Geomythology on the Colonial Frontier: Edward Taylor, Cotton Mather, and the Claverack Giant (2013)
In a rare example of engagement with Indian traditions, the puritan ministers Edward Taylor and Cotton Mather used Indian geomyths to help explain the enormous fossilized bones and teeth discovered at Claverack, New York, in 1705. The teeth would eventually be classified by paleontologists as mastodon remains, but in the early eighteenth century, colonists entertained the possibility that they were human molars. An unfinished poem by Taylor and an essay on Genesis 6:4 by Mather argued against the skepticism that prevailed in Britain concerning the historicity of the giants mentioned in the Bible and European folklore, and both independently turned for support to American Indian accounts. Although Mather and Taylor both believed in the giant of Claverack, their interpretations differed in ways that were inflected by their different geographic locations within Massachusetts. Writing from the political hub of Boston, Mather portrayed the Claverack giant as a villain, whose destruction by the biblical Flood paralleled the military defeat of the Indians in holy warfare. By contrast Taylor, living in the frontier village of Westfield, integrated the Indian stories into his English folk heritage. By making comparisons with Guy of Warwick, for instance, Taylor presented the Claverack giant as the ambiguous hero of an unfinished epic poem.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Stephen Coss;
(2016)
The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic that Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics
(/isis/citation/CBB269392682/)
Article
R. Bruce Mcmillan;
(2023)
Albert Koch’s Hydrarchos: A Hoax or A Bona Fide Collection of Bones
(/isis/citation/CBB354774746/)
Chapter
Mayor, Adrienne;
(2008)
Suppression of Indigenous Fossil Knowledge: From Claverack, New York, 1705 to Agate Springs, Nebraska, 2005
(/isis/citation/CBB000951761/)
Chapter
Huchon, Mireille;
(2010)
Palissy et un monde journellement renouvelé: rêverie sur le psaume 104 et les coquilles
(/isis/citation/CBB001023323/)
Article
Joseph H. Hartman;
(2020)
The importance of the museum in antebellum U.S. western territorial exploration: understanding the relevance of collecting fossils and their conservation to solving long-standing geologic and paleontologic problems - Part 1
(/isis/citation/CBB014367344/)
Book
Cohen, Claudine;
(2011)
La méthode de Zadig: La trace, le fossile, la preuve
(/isis/citation/CBB001221122/)
Article
Prestes, Maria Elice Brzezinski;
Faria, Frederico Felipe de Almeida;
(2011)
Lazzaro Spallanzani e os fósseis: das observações em viagens naturalísticas ao ensino de história natural
(/isis/citation/CBB001420546/)
Chapter
Pina Totaro;
(2022)
Le acque e la storia. Fossili e diluvio in Buffon
(/isis/citation/CBB384175206/)
Article
Domenico Laurenza;
(2019)
The study of fossils in Leibniz's Protogaea: towards a reconctruction of the role of technological models in early modern paleontology
(/isis/citation/CBB565261905/)
Book
Francesco Luzzini;
(2013)
Il miracolo inutile. Antonio Vallisneri e le scienze della Terra in Europa tra XVII e XVIII secolo
(/isis/citation/CBB451473673/)
Book
Mulsow, Martin;
Assmann, Jan;
(2006)
Sintflut und Gedächtnis: Erinnern und Vergessen des Ursprungs
(/isis/citation/CBB001221564/)
Thesis
Santoro, Lily A.;
(2011)
The Science of God's Creation: Popular Science and Christianity in the Early Republic
(/isis/citation/CBB001567279/)
Book
Gustavo Costa;
(2006)
Thomas Burnet e la censura pontificia
(/isis/citation/CBB556620562/)
Thesis
Higgins, John Robert;
(2011)
Fossil Poetry, the Birth of Geology, and the Romantic Imagination, 1790--1860
(/isis/citation/CBB001567320/)
Article
Tollerton, Victor P., Jr.;
(2006)
Strabismus and Pseudofossils: A Case Study of Rudolf Ruedemann
(/isis/citation/CBB000771574/)
Article
Rijul Kochhar;
(2020)
The Virus in the Rivers: Histories and Antibiotic Afterlives of the Bacteriophage at the Sangam in Allahabad
(/isis/citation/CBB071903349/)
Book
Mayor, Adrienne;
(2011)
The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times
(/isis/citation/CBB001550088/)
Book
Sliggers, Bert;
(2006)
Dino's en Draken: Fossielen in Mythen en Volksgeloof
(/isis/citation/CBB001031845/)
Article
Solounias, Nikos;
Mayor, Adrienne;
(2004)
Ancient References to the Fossils from the Land of Pythagoras
(/isis/citation/CBB000502325/)
Book
Mayor, Adrienne;
(2005)
Fossil Legends of the First Americans
(/isis/citation/CBB000610308/)
Be the first to comment!