“Winters Embittered with Hardships”: Severe Cold, Wabanaki Power, and English Adjustments, 1690--1710 (2015)
Wickman, Thomas (Author)
William and Mary Quarterly
Volume: 72, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 57-98
Edition Details: Part of a Series: Climate And Early American History
Language: English
In the 1690s and the first decade of the 1700s, two of the coldest decades of the Little Ice Age, severe winter weather in the American Northeast prompted adjustments first by Wabanakis and later by English colonists. Wabanaki people had generations of experience journeying through and drawing subsistence from their “winter lands.” With well-adapted seasonal practices and technologies, such as moose hunting on snowshoes, they knew how to cope with persistent cold and take advantage of periods of stable snow cover. In the Second Anglo-Wabanaki War (1688--99), Wabanakis launched winter raids against sites in northern New England, revealing a crucial seasonal vulnerability of English settlements. Frigid weather and Wabanaki attacks contributed to a sense of panic among New Englanders in the 1690s. During these years, however, English observers, soldiers, and captives also learned winter skills and strategies from their Wabanaki adversaries, which they used in the Third Anglo-Wabanaki War (1703--13). In 1703--4, colonial leaders began sending out hundreds of English “snowshoe men” to patrol Wabanaki hunting grounds, shifting the power dynamics in the winter woods. By appropriating an indigenous technology, English colonists adapted to a changing climate, provided greater security for their settlements, and dissipated fears of long winters.
...MoreArticle Chaplin, Joyce E. (2015) Ogres and Omnivores: Early American Historians and Climate History. William and Mary Quarterly (pp. 25-32).
Similar Citations
Book
Susan Sleeper-Smith;
(2018)
Indigenous prosperity and American conquest : Indian women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792
(/isis/citation/CBB282679559/)
Book
Matt Cohen;
Jeffrey Glover;
(2014)
Colonial Mediascapes: Sensory Worlds of the Early Americas
(/isis/citation/CBB601836741/)
Article
Beisaw, April M.;
(2012)
Environmental History of the Susquehanna Valley around the Time of European Contact
(/isis/citation/CBB001200341/)
Book
Pursell, Carroll W.;
(2005)
Companion to American technology
(/isis/citation/CBB001180187/)
Book
Brückner, Martin;
(2006)
The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity
(/isis/citation/CBB000651412/)
Book
Meacham, Sarah Hand;
(2009)
Every Home a Distillery: Alcohol, Gender, and Technology in the Colonial Chesapeake
(/isis/citation/CBB001020416/)
Thesis
Ryzewski, Krysta;
(2008)
Archaeology of a Colonial Industry: Domestic Ironworking and Industrial Evolution in Rhode Island, 1642--1800
(/isis/citation/CBB001561268/)
Article
Bolster, W. Jeffrey;
(2008)
Putting the Ocean in Atlantic History: Maritime Communities and Marine Ecology in the Northwest Atlantic, 1500--1800
(/isis/citation/CBB001030307/)
Article
Kate Wersan;
(April 2017)
The Early Melon and the Mechanical Gardener: Toward an Environmental History of Timekeeping in the Long Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB967068905/)
Thesis
Megan E. Holmberg;
(2019)
Anomalous Apparitions of Light in Colonial America: Visions of Comets, New Stars, the Aurora Borealis, and Rainbows
(/isis/citation/CBB685919640/)
Book
Jones, David Shumway;
(2004)
Rationalizing Epidemics: Meanings and Uses of American Indian Mortality since 1600
(/isis/citation/CBB000640107/)
Thesis
Robinson, Martha K.;
(2005)
“They Decrease in Numbers Daily”: English and Colonial Perceptions of Indian Disease in Early America
(/isis/citation/CBB001561692/)
Thesis
Wisecup, Kelly;
(2009)
Communicating Disease: Medical Knowledge and Literary Forms in Colonial British America
(/isis/citation/CBB001560648/)
Thesis
LaCombe, Michael;
(2006)
Food and Authority in the English Atlantic World, 1570--1640
(/isis/citation/CBB001560894/)
Chapter
Sinha, Arvind;
(2010)
Implantation of Commercial Crops: Cochineal Culture and the Regional Ecology in the Eighteenth Century Coromandel
(/isis/citation/CBB001500555/)
Article
Evans, Chris;
(2012)
The Plantation Hoe: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Commodity, 1650--1850
(/isis/citation/CBB001212882/)
Book
Olmstead, Alan L;
Rhode, Paul Webb;
(2008)
Creating Abundance: Biological Innovation and American Agricultural Development
(/isis/citation/CBB000900079/)
Article
Hämäläinen, Pekka;
(2010)
The Politics of Grass: European Expansion, Ecological Change, and Indigenous Power in the Southwest Borderlands
(/isis/citation/CBB001030561/)
Article
John E. Crowley;
(2016)
Sugar Machines: Picturing Industrialized Slavery
(/isis/citation/CBB194086091/)
Book
David Bernstein;
(2018)
How the West Was Drawn: Mapping, Indians, and the Construction of the Trans-Mississippi West
(/isis/citation/CBB896138227/)
Be the first to comment!