Mary Jemison, Feminism and the Enclosures
Earlier on this blog, I
told the story of a dream I had in Paris and finding its meaning in
Scotland. I discussed Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in
light of that meaning – her loyalty to the patriarchy, not to
women. Here, I leave Clinton behind and relate the story of a truly
brave heroine most of you have never heard of. I apologize for the
need to repeat myself a bit.
Protesting the cutting of the Art program at Brown University in the late 60s
As a peace and social
justice activist, it has been fascinating for me to trace the myriad
ways in which one's political consciousness develops. Years ago, I
hosted a gathering for activists and would-be activists at which
people shared their stories of awakening political consciousness and
how they turned that to action. There were as many variations of that
journey as there were people in the room. My goal had been to inspire
action in those who felt somehow unqualified. I wanted them to
understand that there is no “unqualified.” I hope that happened.
Many experiences and
encounters go into creating the activist one becomes – the causes
one takes up, the combination of cooperation and resistance, the
people with whom one feels comfortable working, even one's ability to
work with people who make one uncomfortable - but one of the most
important is simply being open and paying attention to the messages
sent one's way. I'm reluctant to use that word “sent,” because I
question that there is something doing the sending. Where I stand
between coincidence and synchronicity, I'm still not certain. But I'm
inclined to believe that what is labeled “synchronicity” is
simply that openess, which enables one to see more and select what
reinforces one's inclinations or gives one the confidence to move in
a new and unexpected direction.
What follows is the long
trail of one of those messages.
Our Long Island house in the 50s
During my elementary
school years, I lived on Long Island, NY, in one of those new
suburban developments that were springing up in the 1950's, in part
because of the G.I. Bill. Our house was at the edge of the
development and across from a small forest. We called it The Woods.
It was actually part of a huge estate owned by heirs of the Cunard
shipping line. Besides The Woods, it offered fields (some of them
farmed), haystacks, greenhouses and a mansion. We generally stayed
out of sight, feeling sure we could be arrested for trespass, but
occasionally risked being seen by jumping from the haystacks. I
remember daring to get near the mansion only once.
The Woods as seen from my house (that white house is not the mansion)
In a tiny clearing in The
Woods, there was the roofless remains of a log cabin. It has always
distressed me that I never took a photograph of the cabin (which no
longer exists)..We did not know how long it had been there, but we
always assumed that it dated from colonial days, which was unlikely.
We played there often and I would stand outside the cabin door and
try to imagine – through my feet on the earth – what it would
have been like to be a young pioneer girl living before what I
considered to be “civilization.” I was sure that the forest would
have been home to “Indians” and that was a terrifying thought.
This was the 50's and playing “Cowboys and Indians” was at its
height. That pioneer girl seemed unimaginably brave! I felt her
courage, along with a sense of both distance and belonging in that
spot. And I still do that feet on the earth thing in hopes of
connecting to the humans who are “history.”
My mother between her Aunt Helen (l) and Aunt Jessie (r) at the house in Belfast
At that time, we spent
several vacations visiting my great-aunt Jessie, who lived in the
farming community of Belfast in western New York State. Jessie lived
in a white house with an old barn. I remember that house for its very
steep and narrow stairs to the second floor, its Victorian furniture,
a collection of Earl Stanley Gardner mysteries and a wonderful
raspberry patch out back. Jessie smoked cigarettes and would blow
smoke rings upon request! My mother's aunts were unusual for their time. They went to college, had careers and never married.
Jessie, when she was young, probably as a college student
When we weren't playing
with the kids from the dairy farm across the street or walking a
couple of blocks to buy penny candy or reading the decades' worth of
“LIFE” magazines stored in the barn, we would play Canasta or
Bolivia with the grown-ups. It seemed particularly sophisticated to
be spending the hottest part of the day in the gloom of the old house
playing cards.
My brother, Bill, standing on a fence which overlooks the Genesee River Valley
The town and the house
were on a rise overlooking the Genesee River. About twenty-five miles
away, the river runs through a gorge, sometimes called the Grand
Canyon of the East, in what is now Letchworth State Park. We would
drive to the park to see the falls, have a picnic and visit the cabin
of Mary Jemison. Mary was born at sea as her family fled a famine in
Ireland in 1743. I didn't learn until recently that my
great-great-great-great-great-grandparents (5th
great-grandparents) had left Ireland in 1751 (at the time of the
collapse of the linen trade) and my 5th
great-grandmother had died and been buried at sea. She had already
birthed my great-great-great-great-grandfather. The Jemisons grew
flax in western Pennsylvania for what was left of the Irish linen
trade in and they were killed and scalped in a Shawnee raid in 1755,
except for Mary and a brother, whose fate is unknown. She was
abducted and given to some Seneca women to replace their brother, who
had been killed by settlers. She married, twice, and had several
children. When she had an opportunity to return to White
“civilization,” she refused.
