AFTER KAMESIT
Reading edition
The country about South Pond and the neighboring ponds in Plymouth, Massachusetts was called by the Wampanoag Indians “Kamesit.” Although the region began to be inhabited almost three hundred years ago, its natural beauty abides and abounds. The many clear, bright, white sandy ponds are clean and sparkling. The great white pine woods, the low rolling hills, the bogs and old kettle holes maintain their charm. A vast abundance of wild shrubs and native wild flowers such as trailing arbutus (mayflower), sabbatias (marsh pinks), are about in many places.[1]
What were once old logging roads can be walked for hours. In good weather clear skies of clean air make the stars and planets appear very close. I do not know the broad connotation of the word “Kamesit” in the Indian language of the time and place. It does suggest great fish and pine places and has a nice, pleasant sound.[2] For one who lives here now, a countryman of sorts and is surrounded by Kamesit, the word adds to a happy fate, my kismet.
I use the term “after Kamesit” because time has moved on and I would like to give an account of some of the happenings here since those Indian days; to tell about some of the people who have lived here and what their activities were, and about the very old house I live in now. It is an attempt to look at a segment of time, fleeting time, to penetrate a few unknowns, to explore what has been passing. We seek motivations and relationships in watching the continuum and haply some pleasures will arise.
There are those who believe that there is a spirit of place which provides a transcendence beyond the immediate reality around us. This spirit enters our own inner selves and transports us so that we can go beyond. Our transcendence is possible because the nature and special power of that particular place gives off a unique illumination.
It has been my good fortune to live for fifteen years in a homestead built by an early settler in this region, a house and site still not readily changed from its beginning in 1769. It is five miles south from the center of Plymouth on the eastern shore of Boot Pond. For about a hundred years, 1770-1870, it was a working and providing farm, originally ninety acres. Such activity used to be called husbandry. In the early 1800’s acreage was added to a peak of 200 acres. Some acres were cleared for dwelling, barn, animals and crops on the shores of two beautiful ponds, one called Great South, the other the Southerly Arm of Great South Pond, the latter eventually to be called Boot Pond because of its true boot contour. A strip of meadow beside the pond is mentioned in the first deed of sale. A meadow was always a thing of value because it meant open, flat, grassy, rich soil, usually moist, in contrast to the all pervasive woods. Now, for the last hundred years with the ceasing of husbandry, the forest has reclaimed much of what it once had before the fields were cleared.
The place where I live has been called the Burgess Place. This family had lived in the house from 1801 to 1959, beginning 32 years after it was built. This span amounts to more than a century and a half. The first two Burgess generations here, headed by John, born 1765 and Phineas, born 1807, earned their sustenance from this soil. Peleg, born 1840, lived here and later in Plymouth center. He bought the place from his father and his children in turn bought it from him in 1918 and spent their summers here until 1959.
As a sub-title to my account I have used the phrase “an account of a local habitation and some names.”
You Shakespereans will recognize a borrowing from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V. 1, in which the poet explains how it is possible for the imagination to give body to forms of things, turn them into shapes and “give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.” Perhaps a modern concept would be to say a place and an identity. In a sense we do have records, annals, traditions to guide us that are more than airy nothings, but hopefully, imagination may help produce a broader understanding of the experience we see before us with the aid of the mind’s eye.