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| Detail of a mishoon loaded with rocks to anchor it [Credit: T&G/Paul Kapteyn] |
Samples of the hyper-fragile pine from these native craft have been carbon-dated to approximately 1640. Unlike the accidental sinking of the opulent Titanic, so roundly commemorated recently, these simple boats were sunk on purpose for later retrieval from shallow water. The Indians knew that the lake bottom’s cool and constant year-round temperatures provided protection from the freeze-thaw/wet-dry cycle that could deteriorate the wooden craft they had hollowed out by hand.
Each mishoon, approximately 14 feet long, was discovered in separate dives, the first in early 2001 when Mike Brauer, a recreational diver from Connecticut, chanced upon it anchored by a pile of stones inside. A second and third were found later that year during dives to confirm, secure and investigate the initial finding, once the state Board of Underwater Archeological Resources got word of the historic remains.
“Maximum vertical visibility was one foot, the horizontal maybe six inches,” said Chris Hugo of Auburn, a volunteer diver credited with finding the second mishoon during a follow-up dive.
Quickly the board legally protected the boats as underwater archaeological resources and consulted with the Nipmuc tribe that inhabited this area. Hugo fondly remembers taking a video camera cabled to a monitor on shore during one of his dives, enabling overjoyed Nipmuc officials to view the treasures firsthand.
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| Detail of a mishoon [Credit: T&G/Paul Kapteyn] |
“I’m always trying to find ways to bring Nipmuc things back home,” she said.
The project’s goal is first to raise funds for the proper recovery of the mishoonash, which must be chemically preserved immediately on contact with the air. The past several years have been spent trying to secure a building as well as more than $100,000 needed for preservation.
A best-case outcome, Ms. Stedtler said, would be to put the boats in a Nipmuc cultural museum in Central Massachusetts serving all bands of the tribe, keeping tribal history alive for future generations.
“We want it to be here,” she said. “We don’t want it in a museum hundreds of miles away. But the project really can’t go forward without a building. We need a facility. They have to get to them right out of the water to go into this building.”
A documentary to raise funds and awareness of the project is being planned. The film will include underwater video footage taken on dives and a reenactment of making a mishoon by present-day tribe members. Young and old, about two dozen of them, are studying the language and learning about dress and customs specific to the era when the mishoonash were made — during the run-up to King Philip’s War against white settlers.
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| Cheryl A. Stedtler, director of Project Mishoon, and photographer Bob Michelson, chief visual documentarian for the project, stand near Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester. Project Mishoon is working toward the excavation and preservation of Nipmuc dugout canoes, several of which have been found in Lake Quisigamond [Credit: T&G/Paul Kapteyn] |
“We’ll be setting weirs, dip netting, bows and arrows, spearing — all the traditions that were used,” Michelson said, along with a look at domestic life involving women making equipment at a Nipmuc encampment.
He and Hugo agreed that the underwater conditions make photography difficult, and also kept the mishoonash undiscovered for so long.
The brittle material, Michelson said, “is almost like Jell-O that looks like wood. They keep their shape, but they’re pulp. We’re strictly on a no-touch policy.”
David Robinson, the project archeologist from Fathom Research LLC in New Bedford, has looked at all three canoes.
“Three (the mishoons are numbered in order of discovery) is in pretty rough shape. One and Two are partially buried in fine anaerobic sediments at the bottom of the lake and give you the impression of being quite solid, but that’s underwater.”
He explained that in long-submerged objects, rotted portions of the wood cells are replaced by water, but other portions are intact. “You remove the wooden object from the water and that water will evaporate, and it creates a tension inside the cells that allows them to collapse.”
The boats would be raised and immediately brought to a chemical bath on shore, Mr. Robinson explained. Preservative substances include polyethelyne glycol, as well as pine rosin dissolved in solvent. Whatever agent is chosen, its purpose is to seep in and reinforce the deteriorated cells with “kind of like a liquefied wax” that, after controlled evaporation, leaves behind a thicker waxy material.
“With all these types of treatments you do get some shrinkage. It’s all about trying to control the shrinkage,” he said of the drying process.
Ms. Stedtler has found newspaper accounts of a mishoon of unknown age that was brought up from the bottom of Lake Quinsigamond in the late 1800s, but she said its whereabouts have become unknown. This time protected under state law — the location is somewhere south of the Route 9 bridge — the mishoonash should not be disturbed.
These boats, which were used for general transportation as well as fishing, won’t be the ones that got away if state and tribal officials can see to it.
“It’s very empowering for us,” Ms. Stedtler of Project Mishoon stated recently. “We have found a thread that connects us to our past, which will extend to our future generations as well. It helps us to become stronger.”
For further information online, visit Project Mishoon: http://projectmishoon.homestead.com/Index.html and Nipmuc Nation: www.nipmucnation.org
Author: Bob Datz | Source: The Telegram and Gazette [May 20, 2012]
