Aptucxet Trading Post Project

The Aptucxet trading Post, aka the Trading House at Manomet, was built circa 1626-1627 by the colonists at Plymouth. Here they built a small house and kept a couple of men to go in search of trade in wampum to the south in Narragansett Bay. This trading establishment was slow to turn a profit and was soon eclipsed by the trading house at Cushnoc on the Kennebec River in what is now Maine. The end of this house came in 1635 when a dramatic hurricane blew the roof of the structure off and left nothing but the posts of the house standing in the ground. The house may have in fact been abandoned much earlier as it never appears in the colonial records or reports between its construction and use as a meeting place for an ambassador from the New Netherlands and its final destruction in 1635.

The Aptucxet Trading Post Project was conducted in 1995 by the author, Craig S. Chartier, and the late Dr. Barbera Luedtke and the University of Massachusetts Boston as a summer field school. We had set out to discover whether the site that was tauted as the Aptucxet Trading Post in Bourne Massachusetts really was a circa 1627 structure. Before work had begun, the artifact assemblage that had been excavated in the 1920s by Percival Hall Lombard was reexamined with the result being that we had serious douibts that the 1627 site was located where the Bourne Historical Society believes it is.

The following information is the end result of our fieldwork in 1995 and several years of research and analysis.

Aptucxet Web References

Aptucxet Rune Stone

, a slightly different take on the archaeology of this site

The Museum Presents a Chronology of the Site, presented below with adendums made by PARP (in Red)

Chronological List of Events

Manamet River visited by Leif Ericson (No Proof the Vikings ever were in the area)
Manamet Portage across the isthmus must be very ancient as the Indian name "Manamet" signifies "Trail of the burden carriers". (Actually the name means either "the land between" or "the palce of the watch hill")
The Pilgrims knew of it early, because the Billington boy, having been lost in the woods in 1621, was found by the Indians at Manamet and kept there before being taken further down the Cape.
Governor Bradford found the much needed corn and beans at Manamet and left it there in the care of Caunacum, the Sachem of Manamet until Capt. Standish could get it.
1627: Trade House founded by Plymouth Colony.
1627: Isaac DeRaasiere visited Aptucxet October, 1627 on board his barque "Nassau". Introduction of Wampumpeaker. (Introduction of Wampumpeage/ Wampumpeake)
1633: Frame for the Plymouth Colony's third trade house at Metteneque (Windsor Locks, CT), is constructed at Aptucxet, put on board their barque and transported to the Connecticut River. (No historic reference to the frame being built here)
1635: Great storm took off roof of a building at the Post, carrying it from its foundation, leaving the posts still standing in the ground; could not have been the trade house itself for its foundations were of stone; more likely it was a shed or a hog pen. (This argument is based on the a priori logic that the structure excavated in the 1920s was in fact the Trading post, a structure which did have a stone foundation. But the structure was the Ezra Perry II house, and not the Trading post [see the above report]. The trading house was likely of post-in-ground construction)
1654: Captain Standish ordered to assemble a company of men at Manamet and embark on the barque Adventer on an expedition against the Dutch at Manhattan. This was never carried out as peace between England and Holland was declared, for the time being. (Not sure where this refernce comes from- can't find the primary documentation for it)
1655: First recorded transfer of the Trading Post land - from Keene's book: page 55.
Circa 1663: Ezra Perry (1) bought of his father-in-law Thomas Burgess, the western part of his 1652 grant, which consisted of land lying mostly on the south of Manamet River and which extended nearly to the river's mouth.
1852: Site partially excavated by Dr. John Batchelder of Bourne and William S. Russell of Plymouth.
1882, August 8: Cape Cod Historical Society held a clambake at Buzzards Bay when Judge Thomas Russell, President of the Pilgrim Society at Plymouth for many years, made an address and placed a flag at the site of the old Trading Post.
1921, December 29: Bourne Historical Society was incorporated under the laws of Massachusetts to acquire the site of Aptucxet and make excavations.
1926, October and November: President Percival H. Lombard and Vice President Nathan Bourne Harford made complete excavations, uncovering the entire foundations and many relics.
1930, May and June: Restoration of foundations and erection thereon of a replica of the Trading Post, undertaken through the generosity of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants and friendly citizens, by the Bourne Historical Society; the work was done by Eugene M. Dow of Topsfield, MA.
1930, September 3: Building dedicated.
1995 University of Massachusetts Boston archaeologists Dr. Barbara Luedtke and Craig Chartier conduct a two week field school at the site and find no evidence to support the theory that the 1627 trading post stood here. What they found was abundant evidence of late 17th century to early 18th century occupation by the Perry family