Archaeology, Narrative, and the Politics of the Past: The View from Southern Maryland

3. The Transient Nature of All Things Sublunary

Chapter 3 The Transient Nature of All Things Sublunary one especially interesting artifact commemorating Maryland’s colonial settlement is emanuel leutze’s painting, The Founding of Maryland (figure 3.1).1 leutze, who is best known for Washington Crossing the Delaware and Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way, painted The Founding of Maryland in 1860 for an as-yet-unidentified patron. The painting was exhibited in 1863 at the Pennsylvania Academy of fine Arts and later at the Maryland historical Society. Measuring fiftytwo by seventy-three inches, the richly detailed oil on canvas illustrates the colony’s initial settlement at St. Mary’s City with what art historian William Truettner describes as an“astonishing clarity.”At the beginning of each semester, i share an image of this painting with students in my classes at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, located in St. Mary’s City, and it is striking how quickly they recognize the painting’s story, even though no one reports having seen the painting before. The students invariably conclude that the image depicts the english settlement of Maryland at St. Mary’s City. Some of this recognition undoubtedly stems from previous exposure to nineteenth-century American history painting and its conventions. The identification of this painting as a representation specifically of Maryland’s colonial settlement, however, is remarkable, given that the scene leutze depicts is, with one important exception, wholly fanciful. There were no european-style timber-framed buildings at St. Mary’s City like the one shown on the hillside—not at the founding or at any other time. The yaocomico indians of Maryland lived not in tee-pees but in loaf-shaped houses constructed of saplings and woven grass, and the clothing leutze dresses them with is more appropriate to nineteenthcentury Plains indian attire than seventeenth-century Algonquian dress. 52 The Transient Nature of All Things Sublunary 3.1. The founding of Maryland by emanuel leutze, c. 1860. (Courtesy of the Maryland historical Society.) further, the initial meeting between the colonists looked nothing like this scenario, an obviously staged and, so it seems, inevitable encounter. About the only accurate representation in leutze’s painting is the shoreline at St. Mary’s City, which leutze visited in preparation for executing the painting. Despite these significant inaccuracies, however, the story depicted in leutze’s painting is recognizable because it remarkably parallels the one so often told about the founding of the Maryland colony. Maryland, the story goes, was a Catholic colony, founded by people of that faith to escape religious persecution in england. in Maryland, religious toleration meant that Catholics and Protestants lived and worked together in peace and harmony.racial harmony also prevailed,as the colonists were fair and just in their dealings with the indians, the lords of a bountiful wilderness whose own time would soon be coming to its inevitable end. leutze did not invent this story, but he did a very good job of representing it visually in The Founding of Maryland. This powerful story had first emerged during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, later informing leutze’s work and informing the shape of the stories told about the Susquehanna plantation discussed in chapter 2. And if the The Transient Nature of All Things Sublunary 53 students’ recognition of leutze’s 150-year-old painting is any indication, it is a story that remains deeply entrenched in how Maryland history is understood today in many quarters. At the same time that i was intrigued with the recognition of what i now call the Maryland founding narrative,i was also fascinated with the long-running land-use conflicts and controversies involving St. Mary’s City at the end of the twentieth century (figure 3.2). Much of the land at the site of the first settlement is now owned by the State of Maryland; one portion is occupied by St. Mary’s College while the second functions as a public archaeological park and museum. The college was established in 1840 to commemorate the Maryland founding; the St. Mary’s City Commission was organized in 1966 to preserve and interpret the early settlement in an outdoor setting. it is no secret, however, that the state has struggled with precisely how the site should be preserved and interpreted. The ongoing conflicts in St. Mary’s City have revolved and continue to revolve around differing but strongly held ideas about what...