norumbega/Paper.md

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\usepackage{setspace} \doublespacing	Norumbega	Jacob Signorovitch

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In Weston, Massachusetts, across the Charles River from Brandeis University, an unusual structure rises among the trees; a forty foot stone tower, complete with spiral staircase and ramparts, weathered and stained with time, looking distinctly out of place within earshot of I-95. The story of how it came to be there involves Vikings, a baking soda magnate, the discovery of America, and, at the center of it all, the city of Norumbega. As one explores the area, the name comes up again and again; a map will tell you the structure's name is Norumbega Tower, and running alongside is Norumbega Road. Further south, one finds a Norumbega Park, and another road called Norumbega Court. This paper will explore how one man in the late 19th century, Eben Norton Horsford, brought together two seemingly disconnected ideas into a theory for the original discovery of America, what motivated him to do so, and what he left behind.

The myth of Norumbega originated in the 16th century, during the Age of Exploration. It was variously a town, city, or country, somewhere along the coast of New England, inhabited by amiable and civilized natives. First given the name Nurumberg by Giacomo Gastaldi in a 1548 edition of Ptolemy's Geography,[@KirsNor98, 34] the myth can be traced back to a conflation of two separate accounts. The first is that of Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer under King Francis I of France.[@GreeneLife37, 4-7] He was one of the first Europeans to explore the area around Narragansett Bay in 1524[@KirsNor98, 36, 39], far distant from where Norumbega would eventual be described. However, due to geographical ambiguity at the time, his account would later become "at the heart of the Norumbega legend."[@KirsNor98, 39] He recounted his experiences in a letter to the king, where he described a pleasant harbor inhabited by friendly and civil natives.[@KirsNor98, 39] They practiced "more systematic cultivation [of crops] than the other tribes," and were "very like the manner of the ancients."[@KirsNor98, 39] In the letter, Giovanni names the place refugio, "on account of its beauty."[@KirsNor98, 39] Civilized inhabitants became one of the core aspects of the myth, present throughout its evolution even as its exact location and size varied. The second account is that of Jean Alfonce de Saintonge, pilot on Jacques Cartier's exploration of the Penobscot Bay area [@KirsNor98, 41]. Sailing up the Penobscot River, which he called the Norenbègue, he described "a city called Norombegue with clever inhabitants [...] The people use many words which sound like Latin and worship the sun, and they are fair people and tall."[@KirsNor98, 41] These two accounts, Giovanni s refugio and Saintonge's Norombegue, eventually merged into a single myth, canonized by Gastaldi, of an advanced Native American city whose manners were closer to those of Europe than their neighbors.[@KirsNor98, 41]

Eben Norton Horsford was a chemist working in Cambridge, best known for his invention of modern baking powder.[@JackHors92, 343] In addition to his work, he showed some interest in history and archaeology throughout his life. He would collect fossils around his father's farm in Moscow (now Leister), New York where he grew up,[@JackHors92, 340] and became interested in learning the language of the Seneca Indians[@JackHors92, 340], to which his father worked as a missionary.[@JackHors92, 103] Later, he would often visit his wife's family estate on Shelter Island, New York.[@AdamsMemBiog08, 104] There, he became interested in the island's history and "erected a monument to the Quakers, who found shelter there from Puritan persecution."[@AdamsMemBiog08, 104] He would later repeat this pattern of investigation and monument building in Massachusetts. Horsford is most remembered for his contribution to baking science. He is credited for the invention of modern baking powder in 1861, which did not involve a fermentation step.[@HorsBread61] He then founded the Rumford Chemical Works, named after the position he held at Harvard, and made a fortune[@JackHors92, 343] selling his invention and cookbooks which used it.[@HorsCook77] While in Cambridge, Horsford became very interested in the possibility of Vikings in New England. This not an unheard of idea at the time,[@FlemPicHist95, 1079] but Horsford would bring much more publicity and become its foremost supporter. In 1887,[@HorsDisc87, 10] Horsford wrote the dedication for a large bronze statue of Erickson,[@GuttVal18, 86] commending him for his early discovery of America. He doesn't stop just there, though; he additionally asserts Leif sailed south after making the continent, all the way to Cape Cod. He explains his reasoning:

...if you will be kind enough to hold up to your mind's eye, now for a moment, any familiar map of North America. Look at the east coast. From Greenland, along the line to the southwest, you will notice three projections into the sea. They are Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod.[@HorsDisc87, 9]

He disregards Newfoundland as an option, saying "[it] is bold, rocky, mountainous, of meagre vegetation, and with few beaches."[@HorsDisc87, 10] Ironically, the best evidence archaeologists have now for the location of Vinland is L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. How Horsford was recieved in the moment, if those around him were surprised by this theory, is unclear. But his theories would certainly see criticism from historians once published. One author, Justin Winsor, found issue with Horsford's theory that Vikings had left a noticeable imprint on Native American language:

Nothing could be slenderer than the alleged correspondences of languages, and we can see in Horsford's Discovery of America by Northmen to what a fanciful extent a confident enthusiasm can carry it.[@WinsNar89, 98-99]

