Prologue

One of the oddest historical markers in all of New England can be found in the town of Duxbury, Massachusetts. A simple granite slab, it stands about five feet high and is perhaps two and a half feet wide. It was erected in 1940, shortly after Duxbury citizens observed the tercentenary of their town's founding. Yet the monument does not commemorate Duxbury's beginnings. Nor does it celebrate the achievements of a local notable, note the location of an historic building, or commemorate a battle. The marker instead shows where a fence once stood. Carved into its granite surface are the words: “SITE OF NOOK GATE. HERE A PALISADE WAS ERECTED ACROSS THE NOOK IN 1634. THIS PALISADE WAS A HIGH FENCE TO PREVENT CATTLE FROM STRAYING AND PROBABLY TO KEEP THE INDIANS OUT.” The inscription recalls the familiar proverb about good fences making good neighbors, and yet at the same time it conjures up an unlikely image. The neighbors involved here—Indians, cattle, and (by implication) colonists—are not the typical cast of characters featured in New England histories, let alone on granite monuments. Colonists, of course, appear in force both in histories and on markers, although their fence-building efforts are seldom memorialized. Indians, still scarce on monuments, are at last achieving something like parity in written accounts of New England's past. But cattle? Livestock seldom figure at all in the narrative of colonization, and when they do they usually serve as part of the scenery rather than as historical actors. The Duxbury marker may be the only monument to mention their presence in all of New England.

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