gain and high individual standing, but it was not directly tied to a capitalistic market as it was with the Europeans.

29 The name Askiminikonson was spelled a variety of different ways by the settlers. Spelling of the English language was just being developed in this time period and so no standards had been set yet. According to Hammil Kenny, in The Placenames of Maryland Their Origin and Meaning (1984) Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, Askiminikonson has been referred to as the Askiminikanson, and Askimenkonsen Indian town. A court council held on 7 May 1686 in St. Mary's City indicates that Nassawango Creek once bore the alternate name Askimenokonson Creek. Another reference on the eleventh of May. Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1684-89, Liber B. P.R.O., folio 26,28. It has also been spelled as Nassiungo or Naseongo. Today it partly lies in the Coulbourne district in Worcester County and is most commonly called Indiantown or Nassawango.

30 Somerset County Maryland Rent Rolls. 1662-1723. p. 39.

31 Ibid. 10 June 1664. Land was called Assacimaco.

32 Somerset County Maryland Rent Rolls. 1663-1723. p 169-170. Surveyed 17 July 1665. Lies on the north side of the Pocomoke River near the land of Thomas White.

33 Ibid. p. 39. The land was called "Ledburn" and was situated on the north side of the Pocomoke River at the southern most bounds of the land of Phineas White.

34 Improvements to the land can be seen in Cronon's Changes in the Land and Micheal Leroy Oberg. Dominion and Civility. 1999. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

35 Silver's A New Face On the Countryside.

36 Somerset County Judicial Records, September 1689-November 1690: p. 33. The Natives were made to pay their land's rent of beaver skins, but even this proved difficult. The ruler of the settlement of the Assateague Natives on Askiminikonson, Robin, complained that although they were expected to pay this rent the English obstructed and deprived them of hunting beaver. Another Native complaint from Askiminikonson was that "John Kirk and John Carter will not suffer their Indians to hunt upon their land"; further, if they "catch any beaver" the colonists would "challenge the [ownership of the] skinns." See the Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1684-89, Liber B. P.R.O., folio 26. May 6, 1686.

37 This land acreage exceeds the study area of 5,000 acres of this research, but the research area is included within it (see Map 3).

38 Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1684-89. Liber B. P.R.O., folio 25.

39 Edward Hammond was one of the Englishmen the Natives complained about. He came to Old Somerset County (now Worcester) in 1669. He was transported. This normally meant he indentured himself to another in servitude in order to "pay" for passage across the Atlantic from England. By 1681 he was transporting people himself to obtain "headrights" or land in return for payment of passengers. He was given 700 acres called "Chasbury" in October 1681. Land Office (Patent Record) 1682-1688. Folio 70.

40 Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1684-89. Liber B.P.R.O.

41 Rountree and Davidson. 1997.

42 For more information on bald cypress trees and the mysterious role of the "knees" that surround them see Christopher H. Briand. "Cypress Knees: An Enduring Enigma." Arnoldia. 2000-2001.Vol. 60(4). p.19-20, 21-25.

43 The other place is Battle Creek in Southern Maryland. Battle Creek is also presently owned by The Nature Conservancy. More information on Maryland vegetation can be found in Russell G. Brown and Melvin L. Brown. Woody Plants of Maryland. 1972. Baltimore: Port City Press.

44 Rountree and Davidson, 1997.

45 The English were not forced off the land because they had "paid" the Natives for the land with matchcoats. Matchcoats were a cloak-like garment made of European cloth sometimes referred to as trading cloth. This was apparently not an equitable system, not only because land is worth much more than cloth and it was an unfair way to "pay" for Indian land, but even within itself it was not well organized. For instance, one colonist paid forty-two matchcoats for 3,000 acres while another colonist paid forty for 500 acres. Dorchester County Land Records Liber 6: folio 6, 3, Liber 5 folio, 214.

46 Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1684-89. Liber B. P.R.O., folio 28-29. The court went on to suggest that a swinging gate "that will shut of itself" be placed at the Pocomoke River bridge and the Nassawango/Askiminikonson Creek to keep out the horses and Cattle for the security of the Indians' fields and labors.

47 Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1684-89. Liber B. P.R.O., folio 68-69.

48 These examples of encroachment can also be found in the Archives of Maryland Transcribed by William Hande Browne. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society Vol. 5 p. 312-328; Arch. Vol. 15 p. 390; Arch. Vol. 17: p. 50-51, 55-56.

49 There is now a golf course at this location at the northern point of Nassawango. The horse bridge is no longer there, but the name has persisted.

