Week 5
The underlying topic that I am thinking about for my individual project surrounds water, water infrastructure, and the ways in which water influences the lives of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people within Philadelphia and the surrounding area.
Here are a collection of ideas that I am putting together, supported by archival resources.
1. Water infrastructure, namely sewers and other municipal systems
For this part of my project, I will look at planning documents for Philadelphia using readily available, publicly accessible documents from the city’s archives. Throughout my navigation of this collection, I will collect things specifically related to Dock Creek to accentuate the group project the Ecological group has selected for this course. One specific example related to Dock Creek would be the resource “From Scenic River to City Sewer” which is a report written in the early 2000s as to the shifting of Dock Creek from a navigable, healthy river to a city waste disposal method throughout the 18th century.
I will be approaching the research of this collection through a temporal lens specifically – moving from the incorporation of Philadelphia (and before if available – potentially in other collections) through the first 100 years to make claims as to the motivations/overarching strategy of the city in its choices regarding such infrastructure.
2. Water as a source of subsistence and entertainment.
When I first went into the archive I didn’t realize that there was a long history of maritime entertainment and fishing/whaling in the area. I will be looking at documents related to these practices – namely from the records of the American Philosophical Society – to track the ways in which the settler population interacted with water and compare it to documents that my othergroup members are researching related to how Indigenous peoples related to the waters of the surrounding areas.
A key part of this research will be looking through the meteorological journals of William Adair, who has a surprising number of notes related to ships going to and fro down the Delaware River. One interesting element of this research is Adair’s knowledge and documentation of sicknesses that came and went through the city like the tide.
3. Water Rights for Indigenous Peoples
I will be concentrating on the relationships between Indigenous peoples of the area and the water sources prior to colonization when documented, or documented right at first contact. This will be heavily accentuated by documents I am finding for question 2 and with documents that my group members are specifically looking at – namely those about settlers documenting Indigenous religious ceremonies. Stella has found some fascinating materials related to water being used throughout a young Lenape’s life for developmental stages and rituals.
