in babylon's shadow

It began with Tuscarora people moving north and west after their defeat at the hands of the British in North Carolina between 1711 and 1714. They settled in among the Lenape, in the densely-wooded New Jersey hills west of the Hudson, up against the New York border.

Over time they intermarried with other races, mainly servile escapees, both black and white, from the old Dutch plantations along the river, who gave the tribe the names of their main families: Mann, De Freese, De Groot, and Von Donk. In time, they also welcomed a sprinkling of Hessian deserters from the British Expeditionary Forces at the time of the Revolution.

Outsiders sometimes call them "Jackson Whites," an insulting and derisive term, originally 'Jacks and Whites," implying that these people are mostly descended from runaway slaves and white traitors or turncoats. They call themselves the Ramapough Mountain Indians, and are recognized as a tribe by the state of New Jersey, but not yet by the government of the U.S. Certainly the historical stem of this tribe of associated clans is Native American, but over the years their culture has evolved and changed along with their ethnicity. The old Indian languages are forgotten now, although some of the people are making an effort to revive them. They mostly speak English exclusively, with a little whiff of the nearly extinct dialect known as "Jersey Dutch" occasionally thrown in. They live isolated and apart in their remote mountain fastness, and in that style of life generally known as "hillbilly."

An example of the kind of fear and distrust the Ramapo Mountain people excite in some of their neighbors is typified by H.P. Lovecraft's descriptions of "the degenerated local inhabitants" in his stories dealing with the town of Arkham, Mass. and its environs, such as "The Dunwich Horror." There is no doubt that the old horror master and born-again racist Lovecraft was using the so-called "jackson Whites" as the model for his inbred and decadent villagers of western Massachusetts, and they are undeniably different than their neighbors, bound to arouse the animosity that clannish and reclusive people often provoke among the untrusting.

Those who know them well describe a mild and harmless people, living in shanties and old houses scattered thinly among the hills and hidden lakes of upland Bergen County. They sometimes drive ancient, rusting pickup trucks, but more often take to the mountain roads on all terrain vehicles, which they use for hunting squirrels and possums and for other kinds of foraging. Most drop out of school after the eighth grade, so they're neither illiterate nor educated. Often they seek employment in nearby towns and villages, where they work as construction hands, fork lift drivers, janitors, or other manual pursuits. They're a unique and singular people, and there is no one else like them.

The thing that fascinates me most about these people is that they have persisted against all odds. Their focus is not on careers or material gain, since their highest values in life are the family, the clan, and the tribe. The white invaders have been trying to stamp them out or run them off for most of the last 300 years, but they're still right here, living in the shadow of Babylon. Hunkered down a stone's throw away from the Empire's greatest city, whose skyscrapers the mountain people can easily see on a clear day, they hang on to their old ways, a stubborn band of witnesses providing evidence for the persistence of a gone world.