50 This estimation was not done out in the field and so "all distances are approximate and are in no way guaranteed or recordable for an official survey." The size in square miles was 63.81901. Three mile buffer reference: Archives of Maryland 5 p. 480. It is in the three-mile buffer zone that that the Nassawango Iron Furnace was built. To clarify, the study area for this research is a 5,000 acre portion of the Askiminikonson reservation, including the surrounding buffer zone.

51 Somerset County Maryland Rent Rolls. 1662-1723.

52 More information on the ways in which the English improved their land can be found in William Cronon's Changes in the Land and Oberg's, Dominion and Civility. Information just on improvement through fences can be found in Archives of Maryland: 26 p. 443; Arch. 35 p. 369.

53 Archives of Maryland Vol. 15 p. 312-328, 351, 390; Arch. Vol. 17 p. 50-51, 55-56.

54 Somerset County Judicial Records. 1707-11: 96, 131, 1727-30: 154, 222. Interestingly enough, as time went on, the Maryland authorities were less threatened by the Natives. They did not fear an attack and so did not attempt to appease the Natives in the ways they had before. The Natives, even after complaining to the court system, rarely won their cases. It was nearly impossible for the local juries to convict English defendants in these cases.

55 Archives of Maryland Vol. 5 p. 312-328; Arch. Vol. 15 p. 390. John Parker, a freed indentured servant, began an almost 30-year battle with the help of his father (George) and son (John Jr.) against the Pocomoke and Assateague over the Askiminikonson reservation land. He was a freed indentured servant and actually began surveying his own property in the territory. He emerged as one of the largest landowners in the reservation land by 1760.

56 Abram's 2004 "Where Has All the White Oak Gone?"

57 Cronon in Changes in the Land.

58 It is believed that, of these remaining Natives, those who chose to leave joined fellow Algonquian tribes in northern Pennsylvania. Rountree and Davidson 1997.

59 To see these references see Archives of Maryland Vol. 17 p. 50-51, 55-56. Somerset County Judicial Records, September 1689-November 1690: 40. Somerset County Judicial Records 1675-77: 81. Archives of Maryland Vol. 25 p. 392, 457. Somerset County Judicial Records 1727-30: 154. To see references to the last mentions of the reservation see Worcester County Land Records A: 475, Archives of Maryland Vol. 28 p. 268, and Worcester County Land Records B: 311.

60 Benitez et al. "Historical Land-Cover Conversion (1665-1820) in the Choptank Watershed, Eastern United States." For more information on changes in the soil see also P.B. Bapst, K.R Lewis, W.W. Miller, L.R. Lal, and R. Fausey. "Soil Carbon Sequestration Under Different Management Practices." n.d. Ohio State University.

61 The original tract was a 20-acre parcel called "Defiance." Furnacetown Uncatalogued Archives.

62 Later bequeathed to his son John Morris. The land is currently referred to as "Adkin's bog." Nature Conservancy Files found in Furnacetown Uncatalogued Archives.

63 By 1916, there were "a total of 51 large mill and timber operations." F.W. Besley. The Forests of Maryland. 1916. Annapolis: The Advertiser-Republican.

64 Catriona E. Rogers and John P. McCarty. "Climate Change and Ecosystems of the Mid-Atlantic Region." n.d. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

65 Bacon's Laws of Maryland, 1756. Archives of Maryland. Vol. 75, p. 717.

66 The study was done by J.W. McAtee and D.L. Drawe. "Human Impact on Beach and Foredune Microclimate on North Padre Island, Texas." Environmental Management. 1981. Vol. 5. p. 121-134. Interesting references to it can be found in Lori M. Hunter The Environmental Implications of Population Dynamics. 2001. Santa Monica: Rand. For a discussion on soil properties see S.I. Dodson, T.F.H. Allen, S.R. Carpenter, A.R. Ives, R.L. Jeanne, J.F. Kitchell, N.E. Langston, and M.G. Turner. Ecology. 1998. New York: Oxford University Press.

67 View and Estimates. Worcester County Orphans Court Proceedings 1797-1802. LH 8.

68 Archives of Maryland, Vol. 34, p. 460. For more on tobacco and soil exhaustion see Wennersten in Soil Miners Redux.

69 View and Estimates. Worcester County Orphans Court Proceedings 1797-1802. LH 8. The regulation on tree cutting was considered mostly for the benefit of the orphan. It was so that when the orphan came of age, the land would not be void of forest or contain exhausted soil.