My father, Jim, standing near the falls at Letchworth
When I was about 9, I
bought her autobiography, which she had dictated to a local preacher,
from the Letchworth Park gift shop. I read it a couple of times, had
dreams about her for years and couldn't comprehend her choices. As a
child, I had several recurring dreams which I would invoke in order
to go to sleep. These dreams would generally be considered unsettling
and, yet, I took comfort in them. Why they helped me sleep, I do not
know. One was based upon Mary's life. From that time on, when I stood
outside the ruins of the log cabin in The Woods, it was Mary Jemison
I tried to imagine and Mary Jemison I could not yet understand. Why
had she chosen to stay with a people who had scalped her family? I
was a child and didn't know what I know now, but courage and
belonging were the two conditions I still experienced as my feet were
planted outside that cabin.
Me, at age 9
Though my mother was a
feminist her entire life, beginning well before the Women's Movement
of the 70's, she was definitely a modern White feminist with little
understanding of intersectionality. Hers was a perspective of a
highly-educated, white, middle class woman, who wanted to work, but
dd not have to. I'm not sure that she ever realized that to have the
freedom she wanted, she would have to give up much of what she felt
she needed. It was always someone else's fault that she couldn't have
that freedom. She was a slave to creature comforts and would never
have been able to explain why a woman would stay with “savages.”
It would be decades before I would learn that the majority of
abducted White women, who lived in indigenous communities, refused to
return to “civilization,” because life was more egalitarian where
they were. And just a few years ago, I learned even more.
My mother
In the intervening decades
I developed politically, but slowly. Protesting against the Vietnam
War and the subsequent large and small wars, which the United States
waged upon small countries, and a fairly constant appearance in the
Letters to the Editor sections of several newspapers were the extent
of my activism. But, eventually, I became more radicalized and with
it came knowledge of The Commons and the Enclosure Movement in Great
Britain and the United States and their relevence to privatization
and climate change in the present moment.
Since then, most of my
activism has been around the issues of war, income inequality and the
militarization of law enforcement, often through the lens of
feminism. But I wasn't giving Mary Jemison much thought.
In 2013, I turned 65 and
had long promised myself a few months in Paris to celebrate that
birthday. Some day I may regret having spent all that money that
should have been for my old age, but I hope not. I planned 2-1/2
months in Paris, 2 weeks in Scotland and 2 weeks in Wales with my
poetry workhop. My heritage is Scots-Irish, English, Welsh, German
and Swiss. It was a fabulous trip, but a couple of things happened in
Paris that are germane to this story.
The first incident was
learning about the Scottish Clearances, as distinct from the English
Enclosures. I did a lot of reading in cafés
with a glass of rosé
and some olives and got most of my books at a second hand store
called The Abbey Bookshop in the Latin Quarter. It was tiny and so
packed with books that one could barely turn around in it. One day I
went into the basement and near the bottom of a stack on the floor I
found John McPhee's The Crofter and the Laird,
about McPhee's time on the island of Colonsay, off the west coast of
Scotland, the home of his ancestors. When I went to pay for it, the
owner remarked, “Ah, you've found a treasure!” In that book,
McPhee told the story of the Clearances, the Scottish iteration of
the Enclosure Movement.
A photo of Scottish crofters from the internet
The
Clearances (which spanned more than a century from the early 1700's
to at least the mid-1800's) was literally a clearing of the land of
people and the replacement of them with sheep. People were thrown out
of their homes and many of the homes were burned so people couldn't
return. Many fled to the coastal cliffs, where they could not support
themselves. Most had led a subsistence life of weaving, shepherding
and growing their own food. Some were dumped in Ireland. Others fled
to North America and Australia. Many of them died of hunger. In the
book, McPhee offers an 1827 quote: “The landlords have very
properly done all they could to substitute a population of sheep for
innumerable hordes of useless human beings, who formerly vegetated
upon a soil that seemed barren of everything else.” Sounded to me
an awful lot like some modern politicians and corporate CEO's laying
waste to workers through job out-sourcing and automation. People had
become superfluous to the needs of the rich – which is all that
matters, right? - just as many have here in the United States.
