The Worlds of Lion Gardiner, ca. 1599–1663: Crossings and Boundaries: Special Issue Introduction

Abstract

The Worlds of Lion Gardiner, ca. 1599–1663: Crossings and BoundariesSpecial Issue Introduction Ned Landsman As an aging Lion Gardiner looked backward in his “Relation of the Pequot Warres” (1660), the “Ingeannere or archecktector,” [engineer or architect] as he called himself, lamented the fact that what he referred to as “our New England 12 penne chronacle” was filled with the names of many men who hardly “deserved Imortall fame.” But those he called “the right New England Millitarie worthies are left out for want of roome as Major Mason Captain undrill [Underhill] lieftennant Sielley [Seely] &c” along with their Indian “confederates” “uncas of Mistic” and Waiandance, their “trustie frend,” and— although Gardiner does not say it—that other military worthy, Gardiner himself. The old soldier concluded, “And this I write, that young men may learne,” that “pollicie is Needfull in warres as well as strength.”1 “Policy,” in this instance, referred specifically to military tactics and subterfuge, but applied to the whole of the narrative it has a broader meaning: that wars in general should be undertaken not rashly but with forethought. They required careful planning and strategy to ensure their success, without impulsive actions that would bring down the vengeance of one’s enemies for anything less than vital concerns. At the same time, preparations for war should not be neglected in a world where potential enemies loomed constantly, and diplomacy and strategic alliances with trusty Indian friends should not be neglected. It was a strange world that Lion Gardiner inhabited, lodged amid land and sea, in a riverbank fortress and on an island off an island, among a shifting mix of Dutch and English, Montauks, Mohegans, Pequots, Narragansetts, [End Page 241] and others, tottering constantly between war and peace. It was a world in which one might display one’s benign intent through acts of profound violence, and where the price of peace could be paid in enemy heads. It was a world where experts in warfare might be compensated with enormous sums but left without provisions of relief in their lonely outposts, only to be vanquished by “Capt hunger.”2 It was a world where, surely, no man was an island, but where an astute individual might acquire one, as Gardiner did, under a manorial tenure derived from Scottish deeds and Indian titles, beyond the established jurisdiction of the English, the Dutch, or any other of the groups who contributed to its acquisition. This special issue originated in a conference entitled “The Worlds of Lion Gardiner, c. 1599–1660: Crossings and Boundaries,” which was held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in March 2009. It was sponsored by the university, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and the Columbia Faculty Seminar on Early American History, with support from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. From the many excellent papers presented there, the editors selected a group that came together around the theme of the triangular (and occasionally quadrangular) relationships that developed in the region we were considering among English, Dutch, and one or more of the several Native peoples residing there, or, alternatively, among rival Native populations with either the English or the Dutch. The complexity of those interactions, the papers suggest, determined a great many things about the development of the region and indeed were essential to defining the region itself. The region in question was one that had, and still has, no clearly recognized name. It has rarely been considered as a distinct region at all. It comprised the lands along both the northern and southern shores of the Long Island Sound, extending roughly from the East River to the Narragansett Bay.3 It was territory defined as much by water as by land. Indeed, as Andrew [End Page 242] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Lion Gardiner constructed Fort Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut River, in 1636, and he acquired the island he called the Isle of Wight in 1639. Map from Curtiss C. Gardiner, Lion Gardiner, and His Descendants . . . [1599–1890]. (St. Louis: A. Whipple, 1890). Courtesy of the Special Collections and University Archives, Stony Brook University. [End Page 243] Lipman notes...