70 Darling, Fraser E. "Man's Ecological Dominance Through Domesticated Animals on Wild Lands." excerpt from Cronon's Changes in the Land. p. 141.

71 Soil Miners Redux.

72 Henry Norwood's "Voyage to Virginia" and Himes' Cavalier's Adventure. Bear quote excerpted from Bay Journal March 2004 issue.

73 Abram's 2004. "Where Has All the White Oak Gone?"

74 Another growing market on the Eastern Shore was the slave market. Most of the hard plantation work was done by slave labor. John R. Wennersten. The Chesapeake: An Environmental Biography. 2001. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society.

Works Used

Primary Sources

"An Account of the Colony of the Lord Baron of Baltamore."1633. Unknown. In Narratives of Early Maryland, 1633-1684. Edited by Clayton Collman Hall. 1910. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Archives of Maryland. Transcribed by William Hande Browne. Volumes 4, 5, 15, 17, 25, 26, 28, 34, 35, 39, 75, 423, 540. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society.

Besley, F.W. December 1916. The Forests of Maryland. Annapolis: The Advertiser- Republican.

The Borderer. August 4, 1835.

"A Briefe Relation of the Voyage Unto Maryland." 1633. Father Andrew White. In Narratives of Early Maryland, 1633-1684. Edited by Clayton Collman Hall. 1910. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Catalogued Manuscript Collection from the Jones and Taylor Family Papers. Housed by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Complete Works of Captain John Smith. (1580-1631): The Description of Virginia by Captaine Smith. 1612. Transcribed by Philip Barbour. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Daily Times. May 23, 1980, May 30, 1980, July 17, 1980, January 11, 1982, January 1, 1983, April 25, 1994.

Democratic Messenger. 1976.

Dorchester County, Maryland Land Records Libers 5, 6.

Eburne, Richard. 1624. A Plain Pathway to Plantations. Edited by Louis B. Wright. 1962. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Fehrer, Joseph and Ilia. Spring 1992. From the files and Recollections of Ilia J. and Joseph W. Fehrer, Sr. "The Nature Conservancy Nassawango Creek Nature Preserve: How it Began."

Fuller, Garth. 1993. "Conservation of Rare Plant Populations on Maryland's Eastern Shore: Management for Protection of Rare Plants in Adkin's Bog." Nature Conservancy Archival Materials of Bill Bostian. Held at the Furnacetown Living Heritage Museum located in Snow Hill, Maryland.

Green, Elmer. 1934. The Making of Maryland. Baltimore: E & M Green.

Hughes, Richard B. 1980. A Cultural and Environmental Overview of the Prehistory of Maryland's Lower Eastern Shore Based Upon A Study of Selected Artifact Collections. Prepared for the Maryland Historical Trust and The Tidewater Administration Maryland Department of Natural Resources Coastal Resources Division.

Judicial and Testamentary Business of the Maryland Provincial Court, 1637-1650. Liber Z. 12 February 1637. Found in the Archives of Maryland Vol IV.

Land Office (Patent Record). 1682-1688.

Uncatalogued Archival Collection from the Furnacetown Living Heritage Museum. Located in Snow Hill, Maryland.

Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, 1733-1736. Found in Archives of Maryland. Vol. 39.

Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1657-1660: Liber H-H, 1661-1675: Liber H-H, 1684-1689: Liber B.P.R.O.

Maryland Coast Press. January 30, 1981, June 26, 1981.

Maryland Provincial Patents. Vol. 9.

North American Gazette. May 1850.

Interview with Kathy P. Fisher by Mercedes Quesada-Embid at Furnacetown Living Heritage Museum located in Snow Hill, Maryland on 21 November 2003.

Salisbury Advertiser. September 4, 1952; February 2, 1983.

Seymour, John 1707. [Letter from this Maryland Governor was printed in the unpublished Maryland Provincial Records] Published in Maryland Historical Magazine. Vol. 16. Transcribed by Louis Dielman. 1921.

Somerset County Judicial Records. 1675-1677, September 1689-November 1690, 1707- 1711, 1727-1730.

Somerset County Maryland Rent Rolls. 1662-1723.

Snow Hill Messenger. November 1831, April 1832, May 1832.

Townsend, George Alfred. 1884. The Entailed Hat. New York: Harper and Brothers. Housed in the Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture's Rare Book Collection.

View and Estimates. Worcester County Orphans Court Proceedings 1797-1802. LH 8.

