The Place of Stone: Dighton Rock and the Erasure of America’s Indigenous Past

Dighton Rock, a 40-ton boulder located in southeastern Massachusetts, remains little known outside New England, but the origins of its elaborate inscriptions were for several centuries a subject of impassioned debate among European and American intellectuals. Canadian historian Hunter (The Race to the New World) writes that the rock has reflected “the prejudices and ignorance” of its interrogators ever since white settlers first encountered it in the late 17th century. Puritan intellectuals believed that it was a relic of some culture that had existed before that of the current indigenous inhabitants; throughout the 18th and 19th centuries various scholars attributed the carvings to the ancient Phoenicians, the medieval Norsemen, and early 16th-century Portuguese explorers. Only amateur ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft insisted that the inscriptions were the work of New England indigenes, but his claims failed to win academic support due to their problematic methodology and a far broader issue: Dighton Rock interested only a small intellectual circle, but conclusions about its provenance disrupted white Americans’ ideas about their right to formerly Indian territories. Hunter’s deeply researched, heavily detailed study raises fascinating questions about white Americans’ understandings of Native American culture as well as their own sense of identity and nation. Illus. [em](Oct.) [/em]