The
second incident of import to this story was a dream I had about a
week before leaving Paris for Scotland. In the dream, I was standing
with some allies behind me. I could not see them, but sensed they
were women. I knew we were facing a violent enemy and we had to be
brave and strong. Whatever the upcoming conflict was, it was not a
part of the dream. I clearly felt both the danger, which was extreme,
and the support, which was not necessarily sufficient. I was keenly
aware that this was a “battle” - both physical and ideological –
that we might not win. And now I know that we didn't.
The apartment in Paris, where I had the dream
My
trip to Scotland was in the southern part of the Highlands along the
western coast. One evening I was having dinner in a restaurant on the
Isle of Mull. There were two women – probably in their 70's - at
the next table. I was reading and one of the women leaned over and
asked me how I liked the book (it was history). She explained that
she was a retired professor of British history and we discussed the
book briefly. Hearing my American accent, she asked, “What do you
think about what happened in Detroit today?” I hadn't seen the
news. “Detroit declared bankruptcy today.” I had known that was
an imminent possibility and I told her that I thought Detroit was but
one U.S. example of a modern day Scottish Clearances. Then she did
something uncharacteristic of the British: she stood up and gave me a
huge bear hug. She was thrilled to discover someone from the U.S. who
knew about The Clearances and who understood the relevance for today.
Photo of Kilmartin, looking from across the glen
My
next stop was the tiny town of Kilmartin, which I chose because it
had the greatest concentration of cairns and standing stones in
Scotland. I was traveling by local bus (often as the only non-local
passenger) and ferry and needed to see sites to which I could walk.
The small inn I stayed at looked out on a glen (valley) that
contained several Bronze Age cairns and a collection of standing
stones. It wasn't until later that I would realize how much its
denuded hills with rectangles of existing Spruce (non-native) would
reflect exactly what had begun in this glen thousands of years ago.
Looking down the glen from my room at the Kilmartin Inn
Standing stone in the middle of a sheep pasture
I
spent a day walking down the glen and at one point stopped to look at
a scraggley grouping of thistles. For some reason I felt compelled to
take a picture of them, though I had passed many examples of
beautiful thistles. I took the picture and, as I turned to walk over
to a cairn, I suddenly became completely disoriented and almost fell
over. I was sensing that I had been there before and kept telling
myself “you've never been here, you've never been here.” I
regained my balance and then realized that the dream I'd had in Paris
had taken place in this spot, as impossible as that seemed.
The thistles that stopped me in my tracks
Thistles I'd seen elsewhere
It
wasn't until I returned to the U.S. and ordered some books about the
area from the museum in Kilmartin I hadn't wanted to add them to my
baggage) that I learned that the glen was one of the first known
examples of the clash created by the evolution from a feminine,
earth-centered culture to a masculine, war-centered culture. One of
the books contained an essay titled “From Sacred Landscapes to
Warrior Society.” In that dream, I had somehow been tapping into
the struggle that had taken place in the glen. And the women, those
brave allies who had stood behind me, lost. Actually, I believe all
humanity lost.
Someone's imaginative rendering of a Bronze Age burial in Scotland
After
returning from my trip, I spent time thinking about the relevance of
what had happened a couple of centuries earlier in Great Britain to
our era of privatization and increasing income disparity. Let me give
you an example. For quite a while now, people have been wondering why
government would so consistently under-fund education. We say, “Don't
they understand how important education is to a healthy economy and
country?” But this does not account for automation, among other
things, that will continue to eliminate jobs on a massive scale, as
computers increasingly replace people in the workplace. Most of us
will become those “useless hordes” - just 200 years later. Why
spend the money on educating people who will be superfluous, when you
can spend it on, for example, the law enforcement which will be
needed to protect the 1% from the rest of us?
During
this same period, I also did some genealogical research, building on
work done by my uncle who had died a few years before. This was when
I started learning about the exodus of many lines of my family from
the British Isles, primarily because of religious and economic
persecution.
This chair is in Chester (England) Cathedral and is where "nonconformists" were questioned by the Church of England - often resulting in prison and, sometimes, death. My Welsh ancestors were "nonconformists" and left for the Colonies at this time.
A year after my return,
while attending the Progressive Festival in Petaluma in 2014, I came
upon a book in the PM Press booth titled Stop,
Thief!:The Commons, Enclosures and Resistance by
Peter Linebaugh. Ever since returning from Scotland, I had wanted to
read more about The Clearances and this book was just what I was
looking for. As I was paying, a man came into the booth to buy the
same book (there was a single copy) – he'd gone back to his car to
get the money. The PM Press rep told him he could get it online and
he was amenable, relieving me of a little of the guilt I was feeling
for snatching it up ahead of him.