Horsford begins his next book on the Vikings, The Problem of the Northmen, by directly addressing Winsor's comment,[@HorsProb89, 1] demonstrating that he was willing to openly spar with historians to defend his theory. Horsford's belief and confidence that there were Nordic elements present in Native American language may have been informed by his early years with the Seneca in New York. Horsford then continues to present evidence for the location of Leif Erickson's houses: "If anyone interested will walk from the junction of Elmwood Avenue with Mt. Auburn Street [...] he will be at the site of the objects of interest which had once been there, and which I had predicted might there be found."[@HorsProb89, 14] Horsford is remarkably confident in his claims, inviting his audience to see the evidence for themselves. He claims there are "inequalities of the surface," which are "the remains of two long log houses, and huts, or cots."[@HorsProb89, 14] He states they are arranged "'some nearer, some farther from the water,' as the sagas say,"[@HorsProb89, 14] again using the sagas as a primary source of proof for his theory. Outside of just Horsford, there existed a wider movement around the promotion of Leif Erickson at the time. Newspapers at the time rarely mention Leif without mention his preceding Columbus,¹ which may have been part of the widespread anti-Italian sentiment. Several other proponents of Vikings in New England also believed "the 'Aryan race,' in particular its 'Teutonic' [i.e., German] branch, was superior to all others."[@FlemPicHist95, 1078] Horsford, however, seems to have only been interested in Leif and never brings up racial superiority or a disdain for Columbus. In fact, he states that Leif's prior discovery of America "would dim, by the measure of the faintest Indian-summer haze only, the transcendent glory of the life-work of Columbus."[@HorsDisc90, 16] So, while some of the enthusiasm around Horsford's work may have been to diminish Columbus as an expression of pro-Nordic anti-Italian sentiment, it seems the man himself was more scientifically motivated.

It was at Shelter island when "a chance reference let fall by one of his guests" would introduce Horsford to the legend of Norumbega.[@JackHors92, 344] The term seems to have been widely known in New England at the time; both an article from the Worcester Daily Spy in 1875 and one from the Vermont Phoenix in 1894 mention Norumbega in passing, the reader assumed to be familiar. Horsford, having grown up in New York, was only introduced to it after his retirement and became deeply interested He read the accounts of Alafonce and Verrazzano, and describes them in one of his books.[@HorsDisc90, 14] In this same book, Discovery of the Ancient City of Norumbega, Horsford mentions the existence of so many maps that prominently display Norumbega that "one could not help thinking that they must have some foundation in truth; the alternative [would have] involved too many conspirators, of different nationalities."[@HorsDisc90, 13] How Horsford made the connection from Norumbega to Leif Erickson is a little less clear, though it was most likely etymological. We have seen already Horsford's early interest in Native American language from his early years with the Seneca in New York, and it seems he thought the name "Norumbega" peculiar. He describes how "many hundreds of years ago the country we call Norway was called Norbegia or Norbega,"[@HorsDisc90, 19] and that in "the Algonquin family of languages, which prevailed throughout New England, could not [...] utter the sound of b without prefixing to it the sound of m."[@HorsDisc90, 18] Thus, he reasons, Norumbega is but a Native American corruption of what the Vikings would have called Norway. Horsford uses physical evidence to support his claim as well. He mentions several instances where the first settlers of Massachusetts found natural dams or weirs, which could be used for fishing (the fish would be stopped and collect before the weir on their way upstream to spawn.)[@HorsDisc90, 33-34] He also describes walls and other structures on the floor of Boston Harbor and Back Bay, evidence of "the ancient seaport of Norumbega."[@HorsDisc90, 37] To Horsford, all this evidence proved the existence of a great Viking fort of Norumbega, and necessitated the construction of a monument. We have seen this pattern before; once to the Quakers who found refuge on Shelter Island, and again in Boston to Leif Erickson for discovering America. He justifies the monument in four reasons:

1. It will commemorate the Discovery of Vinland and Norumbega in the forty-third degree, and the identification of Norumbega with Norway, the come country to which this region was once subject by right of discovery and colonization.
2. It will invite criticism, and so sift out any errors of interpretation into which, sharing the usual fortune of the pioneer, I may have been led.
3. It will encourage archæological investigation in a fascinating and almost untrodden field, and be certain to contribute in the results of research and exploration, both in the study and the field, to the historical treasure of the Commonwealth.
4. It will help, by reason of its mere presence, and by virtue of the veneration with which the Tower will in time come to be regarded, to bring acquiescence in the fruit of investigation, and so allay the blind scepticism, amounting practically to inverted ambition, that would deprive Massachusetts of the glory of holding the Landfall of Leif Erickson, and at the same time the seat of the earliest colony of Europeans in America.[@HorsDisc90, 40]

These say much about the man Horsford was. As already seen from his comments on Columbus, he was not motivated by dislike of the Italians; rather, he sought to bring "the glory" of Leif's discovery to Massachusetts, his home for the majority of his working life. Second, he is remarkably humble in his theories; this is particularly evident in his second point, and to an extent the third. He accepts that "the trustworthiness of my conclusions might be tested by the spade,"[@HorsDisc90, 41] and that he had not been able to do much of his own archaeology. Horsford did not build the tower to be himself remembered, rather to inspire others to continue his work. Indeed, the plaque at the base of the tower does not bear his name.

Eben Norton Horsford would die two years after The Discovery was published, on January first, 1893.[@AdamsMemBiog08, 103] He believed himself a pioneer; at the cutting edge of discovery, the first breakthrough in a movement that would long outlive him. After his death, however, there seemed to be little interest around his ideas. His biographers mostly gloss over the veracity of his theories, focusing more on his achievements in chemistry, and his large and generous donations to various colleges in the area[@JackHors92, 345] The tower remains. A century of wind and rain have made its words near impossible to read, and trees now obscure it from the river.

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References

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1. Springfield Weekly, 1893 ↩︎