n e w a cq u i s i t i o n
Gateway to the Mid-Atlantic Is the Conservancy’s The Maddox Island site on Maryland’s Eastern Shore may reveal much about the tribes that greeted the first English settlers in the New World.
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efore the 1600s, American Indians probably thought that the region around Chesapeake Bay was the best place to live on Earth. The weather was moderate; resources such as beaver, fish, and game were plentiful; farming was productive; and transportation via the navigable waterways was easy. Maryland’s Eastern Shore had the added advantage of being relatively inaccessible to the myriad enemies and competitors across the bay. Natives living here had just enough contact with tribes to the west to establish a modest system of trade. The arrival of the English explorer John Smith to the area in 1608 meant the end of the splendid isolation of the Nanticoke and other tribes on the Eastern Shore. Today American schoolchildren learn about the adventures of Smith and the first settlers at Jamestown. Less well known is the fact that Smith—along with other English explorers, traders, and soldiers—made early and extensive travels to Maryland’s Eastern Shore. On Smith’s famous “Map of Virginia,” he records his visits to eight large Indian towns, observing that they looked like “Countrey [sic] Villages in England.” The Conservancy’s most recent preserve contains one
village site that may have been occupied long before and during Smith’s travels to this region. The Maddox Island site is the Conservancy’s second preserve in Maryland and its first on the Eastern Shore. Located in Somerset County, about 100 miles southeast of Annapolis, the Maddox site may answer questions about the Late Woodland and early historic periods in the region. Overlooking the placid Chesapeake Bay, Maddox Island may be one of the most scenic landscapes in North America. The 23-acre site represents roughly half of a historic homestead known since 1750 as the Maddox Island Farm. The centerpiece of the site is a vast shell midden covering approximately half the property. During a 1996 survey for the Maryland Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs, archaeologist Darrin Lowery recovered numerous pottery sherds, stone tools and points, and shells on the fertile fields at the mouth of the Manokin River. Maddox Island is among the most extensive and well-stratified sites along the 115-mile-long Eastern Shore. In addition to the prehistoric midden and living area, cultural resources represented at the site include a brick limekiln ruin filled with burnt oyster shell. The kiln is likely related to a group of pilings along the shoreline, perhaps the remains of a maritime business venture that went bust in the 19th century.
The view of Maddox Island’s peninsula BOB WALL
from the prehistoric site. Oyster shell blankets the beach where a historic limekiln once operated.
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