I
really can't recommend this book enough. As I mentioned above, just
as so many believe that the United States could never return to
slavery and don't recognize it in mass incarceration and the renting
out of the labor of the incarcerated, so, too, people don't recognize
that the political/corporate class has already returned to this
period of “superfluous” people, who can be allowed to die through
law enforcement violence, recruitment of young people for wars for
the rich, lack of housing, healthcare, jobs, etc. Aren't we too aware
to allow this to happen? Apparently not. And it is the culmination of
the “march of history” which began with men who replaced the
“sacred landscapes” wth a “warrior society.”
I
started the book that evening. In the “Introduction,” Linebaugh
wrote of his mother, who grew up along the Genesee River, of his time
in Rochester, NY and his visits to Letchworth State Park. To my
amazement, the “Introduction” ends with a tribute to Mary
Jemison! My heart actually started pounding faster in my chest when I
read her name. So, it was here that I learned how much more important
she had been. While putting the essays together for his book,
Linebaugh wrote, “....I learned about Mary Jemison, an unsung
inhabitant of the region.....her story....seems so well to summarize
the personal, professional and theoretical themes of Stop,
Thief!” A
story in my life, that had comforted me in my childhood dreams for
unknown reasons, had come full circle.
While,
as a child, I had concentrated on Mary's early years, Linebaugh
concentrates on her adulthood and wrote, 'Mary Jemison fled to
Letchworth Gorge from the terrorizing onslaught in 1779 of General
Sullivan who killed and burnt everything – corn, orchards, cabins,
men, women and children [just like the Clearances] – of the
Iroquois [of which the Seneca were a part]. With two children on her
back and three trailing behind, she found refuge in the relatively
inaccessible gorge where two runaway African-American former slaves
made her welcome. They lived in common for several years. Given the
opportunity in 1797 to return to so-called “white” society, she
refused. That was at the peak of the second historical wave of
enclosures. Despite the settlers' terror, the commons was, at least,
temporarily preserved by the unexpected endeavors of a commons of
Irish, Iroquois and African people. Her white, Anglo editor of 1824
agreed that “she was the protectress of the homeless fugitive, and
made welcome the weary traveller.” It was the women of the
Haudenosaunee [Iroquois Nation] who preserved the commons in the
midst of the expropriations attendant on the creation of the USA. It
is the women of the world who continue to do so in the midst of our
dark times.' (excerpts from Linebaugh's book)
At Letchworth State Park
You
can imagine how exciting I found this. It felt as though I had
somehow been destined to be in the political place where I am now.
How could I ever have imagined how much Jemison would come to
represent, back when I was dreaming of her as a child, back when I
tried to feel her presence through the soles of my feet.
I've
begun, but have not completed to my satisfaction, a couple of poems
about my walk down Kilmartin Glen. But last year I wrote this poem
about my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother's voyage from
Ireland.
And I've posted this
before, in August of 2016, referring to the inspiration from the
Irish poet Eavan Boland. Please bear with me as I repeat it.
Sailing ship of the period
Salt
by Susan Lamont
for my 5th
great-grandmother, buried at sea in 1751, wife of John, first name
unknown
I imagine cormorants,
black against rinsed sky, fog
a second skin, your hands
on the ship's slick rail
steady against the tide
that day you fled. I imagine
your leave-taking, rough
unpainted door, hedgerow
of hawthorn in bud, blue
song-thrush eggs safe in their nest,
left behind with your idle
loom. Ulster's kings of commerce
no longer trade in linen,
raised the rent, pressed your life to the margins.
You and yours can only
imagine freedom and plenty somewhere that is not home.
A rough migration along
the curve of the earth leaves the Irish Sea behind,
your ears filled with
wind, heaven past the horizon, just out of reach.
I imagine ingots of light
igniting the waves as smallpox ignites
your cheeks, your fevered
dreams of home, the hawthorn buds, open,
their honeyed scent, a
thrush's fluting song, while on this ship,
three children, John,
Jacob, Sarah, clutch their father's homespun shirt.
I imagine a life, a death,
your memory a whisper,
nameless. No shroud save
your linen apron. No Memento mori
on
lichened stone. The salt of fever and
tears joins all the unnamed
beneath the waves, your
life just so much salt in the wound of the world.