Virginia Legislative Petitions, Northampton County. March 17, 1842.

A Voyage to Virginia by Colonel Norwood. 1650. In Force's Collection of Historical Tracts. Vol. III.-No. 10. Edited by Peter Force. 1836. Washington D.C.: Peter Force.

Worcester County Land Records A and B.

Worcester County, Maryland 1840 and 1850 Census. Transcribed by Ruth T. Dryden. Westminster: Family Line Publications.

Secondary Sources

Abrams, Marc D. 2003. "Where has all the White Oak Gone?" BioScience.Vol. 53(10).

Anderson, Terry L. 1992. Property Rights and Indian Economies. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

Bapst, P.B., K.R Lewis, W.W. Miller, L.R. Lal, and R. Fausey. n.d. "Soil Carbon Sequestration Under Different Management Practices." Ohio State University.

"Base Metal and Iron Ore Mining." 1998. Pollution Prevention and Abatement Handbook.

Bay Journal. March 2004.

Beaven, George Francis and Henry J. Oosting. 1939. "Pocomoke Swamp: A Study of a Cypress Swamp on the Eastern Shore of Maryland." Bulletin of the Torrey Club. Vol. 66.

Benitez, Jorge A. and Thomas R. Fisher. 2004. "Historical Land-Cover Conversion (1665-1820) in the Choptank Watershed, Eastern United States." Ecosystems. Vol. 7.

Briand, Christopher H. 2000-2001. "Cypress Knees: An Enduring Enigma." Arnoldia. Vol. 60(4).

Brock, Peter. 1968. Pacifism in the United States from the Colonial Period to the First World War. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Brown, Russell G. and Melvin L. Brown. 1972. Woody Plants of Maryland. Baltimore: Port City Press.

Clemens, B. 2001. "Changing Environmental Strategies Over Time: An Empirical Study of the Steel Industry In the United States." Journal of Environmental Management. Vol. 62.

Cronon, William. 1983. Changes in the Land. New York: Hill and Wang.

Cronon, William. 1991. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W.W. Norton.

Dodson, S.I., T.F.H. Allen, S.R. Carpenter, A.R. Ives, R.L. Jeanne, J.F. Kitchell, N.E. Langston, and M.G. Turner. 1998. Ecology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Eastern Shore Times. July 14, 1977.

Grumet, Robert S. 1995. Historic Contact: Indian People and Colonists in Today's Northeastern United States in the Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Heimann, R.B., U. Kreher, I. Spazier and G. Wetzel. 2001. "Mineralogical and Chemical Investigations of Bloomery Slags from Prehistoric (8th Century BC to 4th Century AD) Iron Production Sites in Upper and Lower Lusatia, Germany." Archaeometry. Vol. 43(2).

Himes, Sharon. 2000. Cavalier's Adventure: The Story of Henry Norwood. Princess Anne: Arcadia Productions.

Hunter, Lori M. 2001. The Environmental Implications of Population Dynamics. Santa Monica: Rand.

Joosten, I., J.B.H. Jansen, and H. Kars. 1998. "Geochemistry and the Past: Estimation of the Output of a Germanic Iron Production Site in the Netherlands." Journal of Geochemical Exploration. Vol. 62.

Kaczorek, Danuta, M. Sommer, I. Andruschkewitsch, L. Oktaba, Z. Cxerwinski and K. Stahr. 2004. "A Comparative Micromorphological and Chemical Study of 'Raseneisenstein' (bog iron ore) and 'Ortstein.'" Geoderma. Vol 121.

Kaczorek, Danuta and Micheal Sommer. 2003. "Micromorphology, Chemistry, and Mineralogy of Bog Iron Ores from Poland." Danuta Kaczorek and Micheal Sommer. Catena. Vol. 54.

Kenny, Hammil. 1984. The Placenames of Maryland Their Origin and Meaning. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society.

Kuwan, J.L. and H.H. Shurgart. 2000. Vegetation and Two Indices of Fire on the Delmarva Peninsula. Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society. Vol. 127(1).

Leconanet, Hélène, Francois Léveque and Jean-Paul Ambrosi. 2001. "Magnetic Properties of Salt-Marsh Soils Contaminated by Iron Industry Emissions (Southeast France)." Journal of Applied Geophysics. Vol. 48.

Legler , Dixie. 2002. Historic Bridges of Maryland. Crownsville: Maryland Historical Trust.

Lepore, Jill. 1998. The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity. New York: Random House.

