Installation for The Way Mayne (Maine) Was by Andrew Ellis Johnson:

Lying Blanket (circa late 17th through late 20th century CE).

The history of Maine is, as are all histories, created and contested, suspect and subjective, lying and living, woven and rent, treacherous and tantalizing.  To portray 17th century New England as a tumultuous time of brutal interracial conflict would be accurate but injudicious.  To do so would ignore the complexities of intra-Native American relationships, European divisiveness, and prolonged periods of peaceful respect and economic dependence among multiple cultures.  And yet to remember this age without a consumptive sense of guilt and loss is more than conscience can bear. 

 

The scant vestiges from the life of the modest Thomas Danforth provide an apt filter to reexamine our own perceptions; his non-conformist and tolerant stances provide a marker to measure our own.  Thomas Danforth’s outspokenness can be attributed in part to an inheritance from his father Nicholas, who “went so far as paying for a minister to lecture in Framlingham’s church, and a neighboring divine, Mr. Burroughs, together with others, gave weekly sermons strongly tainted with Nonconformist principles.”

Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi America, Hartford, 1826, II, 59

 

This “tainting” provided Thomas Danforth the necessary grounding to maintain an unpopular humanity toward the “praying” Indians during “King Philips War”, despite the surreptitious distribution of the following note which reflected popular sentiment:

Reader thou art desired not to suppresse this paper, but to promote its designe, which is to certify (those traytors to their King and Countrey) Guggins and Danford, that some generous spiritts have vowed their destruction, as Christians we warne them to prepare for death, for though they will deservedly dye; yet we wish the health of their souls.

                                                By the new Society

                                                            A.B.C.D.                     

Douglas Edward Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 1958, p.151

 

However, despite his apparent sympathy, Thomas Danforth, as a member of the Council of Commissioners of the United Colonies, participated fully in their “most serious task: directing the great war for securing the Promised Land for themselves.” 

Harry M. Ward, The United Colonies of New England, 1643-1690, p. 286

Furthermore, we must note that those neglecting their forced conscription to fight against indigenous peoples or who showed contempt for authority were subject to “death or some other grievous punishment” as ordered by the Massachusetts Court.

Massachusetts Colony Records, V, 78-9.

“One soldier in the Bay was even imprisoned for slandering the President of the United Colonies, Thomas Danforth.”

Ward, The United Colonies of New England, 1643-1690, p. 291

 

And, despite his protective efforts toward the “praying Indians”, the provisional government with which he was later affiliated was unable to fulfill the populace’s expectations for greater rights and stronger defense.  In fact, Thomas Danforth’s reply to pleas for protection from the people

 

 

besieged by the French and Indians at Casco Bay was “that Jesus Christ was king of earth as well as heaven, and that if Jesus Christ did not help them, he could not.”

Cal. State Pap. Col., 1689-1692, from Viola Florence Barnes, The Dominion of New England, p.260

 

It is precisely this dual aspect of Danforth as perceived protector (during the King Philip’s War) and as representative of ineffectual power (during the revolutionary provisional government) that draws the most striking parallels with our current problematic role as enforcer of international justice.  Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda, Guatemala, Cambodia — sites of genocide (more conveniently and palatably renamed “ethnic cleansing”) are testament to our own self-serving policies or our own impotence at enforcing our professed policies.

 

 

Lying Blanket is woven from Coral snakes which are indigenous to North America.  They inflict their poisonous venom only when manhandled.  Their made-in-China rubber versions are originally patterned with red, yellow and black (colors stereotypically associated with the non-Caucasian races), later whitewashed and illuminated by a deep red light.  The image of the open blanket, symbol of childhood security, extended coverage, and societal comfort, serves as an icon of the protector as well as locus of the protectorate.  The serpents, woven warp and woof, allude to the Spirit; concentrated power kept in check; a common ground of collective knowledge, phallic virility and Eve’s agency, the endless deceitful proclamations (spoken with forked tongues) that become the bed of history, and the slippage inherent in interpretation.  The filtered light attests to the selective spectrum we must but see, the unintended limitations of our vantage, the restricted perspective of our inherited claim.  The color red evokes xenophobic attributes of a native other, narratives’ innate theatricality, and questions of racial identity and political allegiance. 

 

On another plane, the blanket harkens to the exquisitely crafted “red cloth blanket on which King Philip would sit while appearing ‘in state’.”  It was given to Major Church by the conquered Annawon after Philip’s death.  Major Church in turn presented it to Plymouth’s Governor Winslow, who in his turn made it an offering to King Charles II of England. 

Russell Bourne, The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England 1675-1678, p.205

 

It was, rather, as so many most cherished hopes, irretrievably lost en route, and remains for us to imagine.  Then, the war raged on in Maine; now, in the main, war rages on. 

 

The Lying Blanket lets the viewer decipher whether or not it must remain so stained, so steeped, in this blood red hue.

 

The Lying Blanket lets the viewer decipher whether or not the apparently “crimson” snakes would be more or less hideous if presented in a harsher light that would reveal their white vacancy.

 

The Lying Blanket lets the viewer decipher whether or not the spiritual purity we ascribe to whiteness is merited, whether or not this least absorbent hue represents a reflective common ground or an ever seething, ever sweeping bed of lies which both covers and is uncovered.