Associate Professor of History Jamie Paxton teaches students how to use a bow and arrow as part of a course in experimental archaelogy in which students learn by doing.
I grew up in Beamsville, Ontario, a small, agricultural community in the Niagara Peninsula of Southern Ontario. Beamsville is between Lake Ontario and the Niagara Escarpment, an 80- to 100-foot, almost vertical, limestone cliff that runs over 600 miles from western New York through Ontario and into Michigan. The family home was on the edge of town with a ravine behind in the backyard and an orchard across the street. As teenagers, we thought the place was dreadfully boring. Only after I moved away to attend university did I realize how much of a hold the land had on me. In retrospect, I loved to disappear into the ravine for long stretches of time with friends, hike the trails that hugged the edge of the escarpment, and eat fruit from the orchards in the summer. I still do those things, but I lack the strong, personal connections to the Lehigh Valley. A consequence of those experiences is my interest in exploring the history of places and humans’ relationships to the land.
What drew you to your academic discipline?
I have been interested in history for as long as I can remember. Niagara was a major theater of the War of 1812, and my parents took me to visit battlefields and forts on both sides of the Canada-US border. When I was eight my sister let me attend some of her university classes and that is when I learned that people could make a living teaching what they enjoyed. As much as anything, those two experiences set me on the path to becoming a history professor.
What are your research interests?
My research focuses on the Mohawks (Kanien‘kehá:ka in their own language), one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederacy. I am especially interested in how Mohawks gave meaning to their world during times of transition, first when significant numbers of Europeans began entering their territory in the early eighteenth century and then when they were expelled from their homeland in New York during the American Revolution and had to relocate to Upper Canada (Ontario).
I had no intention of studying the history of indigenous people when I was in graduate school. I stumbled into it while working on my dissertation. I was curious about the fact that Loyalists and Haudenosuanee arrived in Upper Canada together during and after the Revolution. In researching the Mohawk Valley of New York, where many of the Loyalists and Mohawk refugees originated, I came across a quote by a German settler begging the Mohawks “not to wean them so soon and cast them off.” Why did German settlers cast themselves as children and ask their Mohawk “mothers” not to abandon them, I wondered? That was the story I wanted to tell. To my advisor’s dismay, I switched my dissertation topic to the Mohawks, how they created community, and how they transformed diverse outsiders into kin.
I still study the Mohawks, and I am now working on an ethnogeography of their homeland. Ethnogeography assumes that landscapes are not inert backgrounds against which history is played out but rather vibrant and dynamic cultural constructs central to personal and collective identity. I am interested in how the Mohawks imbued the environment with meaning and how the arrival of Europeans upset these culturally constructed landscapes and gave rise to creolized landscapes.
Share something about yourself that people may not know.
I learned how to flint knap [breaking and shaping flint to create arrowheads and other objects] in order to co-teach experimental archaeology with Sandy Bardsley [Professor of History]. I have taken it up as a hobby, and although I am not very skilled, I have made some crude points. Smashing rocks is cathartic.
What is your favorite space on campus and why?
Not sure if it counts as being on campus, but I enjoy the Deputy Environmental Field Center, a 70-acre tract of mostly wooded land near Bangor that the university owns. Sandy Bardsley and I take students camping there when we teach experimental archaeology. Over the years we have built shelters, pit-fired pottery, and cooked with hot rocks. Not only do I like doing these things, but I also like being with students in a different, less structured setting. It is rewarding to see students who may be shy in class, display a talent you did not know they possessed or take the lead in a project.
What is your favorite Moravian University tradition?
I may be biased but I love the History Cookout. Students in 100-level history courses feed the campus community with dishes they have prepared representing the cultures and time periods they are studying. The project engages all the senses, and students who may have little experience cooking take pride in their accomplishments. The turnout is always good, and students genuinely seem to enjoy the experience of doing hands on history.
What do you like to do with your free time?
Apart from flint knapping, I like being outdoors. My wife and I take the dog hiking, camping, canoeing, and kayaking whenever we can. I also enjoy music. I refurbished an old turntable and restarted my record collection. I lost my previous collection to a flood. My daughter and I attend concerts each year.