Lewis, Clara L. 1993. Handbook for Delmarva Archaeology. Department of State, State of Delaware.

Lewis, Ronald L. 1978. "Slave Families At Early Chesapeake Ironworks." The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. Vol. 86(2).

Mannino, Antonio, Forrest Hall, Frank Hoge, Randy Kawa, Robert Knox, Charles McClain, Elizabeth Middleton, Robert Swift, Alexander Chekalyuk, Lawrence Harding, John Moisan, and Tiffany Moisan. 2003. "The Chesapeake Bay-Mid-Atlantic Bight (CMAB): A Proposed NACP Coastal Ocean Field Intensive Site."

McAtee, J.W. and D.L. Drawe. 1981. "Human Impact on Beach and Foredune Microclimate on North Padre Island, Texas." Environmental Management. Vol. 5.

McNeill, J.R. 2000. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Miller, Henry, M. 1986."Transforming a 'Splendid and Delightsome Land:' Colonists and Ecological Change in the Chesapeake 1607-1820." Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences. Vol. 76(3).

Mitchell, John Hanson. 1984. Ceremonial Time. New York: Anchor Press.

Mitsch, William J. and James G. Gosselink. 2000. Wetlands. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Martin, Calvin. 1980. Keepers of the Game: Indian-Animal Relationships and the Fur Trade. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Merritt, Jane T. 2003. At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700-1763. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Muller, H. Reed, Alice E. Paterra and Jerome DeRidder. 1995. "The Furnace Town Phoenix: A Case Study of the Rebirth of an Economic Community." Essays in Economic Business and History. Vol. 13.

Oberg, Micheal Leroy. 1999. Dominion and Civility. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Paling, E.I., G. Humphries, I. McCardle and G. Thompson. 2001. "The Effects of Iron Ore Dust on Mangroves in Western Australia: Lack of Evidence for Stomatal Damage." Wetlands Ecology and Management. Vol. 9.

Porter, Frank W., III. 1986. In Pursuit of the Past: An Anthropological and Bibliographic Guide to Maryland and Delaware. Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Porter, Frank W., III. 1979. Indians in Maryland and Delaware: A Critical Bibliography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Potter, David M. 1954. People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Quinn, David B. 1982. Early Maryland in a Wider World. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Roache, George. November 1996. "Nassawango News: The Newsletter of the Nassawango Creek Nature Preserve." Vol. 5(2).

Robbins, Michael Warren. 1972. The Principio Company: Iron-Making in Colonial Maryland, 1720-1781. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.

Rogers, Catriona E. and John P. McCarty. "Climate Change and Ecosystems of the Mid- Atlantic Region." n.d. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Rountree, Helen C. and Thomas E. Davidson. 1997. The Eastern Shore Indians of Virginia and Maryland. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

Rountree, Helen C. 1989. The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Selfa, John Bezis. 1994. "Planter Industrialists and Iron Oligarchs: A Comparative Prosopography of Early Anglo-American Ironmasters." Business and Economic History. Vol. 23(1).

Semmes, Raphael. 1937. Captains and Mariners of Early Maryland. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.

Silver, Timothy. 1990. A New Face On the Countryside: Indians, Colonists and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Singewald, Joseph T. 1911. The Iron Ores of Maryland. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Taiz, Lincoln and Eduardo Zeiger. 1998. Plant Physiology. Sunderland: Sinauer Associates, Inc.

Thomas, James Walter. 1900. Chronicles of Colonial Maryland. Baltimore: Cushing and Company.

Tiner, Ralph W. 1987. A Field Guide to Coastal Wetland Plants of the Northeastern United States. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Torrence, Clayton. 1979. Old Somerset on the Eastern Shore of Maryland: A Study in Foundations and Founders. Baltimore: Regional Publishing Co.

Truitt, Reginald V., and Millard G. LesCallette. 1977. Worcester County: Maryland's Arcadia. Snow Hill: Worcester County Historical Society.

Wennersten, John R. 2001. The Chesapeake: An Environmental Biography. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society.

Wennersten, John R. 1996. "Soil Miners Redux: The Chesapeake Environment, 1680-1810." Maryland Historical Magazine. Vol. 91.

White, John R. n.d. "The Rebirth and Demise of Ohio's Earliest Blast Furnace." Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology. Vol. 21(2).

White, Richard. 1996 . The Organic Machine. New York: Hill and Wang.

Worcester County Messenger. December 21, 1977, December 30, 1981.